Chinese Culture Camp: More of Everything

There's a lot more of everything this year in Chinese Cultural Camp, more students (nearly twice as much), more lions, the camp is longer (by one day), and... more cameras. (I don't have a SLR this time around, though.) Looks like those advertisements are getting somewhere (I think my video from last year helped partially with it).

I didn't have any moving tripods to create some pan effects so I had to improvise a bit and use a cart, and handle the shakes post-processing since the wheels on the carts are designed for moving foldable chairs around and they aren't the smoothest.

News article on this.

Summer at the Stockton Cinemas

During this month I have been to the theaters to watch a movie more often than any other. And apparently the lines are longer than ever. So long that Monsters University sold out and there were two separate lines near the entrance of the theater for those waiting for the next showing (people were lining up around an hour before the movie started). Must've been the summer movies and the specials.

Specials in the Stockton Area: Although you can get 20 dollars worth of movies and $10 for concessions at Costco for 25 bucks everything (except for large popcorn) is quite expensive so it's not really worth buying. Other than early bird and matinee specials there's a few other specials going on at this time:

• Stockton City Center Stadium 16: Twilight Special - discounts the cost of tickets to $6.00 for any movie that starts between 4-6 pm on the weekdays.
• Stockton Holiday 8 on West Lane: Tickets for any show on Tuesday and Sunday are $5 (more than half off). They also show G and PG movies at 10am on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for $1 each, however there is only one showing a day and it's first come first serve.

The One Dollar Bookstore

The books are a dollar each, but good luck finding what you want.

The One Dollar Bookstore (also known as Piccolo's Books) at Long Beach: One dollar a book, excluding tax. This includes audio CDs and magazines. The only exceptions to these rules are the ones on the window display, and some large posters, which are $5 and $25 respectively. The store (at least the one in Long Beach) is huge, so you'll have a variety available to you.

Although books are broadly sorted (such as fiction, travel, self-improvement, etc. the organization in those categories are subpar, you may spend more time trying to browse (and/or sort) books than looking in them in some areas.

Note on books:

• Practically all of them are used books, meaning that what you find is something that someone else didn't want.
• Good place if you're looking for fiction books.
• Since they are used books, expect to find lots of dated material.
• There's an entire shelf of AAA travel books (and it has its own category) for those who don't have a AAA membership. (They are usually free of charge once you get one)
• The computer books are great... for legacy software. Want to learn the basics of a program? You can start here. I recommend you get a up-to-date book when possible though. The books here typically cover software ranging from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Don't expect to find books relating to programming languages. Ignore the manuals (like Norton Systemworks).
• Books regarding games are literally used; you may find puzzle books which have been written in and partially completed. Most of them in this section are discarded game manuals, in the days where detailed manuals existed in physical form.
• If someone sees you sorting something (or as much as putting a book back), there's a chance someone may mistake you for working there.

Attempt at grouping all the Visual Quickstart guides together to make a decision on which ones to get.

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.