Apps by Al Sims

TouchMe

Sysinfo

Bezier, Beziers (Metamorphoses)

50 Famous Curves, Famous Curves #2

Chomp, Chomp #2 (Not published)

Trios

Try to touch to Android icon within a certain amount of time as many times as possible. You can choose among difficulty levels of two different types of variation: movement time and icon size. Another option is duration of each round, giving you the possibility to measure your scores within shorter or longer time.

This small utility shows you a lot of different and useful system information (4 pages in total). You can save the info to a file. (The code for accessing each information piece is available on demand.)

Maybe you are familiar with Bezier curves, often used by screen savers. They can contain 2 or more segments, moving together but forming independent shapes in a quite randomized manner. These ones are 4-segment Beziers. These are 4-segment Relaxing and aesthetical "dancing" shapes in various color combinations that you choose among using the "PREVIOUS" and "NEXT" buttons in the Title bar. You can also move the Beziers around by touching anywhere on the screen or moving them with your finger.

You will be really amazed with this!

These are 2-segment Beziers that start moving in the standard randomized manner but they end up transformed into flying creatures! I have called the first one "the nascence of a butterfly". The last one is a "whirligig" (round cone) that starts pointing upwards and after a lot of transformations it ends up re-formed pointing downwards!

You can start, pause and jump to previous/next Bezier with the keys in the Title bar.

Geometric curves can be quite fascinating even for those who are not Math fans!
Here is a collection of 50 famous curves that are drawn before you from start to end and some of them filled at the end. A rotation then enhances their aspect.

You can select a specific curve from a dropdown menu, select All to be drawn one after the other and jump to next/previous curve.

Most of the 50 Famous curves are selected for a special processing: filling of the curves with smaller curves inside them. The result as you can see is quite impressive.

Here you can select with "EFF" the type of effect to apply when drawing is completed: ROT (Rotation) and FLIP H (horizontal flipping) or FLIP V (vertical flipping). Both rotation and flipping (horizontal or vertical) can be applied.

And you can select, here too, a specific curve from a dropdown menu, select All to be drawn one after the other and jump to next/previous curve.

(Fig. 1)		(Fig. 2)		(Fig. 3)

Chomp is a known two player board game involving mainly logic, but also some strategy and … a little mystery.

It exists in various versions and names e.g. Munch, which is a synonym of Chomp. In this version, the board consists of a certain number of chocolates arranged in rows and columns (Fig. 1). Each player in turn eats (removes) a rectangular block of these chocolates. All the chocolates are the same, good and tasty, except the one on the top left corner, which is stale.

The game is played as follows: Each player in turn selects a chocolate, e.g. row 4, column 2. Then he/she eats that chocolate and all the chocolates below it and to the right of it (Fig. 2), which are removed from the board (Fig. 3). Playing is mandatory (you cannot "pass").

The goal is to leave the stale chocolate alone to be eaten by the opponent. Simple as that. Or not? Here comes the "mystery" element: Is there a certain winner? Can the first or second player play in a way that he/she always win? Well, it can be proven that the first player can always win if he/she plays perfectly. (Hint: If the move of the first player is not a winning move, but the move of the second player is, it means that the first player could have chosen the move of the second player at the first place!)
However, except if you are trained in the game, you will see that playing against the machine is very tough. In fact, the machine always wins, esp. against the beginners. This is of course because the machine knows how to make a winning move. But don't get disappointed , which is natural, if you are new to the game. You can make progress in a short time.

Playing options:

• Board size:
  You can select among 5 board sizes (and number of chocolates, accordingly): 4x3, 4x5, 4x6, 4x7 and 4x8.
• Tracing ON/OFF:
  This leaves marks at the place of the chocolates you and the machine are removing at each move (H = human, M = machine). It helps visualizing best moves.

In this Chomp version there are playing mode options, as you can see in the middle screenshot above.

(Fig. 1)		(Fig. 2)		(Fig. 3)

Trios is an addictive board game, in which various perceptions come into play.

There is a deck of 27 cards. Each card contains one or more same objects with 3 characteristics: color (red, green or blue), shape (triangle, rectangle or oval) and number (one, two or three).

A 3x3 board is created containing 9 cards drawn at random from this deck and appearing only once (Fig. 1).

A "trio" is a combination of 3 cards based on the following rule: Each of the 3 characteristics must be either the same or different.

Examples:
	All different: color, shape and number		Same number, different color and shape		Same color and number, different shape

The player selects a trio by clicking on 3 cards, which are highlighted (Fig. 2). If it is a valid selection, the trio is added to the "found" trios. The game ends when all trios in the particular board are found. The a new game can start, always with a different board.

Object of the game: Find all the trios that exist in the board. (There are always 3 trios in a board.)

Playing options:

• Board size:
  Choose the number of chocolates, using a 4x3, 4x5, 4x6 4x7 or 4x8 board.
• Marking:
  Set it to ON if you want to see the chocolates that will be removed before making your move. In this playing mode, when you touch a chocolate, the block of chocolates that is going to be removed is marked with gray color. If then you want to make this move, swipe the block away from within the block. Otherwise, either touch another chocolate to create a new block to be removed or touch at any point outside the board to unmark the block.
• Tracing:
  Set it to ON you want to see which chocolates are eaten by each player.
• Timing:
  Set it to ON to time your play. Each new game then will be timed.