Bejeweled Blitz Stats can’t cope! October 12, 2009
Posted by faelix in curi-ocity.Tags: bejeweled blitz
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There’s too many scores for Bejeweled Blitz’s Statistics to handle!
the new bejeweled blitz has arrived October 12, 2009
Posted by faelix in curi-ocity.Tags: bejeweled blitz
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The new version of Bewejeled Blitz is finally active on Facebook!
A friend of mine asked me what my secret was to getting the high scores that I do. I replied that it was mostly chance. And it is. As previously mentioned during the reviews, it’s possible to score massive bonus points from the Last Hurrah with nothing except random chance.
PopCap need to introduce more higher score badges – currently, the highest score badge is just 250k, however I’ve now scored 4 of them. My current score is over 350k, and a friend has over 300k. The ease with which highscores are possible has shifted the range of scores up.
Having said that, it’s definitely not a case of making just one match and watching the gems explode and your score increase. There are approaches and techniques that you can apply, but chance can often play against you and you can end up with a piddling 17k or 3k.
Cascade. Although in this new version you can make new matches while the previous one completes, I’ve lost the chance to create hyper / rainbow gems a few times by making matches and then seeing that if I had not made that match, but waited for the previous match to complete, I’d have been able to make a rainbow gem. Allowing the gems to cascade is sometimes still useful. Your speed bonus is not affected if you wait, which is also good. As long as you make a match as soon as the cascade is over, you can still keep working towards Blazing Speed.
Speed Bonus. I’ve still to figure out exactly how the speed bonus scores are calculated, but I’ve gotten plenty of speed bonus points and multipliers. The more fast matches you make, the faster the gems move, meaning you can make more matches even faster! And if you keep up the speed (and you have sound on) you’ll hear the crackle of the flames as you approach Blazing Speed. Once your entire speed bonus text has turned orange you get Blazing Speed.
Regular Board:
Blazing Speed Board:
Speed Bonus Score:
If you are trying to get a high score, the most critical thing to NOT do is be entranced by the completing matches and pretty explosions. Ignore them and look at the gems that are not moving for a match. If you’ve got good reflexes, you can watch the gems as they scroll down the game board in anticipation of a match with gems that are already there.
And finally, practice is definitely the best thing. It means you’re playing lots of games and there’s a chance that the randomness will work in your favour.
Enjoy! And thank you again to PopCap for a most fun game! :D
Using Googles Search Results October 3, 2009
Posted by faelix in curi-ocity, ocity.Tags: google, research
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I recently had the opportunity to observe another person’s behaviour with a set of google’s search results.
He had approached a friend with a question and said that he could only find lots of results of other people who also had the same problem – he had not yet been able to find anyone who had a solution.
My suggestion was to add the word “solution” to his search terms.
I went with him to his computer and observed.
The first thing I noticed was that he specifically used the “+” feature.
While I am very aware of this feature in the search, I rarely use it, as I seem to be able to find a useful result quite often without it. I’m more likely to use the “-” feature.
The second thing I noticed was his (seeming) instant dismissal of what I would have clicked on – forum posts. True, the description of those forum threads that are displayed by the google search results are typically merely stating the problem, but often the solution is also there.
Other factors led us to leave the problem and not do further searching that evening, however, my observations of the interactions with the search results fascinated me. They showed me how differently people think and how differently they respond to the same set of information.
SEO for bloggers August 28, 2009
Posted by faelix in curi-ocity.3 comments
I just watched http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-for-bloggers/
Initially, I thought it was going to be about the same stuff you do to get your site to have better hits on google, but it was actually interesting, and Matt is a great talker.
I almost went to change one of the titles of my posts (the Eclipse Ganymede EclipseColorer 0.8.0 one), but then about 2 minutes after he mentioned how to make your post links more likely to be hit on a search, he said to not do it for posts you’ve already written. Luckily, the post title is already fairly straightforward. :D
What did interest me, though, is how he highlighted how different people use different search terms for the same thing. He demonstrated with what (he said) can be variously referred to as a “flash drive”, “usb drive”, “thumb drive”. When he was doing this little exercise the word “drive” did not even enter my head. I would have searched for “usb key”.
So, one: Matt’s talk is great for any blogger (especially WordPress bloggers) who wants to improve their blog in terms of pagerank and readership (is that even a real term?!), and two: it highlights how difficult it really is to search for things.
somehow popular August 3, 2009
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This post keeps getting hits from outside the blog. It gets hits from search terms. It keeps appearing consistently as the most recently viewed (and most viewed) post in my blog’s dashboard. I am not sure whether I should view this as being a good thing or a bad thing. Or maybe there are a lot of men who are in search of a bathroom…
look up November 24, 2008
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Why are we so fascinated with looking up to see planes, or helicopters, or cranes lifting loads?
I walked down the street today, and all the traffic on the road was stopped as the crane on the building site lifted its load. And there were a bunch of people on both sides of the road who had stopped to look up at the crane and the load it was lifiting. Do we watch because we’re waiting to see if it’s going to drop?
