Tetris Effect

I got a soldering project kit on Amazon, and it took me less than an hour to build it & get it working on 3xAAA batteries or around 4.5vdc of alkaline primary battery energy. While it contains 5 different games, I was immediately drawn to a version of Tetris (not official) that reminds me of playing Tetris on Nintendo Gameboy & Original Nintendo as a child of the 1980s. Cool. Meg was playing it in no time too. My current high score on day two, 212 lines ^^ 

My YouTube video about this https://youtu.be/_iDaSvKq3S4 Its a built tutorial & more. Please read the video description for more details

I am not much of a gamer anymore, though I do rock some CS:GO on Steam on my gaming laptop sometimes, sporadically. I really like the simple block stacking streaming gameplay of Tetris. In this game scheme, there are seven different blocks, each with four different rotations. You can move the parts left to right or drag them down faster with the left thumb switches, the right thumb switches (top) pause the game (bottom) rotate the falling part. That makes twenty eight different unique possible combinations, in this device displayed on an 8 X 16 DOT Matrix "red" LED pixel array display (see header images). To understand the number of possible stacking configurations, you have to use a logic diagram, so I will spare you the details, it is in the tens of thousands. 

There are many different Tetris playing strategies that result in clearing lines faster or stacking a sequence to clear multiple lines at once. Sometime, you have the same bad part several lines in a row & have to create a layer or two layers or more with holes or defects that will not allow that line to clear. As you play, your brain models the game & parts & their rotation in your working memory. As you continue to play, protein synthesis codes the possible patterns, part combinations, layer solutions, & other specific solution generation strategies into your brain cell architecture by neuronal plasticity, such that the neurons firing together while you are playing Tetris, wire together, with the kinds of thinking forming patterns of thought related to the kinds of solutions you are generating on demand to play Tetris. 

Over time, this kind of Tetris solution generation thinking can actually bleed over into other areas of thought in something known as the Tetris Effect, or Tetris Syndrome. When people spend a lot of time & focus their attention on playing Tetris, they can find themselves thinking about the way the blocks from the game & the shapes of these blocks can be seen in the real world & how things outside the same can fit together, like how items are stacked on shelving in stores or fulfillment centers, how boxes are stacked into distribution trucks, how mail is sorted, how containers are loaded onto ships & other related analogy tasks in construction, surgery, organization around the house & in other domains of life like gardening, workshop arrangement of tools & parts, planning & execution of projects, like how to setup the soldering iron, fume hood with fan & filter, lighting & optics for magnification to enable good electronics silver soldering of a kit like this, for example. 

Because Tetris became so popular, published on more than 64 different electronic gaming platforms, it the became the most popular electronic game in history! It was created by a Russian scientist in 1984, who became a software game designer while working at what is now known as the highly prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences or RAS. The widespread popularity of Tetris & the lingering effects it has on thinking inspired further psychological & neurological studies on the effects of gaming, which inspired further investigation into neuron science about how the brain rewires its structure & functions in response to what it does repeatedly, such that we literally become more like what we do. I guess that in part explain my diverse thinking, since I have 14 different hobbies. People experiencing the Tetris Effect see the blocks falling when they close their eyes, geometric patterns, like the solutions to the line solving, but more detailed, often multiple colors, 3D, spheres & cubes of blocks that interlock. People experiencing the Tetris Effect report dreaming about playing Tetris, stacking different shaped blocks into huge assemblies, becoming part of the block assembly, seeing it from the inside out, like wireframe view in CAD. The profound extension of this phenomena comes through realizing that our habits & ways of operating as people influence who we are becoming in an active positive feedback cascade that can range from 1 hour to 4 days of recurrent loop thinking, like ideas bouncing around in a giant hall of mirrors made of working memory, encoded into long term memory by repetition, just like the way that other skills & knowledge are encoded into the brain & the minds thinking. 

Many of the advances in integrated circuit or chip making, for example the deep UV mirror bounce ASML production of 5nm chipsets for the latest Samsung or Apple smartphone, have been utilized to enable 3D color gaming & other fun oriented uses of compute, rather than brass tacks of cold harsh business, inventory tracking, customer data analysis & other commercial & industrial uses of compute in commerce, for search engines, for enterprise software applications & other computer use cases in business, government, schools, hospitals & other places of employment. Yes, people are using much of the advances in compute technology to screw off playing games for fun. That tells you that people like having fun, something that gaming casinos in Las Vegas proved to our grandparents generation long ago. Consider the purpose of a theme park or roller coaster rides! People like to have fun. We never actually stop being children, we just become older & know a little bit more about the world. We can become wise by reading the Bible, we can become skilled in occupations like surgery. 

We can learn computer science, software engineering & create profitable apps that billions of other people download onto there smartphones, that work with the Aura Ring or Smart Watches, that track health data about the wearers heart rate, respiration or breathing rate, biodata about their sleep cycles, information about their physical activities, calorie burn rates, metabolic rate, hydration, even their blood glucose levels with Dexcom G6 & Abbot Freestyle pucks stuck to peoples body parts that stream data to their smartphone that helps them understand how foods influence their blood glucose levels, how insulin influences their blood glucose levels. Next generation smartwatches will have optical multispectral (many LED colors) imaging of the skin that enable optical glucose measurement, so no invasive wires into the skin, no more finger pricking with glucose test strips, just LED pulses of near IR, green & red light into the skin doing optical inferometery on the cells in the dermis to determine the blood glucose level with enough accuracy for the device maker to obtain costly FDA approval of such medical tracking devices with then new optical glucose tracking functionality! 

I am forecasting that Apple will release Optical Glucose Tracking as a feature & function in the Apple Watch within the next 3 generations, so either the Apple Watch 9, Apple Watch 10 or Apple Watch 11 // if Apple & TSMC do not do it, surely Samsung will offer Optical Glucose Tracking in the Gear 6 or Gear 7 or Gear 8. Optical glucose tracking is coming to peoples wrists with non invasive light based measurement of there blood glucose. Consider the kinds of sensors used on the back of current & past generation smart watches & how those optical & electrical sensors provide biofeedback & useful health data specific to each patient, in real time, 24/7 if they wear them while sleeping, I charge my Apple Watch SE while I drink espresso first thing in the morning. 

Retro Classic Electronic Soldering Kit with 5 Retro Classic Games and Acrylic Case, Idea for STEM High School Family Education Friends by Etoput <- link to item on Amazon

The Kit Comes Like This, in "A Box" 

Nice color instructions with pictures & images & tips about how to correctly solder, including to use a wet sponge to clean the soldering tip of oxide corrosion. I set my precision electronics soldering iron to about 530 F with the NDT silver solder. That makes the part pins heat up fast so that solder flows quickly into the logic board holes & makes a good electronic bond with the metal trace paths in the holes. This kit features a high quality all copper board, with pre-tinned holes to make soldering the parts onto the board a breeze. 

STC microcontroller chip in this kit is fast, turns on & off quickly, resets & boots instantly! The unit very power efficient too, I have several hours of play on the first set of batteries & its still going strong. I had such a positive experience making it & playing it & watching Meg play with it that I ordered another one. When I build them I use an extension cord with a end power splitter with 3 sockets. I plug my light into one, the 3D printed holder with 12v PC fan & variable speed controller + on off switch via a 12vdc class 2 switching power supply in to number 2 & the high precision electronics soldering ion into outlet 3. 

I solder near the open end of the garage with the garage door up for good ventilation. Its actually very light duty soldering to finish this kit, so not a lot of soldering fumes & only a small amount of solder, that's if you fill the holes all the way too. Soldering the main chip to the logic board the hardest, and the first thing you do. I mounted mine in an electronics part holder, brought the light in close to give good illumination, then put the hot tip of the soldering iron the spot to be soldered & use my left hand to push feed electronics silver solder into the soldering joint. I found it helpful to wet the pad on the chip, then wet the connector on the board, then toggle between to solder a bridge to connect them. I found a fluid motion combo that reminded me of z stitch welding technique with thin rods and low amperage settings to weld thin steel tubing, with my very small IGBT stick welder. 

Make sure you do not bridge connection on the chip or the pads on the logic board, be careful to only solder the chip hole & its associated pad together with a small solder bridge. The pictures in the instruction are helpful to give you good orientation about the correct kind of soldering joint, & how to solder the chip down. I found it helpful to align the chip with the board & then use a small amount of blue painters tape to hold the chip in that exact aligned position before soldering the first connection. I reused two small bits of blue painters tap to hold other parts, like the charging port, the power switch, the numerical display, the switches, though the buzzer seems to click & hold into place without help.