Dream Smoke

Some games I finished since May, taken from my post in the UTAMA forums:

Finished Lux-Pain recently. Yes, I suffered through the whole thing in english. They really ruined what could have been a pretty good story experience, imo. The artwork, voice acting, and plot was pretty good. They could have had the decency to actually try translating the text properly rather than using Babelfish (which is what their finished product resembles).

Also finished playing through Trauma Team. That game is godly. I especially enjoyed the Diagnostics and Forensics modes. I've been keeping the game's soundtrack on loop~. I liked that the Diagnostics mode strongly reminded me of the things we learned LMP301, and I thought the new game modes was a pretty good success playing off the surgery from previous games.

Trying to play through Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days now, with a bit of Animal Crossing: City Folk.

Now some random Pokémon stuff, due to Pokemon BW hype.


Enough to make a Bonsly cry real tears.


Why is that so creepy. ;_; But Dragon/Poison sounds pretty cool.


All the Gen I-IV (+2 from Gen V) gather for a group photo. Very nice.

Schiggy

Whoa super blog redesign. Just switched over to the newer "layout" style for Blogger...something which I apparently neglected for a really long time. I actually tried to go back to see an older post and noticed there was no such link available to see previous posts. That's when I realized that I really should have tried to update the layout a long time ago. There's also way more room in the actual blog body now so I don't need to shrink/crop images so much just to post them here. Overall I'm pretty happy with this layout. It's a bit spartan, but at least it's easier to work with than before.

It's a bit sad to see that I have basically made the same number of posts in this blog over my undergrad stint as I did in grade 12 alone, but it seemed that I didn't really have too much motivation to post in the blog. In any case, I'll consider that finally revamping the blog makes up for some of that apathy. I think the fact that I even update at all is a testament to how I'm really using it as a sort of "public diary bank" to store random memories of mine in case I feel like perusing them again the future. In a silly recent happening, it seems I was getting quite a few hits to the blog via a post I made a while back due to the post title (now changed). I only noticed when the Photobucket-hosted images I placed in that post were gaining an unnaturally high number of views. Oh internet... you never cease to amaze me.

Finished with biomedical toxicology undergraduate...four years in the bank, with another possible four more years to come...? Probably the thing I enjoyed most about the university years were the times I was able to stay in residence downtown. Being able to walk around the city and to class without needing to bother with a 4 hour daily commute is rather refreshing. Being able to walk to the local store or fast food place without driving is nice too. Over those years I started to dabble more in cooking and baking (still not proficient though), extended my creative proclivities from iSketch into sites like Sporcle and BPT, and have expanded my anime repertoire. Wow that sounds geeky, but in any case, I think these are the main things that I actually bothered to make some blog posts about during these years.

Lastly, after discovering the Pages gadget thingy I decided to go ahead and make a page for the quizzes I create in Sporcle so I don't need to stuff the end of my blog posts with tons of links as I was doing before. Go ahead and check them out, if you please :) Don't mind the tons of Pokémon quizzes since I kind of got into a frenzy due to playing Pokémon Soul Silver again, but I assure you if you try them that I've tried to make them as refined and enjoyable as possible. >_>

I'm very surprised and flattered that I somehow have three quizzes voted as Editor's Choice. Of course, that's nothing compared to the seasoned Sporcle quiz creators, but it's good enough for me~ I was especially lucky with the latest quiz, Name the Theme - Symbols. I took some time over two days to gather the images and arrange them together, and then posted it shortly after completion. In an unfortunate stroke of timing, just as the quiz was getting its first plays, someone decided to enlist the aid of a second duplicate account and post about 10 quizzes in a row in the same category as my quiz, and thus effectively shoving it out of the Newly Created Quizzes list. (You're normally only allowed to post 7 quizzes/month, to be fair to others.) In a sudden turn, the new editor for the category decided to post my quiz as an Editor's Choice, awarding it with great visibility, (and the credit of being approved by an editor) and so more people were able to try it.

From my observations, the initial phase in the Newly Created Quizzes is really the only way your quiz can garner any notice and possibly become well-played. Normally once your quiz is off the list, it'll only ever be seen if someone happens to search for it or some key terms related to it. If you managed to attract enough plays, it might remain on the Most Played or Highly Rated lists for a while. There's also the Editor's Choice list which has very high visibility, but how long it stays depends on how often the editor posts quizzes up. Usually when Sporcle editors or well-known quiz creators post a new quiz, their quizzes stay visible for a long time. Essentially it's like a positive feedback loop - if you get a lot of plays, your quiz will likely continue to get a lot of plays and thus stay even longer in high visiblity. If your quiz doesn't get enough attention early on, it'll take some luck to get it back on the radar. And that's along the lines of what happened to me. I wish they'd really extend the Newly Created Quizzes list (a scroll bar would be an easy fix) since with so many quizzes being created, it's very easy for quizzes to be overlooked and buried for a long time.

EDIT: Haha wow, just after I made this rant, I go onto Sporcle and find they went and added a way to see a much longer version of all the lists, including Recent Additions. Kudos, Sporcle.

On another note, finally got that terrible desktop computer fixed up with a new hard drive. Some combination of the hard drive being really old and a bunch of other things led the computer into the most ultimate start-up infinite loop ever, where it would continually loop upon start-up, not even letting me into Safe Mode. Let's just hope it manages to run more like a normal computer now, although I'm not keeping my hopes up too high.

Future plans - a trip to Florida with friends in June, for some serious theme park action. Looking forward to it very much~

And yes, check out this webcomic if you haven't already - hilarity is sure to ensue.
Axe Cop

Distemper

I guess I'll just throw in a post with some links to my user-created Sporcle quizzes. I've placed a badge linking to the site in the Links section. In short, Sporcle is a site with a bunch of fun trivia quizzes on many topics. Popular ones include:
Countries of the World
NFL Teams
The Simpsons Characters
Periodic Table
Commonest English Words

They enabled the creation of user-made quizzes sometime around September last year. It doesn't have the full capabilities as some published quizzes, but a lot of pretty impressive and creative quizzes have already been made thus far by various users. Ones that are popular enough or really novel may get published by Sporcle as an official quiz.

I am already rather humbled that any of my quizzes managed to garner some level of popularity, but I'm not sure if any of them will be published. The most well-accepted ones so far are:

Shape-Describing Words
How would you describe in a single word something shaped like a cross, or a star? This quiz might help... Definite plus if you know some Latin or Greek vocab, but there are a lot of words whose meanings can easily be inferred.

Look-Alikes: Hidden Objects [pic]
I took a picture from the book Look-Alikes by Joan Steiner (amazingly creative, I read it when I was younger and loved it) and asked you to identify all the everyday objects Steiner used to create the picture. She uses objects in a way such that they "look alike" to something else, such as using slices of bread to create a sidewalk or a lemon juicer to look like a spinning carnival ride, all rather convincingly.

Pokémon Trainer Classes (Gen I)
Pokémon Trainer Classes (Gen II)
Hopefully if you played Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow back in the day, or even the Gold/Silver/Crystal versions, this might give you a nice nostalgic blast. Can you remember all those annoying trainers from the game who stop you in your tracks, walk up to you to say something completely non-sequitur, and then challenge you to Pokémon battles?

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Here are also some of my other quizzes. There is a bias on Pokemon-based quizzes since those were mostly the ones I started making first before branching out to other topics. I do have some more pending release, like "Accidental Inventions/Discoveries" which I'll release soon...

Classical Mythology Lovers
Identify the lovers from famous classical mythology couples. For example, the woman whose face "launched a thousand ships"...?

Common Drug Delivery Forms
You'll find examples of all of these around the local pharmacy or hospital somewhere. What common methods exist to deliver medicine/drugs into the body?

Pocky & Pretz Flavors
If only I was able to try all of these flavours...Mmm Pocky.

Pokémon by Cry I
Pokémon by Cry II
This was an interesting idea to put together. Can you identify the Pokémon based on the sound they make in the game? Too bad it's not what they say in the anime, since that would make the quiz rather easy. ;)

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And now, all the really niche quizzes/rest of the many Pokémon quizzes.

Non-Evolving Pokémon
These Pokémon defy the laws of evolution. Then again, so do the ones that do evolve since individuals do not evolve. Oh well.

Pokémon Supporting Characters (Game)
No single quiz would be able to encompass all those supporting characters from the anime, so I compromised with supporting characters from the games.

Pokémon Without Footprints
Pokémon by Footprint
Ever wondered what it's like to be a Pokémon forensic podiatrist? ...Me neither. Yet these quizzes exist!

Foreign Pokémon Names
It seems English Charmanders say "Charmander!" while French Charmanders say "Salamèche!". Weird.

Digimon Partners (anime)
Strange that all the world-dominating digital supervillains always seem to show up at Japan first.

Word Disassociation Lyrics
This quiz is flouncy, panicky redundant.

"I'll add you to my travel partner list."

Halfway mark! Unfortunately this semester is much busier than the last, and I'm already worried about some of these courses from the first lecture. I'm also going to the lab in the mornings now so I'm actually taking the GO train. Not used to waking up so early again =_= However, it still feels better at the end of the day when compared to staying at the lab after classes until late. Hopefully my PI will give me a break this semester due to the workload and restricted lab resources...

This Christmas was such a needed break from everything. I tried to indulge in as much gaming as I could to clear some of the backlog before spring semester presents itself. Managed to get some Ogre Battle 64, Ouendan 2, Pokemon Rumble, Band Hero, and Nostalgia. Band Hero's subdued difficuly level is pretty good for GH/RB noobs like me who can only last on Hard difficulty, maybe eke out a few of the easier songs on Expert. Plus the songlist is less boring. Of course, I'm lucky the game supports the RB drum which is the one I had. Somehow I think the RB drums feel a lot better to play on compared to the GH drums.

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New Year's wasn't spent anywhere special, but was enjoyable nonetheless. Have a great 2010, a year which we can finally pronounce again as two two-digit numbers!

First thing eaten in 2010: Turtles chocolate (again, seems to be a theme)
First thing drunk in 2010: Some Chardonnay wine from Pelee Winery
First thing played with in 2010: Band Hero (I didn't manage to get drunk, probably would have been more fun that way)
First thing resumed in 2010 after celebrations: UTAMA foruming, I think

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Just today I finally found a frame for the piece of artwork I got many years ago from Epcot in Florida's Disney World. I think it's called Oriental Letter Art, where you can have someone's name or a message written out in fancy oriental characters which consist of various symbolic elements. They paint using this cool flat-tipped sponge and bright watercolours. I'm pretty sure this purchase was fueled by the tourist's souvenir frenzy but I don't mind having it around. They simply ask you for your name, then you go walk around the park while they paint your name and you can come back to see how it turned out later.

I thought the stand was personally run by the artist herself, but it turns out they have a website where you can even order art online.



There's the design. (Click for larger image) According to the brochure they handed out, the symbols mean:

Sun: hope, faith, and love

Dragonfly: dream

Bird: peace

Ship: perspective (K)

Rainbow: promise, love, hope, and peace

Crane: longevity and noble mindedness (E)

Cactus: patience and hope (I)

Mountain: perseverence and stoicism

Dragon: honour, credit, bravery and pride

I definitely like the birds and the mountain, and I like the Japanese-y vibe of the dragon. My sister actually got one of these done even longer back when we visited Victoria, BC. Her name sports other symbols like dolphins, lighthouse, shrimp (a rather ornate one at that), and some tangle of flowers which I think are orchids. Unfortunately she lost the symbol sheet so we can't know for sure what dolphins are supposed to stand for.

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I'm dismayed to find that BPT is still down for the count. In the meantime I've assembled a few quizzes on Sporcle, and I'm still trying to get some iSketch in whenever possible.

Clairgustance

Injecting lab rats everyday is more stressful than I thought it would be, although the source of the stress is less the actual working with the animals and more the other aspects of the lab. Strange inconsistent equipment and shortage of testing chambers create time constraints which result in me having to wait for everyone else to finish before I can use them. The actual testing session only takes an hour, but I don't get to leave until 6pm or later because I have to wait for the equipment to become available. Juggling 2-3 different experiments at the same time, although each not that bad on their own, gets really taxing after a while. I seriously better get a break next semester seeing as I've pretty much overclocked the hours I need to spend at the lab per week.

In other news, I decided to quickly skim through all the files of Pokemon I've played before and see who my main team members were and if the way I name my team has changed at all. Some of these were on the R4 that I started just to get a certain version exclusive or whatnot. Sadly I found that my file on the Pokemon Yellow cartridge apparently got corrupted and the data was gone.
:(

So I guess, like the meme goes, let me show you them:

Blue - Dude

Charming - Charizard

Flitter - Butterfree

QT - Lapras

Thunder - Pikachu

Puffy - Pidgeot

Silver - Ellix

Cinder - Quilava

Gaiety - Eevee

Whoopah - Quagsire

Fleecy - Flaaffy

Lufia - Lugia

Sapphire - Kev (M)

Gex - Sceptile (M)

Torrent - Kyogre

Blitz - Manetric (F)

Gaiety - Latias (F)

Bahamut - Salamence (M)

Ruby - Gingly (M)

Atash - Blaziken (M)

Masa - Flygon (M)

Jasper - Starmie

Ikshu - Gardevoir (F)

Raiden - Manetric (M)

FireRed - Gingly (M)

Piers - Blastoise (M)

Saxon - Nidoking (M)

Flutter - Butterfree (M)

Zhong - Arcanine (M)

Elysia - Raichu (F)

Tien - Dragonite (M)

Diamond - Ellix (M)

Fervis - Infernape (M)

Ethos - Azelf

Zing - Luxray (F)

Brumey - Empoleon (M)

Larch - Torterra (M)

Tatsuo - Dragonite (M)

Pearl - Exia (F)

Sunny - Infernape (M)

Sai - Scizor (M)

Tesla - Jolteon (F)

Cavall - Lucario (M)

Eddy - Blastoise (M)

Loren - Alakazam (M)

Zoba - Garchomp (M)

Platinum - Exill (M)

Wolder - Torterra (M)

Kenzo - Lucario (M)

Wyvern - Salamence (M)

Arroya - Blastoise (F)

Zener - Espeon (M)

HeartGold - Xei (M)

Tomaw - Feraligatr (M)

Qi - Alakazam (M)

Amber - Ampharos (F)

Shiro - Dragonite (M)

Mushi - Scizor (M)

Agni - Arcanine (M)

EDIT: (May 6, 2010) Update~

SoulSilver - Ellix (M)

Jasper - Typhlosion (M)

Liodora - Ampharos (F)

Lazuri - Vaporeon (M)

Machis - Sceptile (M)

Kyan - Metagross

Uluru - Flygon (M)

EDIT: (May 30, 2012) Update~

White - Ellix (M)

Knick - Haxorus (M)

Li - Espeon (M)

Guilo - Blastoise (M)

Fowler - Archeops (M)

Castor - Chandelure (M)

Meira - Jolteon (F)

Rhizo - Krookodile (M)

Minori - Serperior (F)

Katusdo - Emboar (M)

Ibashi - Samurott (M)

Wo probs

Broken Picture Telephone is a really interesting game which plays similarly to the well-known game of Broken Telephone. An initial message passes from one person to the next, and when it reaches the last person we see how badly lost in communicaton the initial message became. BPT achieves this by using text and drawing prompts. If you are shown a text prompt, you are given 10 minutes using very limited drawing tools and space to portray that message with a drawing. If you are shown a drawing prompt, you have to type up a message describing the picture the best you can in a limited space. When the whole chain is complete, the frames are revealed to all the players who can see how the game began, and how it progressed towards the end.

Here are two snippets from two different games (click for larger pic):

http://www.brokenpicturetelephone.com/view?id=59252

http://www.brokenpicturetelephone.com/view?id=44939
(Yeah I spelled it wrong :[ )

Of course, very rarely does the initial message stay throughout the entire course of the game, but it has happened in very rare occasions. Sometimes themes from the beginning of the game become lost, only to suddenly re-emerge again near the end. BPT really lets you see what the most prevalent motifs are in the minds of people from around the world. There is actually a fairly large player base from Europe and southeast Asia, aside from North America. These themes are usually encountered when a drawing isn't very clear, and thus the person defaults to a common symbol or image that they are familiar with. It is not uncommon for someone to draw a pizza, beach ball, or slice of cheese, only to have it described as "Pac-Man". It's also been a common complaint that most people mix up the "peace symbol" with the Mercedes-Benz logo.

Some common motifs that seem to pop up in many games include:

Green aliens/martians
Jesus
Pac-Man
Cats, dogs
Super Mario
Poop
Godzilla/T-Rex
Satan/the Devil
Cacti
Apples, bananas
Barney the Dinosaur
Ninjas
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

And more recently, Obama and Michael Jackson have been popping up. As someone once said in the comments to a game, whether you describe a brown blob as 'poo' or 'melted chocolate ice cream' probably says something about your personality.

Another thing to behold is the ability of some amazing artists who can create such masterpieces even when using drawing tools which are even more spartan than MS Paint, even more impressive when taking the 10min limit into account. It really matters, especially for me since I can't draw very well and thus draw verrrry slowly. The top artists can be seen here.

The unfortunate reality right now is that the site is defunct. The site gained such popularity that the servers crashed and now images don't load up properly anymore, meaning nobody can play right now. It's sad because the site just got a bit more publicity when named one of the top 100 websites of 2009 by PC Magazine, and I'd imagine there are a lot of interested people flocking to the site only to be completely confused when they find that they can't actually play the game.

A single person owns, designed, and maintains BPT, and it has reached a level of popularity that the owner did not expect. Part of the problem is that he is only one who can make changes to the site, but he maintains a rather remote rapport with the fans. The news section (or "Blog" as it is called in BPT) is in a discrete part of the header, and recently he hasn't been updating much. He didn't actually respond until a few days after the site became dysfunctional, and seems sort of ambivalent towards fixing the site. Of course I can't tell if this is really the case since he hasn't updated us since.

During BPT's run it has had its fair share of problems, and there are a lot of ways it can be improved. There are sometimes trolls who post as many inappropriate pictures as they can, effectively ruining the natural course of the game. Most of these trolls are the unoriginal type whose weapon of choice is the tired old "crude phallus drawing". However there were some more original trolls that attacked BPT. One such troll started tons of games with the initial prompt: "Pokemon trainer catching a _____" where each game featured a different Pokemon. Another troll responded to everything with Star Trek. There was a really big push for better administration to curb the trolls' actions, but the owner never really followed up on those. More experienced players know that if they encounter a frame with an inappropriate picture or message, they should just "begin anew" by ignoring the frame and posting as if they were starting a new game.

Despite the occasional trolling and glitches, the site is easily addictive. I first started at the end of May, drawing with the mouse. Stats class made me take a break, but afterwards I returned and started drawing with the tablet stylus. It definitely allowed me to draw faster so that my pictures didn't look as plainly unfinished as it did before. I'm not sure that the quality of my pictures has really improved that much, however. If BPT ever does get fixed up, I'll definitely start playing again.

My profile

Telephone
Broken Telephone
Chinese Whispers
Arab Phone
Whisper Down the Lane
Gossip
Stille Post

Blanc de blancs

Happy New Year's! I wish everyone the best of luck in 2008.

First thing eaten in 2008: Piece of Hershey's milk chocolate
First thing drunk in 2008: Martellini's sparkling apple-cranberry juice
First thing played with in 2008: Pokémon Diamond (Hatched Phione at 12:03am :D )
First thing resumed in 2008 after celebrations: Hatching Phione

Ryuu no PUREETO

I've been playing Pokémon Diamond recently, and I actually managed to stumble upon two shiny Pokémon, which are basically just extremely rare (somewhere along the lines of 1 in 8,192 chance in each wild encounter) and have different colouring than normal.




I found my first, which was a shiny Onix, at Iron Island. It was really tricky to get because it was in a double battle where I was forced to fight along with Riley and at first I was really annoyed because I thought you weren't allowed to catch Pokémon in double battles. (Which is true, but if one of them faints and the other is left you can catch it) On the first turn we basically knocked both the Onix and Golbat into red health, and I think the Onix summoned a Sandstorm. Unfortunately I had to knock out Riley's Lucario which would have otherwise tried to faint the Onix, and the sandstorm took care of the Golbat. Then I proceeded to put it to sleep and it was caught.

EDIT: I didn't realise it was so unclear in the pictures but basically the Onix is greenish-brown coloured.



Just recently I found a shiny Staravia (but now a Staraptor as pictured) in the Trophy Garden while trying to get wild Eevee.

I wonder if the encounter rate has been increased? Otherwise I'm just extremely lucky. Although, the shiny state doesn't really affect status or anything as far as I know.