San Francisco Fleet Week 2012

#193E: Get on a boat. (Goal completed - USS Makin Island - more like a ship though)

Fleet Week - A week of festivities and music, including Air Shows (featuring Blue Angels), and Ship Tours (for free). If you haven't gotten a chance to see any ships close up, be prepared to be amazed by them. I was impressed by the impressive size of this carrier and its aircraft (from what I've seen from pictures).

View from USS Makin Island, looking towards the SF Harbor

A few miles north is Pier 39 and (if you're up for it) Marina Park. Though you can technically see these air shows anywhere, they offer the best views (with the latter giving you a full 360 view without obstructions). If you can't make it to either, you should get as high as possible (like a parking structure or walkway).

Blue Angels performing stunts

Considerations when Attending: (next year)

• See the ships first, then the air show - they're larger than you think. But be prepared to walk quite a bit (at least a few miles).
• If you're not from SF, it's better off to use the BART system and walk over to the piers than driving there - it cheaper than finding a parking space and it gets rather crowded, and this year was no exception to this rule. Be prepared for delays either way.

  (It was 6pm that day after the main events in San Francisco when the main BART gates on the Embarcadero were temporarily closed due to overcrowding on the platform. When they opened, everyone rushed down in order to get aboard the trains. There was also at least one newscaster on the scene. I know - I was there.)

First time here, are BART stations normally this busy?

Expanding Your Horizons: The Volunteer Side

The EYH Earthquake Structure Test.

I've heard of the Expanding Your Horizons events from my science teacher back during my high school years, and they still have them today. No interest because they were for girls only. However, I had the chance to see what it was like being on the volunteer side.

Basically, girls from across schools in various regions (including Downey High) attend this conference to interact with things geared more towards mathematics and engineering, with professors doing most of the teaching.

Volunteer and CKI Tasks

We, however, were presented with this for the day:

• Serve food
• Move boxes and supplies to various locations
• Take down signs and tables when event is over
• Event Icebreaker - Bang (at a point where I had to react quickly several times in a row and eliminate various people, including Annie Yu (with the reason for her was "Nothing personal, just trust issues.")
• Watch other experiments.
• DCM - Victoria Silva failed a name check - apparently she still doesn't know me after being in various events together for the past year.
• DCM Minigame - find your 'partner' via guessing your character from asking yes/no questions. Found my pair (which was Huijie) but she apparently did not know this.*

But as a side bonus, CKI events always has fellowship afterwards. Which of course happened to be Sushi Buffet and a sushi-eating contest (record at 16). Good stuff - haven't been here for at least two years.

Balls do not work that way!

These are quite a few anomalies on Kroakatoa in which balls observed on the new island seem to break the rules compared to the other island.

Example: You fire two shots in quick succession. In Classic Zuma Blitz, your second shot will (almost always) go cleanly go through the first (assuming you made a match) and if the second matches, you're guaranteed a double tap gap shot score. However on Kroakatoa they can do one of three actions:

• Your first shot makes a match, and the second ball passes through creating a gap shot. Everyone's happy.
• (lower left four panes) The first shot (yellow) lands, but the second ball (red) lands in place before the first ball goes in all the way to trigger a match. Balls not cleared and you don't get any points.
• (entire right half) The first shot (purple) triggers a match, but the second ball (red) doesn't trigger a gap shot. Instead, it behaves as if the fired purple ball still existed, sticks to the nearby set of balls, and rolls them all back with a combo. That's quite a loss of points there.

Both instances elicits a wtf from the beetle in question (as well as lower scores). Keep these cases in mind and fire a bit slower.

Project: ZB Advanced Extended Stats

Previously there was a Top 200 leaderboard made because the person who made the leaderboards discontinued it, before another person picked it up. Now, we have another program designed to help the needs of the users simply because Zuma Blitz didn't provide it yet.

Enter a program called Advanced Extended Stats for Zuma Blitz: A project that was made because people didn't know how well they did or where their points came from.

Description: Allows you to see your performance history in Zuma Bltz. At the time of writing, the game only gave you your score at the end of the game (as well as your friend's scores and level only), this program will give you a lot more than this. Can also give you board records, average board scores, etc.

This program can also get high scores of other people, even though you aren't friends with them - but only if they are also using this program to record their scores.

Implementation: As of November 4, the program is now available for the general public for use. Access it using this link. FB logins are not present at this time, but it might be in the future to display personalized stats.

Purpose: Another attempt to bring back the Top 200 leaderboard. It's a bit more complicated to use though, but at least players are not pulled in automatically - they instead must choose to op-in into this one.

Stockton is Magnificent

The (somewhat) hidden mural painted last year

Stockton is Magnificent: One of the city-wide events in Stockton (the one in California) designed to turn the city's public image around. For the past few years, it's been hit with bad news - the city went bankrupt, the city was listed as one of the most miserable, etc. It was time to change that.

Filled with tons of booths centered around Miracle Mile, an art competition, stores on Miracle Mile trying to promote the festival, music (two stages) and a flash mob (I don't think I saw it this year though).

Mural Location: Look around for Baskin Robbins - It's to the right of it in an alley.

"Physical" Network Models

Here's a literal definition of a "Physical" Network Model: When you're working on wiring in a networking lab with hundreds of wired connections and have bits and pieces left over. You then use the remains to create stuff. And either sell them or leave them there for others to see.

Tips: When dealing with a bunch of Ethernet wires, best to label each wire and test them before mounting them on a rack - If you don't do this and something goes wrong you're gonna have a bad time.

Design: This would normally fall under the 'Designed' category, but I didn't make it. Credit this to P. Miller and V. Tachkov instead.

100 Million? Nope

Woke up to this. Even though the goal was to save as much as possible this week, screw the no power rules, we still have competition at the 100M mark.

Score Differences: The few million point difference might be huge to most people, but on this level this accounts to either a few extra matches (gap shots) or an extra time ball.

Update: Though I have climbed up to 2nd place, as of Sept 29 my top 5 now has a minimum score of 150 million.