Flappy Bird - A game of oneupmanship

Oneupmanship

: The art of outdoing or showing up a rival or competitor

It all began with an innocent taunt from my sbff, Eri Sasaki. At that time, I had never even heard of the game before. In fact, I didn't even know what she was showing me.

I had almost no reaction to this yet - I didn't even know the game's name, much less heard of the game. So I casually asked:

Before the '2 points? dying?' texts it was just a very very mild almost non-existent interest in the game, I didn't really intend to play it just wanted to know what it was called. But this was a direct challenge to me. It became a game of oneupmanship.

I am fairly competitive, and love challenges like this. So when she set out this challenge for me, I went to download the game and try it out.

I have to admit, at first, it was quite challenging. It wasn't as intuitive as the classic 'keep your character up by pressing a button' as a button press actually made you leap, not just go up. But after a while (and by a while I mean 5 minutes), I got the hang of it.

Ok fine I took 15 minutes (according to the time stamp) to beat her score.

Feeling very satisfied, I went to bed.

--

The next day I met my bestie Christabel for lunch, so I was texting her.

The red-circled text is foreshadowing something.

She annoyed me with her next text, where she said she just played and got a high score of 40. What! So I went to have a go and within 5 mins...

Done. Beat her score. I can rest in peace now. 43 is pretty good right?

--

So I went on with my life, without touching this simple annoying game. Then I saw a Facebook post about it, and had to go and ask:

What! His score was 64! That's crazy. And one tier up from mine. I have to beat that now.

I went to have a few goes at it... and beat it! I sent it to my sbff now, the original challenger, to let her know her hopes of beating my score (of what she thought was 48) was snuffed.

She clearly gave up here. But I had to rub it in the next day:

The red circled text is foreshadowing again

Indeed, on my very first try that session I hit a new high score of 72. Ten minutes later...

LOL HUNDRED. WHAT.

I think I was quite stunned when I finally died too. I knew I had gone past 3 digits (one important thing to do well is to avoid looking at your score, but having it change from 2 to 3 digits is quite obvious and distracting), but  wow. Didn't expect this.

..

And just today... I was waiting for my turn in a Hearthstone tournament so I got bored and opened up the silly game again.

And...

LOL 151.


So yup, that's my current score right now. Some people asked me how long it took... and I have NO CLUE. The only thing on my mind while in the run is to maintain a good bouncing rhythm, and avoid the damn pipes. Time perception isn't high on my cognitive list.

Will I stop now? Maybe. Until someone else challenges me. Then a new game of oneupmanship begins.

------


Random tips for Flappy bird

• Sit in a comfortable position. After you clear about 50-70 you'll start to realize parts of your body going numb if you were in a poor posture to begin with. And you can't adjust. Because that distracts you.
• The safest rhythm to achieve is when you bounce up directly above the bottom pipe (rather than bounce up from before the pipe). (meaning you bounce up one bounce away from the pipe, then bounce up again from directly above the pipe. If anyone wants pictures I'll upload it.)
• I found this the safest to avoid bumping the front or back of the pipe by accident. If you lose this rhythm, try to get it back on a subsequent dive/climb
• Practice your dips and dive while your score is low. You need to be accustomed to dropping 3/4 a screen to the bottom pipe, and climbing back up to a height with multiple bounces. You can even practice this before your first pipe - just start from the top of the screen and clear the first pipe accordingly
• Avoid looking at the score. Try to fixate on the right of the screen
• Look at the height of the next pipe and be very clear of what you have to do. Same height = maintain rhythm of bouncing. Climb = multiple taps (not too many!) Dip = slightly slow down taps, or dip entirely

And ultimately, concentrate. Flappy Bird is a game of concentration. I think after a certain level of practice (+ innate ability), everyone attains the same level of skill. What sets the high score then is one's ability to maintain this skill for as long as possible, without mistakes. 

Good luck and happy flapping/bouncing!

CNY 2014!

This year's CNY was probably one of the most enjoyable ones in years. I don't normally enjoy CNY because I'm not very close to my family/relatives. This year proved more eventful.



Day 0 (chu xi) (CNY Eve)
For dinner my mom gave me $20 to buy KFC for me and my brother (she didn't want KFC), and he wanted to buy so he took the money and went out to buy the KFC...

And he came back with a Family Feast for 3-4 people -_-

So in the end the two of us shared 8 pieces of chicken + chicken tenders + popcorn chicken + mashed potato + coleslaw + drink. I was SO full!


Day 1 - CNY!
It is tradition that we go over to my da gu's house on the first day of CNY for lunch with the rest of the relatives. Ever since my dad died (yea, he died when I was 6 if you didn't know), I was never close to my dad's side, so it was always weird to go for these annual gatherings.

This year, however, it was more bearable as the moment I reached there I was asked to join my aunt Christabel (my fav aunt on my dad's side... well she's the youngest and most ... relevant to me lol. The rest like old aunties not very friendly one dunno how to talk) and her two sons to play daidee haha.

She was quite funny like kept saying 'nothing wrong with them playing! (they are like 15 and 7 years old something like that) It's teaching them Math!'

So instead of sitting around doing nothing and staring at my phone, we played daidee both before and after lunch. whee!

--
And that's not all! After lunch at my aunt's house... I headed over to my gf's house for the first time!!!

I was slightly nervous because it was the first time I was meeting her parents! So like, worried about making a good impression and all. And not sure what to talk to them about.

It turned out alright I guess, didn't really talk that much, but her parents were really nice to me. Her dad cooked us dinner, and was so nice about everything. 'I just cook very simple stuff' he said, when there was like a whole fish for me and szehong, and many many other dishes. Good stuff!

Oh and we watched the movie The Machinist at her house too, was a really good show! I highly recommend it haha. Nice psychological thriller.

Annndd to cap the day off, she came over to my house to bainian too haha. My mum was very chatty and think szehong enjoyed herself at my place too. Great day :)


Day 3 of CNY

I did pretty much nothing besides play games at home on Day 2, so it was uneventful.

Day 3 however, I went to Sharon's house with szehong and friends! (Sharon is part of Szehong's Cedar clique, so the whole clique was there)

For some reason they had decided to make onigiri! All the ingredients bought by them so I just go there and press rice haha.

I think my rice balls are the best!? Those two stars with faces are mine! haha so cute right. It started off with someone commenting how hard it was to shape a proper rice ball, then I just joked 'easy! I'll make a star!' and michelle immediately said 'ya right! you make la!'

I took it as a challenge so I made that first shiruken-looking one and they were all like woaaa I am legit hahaha. I decided to follow it up with a real star-shaped one too. Shaping rice balls? EASY

Oh and they turned out rather yummy too! We stuffed the rice balls with crab meat and tuna, and seasoned with some japanese seasoning.

We also played a bit of Texas Hold'em... which wasn't really THAT fun because many didn't know how to play and... no money :( Boo I still haven't played a money game of poker since my one time in the US. I want!!

But ok la, overall I had a good time! I like her friends. :)

Playing caiquan with Michelle to determine who eats the weird concoction in the bowl

Hope future CNYs can be as fun and eventful as this! This cedar clique gathering seems to be an annual thing, hope that it continues for years to come heh. I like annual/ regular stuff.

Bonus picture

Some time before CNY my pospsych group (minus Raymond) went to eat steamboat at Roxys to celebrate CNY! I'm glad this group is willing to go out together even after our project was over last semester. We've already met up quite a few times to meet!

I guess I'm just very grateful for any groups that appear because I don't have any cliques, being more of a 1-to-1 person and having many close 1-1 friends but not like, cliques. Like, even though I'm quite an introvert, I do love my social interaction from time to time, especially with people I can get along with :)

Ok! I feel quite happy after writing this post. Because writing about happy things. I think I should blog more. Adios!

How I trolled a scammer

It all started with an error I was having with MOLPoints, a form of online currency to pay for game credit. I couldn't make my payment to Battle.net so I made a post on the MOLPoints Facebook page asking for help.

Then this guy, Toi Jing Wei replied my post (it has since been deleted so I can't screenshot it) which said something to the extent of:

Hi, please PM me your user/pw and I will help you to fix your issue. - MOL assistant

 Alarm bells immediately went off in my head. The number one rule of internet security is NEVER give your user/pw to anyone, and companies will never ask you for it (something I've learnt from young from Blizzard games. They always have this reminder. Thanks Blizzard.).

I immediately identified him as a scammer, and a really low level one too (lol signing off as 'mol assistant'), and decided to have some fun with him.

I made up a fake username, and came up with a deliberately difficult-to-type password. Let's see if he bites.

.

.

.

Yes! Success! 

I added the 8000 molpoints comment because he wasn't replying to my first 2 lines of messages. So I needed to make it more attractive. (8000 molpoints is worth $80)

My plan to confuse him with the big and small letters is a success. I can imagine him trying the different combinations and not having any success logging in hahahaha. (I am so evil.) (#robinhoodsyndrome)

I repeated the nonsensical password which probably took him another 30 seconds to type. I added more bait so that he would keep replying. I can imagine him thinking 'KACHING!! ANOTHER HUNDRED DOLLAR. I WANT'. His level of intelligence can't be too high anyway if he's resorting to signing off as 'mol assistant' to scam people. 

I am trying to play the role of the helpless eager-to-spend-my-molpoints idiot who is asking for his help. If you notice I've been speaking in pretty broken English, mainly to mirror his English AND to make myself seem more helpless.

And also re-emphasizing the amount of money I have in the account, just to remind him of the stakes.

Aww, how kind.

Clearly having difficulties logging in with my bogus information, he asks me to make my password simpler. Hey, problem solving! Good job JingWei!

I obliged. Hopefully you are not as dim as him and you do realize that the new password says 'you are so dumb'. 

I think I am slightly overdoing the 'try to sound stupid' bit, I sound like some 70 year old learning how to use the Internet from my granddaughter.

I wanted to start pressing him for information just for fun, to see how he responds. I wanted to test his lying skills. So apparently MOLPoints sends him to answers queries by asking for username/passwords. Totally believable!

Oh, it's some high level secret technique which can only be done at the company! He's so nice!

The comment about my battlenet account was because I mentioned earlier I was trying to spend MOLPoints on Battle.net. So now he is getting greedy and wants my battlenet account too!

I'm trying to butter him up a bit (oh god my English is so scarily bad it doesn't even sound believable anymore oops) so that he stays with me.

He returns the compliment by thanking me for trusting him. LOL. Sure. I trust him as much as I trust a bull in a china shop not to break anything.

He repeats the bogus password in capitals with 'some small letter' in parenthesis, I don't quite understand why. But ok. He is still trying hard to break into this bogus account that doesn't exist. Which he believes to contain $100+.

I'm getting bored of him, so I decide to drop some clues. The password reads 'stop scamming' and 314 is basically pi (3.14). 

The account names are references to famous conmen/scams. I think everyone knows Ponzi. And Frank Abagnale is supposed to be one of the most famous conmen ever, and the movie Catch me if you Can is based off his life story!

I'm surprised he hasn't caught on yet, given the trollface password LOL. Well, can't expect much from someone who tries to scam people by signing off as 'MOL Assistant'.

Once again, reminding him of the stakes by bringing up the $$ again.

Damn, he used the word 'client', that makes him totally legit. Anyone who has clients definitely is a MOL employee right?

At this point, I'm curious as to how convoluted his story may become, so I tried to press for specifics.

The first sentence actually sounds legit but the second one makes no sense at all. First, I had not even given him any specifics of the error message. Second, the solution he proposed makes no logical sense and doesn't resolve the issue of me not being able to spend my points on Battle.net currency.

Ugh sorry please forgive my (intentional) horrendous grammar. 'It say I need'.
Anyway, I don't think he really understood what I said in my first sentence, and just tries to roll with it and came up with an excuse 'You may have 0 molpoints in your account' because I mentioned the phrase '0 molpoint'. Regardless, I tried to make him squirm, showing some resistance.

Stop hiding things from me Toi Jing Wei!! Anyway quite amusing how he makes up some cock and bull story about what may have caused my error.

I removed a h from my email address just to let him try something else. I don't even think he understands what dyslexic means.

At this point, the slightest SLIGHTEST of doubts crept in that he may actually be a legit employee and perhaps their technical support is just extremely dated. This is because I'm not sure how he figured out that the email address was not valid - when you try to login with those (non-existent) details, it just says 'the username/password was incorrect', and it doesn't actually tell you which one.

And because I didn't want to malign an innocent party, I wrote in to the official MOLPoints email. Here was our exchange:

At this point of time on Facebook, I notice that all of Toi Jing Wei's comments on their page had been deleted. On top of posting a reply to my query, he tried to scam a few other people too by asking for their account information as well. Most just dismissed him with a reply there saying 'What? I'm not giving you my password!'. I was the only evil one.

Anyway, here are our next 2 emails:

Their reply was quite long, so I've highlighted the relevant part, you can skip the rest. No really, just skip the rest, English isn't their first language I think so it's not very easy to read.

This was also followed up by a post on their Facebook page:

So it was confirmed that this Toi Jing Wei is just some lame scammer.

Anyway, I wanted to bring this drama to a climax. And he wasn't replying since my previous Facebook message. Thus I reminded him of the money again.

Ooooh look an official-looking form to fill up! Legit +1

I continue to play along.

Just to explain in case you miss it, username reads 'dumbass', the address is the address of Sherlock Holmes, and ... ok the HP number is just childish but if you type it on a calculator and read it upside down it says ... go figure it out. 

And for the password part, I was trying to give the impression that Facebook was cutting off my message LOL. To make him feel frustrated like ARGH! So close! Facebook come on send this through! 

Hope be patience. I think he meant like, hopefully, be patient. I think.

Anyway, I was actually planning to end all this here, and with his next reply which would obviously say there's still an error, I would take a screenshot of the company's official emails and send it to him. 

BUT.

BUT. 

He provides me with a hilarious finish to this lengthy attempt at scamming me:

HAHHAA. Sorry but I was literally laughing out loud when I read this feeble pathetic attempt. Yes yes, an actual company would actually ask you to change your password to some lame abcde123 and then inform some random nobody after doing so. hahahhaa this guy has to be like 12 years old or something.

I replied him with pictures of the email exchange I had with MOLPoints (as posted above), as well as a link to this blog entry. 

GG. 

Note: Some of you may argue that I am quite mean, but hey, someone has to teach this kid a lesson. Scammers are bad. Hope this changes his choice of hobby. Remember friends, do not share your account details with ANYONE. The company will never ask for your details, they can acquire it themselves if they need to, whichever company it is.