Asparagus Festival Spear It Run

After going to the Asparagus festival from 2004 to 2011, it feels like almost the same each time: Head over for bus rides in order to get to the festival (or park over there), look at booths and get freebies, try various asparagus food items, that's it. Most of the booths are the same throughout the years, so it's a matter of finding what's new.

I've decided to try out something new: Run the Spear-It Run. I've heard about it for the past few years and saw the finish line, but always wondered where it started. I no longer have to look further. The run goes back and forth over a single street (this makes it quite prone for people taking shortcuts) but is decent enough.

Overall: Cleared in 28:42 (83rd place) - which is a 3:42 improvement. Getting closer to the 'under 20m 5k' goal.

Playlist: My playlist developed quite a few additions since I last did the run at Davis. It still consists of mainly electronic music, but unlike last time, there were many songs that didn't seem to fit right during the run, so I found myself having to skip quite a few songs while running.

The addition of K-Pop Songs during the run (I posted one as a comment on the photo) might get some of my friends by surprise.

• Cold Storage - Operatique
• Skrillex - Bug Hunt (Noisia Remix)
• Big Bang - Tonight
• M&H Band - Popcorn
• Daft Punk - Get Lucky (Mj edit)
• 2NE1 / Big Bang - Lollipop

New Additions: The Asparaberry Shortcake is a Strawberry Shortcake with bits of Asparagus on it, and it's 3 bucks - much cheaper than getting a shortcake at some of the other booths). I don't know if it was introduced last year, but it was featured this year.

Book Sculptures

One of the more interesting exhibits on display at the library - book paper art.

I've always seen book sculptures online as impressive, but they are even more so when you can actually see them in full 3d. It was on display the week of April 15, 2013 near the front of the UOP Library.

I was hoping to get a pic of that last year with a decent camera but the entire exhibit disappeared before I had a chance to do it.

Dialogues

Re: Foster: Not when you're in a room that's going to be removed in the release.

Draft copy of a game screen with dialogue text. Three lines, one character speaking, and an optional portrait. Non-pixel font. Not a mock-up (except for the background). This screen can also be used for various system events like any events occurring in the background.

Need to Add:

• The ability to color or bold text in dialogue - there is no real way to program this easily when relying on word wrap to do line breaks (triggered with \n).
• Optimize dialogue to stretch to border when there's no character portrait displayed.
• Text that fills in like actual dialogue instead of displaying it all at once.
• Fades. In the event that a different character is speaking in any conversation it will fade smoothly to that character, the box itself won't fade until the convo ends.
• Add some timed dialogues (no user intervention) - critical when characters are moving during dialogue.

Repairs

Looks like things have taken a turn for the worse when I got back. Although additional sprites were ready for me to use, KY's images for the menu were lost with the power outage, so I'll have to wait until the materials are ready. David's hard drive on his laptop crashed and pictures couldn't be recovered there. That makes three dead drives this semester.

My programming team is currently out at this time while they replace their laptops (via loans) and get stuff back to working condition - until then I'm on my own to carry AD to the finish... at least to a playable demo anyways.

Returning to Reno: Peppermill

I didn't get to experience all of Reno the first time around at the beginning of this year, so I decided to go another time. I've never been anywhere past Downtown Reno before, and this time around I got to explore much more of Reno, including Virginia City (my friends were at the Piper Opera House back in November but I was unable to make it that day).

I decided to stay at Peppermill since I saw a coupon at Costco once regarding this place and it was well worth the money - I didn't find Circus Circus and Eldorado too satisfying to stay in but this hotel was a notable exception to that rule as a AAA four diamond hotel.

Overview: The suite has some nice amenities. HDTV with capabilities of plugging in computer equipment *, fully dimmable lights, dual showerheads, whirlpool tub, and free wifi*. Like other high class hotels, they tend to lack a fridge and microwave (I'm accustomed to both of them, maybe it's because I've been staying in motels for too long?)

The Costco Package fixes your room cost to $100 a night for two nights, simply make a reservation and use the Costco printout instead of paying. (there are a few blackout dates though when you can't use it though, and space is limited so you'll want to plan in advance). It also gives you a substantial amount of resort credit ($50 on weekends and $100 on weekdays) effectively creating a $50 or $75 per night four diamond suite. Given this is at least 50 percent off the room in most cases, I'd take this offer again.

Bead Sprite: Zuma Blitz Spirit Turtle

Sprites are quite hard to do especially when they require conversion. The Zuma Blitz Spirit Turtle is no exception to this rule.

The turtle's more than capable of spitting out more fireballs than any other. That means more curve clears on shorter boards. It might be expensive but it's also responsible for almost 30M scores because players were exploiting the combo system by racking up combos while remaining in hot frog mode (which only works since the game only resets the combo if one a normal ball that you fire touches another ball on the curve, which never happens).

Of course to get these it's highly dependent on luck; you have to rely on fruit appearing faster than usual and balls appearing in a favorable position. Attempting these scores alone has zeroed my coin balance many times over, and put high coin costs on other players (I think it took someone many attempts and around 30 million coins to achieve the first 29m score).

I didn't record any replays after the Shamrock board since high scores were determined by abusing this system, and the score difference between this and any other combination was so high that it defeated the entire purpose of figuring out optimal strategies for each week's board.

(A direct color conversion of the Spirit Turtle makes it look janky in some areas and will be redesigned. Expect an updated image in the next few days... or not.)

Some days I see the situation on the levee get out of hand. Used to be just ordinary trash, there was a broken down shopping cart and maybe a keyboard at one point. Now it's this - several sofas (can't salvage) and a wooden door. I wonder who picks up these things...

Reminds me of those 'random events' that I see in various RPGs - most of the time a certain area is normal, and only in rare occurrences there's something different.