Goodsol Solitaire Blog

These Links are on Backwards

A couple of New Year's Eve links for you:

Bitter Brew: I opened a charming neighborhood coffee shop.  Then it ruined my life.  (via BusinessPundit)
This article shows how much better of a business software development is than running a small cafe.  All the issues we don't have to deal with.

What is your MTBSA?  Mine is actually less than a minute, because I do it so often it is routine for me to check.

Friday CatBlogging: Truce

It's Friday, so it is time once again for cat pictures. 

Here is a picture of Inquisitor taken with my new camera.  You can also see the new computer in the background.  Inquisitor is sitting on the cat ledge by the window between my desk and Anne's desk at Goodsol's world headquarters.

And here is Inquisitor's nemesis, Pumpkin.  Inquisitor is in the background in a rare moment of peaceful co-existence.

See more cat pictures at Friday Ark #67.

Newsletter

The final Goodsol email newsletter of the year is going out today.  Look for it in your email box if you are subscribed.  You can subscribe here if you are not.

Links

Some interesting links today:

How to become an independent programmer in just 1068 days (via Adam Stiles).  Seven good lessons about independent software development.

From Concept to Completion.  A look at the experimentation that goes into developing a game.  Bonnie's Bookstore, by the way, looks like a very nice game.

SharkJumping Year in Review:

Casual Games - an unsung, but quickly growing entertainment category which is about to be hit by standard consolidation economics, with many current players being bought or going away, with the others being relegated to "lifestyle" businesses.  However, I believe the growth opportunities of this sector make it the most promising one of the entertainment category.

I'm not sure that "unsung" applies anymore since everybody is singing it.  I'd say "standard consolidation economics" means a massive slaughter of the undercapitalized and overhyped is about to happen.

Eric Sink sells Winnable Solitaire.

2005 Year in Review

It's time to look back at 2005.

The main change in 2005 was that this was the year that my stock trading broke out and became a major part of my income.  In the end, the profit from the business exceeded the profit from stock trading, but it was close and it has never been even close before.   This is something that has been coming for several years.  The accumulation of nearly 10 years of profits invested in the stock market was eventually going to start earning significant money whenever the market cooperated and this was the year it happened.  2006 has the potential to be even better.  All it would take would be a 15% or greater return and the stock market would likely exceed the business in profits.   Of course, 2006 is likely to be a down year in the market since it is the low of the 4 year cycle, so a 15% return next year will be a challenge. 

In 2005 I got 100% returns or better (double or better) in HANS, NTRI, and GROW and quite a few other good trades.  The big event of the year in my stock trading was the start of my stock trading blog at http://www.solitairetrader.com .

Quite a bit happened at Goodsol Development this year.  We released a couple of new versions of Pretty Good Solitaire, a new version of Pretty Good MahJongg, a new version of Action Solitaire, and a new game, Most Popular Solitaire.  I was pleased that sales of Action Solitaire look like they might be in a nice upswing as sales in the last few months of 2005 nearly equalled the sales when it was initially released 2 years ago.  It was nice to see that the game may have legs.   The game has a group of core fans that play it a lot but it has been a hard sell to a wider audience.  The portals were uninterested in it 2 years ago, but I wonder how many of the portal games from 2 years ago are selling as well now as they did then.

One of the big events of the year was Pretty Good Solitaire winning the Shareware Industry Awards Foundation People's Choice Award again.

On the personal side, there weren't many changes this year.  This was our first full year with the new cat Pumpkin, who hasn't lost much of her kittenish enthusiasm yet.  I'm sure the other cats wish that in 2006 Pumpkin would stop jumping on them.  This was the last year for the cornfield behind our house as it will be turned into a park next year.  We intended to buy a new car this year, but didn't.  All in all, it was kind of a boring year, but considering that too much happened in 2004, boring was good.

Happy Holidays!

Happy Festivus

Happy Festivus!

May your grievances be few and your feats of strength many!

Friday CatBlogging: Outtakes

Usually when you see cat pictures on a blog, the pictures have been carefully chosen from a large number of shots taken.  The trouble with cats as models is that they are not particularly interested in being good models.  They tend to do unexpected things when you take their picture.

For example:

Here I had a great shot of Pumpkin, but at the last second she decided to sniff the underside of the camera.

Inquisitor was in a great pose, but then she decided to close her eyes and take a nap.

Sometimes you have to stalk the wild kitty to get a good shot.  I have a new digital camera for Christmas and I'm still trying to learn how to use all its settings (my old camera was from before the word "megapixel" was invented).  One problem with the new camera is that its flash tends to cause a glow in the cat's eyes.

This would have been a great shot of Ace if it weren't for the eye glow.

And sometimes you just get lucky.

For more cat pictures, see the Friday Ark #66.

Deck of Cards is Now Cool

I found an interesting news story today:

Play Your Cards Right

Highlights:

"If you'd have told me 10 years ago that one of the biggest new phenomena of the 21st century was people playing cards, I would have said you were absolutely crazy," says Robert Thompson, professor of pop culture at Syracuse University.

"There's a whole kind of hip element to it -- now I need this," says Thompson, who finds the entire phenomenon curious. "Right smack in the middle of the 21st century, sophistication is marrying itself to a very old-fashioned notion of a table where you play games, long before television, video games and home computers. The deck of cards now has become cool again."

I was a cool card player before card playing became cool.

Battle of the Holiday Search Engine Gifts

It's the holiday season again and that means it is time once again for the annual gifts from the search engines.  Each year, Google and Yahoo/Overture send me a gift in appreciation of all the money I've spent with them this year.  I don't know whether everyone who advertises on Google or Yahoo gets these gifts or whether everyone gets the same gifts, but these are this year's gifts.

First, a travel mug from Yahoo.

What can you say?  It's a device designed to contain liquids.  It came with plenty of warning labels about how hot liquids are really hot, in case I wasn't aware of that fact.  Unfortunately, it says that you shouldn't put it in the dishwasher.

Now, the Google gift:

Enclosed in this little case are a little USB Google mouse, a Google 64MB flash drive, a Google USB hub that turns one USB port into 4 USB ports, and a really cool little USB light.  The USB light plugs in and acts like a little flashlight.  It also really freaks the cats out.

So, who do you think wins the battle this year?