Nothing This Weekend!

Despite my positive outlook from Friday when I talked about starting my new game, I actually got nothing accomplished on it this past weekend. Two things happened.

First, Saturday was Halloween and my daughter's soccer team had an away-game. The game was delayed for a while because no referee showed up. By the time we got home, it was almost time for the trick-or-treat to start. Everyone quickly ate dinner and got into costume. The rest of the night was spent walking around the neighborhood asking for candy.

And then that stupid clock-change thing happened. Actually the inspiration for today's comic, I hate Daylight Savings Time. Well, Daylight Savings Time itself is fine - I hate changing the clocks. It messes me up. It doesn't matter that in the fall we supposedly gain an hour of sleep. I never really do. Especially when there are young children in my house that don't care what the clock says. They are going to get up at the same time no matter what. And now I'm getting hungry an hour before lunch, getting tired at 9:00 in the evening, and just off all day. Why do we do this to ourselves? I'm a big proponent of eliminating the whole time change thing. But I'm also in favor of eliminating local time zones and switching to metric time. Nobody cares what I think.

So instead of some Phaser game code and examples, today I'm just sharing a picture of my kids in their Halloween costumes. We get back to software on Wednesday.

Tasha, on the left, is wearing her R2-D2 dress, which I think counts as a costume. She stayed at our house and handed out candy while my wife and I walk around with the other two. Gladrielle, in the center, is Anna from Frozen. Alexandria, on the right, is Sabine from Star Wars Rebels. We had a total Star Wars theme going if you count the fact that "Anna" held a light saber while we walked around. Gladrielle thinks that Anna might have Force powers. They're all owned by Disney now, so it's plausible.

Here's the comic for today, although this 1-frame sample doesn't do it justice. You have to visit the site.

Amphibian.com comic for 2 November 2015

A Little More Daylight

Today there is more daylight than yesterday, but you probably didn't notice.

Yesterday, the 21st of December, was what people here in the northern hemisphere like to call "the shortest day of the year." I like to call it my father's birthday as well, but that's not the point. The point is, all days are actually the same length (unless they add a leap second or some crazy nonsense). Yesterday wasn't the shortest day of the year, but it was the day when the Earth received the smallest amount of solar radiation, due to the tilt of the planet's axis. Winter has officially started.

Today, the 22nd of December, will get slightly more sunlight. But just by a few seconds. Here in central Pennsylvania, we had 9 hours and 16 minutes of daylight yesterday. It won't be until the 26th when we can say we got 9 hours and 17 minutes.

But we're starting to pick up some momentum...we only have to wait until the 28th to get 9 hours and 18 minutes of sun, and we can add another minute on the 20th. At the beginning of January 2015, we'll be adding 1 minute per day, and by the end of the month we'll add 2 minutes per day.

By mid-March, we'll be enjoying around 12 hours of sunlight (when daylight and darkness hours are equal, Spring begins) and we are adding around 3 minutes daily. It slows down as we get closer to June 21, when we max-out at 15 hours and 5 minutes.

I like tables of this kind of information. Here you can find the daylight/darkness table for someplace close to where you live: Duration of Daylight/Darkness Tables

Amphibian.com comic for 22 December 2014