魔法少女まどか☆マギカ オリジナルサウンドトラック Vol.01

Download: http://www.fileserve.com/file/AqhGmsw

咲 -saki- 麻雀牌 ver.3.0

I said I was going to buy the Touhou Mahjong set, but instead, decided to go with the Saki set. The images will speak for themselves:

Original Package - Front

Original Package - Back

 

Close up of back

 

Package unwrapped

The insides

Man and Honor tiles

 

Pin and Sou tiles

The back of the tiles

Size comparison with my travel set

 

The only thing disappointing was that the case didn't have a handle to make it easier to carry. But in their defense, carrying tiles vertically instead of horizontally is damaging, so I'll let it slide.

Magia

カラフィナ - Magia

コネクト

ClariS - コネクト

Sis Puella Magica ピアノ

The OST for Puella Magi Madoka Magica comes out in a few day; for now enjoy a piano rendition of Sis Puella Magica.

遊☆戯☆王 木曜日 トーナメント二

Single elimination tournaments are just dumb.

I played with Chaos Fitzgerald, same deck list as from the Pot of Duality tournament a week ago, but take out Lyla for Doppelwarrior (Since the Lyla was borrowed).

Round 1: Chaos Fitzgerald vs. Dark Genex (2-0)

To be honest, I didn't know what I was playing. I quickly won game 1, even though they dropped Gorz on me. I was surprised that I won game 2, since they managed to get Dark Armed Dragon out. However, Junk Synchron + Doppelwarrior into a 3100 Attack Junk Warrior saved the day for me.

Round 2: Chaos Fitzgerald vs. XX-Sabers (0-2)

I'm not surprised with the result, as my opponent is a Nationals player. A misplay cost me game 1. I had Frozen Fitzgerald on the field as well as Chaos Sorcerer. I summoned Glow-up Bulb and synchro summoned Arcanite Magicia since I wanted to get rid of their set monster and 1 set back row. The set back row was Torrential Tribute, and after that point I couldn't recover.

Game 2 was also not in my favor. Although I had Thunder King Rai-Oh on the field, they managed to get rid of it with Book of Moon, and then proceeded to control the duel with XX-Saber Gottoms.

Although the tournament wasn't in my favor, I did manage to get this little gem from the Turbo Pack:

魔法少女まどか☆マギカ -the ultimate modification-

I have writer's block; until then enjoy random Madoka videos:

ベンゼン

The time it took to make this is equivalent to the average blog post I make.

龍門渕透華のリーチ

Next week's post will be relevant:

フラペチーノ

I will miss Happy Hour (AKA half price Frappuccinos) at Starbucks. I don't feel that I've taken full advantage of it, seeing as I had only bought five Venti Frappuccinos during the duration.

マミさんの戦闘テーマ

So I thought I was going to a tournament today, but plans spontaneously changed. So here's Mami's theme (Unofficial Nico Nico version):

The official OST comes out May 25.

13日の金曜日

Today is the only Friday the 13th of the year, and you know what they say; it's bad luck to blog post on that day (Or I'm just being lazy, your choice).

The real reason  there isn't a volunteer post today is because I can say, without a doubt, that nothing interesting happened. The only thing of interest was that it's still half price Fraps at Starbucks; until May 15th at least.

Does scary have any correlation with Friday the 13th? Maybe, but here's my media post for the week.

Spoilers for those that haven't watched Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

バインダー

No tournament today, but I finally received my binder in the mail.

 

My front page (It just goes downhill from there):

And my soon to be complete T.G. page:

電子配置

Can you spot the error? With all the positive feedback this book has received, I'm surprised they made such a simple mistake. Despite that, it's still a very good book (Organic Chemistry 6th Edition, Paula Y. Bruice)

有機化学モデルキット

Today I had to go pick up one of these:

A standard organic chemistry model kit. It's made in Japan; that means it's some legit stuff.

It also comes with a sheet that lists all the contents, as well as what each part is supposed to represent:

Light blue - Hydrogen
Black - Carbon
Blue - Nitrogen
Red - Oxygen
Grey - m(?); no idea what that is

There's some black tube within the box, but I have no idea what it's for, and the sheet gives no information about it.

What else to do but to play with it, right?

Guess what molecule I made: Ethane

The real bummer; the kit costs $40. Although I'll probably still use it next semester for Organic Chemistry II, most likely I won't be using it more than a few times. Is it worth $40. Not really, but I guess I could sell it to an underclassman for $30 later.

九蓮宝燈

九蓮宝燈, literally, Nine Lotus Treasure, but translated into Nine Gates, is the least probable hand you can get in Mahjong, second to the Thirteen Orphans (Although some would contest that). Nine Gates is the one of two hands that, after many years of playing, I have yet to attain legitimately (The other being 緑一色, or All Green / Emerald Dragon, which in theory is much more probable than Nine Gates).

The Nine Gates hand is shown below:

Which is basically 1-1-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-9-9 of any suit; that would be your 13 tiles. Your wait would be any number of that suit, so 9 possible waits in total. This is also the hand with the largest number of possible waits, as most hands wait on either 1 or 2 tiles.

How do you win with any of the numbers? Let's go through them. For example, let's say your opponent discards 1 Man, or you draw 1 Man. Then your winning hand would be:

1 Man: 1-1-1, 1-2-3, 4-5-6, 7-8-9, 9-9 Eyes

We can show this for any other number, and if you observe carefully, a pattern forms.

2 Man: 1-1-1, 2-2 Eyes, 3-4-5, 6-7-8, 9-9-9

3 Man: 1-1 Eyes, 1-2-3, 3-4-5, 6-7-8, 9-9-9


4 Man: 1-1-1, 2-3-4, 4-5-6, 7-8-9, 9-9 Eyes

5 Man: 1-1-1, 2-3-4, 5-5 Eyes, 6-7-8, 9-9-9

6 Man: 1-1 Eyes, 1-2-3, 4-5-6, 6-7-8, 9-9-9


7 Man: 1-1-1, 2-3-4, 5-6-7, 7-8-9, 9-9 Eyes

8 Man: 1-1-1, 2-3-4, 5-6-7, 8-8 Eyes, 9-9-9

9 Man: 1-1 Eyes, 1-2-3, 4-5-6, 7-8-9, 9-9-9

If you observe the eyes in each hand, you will be able to see some symmetry; 1 Man results in 9 Eyes, while 9 Man results in 1 Eyes. It is a fallacy to think that the tile you win off of becomes the Eyes number; 3 and 7, as well as 4 and 6 Man wins result in 9 and 1 Eyes respectively.

Therefore, 1 and 9 acts the most as Eyes, with 3 hands, where the rest of the winning tiles act only act as 1 Eyes. Ironically, but not really since there is a logical pattern, the number of tiles of that certain number results in the number of possible winning hands that it is the eyes in.

母の日

Happy Mother's Day everyone

遊☆戯☆王 強欲で謙虚な壺 トーナメント

There was a Pot of Duality tournament today, and a friend and I decided to enter with (nearly) identical decks.


The deck we used was Chaos Fitzgerald:

Monsters (26):

1x Blackwing – Gale the Whirlwind

2x Card Trooper

3x Chaos Sorcerer

1x Effect Veiler

1x Genex Ally Birdman

1x Glow-up Bulb

1x Gorz, the Emissary of Darkness

3x Junk Synchron

1x Lyla, Lightsworn Sorceress

3x Nimble Momonga

1x Plaguespreader Zombie

3x Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter

2x Spirit Reaper

2x Thunder King Rai-Oh

Spells (13):

1x Allure of Darkness

1x Book of Moon

1x Charge of the Light Brigade

1x Dark Hole

1x Forbidden Lance

1x Giant Trunade

1x Monster Reborn

2x Mystical Space Typhoon

2x Pot of Avarice

1x Reinforcement of the Army

1x Scapegoat

Traps (1):

1x Treacherous Trap Hole

Total: 40

Side Deck (15):

2x D.D. Crow

2x Kinetic Soldier

2x Puppet Plant

2x Bottomless Trap Hole

2x Chain Disappearance

2x Dimensional Prison

1x Mirror Force

1x Solemn Judgment

1x Torrential Tribute

Extra Deck (15):

1x Ally of Justice Catastor 5*

1x Ancient Fairy Dragon 7*

1x Arcanite Magician 7*

1x Black Rose Dragon 7*

1x Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier 6*

1x Dark End Dragon 8*

1x Formula Synchron 2*

2x Frozen Fitzgerald 5*

1x Gungnir, Dragon of the Ice Barrier 7*

1x Hundred-Eyes Dragon 8*

1x Junk Warrior 5*

1x Shooting Star Dragon 10*

1x Stardust Dragon 8*

1x Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier 9*

The point of the deck is to mill, which puts level 2 beast monsters in your graveyard as well as Light and Dark monsters to fuel Chaos Sorcerer. Junk Synchron + Ryko or Nimble Momonga in the graveyard will synchro Frozen Fitzgerald.

The side deck is trap heavy, since the use of Treacherous Trap Hole alludes the opponent into thinking that this deck runs no traps. It turns a swarm deck into a control deck.

Onto the tournament itself:

Round 1: Chaos Fitzgerald vs. FishOTK (2-0)

When I managed to discard Symbol of Heritage with Spirit Reaper's effect, I knew I was facing a FishOTK deck. Luck was in my favor, and I won the first game.

Although I didn't draw any of my sides for the second game, I still won. I managed to summon Dark Armed Dragon and finished the game quickly.

Round 2: Chaos Fitzgerald vs. Gravekeeper's (1-2)

Gravekeepers are an awful match-up, since this deck relies on the graveyard very heavily. The first game was mine because they didn't have Necrovalley, so I kept summoning Chaos Sorcerer.

Game 2 I sided in my traps, since my opponent thought I didn't run any due to Treacherous Trap Hole. Despite that, I lost second game due to Gravekeeper's Descendant destroying my set monsters.

Final game I lost due to a bad decision to Solemn Judgment their Nobleman of Crossout on my set Ryko. In retrospect, it was not worth half my lifepoints. When I thought I could have made a comeback, they activated their sided Gozen Match, thus preventing my Junk Synchron to synchro. It was their game after that.

The surprising thing about this match was that, in all three games, they never drew or used Royal Tribute.

Round 3: Chaos Fitzgerald vs. Six Samurai (0-2)

Perhaps the most pathetic match today. They won the dice roll and went first, and then did the usual Gateway of the Six + Monster spam. My hand was terrible, and I already knew it was a loss.

Game 2 I sided in my Six Samurai counters, but I opened with none of them, and on their turn, they repeated the Gateway of the Six + Monster spam. Worst part is that my Ryko milled Kinetic Soldier, Puppet Plant, and Mystical Space Typhoon; the three cards that could have helped reverse the situation. 

Things could have went a lot smoother if we had known that Extreme Victory cards were legal (3 Reborn Tengu's would have helped immensely). 

But it was a decent performance for the first time using this deck. Can definitely use more modding, but for now this is a good backbone.

ボランティア 十一日目

12:27 - Half an hour early; for once I can eat lunch

1:37 - On a rainy day like this, it is obligatory for the hospital to display the wet floor warning sign

1:49 - Slow day is slow. Couldn't help the one person that wanted help so far since they were looking to visit a patient, and the part of the hospital I work in does not concern that.

1:55 - My favorite part of the job; answering their question before they even ask it. Usually people carry a familiar looking paper that I can identify, so I can just tell them where the lab is, or where to get an ECG. No psychic powers whatsoever, people's reactions seem to think otherwise.

2:49 - I swear, it doesn't matter ho big or how colorful your volunteer vest is, some people just won't realize you're a volunteer or just don't care. Why phone the hospital for directions when I'm right here?

3:14 - Someone asked me if volunteer resources was in this building. I said no and argued that it was the right address. She was half-right; she got the number right but not the street. An honest mistake really, and it's more of the hospital's fault for having two buildings with the same number.

3:33 - Apparently starting today (May 6) until May 15 and during 3:00-5:00PM is Happy Hour at Starbucks; half price for all fraps. So I paid the price of a tall and got a Venti size. This will be a fun week indeed.

Can't say anything interesting happened this shift. So not much to elaborate on.

My summer schedule means that I have to go immediately to volunteer without a lunch break. So in order to compensate, I'll have to eat lunch while commuting.

遊☆戯☆王 木曜日 トーナメント 一

It's about time I started on the competitive side of Yu-Gi-Oh again, which my intense Spring semester had prevented me from doing.

This will be a really short post, mainly because the deck I played with is half dissected into another deck, and it was a single elimination tournament, as opposed to Swiss which "most* tournaments should be.

I was playing with a Chaos Antimeta deck, and my opponent was playing Frognarch's. I have been out of the tournament scene for quite a while, and the card game in general, and made a really stupid move by using Monster Reborn on their Treeborn Frog; that cost me the first game.

After siding out my backrow destruction (as Frognarch's don't rely much on spells/traps) and siding in things like Chain Disappearance, I managed to win the second game.

The last game could have gone either way; that is until they managed to summon Trishula, and taking away my Gorz in hand at it. Although I managed to top deck a Neo-Spacian Grand Mole and bounce the Trishula back, it was practically their match after that.

My Turbo Pack pull was Wulf, so today was full of minuses.

RGB

This week, the RuneScape update was Capes of Distinction, and many players thought that the color order of those capes followed no logical pattern.

This is the order of the 10's capes:

Consider the volume of a cube:

Where the Cartesian coordinates (with range x;y;z at 1;1;1) are in a Euclidean space. In the electronic color spectrum, the origin (0,0,0) is the color black; this is because there is no color contribution from Red/Green/Blue. On the other hand, 1,1,1 is white, due to full contribution from all colors.

If we let X be the intensity of red, Y the intensity of blue, and Z the intensity of green, then as we fix X and Y at 0, by increasing Z, color becomes more green. If we start at 0,0,1, and end at 0,1,0, then you would get the sequence of colors as on the capes:

To skip all the Calculus jargon, the 10's cape starts at Full Green, then by adding and taking away contributions from Red and Blue, we get the color order.

ファンタジープラズマの魅力

Fulfilling an art request that was 2 months overdue; no I don't do art requests, this was just an exception:

I think it turned out pretty well, considering that I used nothing but a pencil and a sheet of paper.

盗むするかどうかを盗むために

Excuse the awful title of this post for anyone who knows Japanese; was trying to translate "To steal or not to steal" or "Whether to steal or not to steal".

Another short theory post, this time regarding whether to rely on your opponent's discards, or to attempt to win with only the tiles you draw.

This is really just another common sense thing. At the beginning of the game, most of the time you don't want to be taking other player's discards. Not only would that limit your options late game, but it also reveals to your opponent what you are potentially going for.

In regards to limiting your options, for example if you declare Pon on a 1 Man, then in order to win, you either have to go for:

- All Pon
- Half/Full flush of Man
- Pon of Round/Self wind or Dragon
- Win from last discard/draw; "Bottom of the Ocean"

If however, you don't take the 1 Man, and therefore are left with two 1 Man in your hand, you can go for any hand possible; it just depends on how the rest of your hand looks. Also, your opponent can only guess what hand you are attempting based on your discards. Lastly, you have access to Riichi, which was discussed previously.

This isn't to say to never take discards early game, since a round/self wind or dragon means an instant win condition. Also, if your hand is nearly complete, 1-3 Shanten, then taking it would be wise even if it partially reveals your motives. This would force your opponents to play defensively, and quite possibly result in only you being in Tenpai if the game does end without a winner.

During and after the halfway point (since there are 69 tiles available to be drawn, this would be ~34 tiles left, or 1 full wall) is when you have to start relying on opponent's discards if you aren't already in Tenpai. Since the probability of drawing what you need is much lower than early game, attempting Riichi is much more difficult. That, coupled with the large discard pool, means a much lower chance of winning (which was elaborated on in my last post).

Endgame is where you really want to call everything possible (I consider endgame ~10 tiles left). Even if you can't win, you might want to go for Tenpai. In most cases, you would want to try and Tenpai. I say might because there are some situations where you would not want to reveal your hand (since the declaration of Tenpai at the end of a drawn game is coupled with showing your tiles). This could be because you don't want to show new opponents the way you play (aggressively, by focusing on completing your hand, or defensively, by keeping dangerous tiles to yourself). Of course a good player is able to do both, but even so there are situations where you don't want to reveal your hand.