2016 Aug 14 | Twilight Concert Series, turtle racing, videogame party, poker



A fire by Apple Valley.



Getting bigger.



And covering half the sky.



This other fire up near Monterey is mostly contained now.



The women working at this office all bought the same shoe in different colors.



The homeless around this area have managed to build up a huge pile of crap since the city came by and cleaned it all up a few months ago.



Jets for all?



That back left tire doesn't look healthy.



This little pathway by the Los Angeles Department of Water has really been fixed up nicely.



Don't see that often; graffiti in Beverly Hills. The nearby business owners were constantly calling the cops to come clean it up. In other parts of LA the business owners wouldn't even bat an eye.



Beverly Hills drivers stopped way over the crosswalk line.



Expensive car.



Aw, the first office I worked at as an Optometrist is closed up.



Or just moving. The Farmer's Market probably has fairly expensive rent, and while you'd think you'd have rich patients, you actually see very few of them; most are middle class or a surprisingly large number of lower class on Medicaid at your office takes it, even in Beverly Hills. Even the rich people often just have the normal insurance everyone else has, so unless you can make it up selling really expensive frames to them, it's hard to have an office in an expensive area.



Everyone was looking at this car and the guy said he makes them.



The website he told people to go to.



Pretty cool.



Ogii with some birthday presents.



Black Hills gold necklace and ring.



And matching earrings.



I stopped at Bo Nuage to grab Ogii a birthday cake; they're rather unique.



Colorful mini ones.



Some really impressive ones up on the walls.



We went to a Twilight Concert on the Santa Monica pier that evening. A bit of a line to get in.



Some booths.



Fun mirrors.



More booths, including food and drinks.



Some people dressed up interestingly.



Another guy.



Ogii blowing out her candle.



Inside the cake.



Some little fudge snacks.



On our blanket.



When we first got there, everyone was sitting on blankets. Eventually it got so crowded that everyone was standing.



At night.



People still waiting in line to get in as we were leaving. I don't think they'll have much luck.



After that we headed to Brennan's Pub for turtle racing. People lined up to pay for a turtle.



Round 1.



You have to place your turtle without bending your knees so your butt sticks out.



And they're off.



Whoever placed the winning turtle gets a prize.



Ogii putting her turtle in.



This guy had trouble not bending his legs; he had to widen his stance way out.



A video of Ogii's race.



And she won!



They're so cute with their heads way up in the air.



Later on they had a special race for people who had brought their own turtles. This guy brought a tiny one.



A house in Beverly Hills has it's own mini railroad track so the owner's kids can ride on a mini train.



A saw this driving in Koreatown and figured we had to try it, whatever it was.



Especially because it was right beside a Korean BBQ restaurant...



... and a boba place, so we could hit all three in one stop.



The Korean BBQ restaurant had a 2-hour wait...



... but the one literally next door had no wait at all. Is it just popularity or can this restaurant possibly be two hours worse?



Covered spoons.



Lots of meat.



Some soju.



This table was already through four bottles.



They give you all of these little sides and dipping sauces but I don't like any of them.



The Cotton Hi place had ice cream covered with cotton candy.



It was fairly busy.



Ogii eating the cotton candy.



The ice cream part.



And finally, onto boba.



All these options and I still only get the Thai tea.



A little Jenga while we're there.



Kids playing soccer even really late at the nearby park.



A squirrel.



Saturday night we had a videogame party. Trying out the Oculus.



Goldeneye.



Mario Kart.



Having fun.



Smash Brothers 4.



Smash Bros the original.



More Mario Kart.



Bomberman.



Ogii destroyed everyone else in this round.



Her opponents.



Mario Party.



A little Gauntlet Legends.



Some Starfox.



Note a huge group, but not too small; just the right size.



A CE meeting in Orange County on Sunday morning.



Breakfast.



A lot of wrapped stuff, pretty good.



And it begins.



Finding items inside the eye.



This was a living parasite that ran to the back of the eye when they shone a light on it and had to cut out.



Pretty impressive for LASIK: 30% at 20/12.5.



At the other end of the spectrum is low vision, where you try to help people with very poor vision see.



This is a neat device; it recognizes people and things and tells the wearer what they're looking at.



The problem with low vision is that devices beyond simple magnifiers can get expensive quickly.



However, with smart phones and tablets, there are now a lot of cheap apps that can provide magnification as well.



Not as packed as the LA CEs, but still a fair turnout.



What to do the first day after cataract surgery depending on the pressure.



Most glaucoma progresses very slowly, but pseudoexfolative glaucoma can be very fast.



And it progresses often.



Telling the difference between glaucoma or a tumor, the latter of which you need to perform neuroimaging on. It's a waste of money and time for the patient to do it for glaucoma, though.



A Rav 4 with a different color on each panel.



We can watch the Olympics during poker.



Our last poker game in LA.



The winners.



Some sort of hacking?



Wow, that's cheap parking for downtown LA. I found this lot on the ParkMe App and didn't believe it was that cheap until I saw it.



Another fire in Apple Valley.



Bigger.



And much bigger.



I had take a different route home because the highway was closed.



This one is the one in the middle along I-15 just north of Scottland; the one from last week is the larger one to the east above Crestline.



It's a pain getting around the closures.



Looking for houses in Soledad. This one looked really nice.



A little outside patio.



Everyone jokes in Pokemon Go about the yellow team being the joke team; that seems true even with our jelly beans.



A tough life, selling drinks to passers-by on the street out of a shopping cart.



Looking at possibly buying a drone; the X5 camera on the Inspire is much more professional than the X3 camera on the Phantom, but it's more expensive.



Some tourists asked me where Rodeo Drive was, so I showed them on my phone. Pretty easy; just keep heading north.



Google remembers that I visited this McDonald's 4 months ago.



It also makes places you searched for, even a while ago, pop up more. This can be helpful or annoying.



I hate this ad. I give a damn, but about things important in life, not cocktails, grooming, and style. How small minded.



One of the biggest optical zooms on a camera.



The times on my tasks list are normally 9am, 1pm, 5pm, and 8pm. However, I usually get up and go to bed early, so I switched them all to 3 hours earlier. I couldn't figure out how to change the names, though, so afternoon and evening are a little confusing.



A really cool cosplay of an Archon in Starcraft.



One way to make it better, and it has it.



Pretty impressive.



A post on MMA 202, McGregor vs Diaz.



With links.



And links.



And links.



And links.



I and everyone else were quite impressed.



A guy making a HUD for live poker using Google Spreadsheets.



A photography technique: focus stacking.



Mostly for smoothing everything out.



Especially clouds and water.



You have to use Photoshop.



Although it does it automatically for you.



It's amazing it's able to do something like that.



Another technique: long exposure.



It's similar to focus stacking in that it smooths everything out.



Although it's a little different technique.



And you do it more in-camera than using Photoshop.



It's pretty easy; you just count the number of clicks to change everything by.



Pretty pictures, too.



Although just looking at the picture makes it hard to tell if it came out right, so you have to trust the histogram.



How to close an optometric practice.



Lots of animal street names here.



If Usain Bolt isn't on steroids, could we see how fast he would be if he were?



Ooh, the Gear 360 is finally coming out in the US. I'm setting an alarm to try to buy it first thing Friday morning.



I'm up an entire queen, and my opponent wants to draw.



I don't think so.



Santa Monica Pier is the go-to place for Pokemon in LA, but Long Beach by the aquarium probably has slightly better results.



Although most of the good ones spawn pretty late in the night.



Disneyland is also pretty crazy.



San Francisco also has really good spots.



The best gym defenders and attackers.



Twitch just banned all of the streamers who were hacking while playing the game, which was almost everyone.



Although it looks like there are still some hackers around; I doubt this is a real leveled-up character.



Niantic is doing really well with updates. The tracker works much better now.



People are also using geometry to find exactly where the Pokemon might be.



A slightly faster method.



It's still not as accurate and takes a bit longer than actually pulling data from the game, but Niantic is banning for doing that.



For example, I saw this outline of a Pokemon I hadn't caught yet. I'd seen it a few other times but never been able to track him down.



This time I found him.



Got him!



They also implemented a warning if you're moving too fast.



How to dodge when attacking a gym.



However, one problem with the new patch is they made it so you can't go as fast to hatch an egg.



10.5km/h is only 6.5mph, or really slow. A lot of people are complaining that they can't bike or even run while playing now.



They're also banning botters, too.



Another trick people have discovered. If you use incense to attract Pokemon, usually it will get the common ones around you. However, if you go into the middle of absolutely nowhere where there are no spawn pools in the game, it will pick from all the Pokemon and you have a greater chance of getting rare ones.



However, they still haven't created a way to track IVs, which are how strong an individual Pokemon is, so there are many third-party apps to do that.



The earlier ones pulled from the game data, but as they're banning for that now, the new ones use screen overlays.



It's not quite as accurate because there are multiple ways to get the same final IV number out of the different factors that go into it, but you still get a very good idea.



Out of all my Squirtles...



... the 561 CP one seems to be the best.



So I evolved him, first to Wartortle...



... and then to Blastoise.



And he still has great IVs as they carry through evolutions, nice.



Unfortunately I had evolved some of my other Pokemon before I knew about checking IVs. My poor Charizard is horrible.



And my Dragonite is OK, although since he hatched from an egg, there's nothing I could do about that.



Normally Pokemon that hatch from eggs have higher IVs, like my Snorlax.



My Vaporeon is unfortunately also very low. However, for right now, IVs don't really matter all that much; he still destroys everything else in the gym due to movesets.



It seems that rarer Pokemon always come from the same spawn points.



The areas around Long Beach.



And in map form.



A couple of Pokemon that people are saving up candy for in case Niantic ever releases generation 2, although they haven't officially even hinted they might do that.



Building up another gym using Parasect versus Magikarp.



Got it up to level 10 pretty fast.