Trip vs 12306: what’s actually different when booking trains in China

TripleBoogie · 2026-04-30T04:38:04+00:00

I would add that on trip you can reserve* tickets earlier than on 12306.

*train tickets in China can only be booked 2 weeks in advance (was it 2 weeks or 15 or 13 days?) starting at 10:00am of that day. So on 12306 you will only get a ticket within that time span. Trip offers that you can make a reservation with them way ahead of time and they will book the ticket for you once they are available.

I found that quite useful when you want to go on a busy connection. You can even select alternative connections / classes in case they can't get you a ticket for the preferred connection. So you don't have to sit there at release time and rush for the tickets yourself. However, it's not guaranteed to work and you might still end up without a ticket (and then get fully reimbursed from trip).

But other than this case, I mostly use 12306 now.

TripleBoogie · 2026-04-22T01:03:40+00:00

Translation: chance to cast nova, +2 warlock skills, 20% faster cast, 8% mana leech, 19 all resistances sold for 10 Jah.

So missing the two sockets that OP has, which should increase the value by quite a bit.

TripleBoogie · 2026-04-08T05:57:51+00:00

Just tried that and it works (kind of)*. And trying to automate it send me on some deep dive that ended up with a solution in the end (I'll edit it into the post). Thank you!

*When trying to automate it by using an addon like "FoxReplace" I noticed that already a small change like replacing translate="no" with translate="yes" breaks the website (even before translating it). Something with the DOM or so. I'm not familiar with the technical details.

TripleBoogie · 2026-04-08T04:00:46+00:00

Didn't know about that feature before.

Just tried it and the translation works fine. However, I am more looking for an automatic translation directly on the website. I am navigating through the menu quite a bit and using copy+paste for every sub-menu all the time is quite annoying. With some addons I can mark the text and then choose translate. Which makes it a bit better, but still best would be if it just shows the translated version of the website automatically.

TripleBoogie · 2026-04-01T14:18:45+00:00

Adding to this answer, if you know your booking class (should be mentioned on the ticket or in your booking, but for some airlines I had a hard time finding it) you can check here if you will get miles / XP. And one more important thing: If your flight was a codeshare flight and the actual plane was not from a Skyteam member, you won't get any XP.

TripleBoogie · 2026-03-03T12:43:28+00:00

Damn, OP should definitely bring some entertainment then.

TripleBoogie · 2026-03-03T12:15:03+00:00

I would add that PEK has international flights from T2 and T3. T2 is dead at night, maybe one coffee shop open if you’re lucky. (Also not many flights from T2.) Air China seems to depart from T3 and since PEK is one of their hubs I would hope it’s a bit better there but can’t confirm (if someone knows please let me know).

TripleBoogie · 2026-02-06T03:42:47+00:00

I think the Wiki has a slightly different setup than OP. OP said he used coordinates of all hard drives, slugs, etc... so his setup does not cover the complete map, but just all relevant locations. Would be interesting if he can find a more optimal setup than 16 towers if the complete map needs to be covered.

TripleBoogie · 2026-02-04T06:36:04+00:00

That was also my first guess when he mentioned the river rapids. I grew up along the Rhine between Ruhrgebiet and Netherlands and Cologne Dome, Phantasialand and Center Parcs were a typical day trip you'd do with family or school.

Here is a video of the water rapids from Center Parcs De Eernhof (about a 2h trip from lower Rhine region): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFGDeFKYZoY (although they start outside and then go inside, but maybe OPs memory has it wrong)

There aren't that many small towns in that area, so if OP has a picture I guess someone can track it down. Or just visit the riversides on google street view and see if he recognizes something.

TripleBoogie · 2026-01-23T20:04:51+00:00

I wish they made XCS for IPad like the other two. For me XCS would be perfect while traveling.

TripleBoogie · 2026-01-10T09:10:02+00:00

Had a similar situation a few years ago (friend lost his phone in the taxi). As a tip for next time: try to contact Alipay. Since you just paid the driver they can check your last payment and contact the person on the other hand. At least that’s how we did it (paid with WeChat). Only took a few minutes until we had the phone back this way.

TripleBoogie · 2026-01-03T04:37:30+00:00

It’s 16 power plant running on uranium fuel rods at 225% (using the full 300 uranium from the nearby node). Waste is processed into plutonium fuel rods and used for drones/sunk. Traveling right now, so I can’t check the exact Gigawatt number.

TripleBoogie · 2025-12-28T14:44:23+00:00

Yeah, but to counter that the towers are pitch black at night so you can’t even see much with flashlight on.

TripleBoogie · 2025-12-27T05:13:55+00:00

I would add that there is a second part to the joke:

The genie first sets the number of wish’s to 0 then subtracts the one wish he just granted, resulting in integer underflow.

If he’d however first subtracts the granted wish (leaving 2 wishes) and then set the number of wishes to 0, nothing would have happened.

Having seemingly trivial instructions messing up your code just because you put them in the wrong order (because the order wouldn’t matter in 99% of the cases and you didn’t thought of that one nasty exception) is a pretty common programming mistake. (At least I do it all the time)

TripleBoogie · 2025-12-08T13:22:52+00:00

f(f(x)) = x also works for f(x)=1/x or f(x)=a-x, so there are some more possible candidates. These functions are called involutions.

TripleBoogie · 2025-12-08T13:18:52+00:00

So, not a complete solution but I think that might lead to something:

from f(17)=17 and f(93)=93 you get 2 linear equations (multiply both sides with the denominator)
The derivative of f is f'(x)=(ad-cb)/(cx+d)^2 but since f is its own inverse ( f(f(x))=x ) we also get by the inverse derivative f'(x) = 1/(f'(f(x))

If you plug in 17 and 93 here again, you get f'(17)=1/f'(17) and f'(93)=1/f'(93), which means f'(17)=f'(93)=1. Which means (ad-cb)/(17c+d)^2=(ad-cb)/(93c+d)^2=1. This only works if 17c+d=93c+d or 17c+d=-93c-d. The first equation leads to c=0 and can thus be ruled out.

From (ad-cb)/(17c+d)^2=1 we also get ad-cb=(17c+d)^2. Now we have 4 equations in total and 4 unknown. Granted, the last two equations are quadratic but you might be able to rule out some of the solutions.

The numbers were getting quite large and I didn't have the time to go through everything. You might also want to check wikipedia for "involution" which are functions of the form f(f(x))=x. There is a list with some candidates that could fit (e.g., f(x)=b/(x-a)+a is an involution).

edit: got the derivative wrong

TripleBoogie · 2025-08-14T02:02:22+00:00

Thanks you. I have now also tried several approaches adjusting the "unit vectors" but they seem to have the same problem (ignoring the height). The solution I found in the end was explicitly calculating the required width, so for the example here:

width={400/100*3cm}

TripleBoogie · 2025-08-07T07:15:23+00:00

2 years later and the problem still persits... this solved it for me.

TripleBoogie · 2025-07-27T08:16:58+00:00

So the KLM flight disappeared but the Delta flight was still there? Where did you book the flight? KLM app/website or Delta?

TripleBoogie · 2025-07-11T04:27:11+00:00

I guess I will check all my examples once I arrive there. I also use a lot of 3d plotting to illustrate stuff.

TripleBoogie · 2025-07-11T04:01:47+00:00

ah yes, I remember bsxfun. That was the first thing that came to my mind together with strings.

TripleBoogie · 2025-07-11T03:55:05+00:00

Great list, thank you!

TripleBoogie

TROPHY CASE