スターバックスの＄２グランデ

So if you buy a drink in the morning at Starbucks, you can exchange the receipt you get for any Grande drink for $2 (tax not included). Not as good as the Happy Hour half price Fraps, but still a nice deal.

Nuzlocke Challege - Pokemon White - Day 2

Route 2

Caught a Lillipup (Level 7 Male), named him "Shiba Taro".

 

Ambushed by Bianca on the way to Straiton City, beat her as always.

Straiton City

Went to the Trainers' School to find the Gym Leader. Fought with Cheren for experience. Team is currently too not strong enough for the Gym battle, so went to grind some more.

Dreamyard

Fought some trainers, talked to some guy who gave me a Panpour (Level 10 Male), which I named "Pour Vous".  I have no idea why.

Straiton City

Went to the Gym and fought Chili. His Lillipup picked up an Oran berry during the battle, which made it harder to defeat. However, Pour Vous made the latter half of the battle much easier. Received the Trio Badge and TM83 Work Up.

After winning, Fennel gave me HM01 Cut and asked me to get some Dream Mist

Dreamyard

Taught Hi-Beaver cut and dealt with Team Plasma grunts.

Straiton City

Received the C-Gear from Fennel and the Pal Pad from Amanita. The old man blocking Route 3 finally let me through.

Route 3


Fought with the daycare children for more experience. Cheren comes and requests a battle, which I won. Then Bianca comes and explains Team Plasma took one of the children's Pokemon.

Finally some grass. Found a Blitzle (Level 8 Male), but Smugleaf did a critical hit on it. Oh how smug you are indeed.

However, he was left with 1 HP and as a result is now part of the team. Named him "Blitzkrieg" for obvious reasons. The team currently is all male; it's going to be hell if I have to fight an attract user.

Wellspring Cave

Speak of the devil. Found a Roggenrola (Level 11 Female). Was hoping for a Drilbur, but you take what you can get. Plus it's a Rock type, which makes it very useful the next Gym. The only downside to her is that she can only be fully evolved from trading. Named her "PK Rockin", get it?

Beat up the Plasma grunts and got the stolen Pokemon back. Left PK Rockin in the Daycare while I beat up the rest of the trainers on the route.

Will need much more grinding before the second Gym, even with PK Rockin's help.

Nuzlocke Challege - Pokemon White - Day 1

It's been 4 months since Pokemon Black/White came out, and I've yet to play either one. As of late I've been bored of the games, so I never really picked up on one. But now's a good time, since it's the summer and I have nothing better to do.

The two core rules of the Nuzlocke Challenge are:

1. If a Pokemon faints, you have to release it (AKA they're "dead").
2. You have to catch the first Pokemon you encounter in an area.

As well as the core rules, I will also incorporate the following:

1. All Pokemon will be nicknamed.
2. No trading.
3. If the first Pokemon encountered is a duplicate, you catch the next non-duplicate.

These blog posts will be a record of where I am currently in the game. It is also a reference for me so that there's no accidental captures.

Day 1:

I picked Snivy (Male, of course) for my starter Pokemon, since Snivy is probably on the same grounds as Chikorita (E.g. difficulty in story mode). I want the extra bit of challenge.

I gave him the nickname "Smugleaf", because I always wanted to.

Route 1:

The first Pokemon I encountered was Patrat (Level 4, female). I caught it with 1 Pokeball, and named her "Hi-Beaver".

Accumula Town:

No Pokemon in the town to capture (Obviously). Battled N and won.

Pokemon in party:
- Snivy (Level 8)
- Patrat (Level 5)

二飜縛り

Today I learned that if there are 10 or more 本場, then there won't be 三飜縛り.

Of course that's all jargon to the layperson. So here's a short post on what 本場 is.

本場 (Honba, literally meaning counting a situation with bars) are point sticks that are used to keep track of how long the current round. Don't confuse them with the Riichi sticks; those are red, while Honba are black.

Consider this my first post on the scoring system of Japanese style Mahjong. We start with the currency of the game; point sticks. There are 4 different kinds, which correspond to different amounts:

- 100 points is the black dots stick (The number of black dots on the stick tends to vary from set to set; mine for example has 1 black dot, the iPhone game I play with has 6 black dots, and another set uses 10). These are the sticks used to count Honba.
- 1000 points is the 1 red dot stick, these are the sticks that are most familiar, the Riichi sticks.
- 5000 points is, appropriately, the 5 red dot stick.
- 10000 points is the really fancy looking one, for a lack of a better description.

The amount of sticks in a set tend to vary. For a standard 25,000 point initial game, each player would get 1 10000 point stick (10000), 2 5000 point sticks (10000), 4 1000 point sticks (4000) and 10 100 point sticks (1000).

Honba is basically bonus points for making a round last longer. Let me introduce some conventional terms so that we understand each other:

- A hand is basically one game within a round.
- A round encompasses all hands before changing winds; so a round = a wind.
- A round ends after a full rotation of winds (So, 4 rounds).

For a round to continue after a hand, one of the following conditions must be true:
- The dealer wins the hand
- In a drawn hand, the dealer is in tenpai
- The hand was drawn due to a special condition (Will do a post on this eventually).

Therefore, for a round to rotate, AKA rotate winds, anyone other than the dealer must win.

If a round continues after the first hand, the dealer must place one 100 point stick on the table; this is referred to Honba. Each time after that, they still must put one 100 point stick for every continuing round. For example, the dealer wins the first hand of the round, so he must put a 100 point stick. The next hand is drawn, with dealer in tenpai. He puts another 100 point stick so now there are two. He wins the next hand, and puts another 100 point stick so that there are three.

Take not now that the dealer's Honba are for use as indicators only, not for payment. So when the round finally ends, the dealer takes back all his sticks.

I mentioned before that Honba are bonus points. This is basically how they work:

Suppose there are n Honba, where n is an integer. When calculating the points of a winning hand, after the hand portion of the calculation, you add this total to the Honba portion.

For a Ron, the formula is "n * 300"; the player who dealt into the hand pays this amount.

For a Tsumo, the formula is "n * 100"; all players pay this amount.

So for the first hand of a round, either formula would result in multiplication of zero, so nothing is added onto the raw hand score.

I end this post by mentioning that some variants use the 二飜縛り rule. The 二飜縛り (ryanhan shibari, literally two han binding), is in effect after Honba reaches 5, and the rule prevents anyone from winning unless their hand has two or more han.

Hence the opening sentence; I managed to make a round last for 10 Honba, and thought maybe that the 二飜縛り would go to 三飜縛り (3 han); in other words, +1 Han every 5 Honba.

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