I was jogging in a local park minding my own business, when this dog just came up to me and bit me in the leg. The dog owner was very apologetic: "I'm so sorry, she usually doesn't do this, but she's in heat now." So I guess I was sexually assaulted by a bitch.
The wound was minor, but I was worried about rabies and went to see my doctor, who gave me a shot for tetanus, and assured me rabies is not a concern in domestic dogs today. No excuse for foaming at the mouth yet.
God of Tetris
Last week I became a God of Tetris (in Battle 2P mode) on facebook, that is, I reached level 100 with 5 stars on the Tetris Battle game on facebook. For extra godliness (or is it godness ?) I played a few games against a few other gods and beat them back to demigod status. I have nowhere to go but down now.
On no-map games, I generally use a variable width stack. I begin my stack as a 2-wide stack at the bottom, gradually widening it to 3-wide, 4-wide, 5-wide, and more before I start to 'attack'. Like in machine-learning where an ensemble of methods is better than any single method, I think this 'ensemble' stack is better than any pure single-width stacks.
On rare occassions, I do use a pure 1-wide or 4-wide stack, or open with the O-S-L triple T-spin sequence (the video actually shows O-S-L-J-Z-O sequence, but building such a tall stack in a real 2-player game is suicide against any decent player).
My favorite map is the 'combo breaker' map. This is actually a two-sided 4-wide stack. I'm not good at building two-sided 4-wide stacks, but given a pre-built one, I can keep a combo going really well.
The only tuning I did was to increase my left/right speed and line-clear speed by one bar, 'paid' with the tetris coins I 'earned' for playing the game. My soft-drop speed remain unchanged and my next-piece queue is still 1-deep.
I'm against the powerups they have available now: shield, final rush, and double bombs. Before you call me a purist, I actually like the bombs feature, it adds an interesting twist to the game. But the double bomb powerup is just too powerful. But at least powerups are easily obtainable, unlike 'armor'.
If you never played Tetris Battle, armor is a 'feature' that protect your stars, so you can keep losing games but do not go down in rank. I used armor only twice, just to see it is what I think it is. This is one feature of the game I consider outright 'cheating'. I wonder how many Gods of Tetris are 'armored' gods. But I guess this is a good way for them to make money from the game.
The number-one reason I lose a game is bad drops. My finger would get a twitch or shake and a piece got dropped at the wrong spot or in the wrong orientation. If there's one feature I'd like to add to the game, it's piece-recall: if you drop a piece and it doesn't clear any lines, then you can recall this piece back to the top of the board and try again.
Update: you can go above level 100 now, looks like facebook is still making tweaks to this game on a regular basis.
On no-map games, I generally use a variable width stack. I begin my stack as a 2-wide stack at the bottom, gradually widening it to 3-wide, 4-wide, 5-wide, and more before I start to 'attack'. Like in machine-learning where an ensemble of methods is better than any single method, I think this 'ensemble' stack is better than any pure single-width stacks.
On rare occassions, I do use a pure 1-wide or 4-wide stack, or open with the O-S-L triple T-spin sequence (the video actually shows O-S-L-J-Z-O sequence, but building such a tall stack in a real 2-player game is suicide against any decent player).
My favorite map is the 'combo breaker' map. This is actually a two-sided 4-wide stack. I'm not good at building two-sided 4-wide stacks, but given a pre-built one, I can keep a combo going really well.
The only tuning I did was to increase my left/right speed and line-clear speed by one bar, 'paid' with the tetris coins I 'earned' for playing the game. My soft-drop speed remain unchanged and my next-piece queue is still 1-deep.
I'm against the powerups they have available now: shield, final rush, and double bombs. Before you call me a purist, I actually like the bombs feature, it adds an interesting twist to the game. But the double bomb powerup is just too powerful. But at least powerups are easily obtainable, unlike 'armor'.
If you never played Tetris Battle, armor is a 'feature' that protect your stars, so you can keep losing games but do not go down in rank. I used armor only twice, just to see it is what I think it is. This is one feature of the game I consider outright 'cheating'. I wonder how many Gods of Tetris are 'armored' gods. But I guess this is a good way for them to make money from the game.
The number-one reason I lose a game is bad drops. My finger would get a twitch or shake and a piece got dropped at the wrong spot or in the wrong orientation. If there's one feature I'd like to add to the game, it's piece-recall: if you drop a piece and it doesn't clear any lines, then you can recall this piece back to the top of the board and try again.
Update: you can go above level 100 now, looks like facebook is still making tweaks to this game on a regular basis.
Heritage Health Prize Round 1 Results
The Heritage Health Prize round 1 milestone results were released. I came in 3rd on the final private rankings, even though I was only the 5th on public leaderboard. So I guess I didn't overfit too badly.
I wonder by how much I missed winning the lottery this time.
I wonder by how much I missed winning the lottery this time.
On Zombie Apocalypse Survival
Some people like to discuss zombie apocalypse survival scenarios. The suggested preparations usually involve stockpiling guns and ammo, building defensive structures, practicing marksmanship and survival skills, etc.
I used to not take zombie apocalypse survival seriously, but lately I gave it some serious thought.
Almost all zombie apocalypse survivalists are living in a fantasy. Because based on all credible evidence available (movies, duh), when the zombie apocalypse comes, most of them will become zombies themselves. Stockpiling guns and ammo ? Well chances are your stockpile will be used against your future zombie self by the few lucky remaining humans.
Seriously, zombie apocalypse survival is about surviving as zombies, not as humans.
If you're saying, "If I become a zombie, then I don't care about survival any more, and I'd rather be dead." Well, technically you're already dead, but hope springs eternal, even for zombies. Your job is to survive long enough until someone comes up with a cure that turns zombies back into humans.
What can you do today to increase your chance of survival as a zombie in the future ? Keep in mind that all credible evidence available (movies, duh) show that zombies are incapable of higher functioning, and survives by killing humans and eating flesh off the corpses.
The number 1 thing you can do to improve your chance of survival as a zombie is getting strong, sharp, flesh-tearing titanium teeth implants.
Even if zombie apocalypse does not come in your lifetime, titanium teeth implants still have advantages: you'll be a better chewer, and you don't need to worry about cavities any more.
I used to not take zombie apocalypse survival seriously, but lately I gave it some serious thought.
Almost all zombie apocalypse survivalists are living in a fantasy. Because based on all credible evidence available (movies, duh), when the zombie apocalypse comes, most of them will become zombies themselves. Stockpiling guns and ammo ? Well chances are your stockpile will be used against your future zombie self by the few lucky remaining humans.
Seriously, zombie apocalypse survival is about surviving as zombies, not as humans.
If you're saying, "If I become a zombie, then I don't care about survival any more, and I'd rather be dead." Well, technically you're already dead, but hope springs eternal, even for zombies. Your job is to survive long enough until someone comes up with a cure that turns zombies back into humans.
What can you do today to increase your chance of survival as a zombie in the future ? Keep in mind that all credible evidence available (movies, duh) show that zombies are incapable of higher functioning, and survives by killing humans and eating flesh off the corpses.
The number 1 thing you can do to improve your chance of survival as a zombie is getting strong, sharp, flesh-tearing titanium teeth implants.
Even if zombie apocalypse does not come in your lifetime, titanium teeth implants still have advantages: you'll be a better chewer, and you don't need to worry about cavities any more.
Another Tile-based Picture Puzzle Game in Javascript
Wrote another little tile-based picture puzzle in Javascript. Again, due to blogger.com's layout interfering with picture display, I had to put it on a separate page.
Enter the URL to a picture on the web, and the game will load that picture and split it into tiles. The tiles will be randomly shuffled, and to increase difficult, the center of each tile will be covered by a gray square.
You click on two tiles to swap their positions. After all tiles are swapped back into their correct positions in the picture, the whole picture will be displayed.
Enter the URL to a picture on the web, and the game will load that picture and split it into tiles. The tiles will be randomly shuffled, and to increase difficult, the center of each tile will be covered by a gray square.
You click on two tiles to swap their positions. After all tiles are swapped back into their correct positions in the picture, the whole picture will be displayed.
Javascript 15-puzzle Sliding Tile Game
I have been using Javascript more recently, and decided to cleanup the 15-puzzle sliding tile game I wrote in Javascript some time ago. Instead of using boring numbered tiles, my version let you use images and it displays tiled images.
I had to put it on a separate page because columns in blog layout interferes with displaying bigger images.
I had to put it on a separate page because columns in blog layout interferes with displaying bigger images.
Cheating at Video Games: Electronic Automatic Trigger
Some time ago I bought this little "Space Invader" game machine. It plugs into your TV and contains 5 classic games. Two of them, "Pheonix" and "Colony 7", are rapid-fire type shooting games that requires you to press the fire button quickly and repeatedly. Of course, your hand/wrist/arm quickly get sore from pressing the button repeatedly and the it's not fun at all.
I decided to see if I could "cheat" by make an electronic automatic trigger of some sort. I took the game box apart, and using a multimeter, quickly determined that when you press a button, it just connects one point in the circuit to the ground. So make an electronic automatic trigger should be pretty easy.
I drilled a hole on the side on the game box, and run 4 wires in, soldering them to the power, ground, A button contact, and B button contact (unused in my circuit) of the game circuit. I wanted to build a simple oscillator circuit using the 555 IC, but I was out of 555 so I used one half of a 556 (which contains two 555's) instead. The "trigger" circuit is your basic 555 astable mode circuit:
When the output is high, it turns on the transistor and connects the button contact to the ground, thus electrically "press" the button. The rate of fire, using the component values shown, is about 18hz, or about 1000 rounds per minute. That's more than enough for the games since they allow far fewer bullets on screen at a time.
I had to solder the power wire to the power pin of the 556 chip, but everything else was jump-wired on a small breadboard duct-taped to the game box:
I decided to see if I could "cheat" by make an electronic automatic trigger of some sort. I took the game box apart, and using a multimeter, quickly determined that when you press a button, it just connects one point in the circuit to the ground. So make an electronic automatic trigger should be pretty easy.
I drilled a hole on the side on the game box, and run 4 wires in, soldering them to the power, ground, A button contact, and B button contact (unused in my circuit) of the game circuit. I wanted to build a simple oscillator circuit using the 555 IC, but I was out of 555 so I used one half of a 556 (which contains two 555's) instead. The "trigger" circuit is your basic 555 astable mode circuit:
When the output is high, it turns on the transistor and connects the button contact to the ground, thus electrically "press" the button. The rate of fire, using the component values shown, is about 18hz, or about 1000 rounds per minute. That's more than enough for the games since they allow far fewer bullets on screen at a time.
I had to solder the power wire to the power pin of the 556 chip, but everything else was jump-wired on a small breadboard duct-taped to the game box:
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