McDonalds: New Menu Items?

On a McDonalds somewhere on I-5 (the one on Panoche Road) there was a sign containing not one but five new items, consisting of the following:

• Southwest Burger, 360 cal.
• Grilled Onion Cheddar McDouble, 400 cal.
• Southwest McDouble, 400 cal.
• McChicken Deluxe, 440 cal.
• Hot'n Spicy McChicken Deluxe, 460 cal.

The Deluxe versions simply add a tomato and a slice of cheese (this puts it on par with a Premium Grilled Club Sandwich, minus the bacon, for a fraction of the price)

I haven't seen any of these items around before (at least at the McDonalds I've been to normally), does anyone know if these items are available elsewhere?

Las Vegas Redux

Six years ago I first traveled to Las Vegas with relatives, it was a new place for me, a place to see lots of skyscrapers / hotels, and to explore everything it had to offer. Unfortunately the ability to see a lot of things were limited, due to being under 21 at that time. Fast forward to today. Not only am I over 21 (this means I can walk through casinos without a problem* and get to places which were previously inaccessible), but we're also using a Powerpass (that means being able to see as many attractions as possible in three days).

I had two goals to accomplish that week:

• Collect as many different poker chips as possible (although I prefer $5 because some are rare chips, white/blue ones are sufficient)
• See as many places as possible

General Notes regarding the Powerpass:

• It is strongly recommended you buy the Powerpass at Costco online for $105 covering three days. Redeem at the Planet Hollywood Store in the Forum Shops in order to get your cards. Anything less than 3 days would not be advised since you will have to rush between attractions in order to see enough to cover the cost.
• The 3 day period starts as soon as you use it in any attraction that it covers, best to use it at the start of the day.
• You will very likely not be able to make it to every place within 3 days, so plan carefully.
• Mob Museum is the one downtown, NOT the one at the Tropicana. (They mentioned that they no longer accepted it in Feb 2013, implying that they previously accepted it).

Recommendations for Powerpass: (based on what I've seen)

• Planet Hollywood Store or Restaurant Credit. The $10 dollar credit at PH is reusable and stacks so if you're going with friends or family and they also have a powerpass you can use your cards together and make purchases that way (ex. 4 cards give you $40 store or food credit that day).
• Hoover Dam Motor Coach Tour
• Wax Museum
• Bellagio of Fine Art (at the time this was posted, exhibit was Warhol Out West, yours may vary)
• BeatleShow (might as well see it since you are paying lots for the pass)
• Eiffel Tower Experience (the above image was shot from the top of Eiffel Tower)
• Stratosphere Observation Deck (Note: This does not include rides though there is a slight discount for some food items there)
• National Atomic Testing Museum

Notes regarding other things on the trip:

• At this time, it is very hot outside. As in 100+ degree weather, find shade or indoor shelter as soon as possible. Venetian + Palazzo connects together, as well as Monte Carlo + Vadara + Bellagio and Paris + Bally's. TI and Mirage connects via a Tram.
• If you book a location on the Strip (online), be prepared to pay an additional mandatory resort fee per night, the online pricing does not include this in calculating cheapest hotels. Use this page as a guide.
• McDonalds is by far the cheapest thing you can have on the strip, when you consider that burgers (or almost any place not considered fast food, for that matter) are an average price of around $11. Keep in mind that $1 will give you a Spicy McChicken, the regular variant is not available.
• The Flamingo Hotel might be cheap but it's the oldest on the Strip and it speaks for its price from the uneven carpeting (at least on the 10th floor) and in my room the bathroom knob was falling apart and the toilet seat was loose.
• I play one round per casino for this trip in order to collect a poker chip. (Don't collect the ones that you find in the souvenir shops though, they look too polished, have no cash value, and are more expensive)
• Based on observations from the various Roulette Tables while walking by, a black didn't appear for up to nine spins in a row on several tables, so anything can happen. And anybody using any sort of Martingale strategy would go bankrupt (or hit the table limit if they didn't).
• There's a F-Zero AX Machine at Buffalo Bill's, but it wasn't working at the time I was there.

Heard they were renovating, but they weren't quite finished yet. Guess they were right.

The Candy Lei Problem

The board under varying degrees of Candy Lei. Players will never see balls roll out in the way shown on the third screen.

This week's board (previously called Summer Solstice) faces a few problems due to the board design, most notably regarding Candy Lei (and any other food that creates bigger clusters.) The fanpage hints that this is a tough board this week and mentions that the Candy Lei appears to be working, but many people disagree. So what's the real problem here?

Difficulty Adjustment: There are several ways that difficulty can be raised aside from the curve design. As boards in Blitz use the same curve file structure as in Zuma's Revenge, the difficulty can be raised by either increasing the max number of singles that pop up in a row (offset 0x15), the number of colors the curve will produce (offset 0x19, max 6), or other features like max cluster size and speed of balls (offset unknown). The balls generated are not completely random, instead the color of the ball is based on whether or not it meets various criteria in the previous sentence.

Note the difficulty applies for a single curve only, and there are two curves that are loaded in Blitz, so the difficulty for each curve can be adjusted independently.

Problem: The Candy Lei makes clusters bigger by reducing the number of single balls that can appear in a row (it also increases the chance that clusters are bigger, but only marginally). Under normal circumstances after a ball has rolled out, if the next ball isn't the same color as the previous ball then the ball after that must be the same color. The Candy Lei ensures that no single balls roll out at all. However this board allows up to two singles to roll out in a row, so a Candy Lei would set the board to the difficulty found in past boards without the use of Candy Lei. The noticeable change is minor when multiple single balls are allowed to come out in a row, but is major when they cause singles to be non-existent. The huge difference is causing people to believe that the Lei is not working.

How to resolve: The Candy Lei effect either needs to be made stronger, or change the difficulty that fewer singles roll out.

Strategy: I would normally suggest using a Spirit Turtle since you can chain hot frogs together and can clear balls / reach fruit no matter how jumbled up they are, but they banned it and 99% of the players do not have access to a turtle. Unless you are an expert with making gaps, I don't have good tips otherwise, so all I can say is good luck.

Facebook Spam via Tagging

More of these posts start showing up, usually you only know about this via email.

I've been getting a lot more of these spam messages lately, involving a friend (or friend of a friend) sending spam messages, and tagging others to improve spreadability. They're usually deleted within minutes after they show up, and due to its nature they appear to be automated. If that's the case it won't spread far, but there's a few things to get from it.

Stuff I do know about it: I know these messages exist because:

• I get an email the minute I get tagged, even though I was untagged or the post was deleted. I concluded that it was deleted, because tag review notifications include posts which were deleted, and deleted posts technicially still exist on FB's servers, with the privacy setting of that post set so that no one can see it.
• The email is legitimate.
• Who gets tagged appears to be random (though I don't know for sure because I never actually saw the live message)
• It would be quite hard to tag specific friends of friends because you need to type in at least their first name and need to start typing their last name in full.
• If the tags include friends, it can spread quicker because in most cases people don't use Tag Review and therefore any tag from a friend will auto-appear on their wall and a newsfeed post will be made about it. (With Tag Review on, it occurs only if a comment or like is made on the post in question.) Just tagging anyone will automatically hit their tag review wall.
• If it was automated you can apparently tag anyone in a status message... yet the official documentation for graph API for a status message doesn't say anything about tags.

I know there are some legitimate uses for tagging friends of friends (I usually do tags only if I am mentioning someone in a post that they can't normally see) but I feel like there are more ways for this feature to be abused. Although notifications that non-friends have tagged you can be turned off, it doesn't stop them from tagging you, so the activity log should be checked at regular intervals to ensure that people aren't associating you with... bad stuff.

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.