The Other Side

Ngannu Word Forming

2012-02-27T20:12:00.003-08:00

'Ngannu' is the first thing that I see (other than neon) that can be formed here.

This is during the Crab Feed, while waiting for guests to arrive - this is Cameron's game in Hanging with Friends.

I know, it's not a word, but experiences at UC Davis is causing me to think differently, probably for the better.

Note on Future Postings: For picture blog posts set to a certain date, the date will be set at the time I created the post for the first two weeks, meaning it's the first thing that appears on the blog. After this point, the posts will be set to their intended date.

[Also known as: Davis Reference: Word Forming, but I changed it since I prefer more creative titles as an added bonus for people who do look at the pics section of this blog.]

Chinese New Year Parade

2012-02-26T17:57:00.002-08:00

CNYP - Chinese New Year Parade (they didn't do this last year). Featuring a new parade layout.

First thought about this: Too close. But it's like life, progressing from MCHS to UOP in a short lifespan. This makes references to my previous post, where I last visited Pier 39 as a freshman at MCHS. (They were further apart later down the road.)

Also, I wonder why half of the banner is missing (it seems to be folded), but the new MCHS dragon logo looks pimped out.

DLSSP In Stereo

2012-02-26T01:04:00.002-08:00

We're busy working, those PTP dolls were both tough and time-consuming but in the end, we managed to pull it off. GJ Leonne.

Objective: District Large Scale Service Project. Meet up at the Arc in San Francisco. Make PTP (pediatric trauma prevention dolls), quilt and scarf making, outdoor work. A second team for the project was at SF State.

Summary: Event was successful - all people were dismissed at 4pm. Post event, visited Pier 39, a place I haven't been to in seven years (including going to the same restaurant), with portions of Davis, Reno, and UOP meeting up (though at different times)

Because I placed a lot of importance into knowing (and identifying) people, the number of people who I knew when I walked through the door substantially increased. (My knowledge to start a convo however is lacking but I'm trying hard to build that up by the end of the year.)

Last Year: 15 identified (4 not friends on FB), met 13 new people.
This Event: 78 identified (31 not friends on FB), met 19 new people.

Pledging with Computing Honor

2012-02-22T00:28:00.000-08:00

I have finally received my pledge for Professional Computing. Part of the first group of pledges, I will pursue my Comp Sci career with honor.

A Note on Subscriptions: I have started to invest some of my FB adds into subscribes instead. They're normally intended to follow people who you don't really know in person, but all my subscribe adds (currently) are people who I do know in person who I don't think know me (at an acquaintance level). In all honesty, when subscriptions are used on friends of friends, you get more than just their public status updates...

Hole in Chambers

2012-02-21T11:02:00.000-08:00

Chambers 114 today. Two things I would like to know:

(unrelated) Why was there a CKI general meeting yesterday. Yes, you guys said that we would probably be meeting up again, but during a 3 day weekend? Seriously?
How can a hole be made with this size in the Chambers building? I mean someone had to make an effort in order to do this

I'm not sure whether or not someone found a hole to get through to Chambers (either physically or virtually) but either way they had it patched by Thursday morning.

Idea: Davis Crew

2012-02-16T00:26:00.000-08:00

I just had the strangest idea (or a rather creative one) - place the Davis E-Board as well as the A-Board (if possible) in the TF2 cast style. Maybe a sketch or something.

(This image, though not yet uploaded or tagged, will possibly show up at DCON.)

Full Circle VP

2012-02-14T21:47:00.000-08:00

The last two weeks went by too fast. During that time I had my position set on VP Admin, several service events came by, nominated for President and VPA, and later elections. I only went going for VPA. Ultimately I didn't win that position. Neither did the person I voted for, since he had a very good speech and skills in leadership and there was no way I could fully serve given my pending co-op in fall, which I would most likely not be on campus during that time.

It all seems like things have gone full circle now. A year ago I was asking these questions (And yes, I did plan these questions well ahead of time.) and now I'm in that same position in CKI - running for VP (which was the other position I would run for other than secretary)

The only thing left now is accumulating enough hours to get that Bronze at DCON. Trying to figure out how to pass my current grad courses (four projects behind past due date at time of writing) with at least an A- or better is another story altogether.

Background Image - robot holding a flower. Date of this post shifted to Feb 14 - just thought it might relate. Happy Single Awareness Day (at least for me, but hopefully this will change by next year)

DCM, Looking Forward

2012-02-13T09:29:00.000-08:00

[115] Reach 400 total friends on any site that counts friends. (Goal Completed)
[186] Successfully get a job. (Goal Completed)

The best thing to do now is to look up, and push forward. I now have my 400 friends which I thought was impossible or very difficult to do at the time I wrote that goal (which was 170). Now I can focus less on quantity and focus more on quality: In other words, improve as many friendships as possible in whatever time I have left. Additionally I will post on FB more often since I completed that goal.

Starting Point: At Zaps Zone - completely dominated the arena, but it's not as fun as compared to playing against a group of professionals.

I had coupons with me that cuts the price for playing in half, but I only had two. One I used myself, the other I gave to someone else that was playing... someone who I really wanted to know better.

Key2College Audience of One, DCM

2012-02-12T13:02:00.000-08:00

"Probably one of the funniest, most educational DCM I’ve ever been to." -Nam Hoang*

In a week prior to the event, prepared a slideshow (the theme for this year was super mario), learned that my partner had many interest similarities with me, and did a lot of practicing in order to prepare speaking up to the high school audience on Sunday...

... which comprised of one person, Amy Chin, from MCHS.

At least we can say it's successful but there was 100% positive feedback about the workshops, if you factor her post on tumblr.

Fun Fact: Music playing at the title slide (before the presentation starts) - Avicii - Super Mario World Levels (SNES Version)

Crabfeed and Nom Noms

2012-02-11T21:14:00.000-08:00

We're not the ones handling the crabs, we're the ones serving the guests. It's us four*... and 70 or so Key Clubbers. In an attempt to acquire the 50 hours or so for the MRP Bronze for DCON (it's the only thing left I could go for when being on E-board fails) I went through all four hours of this event.

I based the post name off of the next day's Facebook Event, Laser Tag Social and Nom Noms.

Pacific Circle K Car Smash

2012-02-10T17:00:00.000-08:00

We're smashing cars and all of that for a good cause - as a fundraiser.

General Information: This is NOT smashing someone else's car (well it might've been, but this is a old car and the owner didn't want it anymore), but instead a car taken from Stockton Pick and Pull for a nominal fee.

Class of December

2012-02-05T09:02:00.000-08:00

Like this rock, I'm in the class of December 2012, but still walk anyways in May. Gotta work hard on this MS, I need B+'s or higher on all my classes this semester - and they're grad courses too.

(Image: was taken at San Jose State University)

Back at San Jose

2012-02-04T22:18:00.000-08:00

Overhead view of San Jose, facing south. Taken from the Mariott on the 25th floor.

I do realize that I might've missed a Service Event and LAN gaming party back at Stockton, but honestly if I was given the option to do that I would've taken it. Now that I'm over here...

It's been over two years since I last took a visit to the Tech. Original exploration of the city was rather limited in the past, but I made a more thorough effort this time around, including visiting San Jose State (the library - much more modern comp sci-related books than I would find here than in any Stockton library.

And then there was Cassandra back in those days, she used to be at SJSU, but returned back to Delta. Why, I currently do not know. Recent attempts to contact her have not been successful - I am starting to figure that even it's hard to contact former close friends. Which brings me in a loop back to a post almost two years ago.

Any Given Tuesday

2012-02-03T23:56:00.000-08:00

This will probably be my only trip that I'm going to with Pacific ACM - I've not enough hardware requirements to get to any LAN party they put up, plus it tends to interfere with CKI a bit.

It's not a Tuesday (despite the title), it was the store that was called "Tuesday Morning". (I wonder what they sell there?) which is next to Laser Quest, our main event.

Note on the Laser Guns: Not all the sensors work on every vest, and there were many occasions where you will miss a shot when you clearly hit it. It ended up in situations where I was at close range with another opponent and blasted away at each others guns... err, unable to tag each other. (For the record, the front of the gun has a sensor that will disable you if hit.)

Testing: Blitz+ Beetle

2012-01-29T12:01:00.000-08:00

Six weeks in the development of Top 200 leaderboards, it was quite obvious that cheaters in the leaderboard are inevitable. Some are not that easy to spot, however, such as those who slow down the game, etc.

There were a few options to counter this, however. One was adding infinite time (like survival in regular Zuma games, but difficulty is based off of time, and not by points).

Another one was to 'mod' the game somehow to continue making the game competitive and give everyone more equal footing so that games weren't entirely based on luck, but more based on skill. (Even using spirit beetles was considered luck since typical players could only use them once in a while, and you had to be really lucky with the game layout and time for a really high score.) I had a solution for this.

Introducing: The Blitz+ Beetle.

Bringing the classic blitz mode from Zuma's Revenge with a few minor tweaks, it was designed to address a few issues in mind with the time ball stuff. The only factors for your high score is a bit of luck as well as your skill.

Good luck, you have THREE minutes.

I'm planning to roll this out by March for group approval and planning to implement a separate leaderboard for using this beetle.

Features:

No time balls, but game starts with 3:00.
No Multiplier Limit (start with 3x)
Fruit/multiplier spawn rate slightly increased.
Ball Speed +50%
3x Crit Power (12.5% crit chance)
Jade beetle (no spirit blast)
Completely free (for now)
- Probably 40k mojo to use, but gives you 9x mojo/XP than a normal game.

How to use

It's still in testing, so I'll give instructions on it as soon as I get the OK on it.\

Test Results

The difference isn't much, but still significant at higher scores - in three minutes, best scores achieved were 13.2m on the blitz+ beetle, and 10.1m on a L80 beetle, maybe it has to do with the extra 2.5% chance to crit?

24: The Interclub at Davis

2012-01-17T21:46:00.000-08:00

This is the first major event that I've been to this Spring semester. 24 hours. Three events. One unforgettable experience.

I'm almost two weeks since the last post, so that means more pictures here. Please note that headers are picture titles as well.

This has been so far one of the largest picture posts I have made in the history of the blog.

On The Road

The following takes place between 5PM and 7PM.

The limited amount of rides = send drivers from Sac State and Davis down for all seven of us. I of course learned that limited rides were a global problem, and not just us. I knew that this was the largest group from UOP that we took to a interclub since DCON.

Over at Fentons

Vacaville, 18:52 PST.

Fenton's Ice Cream it is. Not just ice cream - burgers as well. (Any ice cream parlor would probably do this). Unfortunately there was ice skating afterward so I'll pass with the ice cream for another day.

Ice Skating

The following takes place between 7PM and 9PM.

Some were pros, others were beginners. One of our members happened to be one of them. Training during the two hours there = went from edge to center of the rink. In another scene, someone had to chase Vinh to make it interesting.

This Old Teahouse

The following takes place between 9PM and 11PM in the Davis Area.

Went over to This Old Teahouse, ordered a Pineapple Blizzard, and it changed my perception about these drinks. Thank Erin on this one - she suggested it.

It's also pretty cold outside and it's crowded inside. Where now? Back to Andrew's - apartment. With a brief intro. 6 beds and a large apartment - I've never seen anything this large in Stockton.

Settling in Catan / Apartments

The following takes place, Between 11PM and 2AM.

Settlers of Catan, anyone? Erin won this time around with me coming in third. Abba-Zaba, among other things.

Between 2AM and 5AM, discussions on CKI occurred on both floors. I start to figure out whether or not I plan to attend one more year - but that'll probably be a backup - I've got co-op to figure out.

Wake up, we've got stuff to do

The following takes place between 5AM and 9AM.

We're asleep, but some are wide awake. If you're in a different place, on the floor... yea. I've had those experiences where I got little sleep.

Rushed to Cuando

The following takes place between 9AM and 11AM.

We've been given a signal to head over to the dining hall in order to meet up with the rest of CKI there. Turns out we were the last ones there. Anyways, brunch.

January DCM

The following takes place between 11AM and 1PM.

DCM. The remainder of the events seems interesting enough. Icebreaker minigame, and the nearby apartment becomes the DCM.

If I had to say something about CKI, how I learned about it, and my experiences, I'd have to say that

I heard about it through one of my friends at UOP, who founded the Key Club for my High School
I went mainly to get community service, to explore new places, and to have fun, and...
To make lots of new friends. (To date, the number of people I've met at Circle K exceeds the number whom I've personally met at UOP.)

Quiltmaking 102

The following takes place between 1PM and 3PM.

Meetings conclude and we continue on with arts and crafts. The only public bathroom in the building is sealed shut for the entire period of the event, causing a few... inconveniences.*

Unfortunately I didn't have much in the form of ideas, so I worked with another person to make a portion of a quilt.

Tied Up As CKI

The following takes place between 3PM and 4PM.

Our next stop was the nearby park to end the event. A jungle gym to be exact. It reminded me of that one in San Ramon, but this one's bigger.

But we had to leave...

The following takes place between 4PM and 5PM.

This was our message on their whiteboard before we said goodbye. It has been a good start towards the new year with these events. There was something that Andrew Tom said that would come later in the semester - I hope that happens.

Evolution of Leaderboards: Product Development

2012-01-07T14:11:00.000-08:00

Many weeks ago (as early as last year), several players decided to step it up and create their own leaderboards based off their high score tables, and eventually groups had players designed to gather scores of players who wished to participate in the group leaderboard, since the board was for friends only. Fast forward to December - my definition of 'leaderboard' was taken a step further when the friend requirement was dismissed with the introduction of a true 'top 200' leaderboard as proof of concept as first, then a regular recurring series after many positive reactions.

I do it mainly to satisfy the needs of the players who want to know how they rank up. But honestly, it seems more like product development.

Prior to the creation of the board, I was looking through posts on forums and this group and discovered that several people were interested in a group-wide or national leaderboard. I went out to develop something that would solve this problem, as well as bypass the 'top 50' on a local leaderboard.

Above, we have the comparison of the first leaderboard that was hosted on this blog with the discovery of the score parser (basically, this is what it actually does - take raw bits of information and parses them into readable data players can interpret easily). More tweaks were made and released on Facebook to my ZB friends for feedback.

A week later the leaderboard went live on the official add me group, with mostly positive feedback, but several had concerns about how this data was retrieved, which was answered. I later went on to add a few more features that I determined might be helpful such as person's level (in order to show true skill as mastery levels weren't factored into score) and general score statistics. One additional feature, ranking arrows, were planned for release next week, but I'll let the viewers decide that change.

A side note on stats: there is a field not listed here called "Percent of Scores Over" - I like stats like this, but it can also be used to determine approximate board difficulty (how easy it is to get points) - a peak on lower level scores (like over 500K or 1M) may indicate the board is easy, peaks on scores lower than this might indicate the board is harder, and low minimum score percents can indicate that difficult multiple-gap techniques might be in play on this board. This can be used as a baseline to determine if a unique (possibly user-created) board has the potential be used again.

The snowpocalypse board had for minimum scores 74-54-45-25 for position 10, 30, 50, and 100th place for the group respectively in terms of percentage of the top score on the board. This indicates that speed and luck (time balls) was more prevalent than skill. Major Mouthful, on the other hand, has 53-38-28-14. This represents that a high scoring technique was more likely used than just speed (in this case a double gap strat was used here).

What can I summarize about making this board? If this was a product in development, it's going through its incremental cycle right now.

Replay Cleanup

2012-01-02T16:04:00.000-08:00

Due to the space taken up by these Zuma Blitz replays (including that ones that make it up on Youtube) I had to put some controls on what replays to keep, which to archive, etc. The rules ended up to be the following:

The top five replays from each category for each board (spirit animal, powers, no powers) will be kept here, the rest will be archived.
All Zuma Blitz replays recorded must be converted to x264 q32 or better before being archived.
Replays must be named correctly and have a naming convention attached (see guide.txt on how to name files)

Fun Fact: In the one year that I've hosted this blog about Zuma Blitz, I've accumulated

150k+ hits on Zuma blitz posts on this blog
over 150 hours of game time
3,626 videos recorded
7.3 billion points accumulated total from video replays
260+ spirit animal uses
19 spirit animal malfunctions (accept spirit animal, takes your mojo, but game fails to start)

Rosebowl Parade

2012-01-02T10:20:00.000-08:00

I woke up to this rose bowl parade. I knew about the other ones, but didn't bother seeing them, but I paid attention to this one. Why? Someone I knew was there - it was Brett Butler, the District Governor of CNH Circle K. The float that I would have possibly helped with should I have went down there for Go West, but wasn't able to attend - it's 300 miles to get over there, and last year was because of no-interest (no one else felt like going down), and this year was a no-ride available.

I look through my older posts, some were long with no picture. Recent pictures were all picture few words - why not try both?

And thus begins the week of (possibly unnecessary) backstories trying to explain a picture or diagram as much as possible.

New Year's Resolutions

2012-01-01T19:20:00.000-08:00

With the new year comes in many resolutions. I have my own share, and despite not having a pic for this post, a few of them are:

renew friendship with a Sac State student
post more content on FB with the "get x friends" goal completed.
Successful hangout with a MCHS class of 09 student currently living at SF
Get half of artwork done for Spring 2011 image set (120 pictures) - Known as Fall 2011 in Pics Extended Version.
Find a job
Ride a bike, get a car, etc. Anything to prevent me from being stuck at UOP for up to five hours a day due to lack of transportation. (Finding a bus route didn't help much either)
Get A's in all classes.
Finish those Day Zero projects (after all, time flies quickly, and this is the last semester before those 1001 days are up.

Note that I didn't call out explicit names, so don't assume anyone.

Fired Up

2011-12-28T22:47:00.000-08:00

GK Mongolian BBQ - one of the places that we went to for a MCHS Reunion Lunch, class of 2008.

Stuff that you might like: Ability to choose your meat, sauce, amount of noodles, and various toppings and have it made in the oven (see above) - and it's actually pretty good to be worth going a second time. Costs 7.51 (with tax).

Star Lost Speedrun

2011-12-25T01:50:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, everyone! *or Happy Holidays, if you're celebrating something different.

Even though it's Christmas today, my family got together yesterday, so I still have time to get a quick vid up for a game released two days ago, Star Lost.

In under eight minutes.

Even though it might be helpful to upgrade your ship with all that stuff, it isn't actually required to win.

Beginning of Winter

2011-12-22T21:49:00.000-08:00

Today marks the beginning of the Winter (at least in the US, according to Wikipedia) - hope you all have a good winter break!

Also, due to not enough people in the area seeing the previous Fall Picture album, I've decided to do an extended version by pushing it towards spring (it still retains the Fall labeling however)

Image: Taken during FTC (See the image on Facebook for a full caption of the image)

Fall 2011 in Pictures Summary

2011-12-17T00:16:00.000-08:00

Fall 2011 in Pictures: Started off great at the beginning, but tapered off at the end... just like the others. No sketches were completed due to lack of time / proficiency in that skill, and is now accepting user submissions of missing pictures in question. Overall, no more effort may be placed in it, due to the fact that very few people from the intended audience actually saw this. All people that can be identified were tagged on FB on a per-picture basis in the caption area, leaving them free to tag themselves or others.

There were five other people (Claudio, Wei Wei, Aarafi, Yoon, Nhi) that would've been on the 'People of Note' but I didn't have a picture of them available.

Errata:

"Szelagowski" is spelled incorrectly on the image.
Missing Christine Phan in the list of people mentioned (supposed to appear in unimplemented sketch "Crossword Inception")
Missing May Chen in the list of people mentioned (supposed to appear in unimplemented sketch "Apples^2")

Finals Week First World Problems

2011-12-12T11:51:00.000-08:00

Even though it's finals week and people are studying, I think it's more appropriate to see this as a first world problem - being unable to stick the AC adapter in the desk outlet. (No, it's not that I could plug it into one of the wall outlets, as it's a bit too far away to reach and poses a trip hazard. The problem was later resolved somehow.)

Thankfully, I do have a netbook and not a large power-consuming notebook, so it should last me six hours off a single charge. Or not...