Blog: Cannot get demographics to work with Google Analytics

I have made some changes and have not been able to get the demographics portion to work. Checking back in the scripts, I noticed that the change that I needed was no longer there. This probably happened when I switched to the Universal Analytics scripts (as opposed to the classic scripts). I have re-added it and waiting to see if there have been any changes.

I have been waiting since I had put in this line before. I had thought that there was a minimum number of visitors needed before it could report something. The warning in Google Analytics is somewhat misleading:

Some data in this report may have been removed when a threshold was applied. Learn more

Reference

1 - https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2799357?hl=en

Life: Meaning of Friendship?

More interesting than the article, the comments have some rather polar differences. What does friendship mean to you? Are you ok with a 'stranger' to use your name and call you a friend? Do you use friendship loosely for use on anyone?

One post even suggests that the term 'friends' has evolved due to social media. Has it evolved?

Reference

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140730152125-69244073-you-re-not-my-friend?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0

Coding: Error running Eclipse with 32-bit Java

I get this error because I had Java 32-bit running and a 64-bit version was needed.

Java was started but returned exit code=13

C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin\javaw.exe

-Xms40m

-Xmx512m

-XX:MaxPermSize=256m

-jar C:\Program Files\Eclipse-SDK-4.2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\\plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.30v20120522-1813.jar

-os win32

-ws win32

-arch x86_64

-showsplash C:\Program Files\Eclipse-SDK-4.2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\\plugins\org.eclipse.platform_4.2.0.v201206081400\splash.bmp

-launcher C:\Program Files\Eclipse-SDK-4.2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\eclipse.exe

-name Eclipse

--launcher.library C:\Program Files\Eclipse-SDK-4.2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\\plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.win32.win32.x86_64_1.1.200.v201205221813\eclipse_1503.dll

-startup C:\Program Files\Eclipse-SDK-4.2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\\plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.30v20120522-1813.jar

--launcher.overrideVmargs

-exitdata 1e30_5c

-vm C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin\javaw.exe

-vmargs

-Xms40m

-Xmx512m

-XX:MaxPermSize=256m

-jar C:\Program Files\Eclipse-SDK-4.2-win32-x86_64\eclipse\\plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.30v20120522-1813.jar

I had Eclipse and Java installed a long while back, and was pretty sure that Eclipse was working before distracted by other projects. Coming back to it to work with Google Apps, I received the above error. After some trial-and-error, I finally found a post that it may have to do with the Java version. I had to download the 64-bit version. I am not sure why I thought Eclipse had worked before. Whatever I had thought, the 64-bit version of Java fixed this above error.

Review: Tassu Shervani (First Impression)

I participated in a virtual summit with Tassu Shervani, PhD as the speaker. He used rather simple analysis of global census and historical patterns to make some very interesting conclusions that do not seem to be the current popular views. The analysis he focuses on is population and demographics.

He starts with how impacts of population growth is to market demands, resources, and GDP. His magic number of 2.1 is the number of children each parents need to produce to maintain a stable population. 2 is obvious because you need two kids who will eventually replace the two parents. Of course there are accidents, health issues, and other events that prevents reproduction, so the number should be greater than 2. Tassu jokingly states that 0.1 is for risk management.

He then goes into how this impacts different countries when the average number of children is greater than 2.1, around 2.1, and less than 2.1. US is around 1.9 (maybe 1.95) indicating that we would have a decreasing population. For us, this has different impacts for our generation today than it was 70 years ago when the number of children was 5-7. One of the examples of impacts to our society is social security. Today, there are one person to support each senior citizen. Compare this to the past, 5-7 people support each senior citizen. Not only that, people are living longer so each person today has to support longer than before.

This has an impact on the workforce and consumers as we move from a growing population to a decreasing population within a couple generations. For a period of time during the process of decreasing population, we'll have an increasing workforce (as children grows into the work force and elderly staying longer in the market) but a decreasing consumers (as people die, children are always consuming). We do not have this impact yet, primarily because of immigration. Immigration maintains the US population to be increasing.

I just find it interesting as to all the oppositions I see on the news to immigration. Immigrants seem to be very helpful to our economy which would impact our job market.

Tassu does bring up a lot of other discussions. Unfortunately, I cannot share it as it is hosted behind a firewall. I did find one video of Tassu on YouTube which discusses a small portion of the summit talk. It was very nice to hear him use actual numbers to reach the conclusions. You may not believe all the conclusions, but at least there is something concrete to accept or refute instead of basing our reactions to our very limited form of information (ie the news for me which really is just showing other people's opinions or fake numbers like polls of other people's opinions).

Reference

1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYqp0gJT_J4
2 - http://www.tianow.org/videos/its-not-just-connectivity-its-business/13806/  - Another talk but not related to population

Bored: 4 Basic Emotions

I thought this was an interesting read: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2014/07/study-of-dynamic-facial-expressions.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BpsResearchDigest+%28BPS+Research+Digest%29

It discusses that the current theory is 6 basic emotions (which I did not know prior to the article) and this latest research suggests there may only be 4 basic emotions (approach, avoidance, happiness, sadness).

Game: Candy Crush Saga Dreamworld 250 Dropping only Black Swirly Licorice

This level is by far the most annoying level, by far. I do not know if this broken but I actually succumbed to using YouTube to see how others have passed this level... only to find that their candy drops look nothing like mine because mine only drops black licorice pieces. Unfortunately, I did not record my eventual win of this (primarily because I went through many, many, many lives) but I did eventually pass it and I do not want to see it again.

My strategy that eventually led to the win was to set off as many fishes at the same time as possible. There seems to be a slight window where it will drop candy pieces. It will drop some licorice, but candy will drop. At this point, I try to clear as much of the top jellies as possible. I typically will reach moonstruck mode which hopefully will clear up as much jellies as possible (hopefully the top ones). Because eventually, it will drop only licorice again (and no more candies will drop). In my winning game, I was able to just have the bottom with candies to eventually just use a horizontal striped candy and a fish.

Good luck!

PS - For some reason if I only get 1-2 fish, it almost always (95% of the time) hits one of the trapped candies at top. I was trying to avoid this to see if I can just get enough horizontal striped candies to clear the jelly before the licorice fell. This strategy did not even clear more than 10 jellies (at best with the striped and wrapped candy combo).

If I got for horizontal or stripped/wrapper combo, I only get licorice. With combination with only 2-3 fishes at most, there are only about 3-4 candies that will drop out of 20+ left cleared licorice.

Even with the final strategy, this took me clearly more than 30 lives (lost count) over a span of several days.

Work: Enterprise Defect Management (rant)

I have worked with defects my entire professional life in support, integration, project management, and release management. I found that the size of the team makes a large difference in the management of defects. In smaller companies, there were few factors to determine the priorities of defects. Simply, the client's most urgent issue is the highest priority. The reason for this is because typically there is only a single person working on each project and each project has a single client. Although a person could have multiple projects, project priorities are typically managed by the boss (i.e. manager).

As companies grow in size, there are more people involved and more priorities to manage. Management of defects move towards another team that does not have easy access to development, testing, and deployment planning. Unlike its smaller company counterpart which typically will only have 2-3 roles involved, now I have to deal with several parties. Depending on the size of the projects, there may now be up to 10 different groups each with their own resources and priorities.

One of the biggest problem that I run into is finding a single method on how to manage the defects. The largest factor to my problem is that there is no single entity that makes the final call. Because of this, there is a lot of delays to the decision because the work cannot "start" until the decision is made. Although the official start is not determined, some teams take it upon themselves to work on certain items. This actually causes more problems to managing the defects. Because a change is simple for a development group, the amount of testing is not necessarily simple nor the deployment.

A simple change in a more fundamental code base could trigger a lot of tests required. Because the lab environment only has a single instance, production may have to deploy over a span of time because it has several environments. And so far, only a single path for a single change.

If multiple development groups provide multiple solutions, there are a lot of resource conflicts that can occur across many teams especially testing. For example if ChangeA is put into testing and requires 2 weeks to deploy to production, ChangeB cannot be put into testing until ChangeA has completed testing. ChangeC cannot be put into testing until ChangeB has completed testing, but ChangeB cannot leave testing until ChangeA is completed in production.

So far it is manageable although it does not address how it can be caught up yet, but another factor on issues from deployment or testing is not considered at this point. If ChangeA faces a problem in production and needs to be backed up then what should be done to ChangeB? Depending on the criticality, ChangeB could be backed out or merged with ChangeA. If ChangeA cannot be replicated in test, then what is the path forward?

If ChangeA works but ChangeB is unable to pass testing, ChangeC is now on hold. How should the group handle if a very high critical issue now comes up? Should everything be backed out then readdressed? Should it be merged to current change?

So far I have only addressed the main actors to SDLC, but there are other actors that make this management more complex: management and product planning. Because they have their own plans resources are now being used to manage unexpected work that comes up, budget and promises need to be considered.

This is comes to another factor to the resource consumption. Regular/planned/scheduled releases are impacted or impacting to defect deployments. Although rules are made to what changes should go into a emergency/point release or a planned/scheduled release, there are always exceptions that throws the process for a loop.

There seems to be several red lights to the chaotic process that I am currently in.

1. The most obvious request from release management is to skip a few weeks of releases. And obviously, no one can stand missing fixes for 2-4 weeks. If the product cannot remain stable for a month, there is something seriously wrong with the product (IMO). What customer wants a solution that require weekly updates? I get quite irritated with weekly updates for changes that do not even impact me to begin with!
2. Similar defects keep showing up. No one wants to manually fix out-of-sync issues, while also unable to replicate or completely fix the problem. There is something seriously wrong fundamentally with the product if no one is able to figure out syncing issues that keep coming up for over 3 months (for us two years even with some fixes that didn't do anything).
3. Every team is requesting additional resources or time. Obviously something is wrong with planning if everyone (or even the majority of groups) cannot accomplish the simplest of tasks within a regular plan.
4. Always in catch-up mode. There is seriously something wrong if product/application planner cannot realign the plan given the current situation.
5. No COO. There is not a single point person who can just put their foot down and just move forward. I do not how many times we spent more time "negotiating" with everyone when the worst plan was still faster than the "planning" of the changes.

Rant over

Life: Exercise Re-continued

Yet another setback in the weight department. This time around it was moving into a bigger place, then spent time trying to fill the place. I gained like 20 pounds during that time. How did that even happen?! Sigh...

Anyways, I am back in running mode again. I went out a few times to the gym and "ran" on the treadmill. I walked most of it, jogged a 5mph pace for like 5 minutes, and was dying. One day, American Ninja was on and that was surprisingly motivating as I kept walking or jogging into the front bar. I probably did that every other day for a couple weeks. I gained like 2-3 pounds. This is most likely me just regaining muscle mass again.

Then my "sponsor" (can bring a free guest to the gym) took a break, so I started running at a nearby park. I "ran" the 5k trail. This takes me about an hour the first time. At first, my right calf seems to tighten up a lot. I'm not sure what is causing this. Usually around the 9 minute mark. Couple minutes later, my ankle and foot feel really sore. At this point, I would just walk and it will go away. Then I would jog again for another minute or two until it comes back. After another couple weeks, I cut this down to 40 minutes. My calf, ankle, and foot no longer bother me.

It also seems that I improve (by which I mean that it feels easier to run) when I run every other day. Even if I do a light (mostly walking) day in between, I feel that the run is not much easier than the previous run. I think I also improve if I take 2 days off. 3 days does not seem to make much difference. This still works if I work on other exercises like crunches and other upper body exercises. Working on my abs seem to also improve me run quite a bit.

At this point, I have lost about 5 pounds from my last max weight. I have also stopped eating "midnight" snacks. That habit was difficult to get rid of because it somehow prevented me from sleeping. Just recently, I had an opportunity to run on the treadmill and I have been able to run a 6mph pace for 10 minutes, then I just do a bunch of runs and walks in 2-5 minute intervals for about an hour. I was able to do the first 5k in 38.5 minutes (my best time post-college was 31 minutes).

I'm glad that things are starting to settle down. For some reason, I just cannot find time to workout when I have other things to do. Hopefully, I'll have more success going forward.

Bored: Hearing Test to Determine Age

I was watching Brain Games and it was showing the hearing test. They had a few age groups. I heard them all. But when they played under age 25, I thought I heard a sound but then it did not go away in my head. This made me wonder if I even heard it.

This made me to go online to see if I can find the sound again. I found a YouTube video that played more frequencies. When it reached under 30, it went completely quiet. But then when there was a higher frequency that played that I heard. When I backtracked, I did not hear any sounds underneath. But then when I used the left arrow to go back, I was able to hear all the sounds rather clearly. When I tried again, no sounds played but I heard my speakers click. Then I noticed that YouTube had filtered some of the sounds. I do not understand why it played temporarily though.

Anyways, this made the video unreliable. I continued my search and found an online tone generator (Reference-1). Here I was able to hear frequencies between 10Hz and 20154Hz. The lower ranges were kind of tough though. I can probably noticeable hear 23-25Hz. But if I used the start and stop, I can hear slightly lower than that but it is a very dull sound. In other words, I probably would not notice the sound is even playing if I listened for it but I can notice a change in sound if I toggled between on and off. Past 10Hz, I do not detect the slightest change.

A limitation to this may be the speakers as well. So I'm not sure if this a good test. The only way to validate this is to have a listening device that can detect what frequency is actually playing. At least for my curiosity, I am at least able to hear the frequencies. I wonder if volume has to do with it too.

Another "test" is as I was watching TV as I typed this post, I had left the tone generator on. Somehow I tuned out the tone but when I returned back to this post on a commercial break, I noticed that there was an odd low tone then recalled that I had forgotten to turn it off. So it is kind of interesting how I am able to tune out certain sounds.

Reference

1 - http://blog.szynalski.com/2012/08/29/online-tone-generator/
2- http://braingames.nationalgeographic.com/

Game: Candy Crush Saga... rigged? (Part 2 - Dreamworld)

Sigh....... I've started playing this game again. Looking at my last post, I did not even make a whole year. But in my defense, I was testing out a new desktop recording application Camstudio then just kept playing.

When testing it out, I noticed there is a new area which I call Dreamworld (which I found in Youtube but not sure if that is the official name or not). I brings a new mechanic where pieces of a random color are automatically destroyed after so many turns then changes to a different mode. In this mode, the random color also no longer appear as long as you remain in the mode. Some levels this mode is only one turn but can span multiple turns. When in this mode, you can get a lot of combinations more easily. One drawback is when you need to get certain recipes which may not longer appear because it no longer appears.

To counter-balance this new mode, there is also a mechanic where you cannot match too many of one of two specific color. This is represented by an owl on a moon. The moon tilts either clockwise or counter-clockwise depending on which color it is weighted towards. You fail when the own (named Otus) falls off the moon (ie balance). For example if red and blue is on the balance, too many reds cleared will cause the game to end or too many blues will cause the game to end. You can counter the balance by alternating between red and blues. This only occurs in the normal mode. There is no balance when in the special mode.

Currently in level 223, I have found that the levels are somewhat more enjoyable but I still notice a few rigged-like behaviors. What is more enjoyable is that it appears a bit more random so I rarely get stuck on a particular level, although there have been a couple where it took me a few days.

What seems odd with the supposedly "random" pieces is when I am stuck and the moon is tilted at the max, there seems to be an increased chance that combinations will more likely to occur for that color or that color will drop causing a combination.

What also seems odd to me is that I always seem to beat certain levels (past around 100) is that I beat levels on my very last life on levels that I get somewhat stuck (stuck being that I already used by 5 lives + the lives given by friends on a specific level). Then I will coast through a couple then get stuck again.

I am not sure about this one, but CCS has an opinion survey that comes up randomly. I have rated some of the levels which took me 2-some days to beat as boring. This appears to increase my odds. I have not rated anything positive so I'm not sure if voting increases, or even that I just perceive it that way.

I'd like to use the record the games as I play but I seem to need a new PC because my computer lags quite a bit when I have multiple apps running. I'm not sure why Facebook games uses so much of my PC memory. I cannot watch a stream and play CCG or Tetris Battle with it slow noticeably but not impossible. Yet, I can play more intense games like SC2 or DOTA while streaming.

Buggish: SharePoint 2010 - Moving List Items to Subfolder, Not Possible

In summary, there appears to be no way to move a list item in SharePoint without additional code. In other words, SharePoint 2010 cannot move list items OOB or with SharePoint Designer (SPD).

I have spent several days trying different things, eventually stumbling on Reference-1 which confirms that the task is not possible. I tried moving adding toolbar (Reference-2) but I was unable to get the same options to move. I tried workflow but there is no action to create an item in a subfolder. There does not even appear to be a manual way to move items to a subfolder.

For those who do have access to the server and can code, Reference-3 appears to have some notes on it. But it appears to be similar to other "move" processes where the process is basically to create a new list item then delete the old one. The problem I have with this is that it loses a lot of the item historical data that are useful for audit.

The reason I was looking into this is to find a solution to archive old data. The benefits of archiving is to keep the current list shorter and cleaner. The other benefit is to keep the table size low. Currently, my only workaround is just to delete the data after a period of time. To "backup" the data, the current plan is to just export to Excel. A better solution would be appreciated.

Reference

1 - http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/686c2ebb-6337-4f3d-b599-24d38b67c225/moving-list-item-to-a-folder-with-in-the-same-list-based-on-condition
2 - http://www.techgrowingpains.com/2010/07/how-to-copymove-sharepoint-items/
3 - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mcsnoiwb/archive/2009/04/30/copy-listitems-from-one-custom-list-to-another-then-move-them-into-subfolders.aspx

HOWTO: Enable New Folder for a List in SharePoint 2010

"Could not save the content type changes to the server. Content type [SharePoint List Location] is sealed."

When navigating to the List > Items, the New Folder icon is greyed out or disabled.

I thought this should have been intuitive but perhaps this is just the beginning signs of me aging. I am trying to create an archiving workflow in SharePoint and found this process to be more complex than it needs to be. In this attempt, I am trying to create a folder and move old items to the folder. Unfortunately, I got stuck with the above problems.

To enable New Folder, I had to navigate to List Settings > Advanced settings. Search for Folders or Make "New Folder" command available? in the list, enable by selecting Yes then click OK.

Review: Twitch.TV on Droid RAZR Mobile (Second Impression)

The amazing thing was how much Twitch has improved since the first time I used it more than a year ago. The first time I used it, it was extremely slow and laggy. The sound was not clear either. Now, the video is very clear, crisp, and vivid. The audio is clear too. This was on both my wifi and off 4G. I'm looking forward to watching DOTA, The International with a $10+ million prize pool.

Unfortunately, the mobile app is not one of the support apps for ChromeCast. I would have liked to compare it with the desktop cast to TV.

Work Life: Job Hunting While Employed

Why haven't human resource managers or recruiters improved the process in finding applicants? It frustrates me to no end why they have to call during the day. When there is finally a job that actually sounds interesting, the interview must be within the next 2-3 days and during work hours.

Perhaps someone that is unhappy with his work could pull it off or someone who is ok with lying to their boss (i.e. calling in sick). But I am (at least I think that I am) very professional about the work that I do. I am almost always busy, so where am I supposed to find time to consider a job opportunity.

There were a couple interviews that I did go to. Primarily because I happened to have some downtime and was able to take some time off. One of the benefits of being a contractor as opposed to being an employee. I feel there is more freedom in how to manage my time.

One of the most upsetting experience was that the manager I was supposed to meet was overbooked during my interview and did not notify myself or the recruiter. I took an entire day off and drove an hour to not even have an interview. I did not even get to meet anyone. I sat in the lobby and waited for my recruiter to call me to tell me why no one was showing up. They also never called back to apologize. Tranzact is totally on my black list now.

As for interview questions, I feel that everyone is surprised when they ask why I am looking and that I respond that I am not looking. I reply that I am perfectly content at my current job, but that I am always willing to consider better opportunities. In my interviews, I always seem to end up asking most of the questions. I have also received a high percentage of offers.

I have rejected all offers so far because I have not been satisfied with the companies. I feel that they start off on the wrong foot with me because they need someone immediately. This tells me a couple things. They have poor resource management. They also have poor contingency plans. This is reinforced by stressing that the start date is as soon as possible, but no more than 2 weeks. Most of other questions are about management and process. Very few interviewers seem genuine in their responses in that they seem to be avoiding certain points. None seem to impress me with what they have.

Perhaps this is because I only respond to cold-calling recruiters so these opportunities are high-stressed environments. I have also found that these recruiters will always try to negotiate your rate down from whatever numbers you give them. There was one that I had absolutely no interest in but the recruiter was very persistent. When he asked, I gave him a number that was high but somewhat reasonable and he countered with a number slightly lower than that. He never did call back though, so I at least found a way to keep some of them away. I am not sure why either, but a lot of these recruiters also have very poor call qualities. I have no problems with anyone else that I speak with and I am on a lot of conference calls.

Well, that's the end of my rant. I really hope that the industry will some day figure a better way to run. It is really tempting to me to start a recruiting company just to demonstrate how it should be done! :D

Review: ChromeCast (First Impression)

I have been using Google's ChromeCast for a few weeks now. I bought it to display my desktop to my TV. It does not exactly do that but has a function sufficient for me. Overall, I really enjoy it and was pretty simple to set up. It connects to the TV via an HDMI port. Now there is even less reason to have a Smart TV feature. There are limited apps that display videos on my phone (Motorola Droid RAZR) to the TV and seem to work much better than the desktop version.

CONS

There are a few minor cons to ChromeCast. The lag is kind of annoying. Besides that, the others are rather minor. I have not played with Apple TV or Roku.

One odd thing is that you need a mobile phone (maybe tablet too) to do the initial setup. I could not set it up through my desktop. The initial setup is to connect the ChromeCast device to your wireless router. Once set, I installed the ChromeCast addin to Google Chrome. Once installed, an icon will appear near the configuration button.

The desktop limitation is that it can only share the browser (Chrome to be specific) not my desktop but I just wanted it to watch streams so good enough. Another problem was that the video did not transpose to my TV properly. It displayed larger than the TV. The problem was actually a setting on the TV where I had to set the video to exact dimensions instead of stretch.

Another con is that the TV is not as sharp as my monitor. I have been testing ChromeCast by watching Twitch stream, StarCraft II WCS America Season 2. The scores and metrics do not appear on the TV clearly even when I stand right next to the TV. It is somewhat blurry. It is readable but not as sharp which may be that Twitch does not stream HD (or at least the channel). The reason is that when watching Cosmos on Youtube through my phone, it does seem much clearer and crisper although the text is much larger so not exactly a perfect comparison.

The most annoying con is that the video lags at random points of time for the browser. When there are lag spikes, portions of the video is smudged and at times pauses completely. I am not sure exactly what causes the lag. There are no new apps running on the PC when streaming, and there is nothing taking up the wireless bandwidth. This problem does not seem to exist when playing videos from my Droid RAZR. The desktop Chrome addin is in beta so I have high hopes this will be corrected at some point.

Reference

ChromeCast site - http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromecast/index.html

Update

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2014/07/chromecast-adds-support-for-android.html

Looks interesting, but unfortunately, I am still running ICS. Perhaps this is a sign that I need a new phone. 

Review: CamStudio Recorder, Candy Crush - Cereal Sea, YouTube (First Impression)

I have many firsts for this post. I've been meaning to test out the CamStudio Recorder for a while. It is an application to record my desktop. What has kept me from testing this was the last of something to record. It is a rather lame (and lazy) excuse but that is how I fool myself sometimes. Then I figured to publish it on YouTube to see how that works too.

You can see the results of my efforts here, http://youtu.be/iPHJ-gnOwN8.

CamStudio

To start, CamStudio Record was quite easy to use. It has a simple music player-like setup with record, stop, and pause. There are options to record part of a screen, select a screen (if you have multiple monitors), or default is all displays.

I did run into a couple tricky things. I wanted to record only part of my screen, but it kept recording putting the area onto my first screen. Even when I moved the browser to the first screen, it was not aligned correctly. To fix this, I had to uncheck "Fixed Top-Left Corner" which I was a bit suspicious but it was checked by default.

It also has options for recording sounds, but I did not test this as I don't have anything worth discuss.

Candy Crush - Frog

They started the new Candy Crush level, Cereal Sea. It starts at 606 and ends at 620. In this level, a frog is introduced. It was odd figuring this one out. The most obvious is that it does not fall like candy. You can match it with other candies of the same color. As you match them, the frog gets fatter. At some point it reached a max point which you can tell when it starts pulsing. At this point, you can click on the frog. When it is highlighed, you can click on another part of the board. Where you click, a 3x3 area is hit.

If the frog is part of a combination that creates a wrapper candy, the frog is then encased in a wrapper. When you match a wrapped frog, it will explode like a wrapped candy except it only explodes once.

If you use a spotted candy on a frog, then all candies of the same color is cleared like a spotted candy with a regular candy. In addition, the frog eats all the candies cleared.

YouTube

Although this is not my first uploaded video, it is my first published video. There are filters than you can apply. There's also a special effect to blur but not sure how effective it is. There are simple fixes available like lighting and contrast. It also has slow motion. Most of these I have not actually used.

My favorite feature is the stabilize feature. I use this for videos that I record from my phone. Another is the ability to trim. I can also rotate the video. I can add annotations, subtitles, and audio.

Overall, it seems very simple to use and has features to publish simple videos.

Misc

I am not very familiar with video editing, but I could use some recommendation on an application to edit videos like trimming or cropping. I guess something like YouTube features plus cropping. I could also use one that helps with desktop training like zooming, mouse clicks, etc.

Reference

http://youtu.be/iPHJ-gnOwN8

Bored: Teens (of 2014) React to Old Computers

Interesting videos of generation Z's reaction to the Apple II. I think some generation Y or millenials would have reacted the same way. 

There was a section where they explained that the power button in the back. This reminded me of a time when a cousin explained about psychology engineering where one of their greatest achievements was moving the power button from the back to the front. Whether that is true or not, the thought is still amusing to me.

Reference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk

Life: Blogger June 2014 Stats and 20202+ Lifetime visitors

Odd that my analytics numbers is much lower than usual even compared to the other metrics. I wonder if something happened with the analytics scripts.

Google Analytics

Sessions = 76

Google Webmasters

Total Queries = 223
Approximate Impressions = 5800
Approximate Clicks = 287

Google AdSense

Page Views = 448
Clicks = 3

Blogger

Pageviews Last Month = 973
All Time Comments = 39
All Time Posts = 222
All Time History Visits = 20202

* Approximations are rounded down