Boxed In

It's been a while since I last made a Zuma Blitz related level post, but I've realized I haven't posted a image tip on this level yet, and people are wondering why fruit won't appear.

IRL, I'm also boxed in. I need to find a way out of here, as in getting out more - it's hard to arrange a get-together these days, especially when everyone's in different cities now.

TIP: (or potential flaw) The only time fruit will appear is when the ball curve reaches this area in the green circle. Doesn't matter how far the other curve is, just this one counts.

Fall 2011 in Pictures Promo: Badass Style

Fall 2011 in Pictures promotional image, prior to the hard drive crash. It later became the title image for the project and the overall theme for this imageset will be based off of this pic.

After some thought, I've decided to do another 'Fall in Pictures' series. However I hope to up the quality of my pictures a bit. The last year around, it seems like documentation doesn't seem to attract a lot of people, so badass style pictures might be more in tune to modern audiences.

The above picture ranks 2nd in views for non-game posts* and 4th overall during the Fall 2011 in Pictures project.

Image Source: Original image by Erika Albinto - I did some photoshop work on it though.

More Drive Failures

The failed hard drive in question

It seems like this shouldn't happen to me, but it did. On my C drive. (Luckily I store the majority of my documents elsewhere, but only a few could be gotten from C.) I might have to resort to a much slower netbook, but as a result:

• With drive C (Windows XP) lost I may have to find 'other' methods to get another version of that OS. Some things don't work in Windows 7, that's why. (Its XP mode there doesn't help much either.)
• There hasn't been a recent backup, so many of my (game) save files were lost. That means I have to play all of those games "all over again, again! :(".
• Production on video jobs are halted.
• Over 1,200 bookmarks lost - I will have a tough time recovering most of them. (I don't really trust online backups...) My recovery goes back one month, so that's not too bad.
• Personal wiki remains intact - I will store the rest of my ideas there.

What that means to you:

• You shouldn't be affected. But...
• There may not be another version of the Zuma Blitz Guide for a while - it was lost along with the drive. EDIT: I managed to pull off a backup copy - it is from the last released version, but I still won't update for a while.
• You won't see a 'Summer 2011 in Artwork' as some pictures used for ideas for the project (including dgteen and OC-Ynafae) do not exist online anymore and I lost my only copy of them, which were on C drive at the time.

One Day in Tahoe

So one day in Tahoe, we've decided to not only visit Kings Beach, but ride a boat, and attempt to make it to one of the buoys. Unfortunately due to some limitations we weren't provided life vests. Ultimately, we didn't make it all the way (we did make it halfway though) but it was still fun.

I couldn't get any pictures when on the lake for obvious reasons, but I managed to get a few shots of the boat prior to launching.

In this boat: Our UOP Circle K group who went on this trip feat. Garrett Coyne* from Sac State

I don't think I'll see the song "Bottoms Up" the same way again in this fan-made music video.*

First Hangout of the Summer: Ice Cream Social

Just a year ago, the post On Both Sides was created reflecting the difficulties of getting to know older friends better since they used many in-jokes. Of course now for newer friends I won't have much of a problem since I can catch up with them online, which makes it much easier to talk to them when I meet them in person.

I have room to expand and move on to college level students - the number of friends I have on Facebook who I've met in college have more than doubled since last year, and the number of friends from Circle K have increased more than sevenfold. Other than that the chain of events were much like last year - I'm helping another person (my cousin) plan a get-together, the screenshot's a park, and a hangout happened.

If you're in Sac, check out Vic's Ice Cream - It has quite a few flavors there and the food there is exceptional at a decent price (under $3), but I've still got a goal that involves eating Cold Stone ice cream. Menu here since the official website doesn't seem to have one.

Chinese Cultural Camp

During this week, I've been asked to assist in the Chinese Cultural camp. Helping out with the Chinese Lion Dance class.

Independence Day

Hope you guys have a nice July 4th (Independence Day)! There's less people time around, but we're still all watching the fireworks. (And I need to find a way to fix that lens flare problem, I suppose it was caused by water seeping in while filming the World of Color water fountain show a while back.)

Try out all the flavors of ice cream at ColdStone (2/20)

I decided to get a create-your own. Good thing I got there early and was close by; the line doubled a few minutes after the fireworks ended.

I noticed that this time around flavors could mean either the flavors of ice cream you get to choose or the Signature Ice Cream, since they both have 20 different varieties. For this '20' I will be referring to the number of signature creations tried out*.