Bubbles!!!

One of the other things I have liked since I was a little kid was making huge bubbles. we had a toy called the bubble thing. and it made giant bubbles, and I thought it was awesome.  I decided as an adult I would make my own big bubble wands and bubble mix.  so I did what all competent individuals do and googled to see what came up.  I've built a few wands and made a few mixes and made lots of bubbles, and I'll tell you how it has worked so far.

Bubble Sticks:

I  started with fat, long dowels that I cut down and large eye hooks for easy sliding, but as I've made a few more I don't think either of those matter as much as the string that is used.

to make the sticks you need:
-2 sticks (wooden dowels or large craft sticks about a foot in length is good)
-eye hooks (any size, but smaller ones are cheaper)
        The eye hooks just need a large enough hole to allow your string to pass through it
-string (I think that 2 yards is sufficient, but could be a little too long for really little kids, but you can always do longer)
        the sites I found recommend using "twill tape" of either cotton or wool, I think the tape works alright, but I have also tried a more lace or trim-like material that seems to make bigger bubbles, but is a bit more fickle, if anyone has any other string advice I'd love to hear it.
-washer (I have not used a washer on any of my sticks, are they truly needed?)

-screw your eye hooks into your dowels (you may want to drill a hole on the end of the dowel, but it is not needed)
-thread your string through the eye hooks.
-thread the washer onto the string as well (if you are using one)
-sew the string together into a loop

this will essentially give you a loop of string with 2 sticks (and a washer) attached to it.


then comes your bubble juice

I make mine in an old laundry detergent bucket by the gallon
I use:

-1 Gal Water
-1 cup dawn soap (dawn and joy are the recommend varieties almost everywhere I've seen.  I use 1 cup of ultra concentrated blue dawn soap, joy seems to work better if I use 2 cups and keep all the other ingredients the same)
-1/4 cup corn syrup

mix the ingredients slowly, foam bubbles on top of the mixture are to be avoided and should be skimmed off (so the interwebs sayz). 

other places recommend glycerin or glycerol (which are the same thing I think), but I have not tried it due to it being highly priced, about $7.00 for a maybe half cup bottle at our local drug store.

I've also tried using baking POWDER (not soda, powder) 2 tablespoons for a gallon and it seemed to make the bubbles last a little longer, but it was hard to tell.

I have not broken down and purchased any commercial "big bubble" solutions that can be found, but I might do so later, they are not too expensive, the most expensive piece seems to be the dawn soap, Ive used several bottles for fun bubble times, but still wish that my bubbles could get a bit bigger.

One thing that many websites say is that bubbles are fickle in general, weather needs to be right, high humidity and very little wind, and few particles in the air. 
Even if it is windy out, going around buildings or walls can give you places where the wind is lower and your bubbles work better.


I mostly pull this out at church activities, and kids love playing with the bubbles, especially my daughter,  she also loves ripping out grass and dropping it in the bubble soap mixture, but I'll work on that with her.  I need to figure out someway to keep little kids entertained so that I can make big bubbles, how to keep them from grabbing spare bubble stick sets, and playing in the mixes.  I guess I'll keep working on that one.

sorry no pictures on this post, but feel free to research these topics the same way I have, (using google) and if anyone has successes I'd be glad to hear them in the comments
     

The Nuzlocke??

So, as my loyal readership can see, I have not made any updates, nor have I even been playing my copy of sapphire for a while. But just for a quick update

I was able to get to gym #4 (Norman –normal type) cleared out all the trainers, but I lost 2 numels getting there, one to random a trainer with explosion and another to a critical hit.  I battled Norman, and defeated his first slaking pretty handily, but in switched his vigoroth with vital spirit and before to long, two of my essential teammates had been KO’d.  I’m sorry to say that I ragequitted and have not picked up my Sapphire game since then, so I do not even remember who I currently have on my team.

In the mean time I was getting ready to make a massive trade over from my copy of diamond to soul silver.  This preparation included giving my good monsters in diamond items that I wanted transferred, and catching an equal number of dummy pokemon on soul silver to make the trades with.  I need give a big thank you to my brother-in-law for letting me borrow his DS so that I could transfer 3 boxes worth of pokemon (about 90 monsters) between my two games, a task that took about 2 ½ hours.

Since that was completed, I have been working on finishing off some teams that I dreamed up.  I’ll put them up as I finish them, I have already completed a hail team, and I just finished a more standardized team, and am working on a sun based team and another slightly unorthodox team that I just call my croteam.

I’ll post the one that I just finished:

My lead is a Swampert with ice beam, earthquake, protect and stealth rock. It is out there to get stealth rock and abuse it’s great resistances and type coverage, and act as a goto pokemon as the battle goes on.

Next I have a Magnezone with discharge, substitute, magnet rise and tri attack for hitting grounds, it acts as a steel trapper with magnet pull and can surprise a few opponents with magnet rise to avoid earthquakes.

I put a Dusknoir on this team as well, with pain split for healing; will-o-wisp, shadow sneak, and brick break from some coverage and screen breaking. This dusknoir lives to burn things and pick things off with STAB shadow sneak, and then to stick around by abusing pain split. 

Next is the Red Gyrados who takes the role of a bulky gyrados with taunt, dragon dance, waterfall and bounce for STAB.  This gyrados acts as a check for lots of things and stops stat boosters with taunt and has more defense and hit points to take hits.

I have a revenge killer with Flygon holding a choice scarf to boost its speed and hopefully make a killing with outrage, earthquake, stone edge, and scout with u-turn. With good typing and u-turn it will have many opportunities to come in and wreak havoc.

Just a note about the game: Revenge Killing.  In the game of Pokemon, if an opponent KO’s one of my monsters, on the following turn, I can switch in another monster on my team without it taking an attack (which is different from the standard switching in a battle). Because of this, many players have taken to crafting ‘Revenge killing’ pokemon to go on their teams.  These are typically very fast monsters with high [special] attack, and can typically be wearing a choice scarf to give them the extra speed to strike first. My fast Flygon can hopefully KO whatever is out, or scare it away, effectively preventing it from becoming a problem.  Other revenge killers have trapping abilities like Wobboffet (but its use it typically frowned upon) or Dugtrio or even Trapinch, or make use of the move pursuit to prevent their prey from escaping because it deals extra damage to monsters that switch out, these include Tyranitar or Weavile.  Flygon operates slightly differently, with the move u-turn, if I predict that the monster is not going to remain in to take a potential outrage or earthquake I can u-turn to deal a little damage, and then see what switches in to take the hit, so I can then select what to switch in, rather than just try to blindly out guess my opponent.

Finally the star of this team is a swords dance Lucario with close combat, extreme speed and crunch for coverage of ghosts and psychics.  The team exists to (hopefully) weaken or KO checks to Lucario so that it can perform a clean sweep of a weakened opposing team.

As for, what I’m working on right now, I am training up a Slowbro for use on my croteam.  My croteam will finish before my sun team, due to the need to train up an Espeon up to 70’s to have it pass the move morning sun to an Archenine

Nuzlocke: day next

I belive this is day 2, the third time,

my team is still coming along smashingly, and I 've added a Whismer to my team, another whismer will probably be added today, and one of my cascoons' evloved into a dustox
so my team changes are:

Rollypoly, lvl 10 Dustox

Winston, lvl 7 Whismer


there will be some updates on Monday

How not to Nuzlocke

Tell me when the alarm bells go off for you that this might be a bad idea:

taking a rock type gym with only 1 effective attack on a team of 6 pokemon
taking on a rock gym with 4 rock weak pokemon
taking on that gym with all your pokemon lower than the gym leader's team

... well, my attampt to tackle the rustboro gym ended in disaster, I lost my whole team, I did have a zigzagoon left, but I decided it would be better to start over, rather than try to start from that point with only 1 pokemon.

so starting again:
Day 1 v3

given the problems of starting with torchick, I elected to start with mudkip, named Gilligan

I am currently about to leave the Petalburg woods (just before Rustboro)
and my team is:

Gilligan (mudkip) lvl 11

Rollypoly (Cascoon) lvl 8

Stiltskin (Cascoon) lvl 7

Highnesnes (Slackoth) lvl7

I'll try to keep doing small updates at least 3 times a week

Nuzlock: day 3

Today was kind of a boring day, I caught a new zigzagoon, and named him bandito, and caught a female tailow and named her Jane. Just more grinding today, but hopefully tomorrow I'll take on the rustboro gym. and I'll give a little update of my current team:

Dustox lv 10 named Poly
Torchic lv 12 named Blaine
Zigzagoon lv 11 named Bandit
Taillow lvl 11 named Jane
Zigzagoon lv 4 named Bandito
Beautifly lv 10 named Beautifly (will be changed to Rolly one I find the name rater)

perhaps I'll add pictures soon,

everyone is still alive, I had a few near death experiences, but hopefully we'll be ready for Rustboro gym soon, with all my rock-weak pokemon.

Nuzloke: day 1

So, I decided to start my Challenge by choosing a torchic (named Phoenix) and running through the introductory sections, and once I could get more monsters, the first thing I stumbled across was a lotad (named Jerry). and I considered myself lucky to have found one of those this early in the game, or at all.  I progressed in the intro sections, and toppled a few early trainers, and picked up a zigzagoon and named him Stardust (ya know, like Ziggy Stardust). but alas, day 1 was abruptly cut short by an early trainer with a taillow that landed two important critical hits with peck and quick attack and KO'd all 3 of my team members.  and that means that my run is over.

Alas, we had such high hopes, but I have learned something, beware of critical hits. I had foolishly given the taillow a chance to set up by not starting with my strongest team member, and for that mistake, my companions paid with their lives.

Well, with such a brief run, I was ready to be off again. so start again I did

Day 1 v2.

I started again with a torchic and named him Blane. Why torchic you ask? due to the lack of fire types in this game, it is possible to never find one, and a fire time will be too important in the final battles to do without. So I take this oppertunity to get one.

the first other monster that I caught was a wrumple, which I forgot to name (Do'h), but it has now evolved into a silcoon, which means I should expect a beautifly some time soon, and I'll have to give him a name once I come across the name rater, in a few towns, but for now I am still off.  I have not yet come to the point that I lost at last time, but I will get through it before I post again.

Will I fall to the same fate as before?
Or will I endure?

tune in tomorrow for the exciting update

Nuzlocke challange

Since I am at somewhat of a pause in many of my games, I decided to restart my Pokemon Sapphire game and try a Nuzlocke run.  If you have never heard of Nuzlocke, you can google it and look at some of the comics that people have made for it.  but if you don't want to even do that... a Nuzlocke challange is just playing through a pokemon with some extra self-imposed rules to make the game more difficult.  the extra rules are:

1. I can only catch the first pokemon that I meet in any area
2. If any pokemon faints, it cannot ever be used again (I will put them in a box marked as 'dead' and won't use them again)
3. Every Pokemon I capture must be named

those are the 3 strict rules, a few things are left to interpretation, so as extra rules
iv. the only items allowed to be purchased are pokeballs, or quest essential items
v. only found items may be used (items found on the ground) but never revives
vi. berries are allowed
vii. not allowed to skip any trainer battles by fancy walking (no avoiding trainer battles)


so with this going on, I'll post a little about what happens, since I do play each day. I'll try to update on my lunch breaks.

BTW: the original Nuzlocke was just 'hard mode' but got named by the first guy to make a comic about  them that was littered with 'Lost' references. you can find his comics if you search for them.

I'll report on my first disasterous day later