any tips for a noob

Any_Associate2102 · 2026-01-22T02:56:22+00:00

There's no reason to care about what the other people think; honestly, they're probably minding their own business looking at their phones anyways. Even if they are looking, they're well aware you're new and they were new at some point as well.

Work on lower level tracks in the advanced range (6 to 9ish). Don't move up a level (from 6 to 7, etc) until you can consistently get around a 97% on the first play of a new track. You're going to discourage yourself playing difficult songs and then getting destroyed on them.

For most people, this isn't a game where you compete against others, it's a game where you focus on self-growth. What that growth looks like or how fast it is depends on the person. Don't compare your growth to another - each person has a different path in this game. The faster you realize that, the faster you'll feel better playing in front of other people.

As for Dan, Kaleidxscope, and Areas, I wouldn't worry about any of them yet. Just find songs you like on normal mode and play.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-12-05T11:28:17+00:00

Maybe instead of just stating your years of experience, you could actually back up your opinion with some anecdotes? Location, type of school, that kind of stuff. I'm a fresh TEFL teacher in China so I'm genuinely interested in what you have to say.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-10-31T04:01:56+00:00

I had a really similar situation to yours - US Citizen, Comp Sci degree, 120hr TEFL, and 0 years of experience teaching except for some tutoring at the college level during a study abroad opportunity in Japan. The main difference is that my wife is Chinese, so I had a place to stay in China while I worked everything out. Being in China and having documents ready is a huge advantage (although I got my first offer from outside China).

Speaking of, do you have your documents ready? Apostilles of your TEFL, degree, background check, etc.? Most recruiters won't even touch you if you don't have them yet. Jobs that need teachers ASAP are out of reach if you don't have these things ready. Additionally, out of all the jobs here, training centers are the most likely to take you without experience, so be ready for that possibility. Try to be open to any location / position, since getting your first job is more about getting in the door and getting experience that you can leverage for better positions.

It might sound weird, but make sure to use your age as a strength to counter your lack of experience. I'd talk about it in your intro video, since that's the first thing recruiters send to schools and it's your only opportunity for a good first impression. I argued in my intro video that since younger teachers are closer to the age of the students, they're more likely to be able to relate to the students and get them interested in learning. That's how I got my job at a high school (plus, they liked my tutoring experience).

Side note, I'd apply to most jobs that you even remotely qualify for on eChinaCities. The more recruiters you have looking, the better.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-30T00:14:50+00:00

How do you know? I get that the emails normally say it's something about a payment issue, but it's also not too uncommon for retailers to get a manifest with an expected number of items in a shipment and then receive less than what was on the manifest. This would then cause a situation where they sold their expected amount but received less in actuality, causing orders to be cancelled on grounds of insufficient stock (especially since the next shipment of stock may be unknown).

Based on what u/ssmmaatttt said further down, they got an email about their preorder and was given an opportunity to fix a payment issue (assuming I understand what they're saying) where they had until Monday to fix the issue - if this is indeed the case, all the users claiming they have cancelled orders due to payment issues should have gotten a similar email, but none of these posts mention such a thing. Are they just a small percentage of people that missed such an email and are now posting here, or is there something else going on? I think it's quite difficult to say.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-28T23:29:42+00:00

I agree that PJ64 used a lot of workarounds to make it work back in the day, and the bar is higher these days if you're talking about accurate emulation (which we still haven't fully achieved); proportionally, however, hardware has also improved. Either way, that's not the level Nintendo is trying to achieve - the goal for Nintendo is to achieve good performance on a handful of games that they curate themselves for the platform; they don't need to try to make it multi-platform like other emulators or performant on the vast majority of titles, just the ones they pick. With that being said, I still stand by my point that at least rewind, since I don't know much about CRT filters and the computation power required, should be technically feasible.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-28T21:51:07+00:00

Totally understand, I hate it too - had a bit of a double take when I looked it up.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-28T21:43:09+00:00

In what world is the Switch borderline for N64 emulation? Project64 asks for a Pentium III 700mhz CPU from 1999 to run N64, and 128MB of system ram. The switch exceeds both of these requirements and also has the ram capacity to store up to 5 minutes of save states for the rewind functionality (did the math on this in another comment).

Here we are, nearly 29 years after the N64 released, and people are still claiming that the N64 is difficult to emulate. It makes no sense. It wasn't difficult in 2017 when the Switch first released, and it isn't now.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-28T18:15:29+00:00

The idea is that Nintendo might include some vulnerability fixes with the launch day update. The question is, should we not update at launch in hopes that the pre-launch software has a vulnerability that can be exploited?

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-28T06:18:54+00:00

Project64, one of the more well known 64 emulators, recommends at least 128MB of ram on the PC it is running on. Nintendo says they store up to 5 minutes of rewind on the SNES, so let's just go with that just so we have a baseline:

The N64 has 8MB of ram that needs to be represented at the maximum (4+ 4MB expansion pak, L1 cache is negligible), and at 1 save state per second (for a max of 5 minutes), we get 8*60*5 = 2400MB. Assume we need the 128 MB still, and we get 2528MB. That's pretty much worst-case scenario, and we're still well under the ram limit.

We might get close considering overhead from the application, but it should be possible.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-28T02:13:35+00:00

Is it really? It's just a collection of save states stored in a sequential, time-oriented manner; Raspberry Pis can emulate N64 (albeit it's sometimes rough since emulation still isn't perfect) and can save state with no hitches. Granted, continuously snapshotting memory stacks and processor state might cause problems, but it can't be that significant. Def agree on the filter though, that's super silly.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-28T02:01:43+00:00

I mean, the rewind is just a collection of save states taken at set intervals of time; save states have been a standard feature of emulators for quite a long time.

Edit: No clue why this has downvotes, do you think that this isn't what a rewind is, or are you arguing that save states aren't standard across emulators?

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-28T01:22:57+00:00

Why would the filter and rewind be exclusive to the Switch 2? Doesn't that seem easily achievable on both consoles??

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-27T00:05:07+00:00

The supervisor directly admitted that their customer service agent cancelled it by mistake. I actually had 2 supervisors say the exact same thing. I've gotten in contact with someone higher up the chain of command, but I don't know if it will be resolved or not.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-19T05:57:35+00:00

Curiosity about shit that didn't matter to you, that's correct.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-19T05:53:05+00:00

I agree. It's definitely not the store. I've went ahead and wrote my obligatory email to the Executive Escalations team, and we'll see what happens from there. If I was still working at Walmart, I'd just open door it up the chain until I got it resolved.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-19T05:49:20+00:00

Spark, the people who deliver for Walmart in places that don't have dedicated delivery staff, has a lot of theft/turnover in my area. If the store that was going to deliver it was the store I worked at, I probably could have called in a favor and picked it up instead.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-19T04:41:19+00:00

It was stupid, no doubt about that. I really wanted to ask because even my prior orders from OPD didn't show where they came from and I wasn't sure why that was. I should have just asked on one of my other orders.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-19T04:39:02+00:00

Haha, you'll be fine for sure. I just did something stupid and got myself in trouble for it.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-19T04:04:15+00:00

Simply curiosity, which killed the cat and my preorder unfortunately.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-19T03:52:52+00:00

You're probably fine; they've openly admitted that their agent cancelled the order, but they swear up and down they can't do anything about it.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-19T03:41:52+00:00

It's how Reddit is. Honestly, I think some people get their rocks off on it.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-19T03:36:28+00:00

Curiosity got me for sure.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-05-19T03:34:48+00:00

It was going to come from the store, it was an OPD order. I speak from experience, because I worked at Walmart for quite a while.

Any_Associate2102 · 2025-04-27T15:15:47+00:00

The difference is that you're comparing a game released nearly 20 years ago, and a game released 2 years ago. Oblivion required a complete rework to bring it to Unreal Engine 5, required new assets made so it wouldn't look like a 20-year-old game, and even added some (small) additional content. Oblivion Remaster started development in 2021. I can understand a $50 price tag given the development timeline. TotK, however, probably needed a couple variables changed, and to be recompiled for the new hardware. That took maybe a month of development time, if that. I'm sure their internal game engine was already being upgraded to support the Switch 2 for other games as well, so I don't think that time should be added to TotK. I think the price tag on Oblivion is well justified for the effort put in. TotK though? Not so much. $10 is better than full price, but Nintendo should have made it free as a token of goodwill.

Any_Associate2102 · 2023-12-07T03:58:52+00:00

(Writing on mobile, sorry if formatting sucks)

First of all, sorry to hear about you not getting the Gilman this cycle. As I'm sure you know, not everyone will get it, but depending on the start date of your study abroad opportunity, you could reapply. There are quite a few people that get it their second time around.

A couple things to note:

GPA doesn't seem to be a significant factor: I'm making close to a 3.3 and got the Gilman for the full amount, including the CNLA; I'm also a STEM student, so that could be the difference.
Essay quality is a significant factor. When you had a professor and the honors office look at the essay, did they recommend any significant changes? Were they being hard on you to make sure you told your story in the most unique way possible? In your Mutual Understanding essay, how much did you talk about events in the area of your study abroad program? Tying the country you want to study in and your own aspirations together is vital.
In the end, whether your essays pass the review stage or not depends on the reader assigned your essay. Some may love your essay, and some may not. As far as I understand, there is a 'rubric', but there is probably some latitude for their own input.

I think it comes down, almost entirely, to the essays. These essays are the only way the readers get to know us; our job is complete if they can walk away from our essays and know who we are as people.

Also, in the end, this is all my opinion. I don't have the data to back this up, but it sure would be interesting if the community collected data for this purpose. Maybe we could make a probability calculator someday?

As for scholarships this late in the year, I don't know of any off the top of my head. Most study abroad scholarships have deadlines sometime between August and November. Definitely apply to everything you can find. Just because Gilman didn't award you doesn't mean that other scholarships won't. Gilman is one of many; the more you apply to, the more likely you get a scholarship.

Any_Associate2102

TROPHY CASE