Month: August 2021

Apples and Pumpkins and Sunflowers, Oh My!

For anyone in the west Chicago suburbs (or passing through), let me tell you about this awesome gem called Kuipers Family Farm. As I recall, we first found Kuipers as a way to go out with friends while social distancing — specifically in the orchard, so I’ll start with that.

There are somewhere around 40 different types of apples available, which you can pay to pick 1/4 peck paper bag of, per person. (The picture below is about 3 of those, for reference, including the full bag.) Each week has a different selection of apples to pick, depending on what’s in season, which means you can feasibly come back 3 or 4 times over autumn and get new flavors every time. Which are available is visible both on the board outside the orchard and on their website, which also offers a “Notify Me” option for when specific types are in harvest. Both of these have a 1-5 rating scale, giving each apple a score for its popularity raw, in baking, and for applesauce. There’s also a policy I’m rather fond of: you’re welcome to taste test the apples as you pick, so long as you finish the whole apple. This lets you go “wow, that one is really good!” and use your limited space accordingly.

I’d give you directions from the orchard to the sunflower area, but honestly between the train looping it and the seven acres of flowers… you can’t miss it. Now, seven acres might sound a little excessive, I admit, but according to the website there are over 20 different varieties of sunflower there. So if you’re up for a bit of a hike, wander through the various paths in the fields, stop for photo ops at the random tractors scattered throughout, and when a specific sunflower catches your eye, take note of where it is, because admission to the sunflower area comes with 1 bloom included — that is to say, you get to take home one flower of your choice, or more if you pay a little extra.

Kuipers also has a pumpkin farm. Unfortunately, I’ve never done that part of the experience, so I can’t tell you much more than the website says — they’ve got a ton of fall activities, from a corn maze to pig races and a petting zoo, to, of course, picking your own pumpkins. What I can tell you is that the Orchard Store, which is kind of in the middle of everything, is a magical little experience and you will leave with some sort of food. Like apple cider donuts. Or mint chocolate fudge. Mmm. *cough* Anyways, since I don’t have any pumpkin photos for you, have another sunflower pic!

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Pixel Art

Yes, I have fallen prey to the hypnosis of color-by-number apps. While I realize there are probably several options along this vein, I’m going to be talking about the one I use, aptly titled Pixel Art.

The basic concept seems fairly self-explanatory — an image is divided into squares, numbered by color, and you fill it in accordingly. You don’t have to use the colors in order, or all of one color at once… in fact, it’s often easiest to start with the highest numbers, as they tend to be the least prevalent. When you select a color on the number bar, it shows how much of that color you’ve completed so far, and marks all pixels of that color with a dark grey to set them apart from the blank white of other unfilled cells. You can choose between tapping these individually to color them, or dragging your finger across several, which is quicker but risks hitting other numbers, too. If that happens the pixel will remain a paler version of that color (number still visible) until you hit it with the correct one. The page of the palette before colors 1-10 has two “Boosters”: the Color Wand, which colors multiple neighboring cells of the same color with one tap, and Color Splash, which colors everything in a set radius with one tap, regardless of color. Honestly, though, I don’t really see the point in those.

There are a couple different menus, all comprehensively organized. First there’s the main one, at the bottom of the page, sorted into Library, Daily, My Works, and Create. Yes, there’s an option to create art for this — don’t ask me how that works, I’ve never done it. Daily is fairly self-explanatory: there’s a new image there every day, like an all-year advent calendar of coloring. My Works has a second menu near the top, split into, again, “My Works,” which shows everything you’ve colored at least one pixel on, and “In Progress,” which shows only the images you haven’t completed yet. As you can imagine, In Progress is super useful for when you’ve got multiple pictures going on at once, especially the more detailed ones that can take a while to complete.

The most complicated tab is Library, which has a 4-tab menu of its own. First off, Event. Currently, there’s a “Desert World” event going on. What the event is changes regularly, but they each have thematically appropriate art, and the more of those you complete by the end of the event, the more rewards you get, including Bonus images, which is the third tab from the left — pretty much, the more event art you complete, the more bonus ones you collect. The tab between those is New, which is also fairly self-explanatory. New art appears at the top of the page, and the more you scroll down, the older the stuff you’re looking at. It’s worth noting that a lot of times, these are added in clusters, hence why my screenshot has four images pertaining to Japan all completed around the same time.

The fourth and final tab in Library is Books, which, like how In Progress acts as a filter for My Works, is effectively a subset of New. These are collections of 8 images each, bound together by a category, be it Landscapes, Comfortable Clothes, or even just “Orange Color.” You unlock each next row of the collection as you work, going through seven easier images and ending on a full one. I won’t say photorealistic, necessarily, because sometimes full pictures are intricate patterns instead, but rather than being a cutout of some concept within a given space, full images take up the entire square.

Both books and individual art are sometimes locked, and while you can buy premium, you can also just watch an ad to unlock them.

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Sudoku Challenge

“Hold up, didn’t you already tell us about Sudoku?” Well, yes, sort of, but that was Hawaiian Sudoku! And, no, I’m not here to talk about the normal version, at least not exactly — I’m here to talk about the board game.

Yep! Sudoku is a competitive game now! Sudoku Challenge actually came out in like 2006, but I didn’t have a blog then, so we’re going to pretend this is a new discovery. The first thing to choose is which side of the board you’re playing — Sudoku (9×9 grid), or Zoodoku (6×6). What’s Zoodoku, you ask? Well, it’s the easier version of Sudoku, and much, much cuter, since instead of numbers, you’re placing animals.

Whichever you choose, the mechanics are the same — you start by placing the starter tiles (marked with a different backing), one in each box, no overlapping rows/columns, and placing each player’s chosen pawn at 0 on the scoring area. Players then take turns drawing a face-down tile and choosing where to place it. Just like regular Sudoku, it can’t be in the same row, column, or box as a tile of the same type. Unlike regular Sudoku, you have another goal: scoring. When you place a tile, you get 1 point for each other tile that shares a row, column, or box with it. Each tile is only counted once. If you’re feeling exceptionally masochistic, you can play Sudoku with a twist — instead of scoring one point for each other tile, you add up their values. Note that if you do this, you will run out of 40-point tokens; we used the Zoodoku tiles as stand-ins.

There are going to be times when prior placements leave spaces unable to be filled, like the empty space in the middle right of the board below, where the box needs a deer (blocked by row) and the row needs a raccoon (blocked by both column and box). If a player draws a tile they cannot place, the game ends immediately, and whoever has the most points wins.

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Prairie Plants

Depending on where you live, some of you are probably already familiar with the concept of pocket prairies — little areas of land specifically dedicated to native prairie plants. Not only does this help preserve the native species, but prairie plants have extensive, deep root systems that hold the soil in place, decreasing erosion. And, y’know, they look nice. So since I was at a pocket prairie the other day, here are some pictures.

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