Mobile Monday! Some lovely summer doggos I found on Unsplash.
Photogs:
@john_cameron
@o5ky

Happy Friday! Here's some Free Scrabble for you.

I tried out a few free Scrabble games online to see how invasive the advertising was, how much they demanded from a player in return for a game and how much data they were taking in the background.

Wow. I came up with two that were okay.

The first I tried was Pogo Scrabble. It's probably the most invasive of the three I tried. It requires a sign up and there are loads of ads. It will not run on all browsers, nor will it run on browsers with protection against malevolent scripts or Flash. On Firefox I was met with mostly a blank screen, faint, blinking outlines of boxes and some sort of Colonial Characters that ghosted in and out of sight. It was weird and kind of creepy. I finally got into the site on an unprotected Chrome browser. (I'm going to need a browser bath.) The ads were unbearable and long. Definitely use a junk email to make an account.

The game, OTOH, was good. The interface was intuitive, it played smoothly and the novice level bot kicked my butt. As usual.

The Internet Scrabble Club is probably the most fun you will have playing Scrabble with friends. Or just watching people play Scrabble. Not sure how much fun that is, but the option is there.

You have to sign up for the IRC nickname in order to get in, but it's an easy process. Playing, is a different matter. This is nearly as old school as it gets without getting the board down from the attic.

If you can get a friend to sign up, it's quite fun. You can also play strangers and there is a convoluted ranking system for judging who you want to play. There's also a code of conduct that you can sign and look for when finding a play partner. So, keep in mind this is a Scrabble *Club* there are directions and rules you have to follow. They are spelled out clearly in the instructions, so read them once you get a feel for the place.

Then there's Lexulous, which I found to be the easiest of the lot. Give the game a try before giving out your email address. But beware - The bot kicked my butt and then mopped me up with a tissue. Honestly, it was the best of the lot.

It's Mobile Monday! I made these for my tablet, so they're girly. 😉 1200x1920

Eek! It's Friday! The days are blending together. I thought today was Thursday. ?

Are you ready for a fun freebie? Well, it's a freemium product because of ads.

It's a relaxing game called Orbia! Well, maybe not totally relaxing. The graphics and sound are relaxing and pleasing. The game gets quite challenging as you move up in levels. It's a dash game that will entertain your fingers for hours. You can get it at Google Play and the App Store! Check out the game play in the video below.

It's Friday! We can move from the home office to the couch! Yay!

Today's free and open source software (FOSS) goodness comes from ... hang on ... Microsoft! Yep, Microsoft. They're developing and releasing PowerToys as an open source project!

If you've been around since the days of Windows '95 and XP, you know what a great program PowerTools was 'back in the day'. The project was axed for Vista and did not reappear in Win 7 or 8.

Now it is an open source project and housed on GitHub. You can once again do a bit of tweaking with PowerToys!

Right now PowerToys includes the following tweaks:
-Fancy Zones (a window manager)
-Windows key shortcut guide
-PowerRename (shell extension)
-File Explorer Preview Panes
-Image Resizer (shell extension)
-PowerToys Run (an app launcher)

Future additions include:
-Virtual Desktop++
-Maximize to new virtual desktop
-Animated Gif recorder
-PowerMenu
-End Task with mouse
-Find my cursor

If any of this interests you, head on over to GitHub and give it a try. (FYI - You have to scroll down a bit for instructions.) It's pretty cool!