Problematic Pearls

Supposedly some of those happy fish you feed in your fish tank will drop pearls -- and posts from people who had versions of Aqua Pets BEFORE June 2011 showed that they were getting pearl rewards from happy fish in their tanks.  This changed recently and now legendary fish can only be caught with bait that you spend pearls on.  I blew most of my pearls on "glowing red pellets" and it seemed as though the number of fish that got away was higher than usual. 

Bionic Panda's list of achievements for which you can earn pearls in Aqua Pets is short, and many of them cost far more pearls than you get in return.  I'm about 100 fish short of the 'sell a thousand fish' -- which will get you five pearls -- but the newly installed 'energy meter' keeps me from blowing all my coins and doing it in one afternoon.  While part of me thinks it's a good idea, part of me is frustrated.  I want those pearls to buy bait.

And no, I'm not into directly buying them.  That really leaves me with only two other options.

There's a Fine Manual! And I read it!

Geeks tend to leap into things without actually reading the manual because... well... it takes longer to read about the thing than it does to figure it out, if you're a "hands on" kind of geek.  With Aqua Pets on Facebook rather coyly hinting about pellets and poles, an option that I only skimmed in the "help" section suddenly caught my eye.

The store actually gives you the approximate percentages of catches on your bait purchases. (d'oh!)


Spotted worms catch rare creatures 5% of the time (and uncommon creatures at least 20% of the time.
Orange worms catch them 3% of the time
Green bugs catch them 1.5% of the time
Yellow bugs catch uncommon creatures more than black bugs do (no surprise)

On the high end, blue glowing pellets catch rare creatures 20% of the time and legendary creatures 10% of the time.
Red glowing pellets catch rares 25% of the time and legendary creatures 20% of the time -- at a cost of 3 pearls per ten.
Rainbow pellets, which cost 4 pearls, catch rares 30% of the time and legendary creatures 30% of the time.


Helpful hints are also found in the fish food area

Aqua Pets for Android -- tips and tricks

There's not a lot of games that I'm tempted to play these days -- I'm an avid World of Warcraft player and I do enjoy playing the Sudoko puzzles, so I'm not really sure why I picked up Bionic Panda's "Aqua Pets" game for my Android tablet, other than it was free and the little logo was cute.  I loved it and played it in the bath tub or whenever there was "down time."  It was just perfect for that -- you could stop it at any time and come back to the same spot.

Then I dropped my Android tablet (AIEE!) and had to go buy a new one (because, of course, nobody fixes screens) and by the time I got back to the Android Marketplace, Aqua Pets was gone.  So you can imagine my delight when I found Aqua Pets back on the Android Marketplace last week.

The in-game currency had changed and other things were added.  When I went looking for tips, I found there were none.  So here's a list of some of the tips that I picked up from the Facebook page and other pages.  Right now my character is level 13, and I'll be posting results from various experiments like testing fish food and bait and rods.

SOME BASIC TIPS -- fish tanks

•  Feeding the fish does result in happy fish that will reward you 24 hours later.  Different fish, however, like different food.  Although you supposedly can get pearls when you feed the fish, so far, all I've gotten are coins (3 to 12 gold coins.  So the coins DO make up for the cost of the fish food plus a little... but not much.)
• You can feed your aquarium fish all day on the food you purchase.  Some of them swim faster than others and will eat the food before the others do.
• If you feed the fish food that they DON'T like, they won't eat it.  No happy fish the next day, so no coins from them.
• Don't be afraid to sell the Aqua Pets you catch (including rare and legendary pets) unless you're saving them to create a special tank.
• Feed your fish when you're connected to the Internet (because the rewards will be calculated on their servers.  No internet access = no record of feeding.)

SOME BASIC TIPS -- fishing

• Some items can only be caught with certain poles and baits
• The ice cube fish can be caught by using a snowflake rod and pellets.  More about that when I reach that level.
• Orange bugs and spotted worms (according to the Bionic Panda team) are probably the best "bang for the buck" NON-free bait.
• You need pellets to catch most of the legendary creatures.
• Fresh water fish can be caught with the wooden rod.
• You can catch common, uncommon and rare fish with regular bait.
• You can catch the panda with bamboo
•  mechanical fish like the Metal Bits

PEARLS (a bone of contention)
According to the Bionic Panda Facebook staff, there are three ways to get free pearls in Aqua Pets:

1) a random fish may give you a pearl as a reward for feeding them the prior day
2) reaching an achievement - like sharing your tank (total over 100 pearls available)
3) trying the free offers - located by clicking on the pearl
 
SHARING TANKS
I'm a little reluctant to share games on Facebook (mainly because I don't want to see game updates from friends.)
Bionic Panda's tips for posting your tank on Facebook:

1) Try to post your fish tank on Facebook while you are connected over a wireless connection.
2) Be sure you are logged in to Facebook before you post

Aqua Pets -- fishing for rares and uncommons

For any game out there, there's always some geek who just has to try out all the options and figure out what's the best strategy.  That'd be me.  I'm one of those.  Since I've just restarted Aqua Pets, I'm working through the early levels (now at level 18) to see which combos are best.

Catching Fish -- some strategies

By the way, although there are rumors of "cheats" for the game, the pages I get directed to seem to be full of ads.  There's no list of hints or cheats for Aqua Pets running around in the wild.  On the other hand, it's a pretty straight-forward game for the Android, based on a random calculator -- it can be difficult to beat random number generators.

The new "luck meter" and pole/bait combos have caused a bit of confusion, particularly since some of the baits are VERY expensive (4 pearls, for instance, for rainbow pellets.)  Pearls are hard to come by unless you buy them directly from Bionic Panda or start sharing your tank.  I did buy a packet of glowing blue pellets and tested it out.  The catch rate of rare/legendary/uncommon fish was high -- about 70%.  However, unless those fishes in my tank start dropping pearls, I don't foresee a lot of buying bait with pearls.
 .  
 Currently, I have one legendary fish (the Loose Triggerfish), which was NOT caught on the expensive bait and 19 rare fish (I caught more than that, but I've sold duplicates.)

Kindle's subscription model -- will it work?

Early this month, Amazon announced a new service for Kindle -- a free "digest edition" of Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine.  It's an ambitious gamble, because science fiction is a growing market (thanks to all the movies out there) and the printing/publishing empire is changing so drastically that it's hard to predict what the shape of the industry will look like in ten years.

Subscription services seem to be the "thing" of the future.


The question is, "will it work?"  We're getting information-jammed, with news and ebooks (including material that wouldn't even make it into fanzines) from all sides.  In addition, with the economic situation we are working longer and harder and have less leisure time.  While subscriptions might temporarily save publishers, the big question is how stable is this in the long term?

Everyone who succumbed to a National Geographic subscription raise your hands.

Right.  And how long did you keep it?

Right.  (some still have it, many don't)

It gets kicked around a lot -- but I think the "take away" lesson for writers or comic book artists is that if it's possible, look into RSS feed syndication that would allow your fans to be able to have stories and art delivered to their mailbox (and nuked quietly if they decide to not read it.)

What to do with an inactive blog

Highly Recommended:
Best 5 Brilliant Things You Can Do with an Inactive Blog

This showed up on my Twitter feed and caught my interest because, like so many others, I have a couple of inactive blogs.  I had always thought of them as sort of a waste of time and was considering option 5 (delete the blog) on this list, but I'm beginning to rethink this position.

I'm also beginning to rethink my position on removing this blog.

� Google Plus One 1 Button Tutorial for Your Blog - Erica Says

 For all of you folks (that'd be me) who are new to Google Plus and wondering just how to deal with the thing, here's a quick and easy reference.
� Google Plus One 1 Button Tutorial for Your Blog - Erica Says

� How to Create a Favicon for your Site - Erica Says

� How to Create a Favicon for your Site - Erica Says

This should be noted for Friends In business and possibly the blog as well.

Setting up an Amazon store

"Get an Amazon Store."  That was some advice I'd gotten when I said, "I'm an artist and writer and I'm trying to make a living online."  The trouble is, that advice came from one of those "internet marketing experts."

Man, the store setup was a pain, and because I don't lurk over on Amazon (except when I want to buy something) it turned out to be much more bewildering than I thought it might be.  I'd like it to be set up with my free (and cheap) ebooks (the reprints of the Coyote ashcans... those things are good advertising but I can't see charging folks for them in ebook format) and links to the books where I have been published all in one neat package.  And maybe some of my favorites for recommendations.

This was a mess.  Will get it in SOME sort of shape before Fencon.  I swears I will.
http://astore.amazon.com/friendsinbizblog-20

Do Follow Blog List | DoFollow Blogs

Blog exchanges are one idea suggested for authors who want to widen their audience, and blog commenting is also recommended.  An interesting idea that I came across was to comment in "do follow blogs."  These are blogs that allow posting in comments and allow posting links to your site as part of your name --AND-- when the search engine hits this site, it is permitted to "backtrack" the commenters to their home page.

What this does is sort of "spreads the word" and makes your book (or art) and your name easier to find.  The advice ALSO said to set YOUR blog to "do follow."

I see both good and bad ideas running here. On the good side, this may increase your visitors. On the bad side, many of them are spammers and they're just coming to ad links to their sites and make themselves look important.

There are lists out there of "do follow" blogs, but some investigation showed that many of them look like sales sites and not true blogs and are likely to get taken down as spam sites.  I think some sort of middle ground here is needed -- and the answer might lie in the "blog roll."  Of course, the problem then is getting onto someone's blogroll.  But that's something for another time.

Do Follow Blog List | DoFollow Blogs