What have you been up to in April of 2005?
1. Apr 4, 2005
Apr 4, 2005: I've modified the Tertiary Status of my Status System report to include further details about fairly recent changes. Two new dreams have also been added, 5-41, and 6-30.
#1 Tertiary Status update: Starting around January of 2005, I've made a small modification to the Tertiary Status. As the compatibility goes away from neutral, the rate of increase or decrease slows. A rating of exactly 0 or exactly 1000 is impossible due to division by zero. Although I've had this "exponential" thing almost since the Tertiary Status was born, I've found the formula for calculating it. It's not truly exponential, though it seems like it.
#2 Two new dreams: Two new dreams have been added. Dream 5-41, featuring multiple categories in one dream of coin collecting, and dream 6-30, featuring me getting banned from an online forum, are the new additions. It was very hard to figure out where dream 5-41 would go as it fits in four different categories: mud, video game, travel, and weird. This dream may end up getting moved if I find a more suitable category. It's mainly between travel and weird that I can't decide. Although I've never been banned from any online forum, dream 6-30 gives an insight on what it's like to be banned from a forum.
#3 A shocking discovery - Some of my dreams predict the future!: I've got a bad feeling about dream 6-30.... Why? Let's take a look at my past dreams and see. First, take a look at dream 6-22. Remember that block game and hunter dream? The dream featured a hunter chasing after me and some others. It also featured a game that had colored blocks. What about this dream? This dream occurred on Jan 28, 2005. On Feb 2, 2005, just five days later, the hunter was represented as the neighbor's dog. The neighbor's dog killed one of our dogs that day. Our neighbors are trying to escape from having to go to court by taking serious measures on what they're doing. According to the dream, the hunter never found us. I wonder if this means that there is going to be no court case.... If you think this is amazing, there are more cases yet. Consider dream 2-11. The dream features a debug system for Bubsy 3D, one of my favorite games. In the dream, I was using the debug system to get up very high by creating platforms. Strange as it is, just a week later, indeed, I did get up very high, but I didn't unlock any debug mode. Not convincing yet? Try looking at dream 6-12. This dream features getting 1800 E-mail messages in my E-mail account relating to my website. It occurred on Dec 1, 2004. But, on Mar 26, 2005, I had a huge spike in my site's traffic. Just overnight, my site's activity has been sexagintupled (or multiplied by 60). My site, however, has died down since. That's three dreams that have predicted the future! Though they're not exact, they provide clues on what'll happen. The clue in dream 6-22 is the hunter and another clue is that he never found the group, although he was seen. The clue in dream 2-11 is the fact that I got up extremely high. The clue in dream 6-12 was the folder called "my site" and the fact that I had 1800 E-mails in that folder. Dream 6-30 is very recent (occurred on Apr 2, 2005). The clue is that I got banned from a forum. I can't tell what forum it was, however. I'm not worried that the dream indicates that I'm going to get banned from a forum. I'll be taking a lot more precautions just to be safe.
#4 A shipload more questions for the forums: Just yesterday, I've posted ten new questions on the forums. I'm still swamping the forums with questions that just pop up in my mind.
#5 My script: I still haven't heard back from the company about my script, but knowing it's length, I do expect it to take a while for them to read that huge script.
#6 Pocahontas in my mind game: Ever since I watched Pocahontas II on my satellite TV system, I've been having a few events in my mind game featuring her. Instead of in the times she was in, I'm in the modern days running around at a few hundred miles an hour as if showing her around the modern world. Of course, it's just my mind game.
#7 55 mph seems very slow: Pretend that you're driving along the road on a highway going 55 mph. To most, this speed isn't that bad. Watch the scenery go by. To me, 55 mph seems very slow. In fact, I'm used of speeds of around 200 to 300 mph as from excessive use of it in my mind game. Now pretend you're cruising down the highway at 250 mph. Everything just whizzes by 4.5 times faster. This is the kind of speed I'm used of. If I ever do drive again, speeding would be one of my worries. If I don't constantly check the speedometer, I might mistake 80 mph for 55 quite easily because I'm so used of those high speeds.
2. Apr 10, 2005
Apr 10, 2005: One new dream has been added. Also, I found some high-resolution satellite imagery of my home town. I've also expanded a lot on my lifestyle as it has been for the last 3 years and more details about my history with school. One new dream has been added. I think I also have something for defective computer products.
#1 Detailed satellite imagery of my home town: Around Apr 6 or so, I found a place where I can get highly detailed satellite imagery of my home town. It's so detailed, you can see the cars in the roads as about two pixels or so. If you look carefully, you can see the lines on the roads. While at it, I've been using the phone book to try to identify some of the places I like, especially Pizza Hut, the major mall, Wal-mart, North Hill School (the school I went to while I was in my elementary years), Erik Ramstad (my top-favorite school and the same one featured at the beginning of my script in which Knuckles goes to to get his first members of his team), and the hard-to-find Central Campus (I knew the vicinity on where it was, but many of the buildings around here looked alike so I had to end up getting the address and applying that ever-so-handy address and distance trick to find it. I'm quite amazed how I've been living here for like 15 years or so and I hardly know where anything is....
#2 So close to getting DSL: If I'm lucky, I might be able to get DSL sometime this week. I'm still trying to convince my parents to switch over from dial-up to 1 Mbps DSL. Since I called the phone company for more details about DSL on a weekend (I hate weekends), I have to wait until Monday. From here, I'll get more information about it and, if possible, convince my parents to switch to DSL. As you may have seen in a few of my blog entries, DSL is cheaper than dial-up. Dial-up costs $16.95. We, however, need another phone line as the internet is used quite a bit, so it's another $13 added onto that totalling $29.95. DSL doesn't bother your home phone line as far as I've heard so there is no need for that extra line. 512 Kbps DSL costs $27.95, two dollars cheaper than dial-up and for double speed, 1 Mbps, it's only two dollars more, or the same price as our dial-up. I'm now closer than ever to getting DSL. I just need to convince my parents more into getting it. Same price, 20 times faster. Why pass away the offer?
#3 My background expanded: I have expanded a lot on my background including an updated photo of me. I've included a lot more details about my current life, more about my school history, and more about my online activities. The other sections haven't been changed much. Included in the expansion is a view of my computer area, where I'm at 20 to 22 hours in the day.
#4 One new dream: Now, if you think a 20-inch pizza is large, the one in my newest dream has one with double that for the diameter! The dream also features a car ride with some close calls and a hill with scenic surroundings. I almost never have dreams featuring food (of all 175 documented dreams to this point, only this one and the well-liked underwater race dream (dream 3-9) features food as far as I can recall). Food isn't of my interest, not even close. The newest dream, by the way, is dream 6-31. I'm probably going to have to find ways to make new categories to cut down on the number of "other" dreams. One category that comes to mind is "vaguely remembered" featuring dreams so little in tact (like less than 5%), that details are next to impossible to give about it. The one featuring the underbuilding (which is only a half of a percent in tact, the lowest to this point) will definitely go in this possible category. There are a few others in which are so vaguely remembered that a category cannot be determined. Other than that, I don't know of any other recategorizations I could implement.
#5 Defective computer products: Ever since I've ordered that monitor from tigerdirect, I've been having troubles with defective computer products. What do I mean? Well, if you were to think about it, the first time I got the monitor, there was a strange red "haze" around it, especially bad in the corners. The second one I got, the same product, had a strange darkened area in the center of the screen vertically and about halfway to the left from the horizontal center. The monitor I have now is very good and okay. Next, I tried to order a new video card for my computer to replace my existing one, but it didn't work at all as nothing was being sent to the screen. I did get my replacement, but I haven't put it in my system yet. That's old stuff. What's next? Well, an optical mouse is what. Unlike the monitor and video card, the optical mouse was bought from my local Kmart store, so no ordering online was done. I got it, and it did work for some time, until around 7:45 AM just today where it suddenly stopped responding. the mouse wouldn't scroll or anything. Clicking doesn't work (right-clicking would've brought up a popup menu, but even that didn't appear). Thankfully, I know of the keyboard shortcuts and getting around Windows with just the keyboard, so shutting down and saving my work wasn't any problem. Yet, from this episode, it was the first time I've ever used alt+tab to switch between windows. I've never used it before. When I switch between windows, I just click the window in the task bar, but since I didn't have the mouse, I couldn't do that. I only knew of the alt+tab from the online forums I frequent. Then, when I restarted my computer, I got a notice that I haven't seen in years: no mouse. Spy Sweeper popped up, after it loaded, saying that there may be a new threat so I tried to run a sweep, but the program wouldn't do it from only the keyboard. I did manage to get AVG to run, but it didn't detect anything. I then tried running Windows in safe mode to see if potential spyware or the related was the cause, but even in safe mode, the mouse wouldn't work. Fortunately, I still had my old mouse, so I took it out and plugged it in and the mouse works. A sweep from Spy Sweeper doesn't detect any spyware and the related. I did, however, capture a screenshot of the no mouse warning:
Clicking on the image will make it zoom in to its true size, 1600x1200 pixels. In case you're wondering, this popped up right when the desktop stuff loaded without the task bar and desktop icons. So, I guess I'll be off to Kmart to return the mouse and get an exchange.
#6 Keeping score: Remember from one of the March updates that I had a scoring system for puzzles? Well, using the new set of puzzles my parents got me, I decided that I'd keep score. I'm currently doing a 750-piece puzzle and I've already got just over 15,000 points and I'm only half way through it. 2/3 of this came from merging a huge group of 145 pieces. The score I got from this is "n(n+1)/2". Since n is 145 in this case, the numbers work out to 10585, a huge amount of points. I've calculated that a 500-piece puzzle has a maximum score of like 72,151 or something (I don't remember exactly) like that and that a 1000-piece puzzle had something close to 200,000. 750 must probably be around 100,000 points and I've got about 1/6 of that at this moment. I've got a lot of ones on the scoreboard and quite a few threes (threes are from merging a group of 2 into another group of 2 or larger). I've got some sixes and tens in there as well (6's from merging a group of 3 into another group of 3 or larger and the tens are from merging a group of 4 into another group of 4 or larger). I like calling ones "scratches" as they sort of look like scratches (a single scratch) on the score board. I call zeros "race tracks" as they are in the shape of a common auto race track.
#7 Large and green clock: Because my mother got an alarm clock that had green digits and was bright, too bright for her, even at the dimmest setting, and since I liked that shade of green, and that I had an alarm clock with dimmer digits that she liked better, I did the ol' switcheroo. I'm not sensitive to light while I sleep as I frequently sleep in broad daylight.
#8 Survey or not: I'm sort of thinking about having a survey on my website, a very simple one mainly. Since, from in the guest book (at the bottom of the main index), many of my visitors come from another site, I'm curious to know which site you're coming from. The guest book has limited features so I can't get a decent survey with it. The only problem I have about this is that I don't know how to script it. I can code it in HTML okay as I can look that up without trouble, but it's having to create a TXT file containing results that I don't know how to get as well as having required items (mainly things like ratings, where you came into my site from, favorite categories (as from below), favorite reports, and that sort of thing). E-mail isn't required and I may not include it in the survey. Do note that this is only a thought that I've had. It may or may not be implemented.
#9 My script: I still haven't heard back from the company yet of which I sent the script to. I still, however, have one other alternative company to send the script to. If all else fails, turning it into a book may be my only resort I have. I already have it in book format (by accident), but I've since added more content and deleted some, so I may need to almost redo it. Of course, it isn't any problem. I've calculated that I can write a story that big, and read through it twice for editting, in just ten days (or 120 hours). Numbers don't lie, unless you work them out incorrectly for some reason (such as using the wrong formula or adding when you should be subtracting). It takes me about 15 minutes or so to type a whole page for my script. The script is 324 pages long. Do the multiplication, that works out to 4860 minutes. It takes about 5 minutes to read through one page of my script to edit it (unless I spot a big error that takes some thinking to figure out). Working this out, for 324 pages, that's 1620 minutes needed for one round of editting. For two rounds, that's 3240 minutes. This totals 8100 minutes. Technically, this is 135 hours. Since I sleep for about 10 hours and I'm awake for about 15 1/2 hours, and if I spent two hours eating, going to the bathroom, etc. and all other activities, I'd spend exactly 10 days working on it. This, however, is only an estimate. I have not technically timed myself. Given some clues that I have, this estimate is high (meaning it would take a shorter amount of time than this, probably around even 7 days (possibly 8)).
3. Apr 18, 2005
Apr 18, 2005: Ever so close! DSL is right around the corner! I've also expanded and reorganized the fears page to include past fears and to include obsessions then and now. Two new dreams have been added. Also, my site may be in for another big update (version 5.1 - modification to style and design). Another order made, some worries.
#1 DSL is right around the corner: I've finally convinced my father to switch to DSL! However, at this point, I've been tempting to get more information about it on how to get it setup. So far, we have all the information needed and we have the router, however, we need NIC cards (network interface c-something (probably "card)) so we can network the computers so the connection can be shared. However, having DSL brings about one worry: increased vulnerability to viri and spyware. Because, as far as I've heard, mainly from the HWW forums, DSL is constantly on, anytime you're running the computer, a virus can slip in or some spyware might get installed even if IE or Firefox isn't open. It just means I'll have to run backups more frequently just to be safe. I'm very careful on what I do. To this point, I can only guess at what DSL is like. I've got the numbers, I just need to put the numbers to use and simulate it in my mind. My dial-up usually logs about 32 to 40 Kbps download speed, which is a bit slow for regular dial-up. DSL, the plan I'm trying to get, is 1024 Kbps (aka 1 Mbps). Doing the math, this is nearly 25 to 30 times faster! To simulate it, I picture a large webpage document downloading on dial-up. One file that I found is over 6 MB in size. My dial-up connection is actually a high-speed dial-up connection. It utilizes file compression to speed up the transfer. An interesting way to test if you have high-speed dial-up or regular dial-up is this. From Outlook Express or another E-mail account, attach a blank BMP file that is 640x480 (having a file size of 921654 bytes). If the file uploads in one minute or less, you have high-speed dial-up. If it takes longer than 4 minutes to upload, you have regular dial-up. If it downloads in less than a half of a minute you have high-speed dial-up and if it downloads in longer than 2.5 minutes, you have regular dial-up. Anyway, back to the main subject. DSL compared to dial-up is 25 to 30 times faster. If that BMP file uploads in 204 seconds (on regular dial-up), on DSL, it would upload in just 7 to 8 seconds! It's hard to comprehend the time difference. 204 seconds versus 7 to 8? Imagine having to watch your clock for 204 seconds. It can get quite boring. Now imagine watching it for 8 seconds. Almost anyone can stand 8 seconds. DSL will be coming on Apr 28, 2005. My calculations show that I should certainly be awake by the morning (I'd probably wake up around 4:00 AM or so by then).
#2 Fears extended and reorganized: If you've seen the document containing my fears and other problems (ya know, the one with the mirror maze), you'll know what I mean. If not, it's just a document that lists my major fears and other problems I've got that I've dealt with for years. To most, they're stupid and I sort of agree with it. Before, I had like 9 items listed on there. Now, I've got double that. I've also added my current obsessions as well as past ones. In addition to all that, I've reorganized the entire document. There are three categories with two sections each. My past and present fears, my past and present problems, and my past and present obsessions. Running my mind game has helped me remember some of this.
#3 Computer safety: I've just added a detailed document on how to be careful with your computer to help prevent viruses and spyware as much as possible. I apply this knowledge almost daily, so I thought I should add information about this.
#4 Puzzle game: You've heard about it a few times, but, in case you haven't, I've come up with a unique scoring technique for jigsaw puzzles. The scoring technique is very promising and I don't see any problems with it so I thought I'd post it as a new game.
#5 Three new dreams: I've added three more dreams, now including the second-most forgotten dream. I had it fresh in my mind, but I got too involved with other things and ended up forgetting 99.3% of it. I also had another dream that I had on that same night, but I forgot it entirely so I didn't list it. However, there was an old dream that I managed to recall featuring a TV advertisement. In fact, the dream seems so realistic, I can't tell if the dream was actually a dream or something that happened for real. The third dream was the night's dream, featuring 5 tiny-diameter tornadoes. Anyways, the new dreams are 2-22 (unlucky number to me and the second-most forgotten), 6-32, and 6-33. This pushes the official count to 178 documented dreams. I'm still adding more to it as time goes by.
#6 My script: Hmm. It seems as if the company still hasn't received my script which is very unusual. It's been nearly a month and postal stuff shouldn't take much more than 7 days. According to the delivery confirmation, the script was delivered. Maybe either they forgot about it or it was misplaced somewhere and they lost it. I can't think of anything else.
#7 Possible redesign of website: With the edits on the number 2 news item above for this update, I had the idea of changing the style some, mainly with the section banners. Instead of listing something as "6. Too many numbers", I might list it as "6.2.1.6: Too many numbers" instead. This would cause a change in every single document on my website, however, the change should go by rather quickly. Unlike the time in which I was adding all those features for the dreams pages, which meant that I had to read through every single dream and type more, this is merely just adding some additional numbers to indicate the category, subcategory, topic, and sections (and possibly subsections). This could mean that my site's version would go from 5.0.2 (now) to 5.1. This idea is rather new, so I haven't had much to think about it yet.
#8 Another order - more defective products: As DSL requires networking for sharing the internet connection, we had to get some NIC cards. However, of the last like 5 items I received, I had to make 3 returns. This isn't a good ratio at all and it's phenominally high. Because I'm now getting 3 items (2 NIC cards and a CPU fan), this could mean that two of which would be defective if this ratio persists. Normally, however, you'd have to buy like 1000 items to find one defective one, and this is on the high end. Usually it'd be a lot less frequent. 1 in 1000 seems much more reasonable compared to 3 in 5 (600 in 1000 converted).
#9 Travel log for Apr 16, 2005: Since I'm hardly out of the house, I decided to keep a log on just when I'm out. On Apr 16, 2005, I was out for 5 hours. I had to go to the Post Office so I can deliver two things: a CD to a company so I can get a moderate-quality printout of a huge image I have and to deliver something I sold on Ebay to the winning bidder. Because this way was a weekend (I seriously hate weekends), the hours businesses are open are very screwy and seemingly hard to predict. The Post Office is no exception. Because, while taking a 23-minute shower (this is typical for me), my mom went to bed and my father was doing auto work at his work place (replacing brakes in particular), I thought I was going to have to wait a lot longer. I had no choice but to wake her up in order to make it in time. If I missed it, I'd have to wait a whole week before I got another chance to deliver the Ebay item and I'd hate to have to do that. Fortunately, I managed to send it. After the Post Office, I went to K-mart where I was for probably 2 hours. Here, my math skills came in handy. Unfortunately, I can't quite remember what I needed to get there besides some new shoes (my old ones, about 8 months old, were getting a lot of mud and stuff in them so I had to replace them). I can't go into my local Wal-mart because they've recently added a ton of mirrors on the ceiling which blocked practically every place in the building (as if they were kicking me out). I ended up getting a Pizza from the pizza area in here. Because I cannot get to it due to mirrors (clothing areas are my least favorites because they are packed with mirrors everywhere), I had to wait by the area where there weren't any mirrors. Frequently, my mom passed in front of a mirror so I had to end up losing sight of her for quite some time so I can take some detours around the mirrors. I think, in all that time, I walked nearly a mile and a half! Quite a bit of that was from having to take detours around the mirrors, but hey, the exercise does have it's advantages. After this, I went to a fabric store (don't remember the name) and I ate half of the pizza while waiting. I'm surprised that Little Ceaser's Pizza has 1/3 the grease and fat as Pizza Hut does. I had smaller napkins, about 1/3 the area, and I only used up about 2/3 of what I normally would. I got full so I couldn't eat any more. The store was a lot bigger than I expected, but, however, I managed to get around the store without troubles as there weren't any mirrors (of which I can remember). From there, we went to the grocery store. I mainly wanted to replenish my cheese supply and, since I had enough pizzas, I didn't need them. Since I love lemonade, I decided to get some lemonades. If you remember that photo showing my computer area, you might notice boxes just to the right of my computer. These are lemonade boxes. Although the boxes are meant as a "fridge pack", I hate cold and I like my drinks warm (room temperature mainly), so I have my drinks on the shelves near my computer. This way, I can freely access them whenever I want a drink. I also got pizza rolls. I have a hard enough time finding the plain cheese versions of them, I was seriously thinking of getting everything on the shelf (which was about 6 bags), but the freezers didn't have enough space (we even have an extra freezer that is quite large (about 2 cubic meters as a guess) and even it is quite full, mainly with old meats and junk. My pizzas take one whole shelf out of 5. After that, it was to one of those second-hand stores (where clothing is often $1.50 each, for a whole shirt that would normally sell for ten times that). Because of curved mirrors (I dislike these more than straight, flat mirrors), my access around this store is quite restricted. About 70% of the store is blocked off by mirrors. The final stop after this was the bank. I didn't need to do anything there myself, but wait. And so, this is the end of the travel log for Apr 16, 2005.
#10 Travel log for Apr 18, 2005: Went to OfficeMax to buy a router for DSL. OfficeMax was in a place I didn't expect it would. I thought it would've been near Menard's along with Staples which is in that vicinity. I also went to the grocery store so dad can get something, but I didn't need anything in particular. The total time out was almost exactly 1 hour.
#11 Big time windy: Lately, for the past, like, 5 days now, it's often very windy. Thursday and Friday (Apr 13 and 14) were particularly bad. Winds were often around 30 mph sustained. There were probable gusts of even 50 mph winds. The winds in my area are usually about 10 to 15 mph, which I don't mind, unless it was cold.
#12 Fence building: On Apr 17, 2005, I was helping my father finish off the fence. Although there is a fence there now, it's too short. The neighbor's dogs could easily jump the fence. The new fence we're putting up is nearly a whole foot higher which makes it very hard to jump over. The fence posts have been put up so far. I did most of the hole digging. Boy, rocks and tree roots can be a pain. Yet, because we needed 10-foot spacing, and that there was a big mess of tree litter in the area (leaves mainly and pine needles), it was a bit of a cleanup. However, I didn't have too much trouble. I did about half of the work compared to my father. The wind, however, was causing some trouble. There was about a 20 mph wind which made it quite difficult to handle the trees.
#13 42,700 points: Still, while I watch TV, I'm working on those puzzles. So far, I've got two of them finished with about 30,000 points accumulated from both. The first puzzle gave me 19,120 points. The second puzzle got me 10520 points. On the third puzzle I have about 13000 points so far, which is a lot better than my previous, and I still have 200 or so pieces remaining. I've got something that I've got that could septuple that (multiply it by 7). The single biggest score in one go is 10585 points (from the first puzzle). The second-largest is 8646 (from the second puzzle). Also, I've found that a 750-piece puzzle yeilds a maximum of 142697 points. I scored 19,120 points on it, so that's quite good, 13.4% of the maximum. The 500-piece puzzle yields of a maximum of, I think, 63,789 points. I scored 10,585, 16.6% of the maximum. A 1000-piece puzzle yields a maximum of 189039 points. I have yet to score on one of those. There are only two in the box ya know. In case you're wondering, the previous thought of 72,151 was incorrect. I reworked the math and discovered otherwise. Also, while I'm doing this, I'm also trying to find how how common each of the scoring numbers are. 1's are the absolute most common. 3's are also quite common, they they appear nearly fifteen times less frequent. Much above that, you won't find much else.
#14 108 degrees: From questions I've asked on the online forums, I've found that my animations seemingly work on 108 degrees field of view. That is, if the animations were of a camera view, the camera used would have a field of view of 108 degrees, which is quite wide. Because I had originally estimated that one scale unit was 25 feet of distance, and that one scale unit represented 11/75 of a foot, I posted a question on the HWW forums to get a formula. From there, I found what I was looking for.
#15 Fireworks galore: If all goes well, I could have up to $250 to spend on fireworks. Usually, it'd take 6 years' worth to cover that much, but this is in just one year. My plans are to save $80 each month (starting in March) and by July, I'd have $400 available (at the start of July). I'd like to have some left over for the fair as well which could mean anywhere from $250 to even $300 could be spend on fireworks. With the DSL stuff, I'm now running a bit behind. I had $100 saved from March and I may only get $40 from April making me behind $20. I can only imagine what it would be like to have that much money available for fireworks! I can also picture my sisters' reaction. In a mind game event that I played, the setting was the local fireworks store on July 4. I tell my sister "guess how much you can spend on fireworks". She says "$30". I say "higher". She says "$40, 50, 75, and even 100" and each time I say "higher". She gets a weird look on her face. She then says "$150" and I say "too high". Finally, she says "$125" and I say "jackpot!". I can only imagine her reaction to it.
4. Apr 24, 2005
Apr 24, 2005: Just four days left until I get DSL! My new Radeon 9600 XT video card wasn't as I expected. I've also regained my motive in working on my game. I also ran a backup of my system's files. One new dream has been added as well.
#1 Four days left to go!: As from the previous news entry, I'll be getting DSL on Apr 28, 2005, just four days from now. It seems like 4 days is a lot, but if you put it in terms of 96 hours, it doesn't seem as long. 345600 seconds may seem strange (which is exactly four days) but it doesn't seem like much, considering it's more than 1% of a year. As of now, I can only just simulate DSL downloading in my mind (or mind game). I can't wait for that day to come. Yet, with my sleep-wake cycle as it is, I'm 90% likely to be awake while the guy installs the stuff.
#2 New video card is as slow as the old: Well, I finally got the chance to put the new video card into my computer, however, when I tried to test it out, there was practically no difference in the frame rate. I'm still getting 15 to 20 fps in the tutorial level. This isn't too bad, though, since the level isn't complete, it'll likely get worse. I don't know why either. Radeon 9600 XT is much newer than a Radeon 7000, so why is it just as slow? It's puzzling.
#3 Game design progress: back at it again: After nearly a month, I've finally regained my motive to working on my game again. I started up a new world, one previously unthought of. My goal is at least 20 worlds with at least 1000 levels but these goals have already been somewhat met. The main thing I'd like, however, are more worlds. At this point, I have 22 worlds thought of. If I can come up with 25 worlds, I could have at least 40 levels per world. At this point, it's 50. Though it seems like a lot, the levels are meant to go by quickly, usually taking just a minute to do one level. I've also thought of a new mode in addition to the two previously thought of. The third mode is much different from the first two. Though details are vague at this point, it's basically where you try to find stuff. I lost my motive when I was trying to build my player model and animate him, but no matter what I did or how I did it, the arms area wouldn't work as they should.
#4 Backup complete: I just ran a backup of my computer's files. It takes two CD's to do so. It's the songs directory that's the biggest problem. I've got 900 MB in WAVs and it only compresses to about 500 MB, more than 70% of a full CD. The other stuff, consisting of over 13,000 files, mostly BMP files and GIF files from my animations. Fortunately, the BMPs, though very large, compress very well and the GIFs are small as they are.
#5 One new dream added: With 179 documented dreams at this point, I just keep adding more. The latest dream is dream 6-34 featuring an airshow and a baseball game. I've also noticed that I forgot to upload the images for the two other dreams, 2-22 and 6-31. If I can recall correctly, a show on TV was coming on at that time and I was nearly finished with what I was doing and was rushing to get my noisy computer turned off and I obviously forgot about the images though I did have them only as a BMP file.
#6 My script: I can't tell if the one who received my script got a hold of it or not and began reading it, I have yet to find out.
#7 Jigsaw puzzle scoring: Three down, 7 to go. So far, more score is looking very good and I've managed to score over 20,000 points on a 500-piece puzzle! With the way the puzzle was designed, I could've scored even 30,000, close to half of the maximum, however, I overlooked something and ended up scoring less than I was hoping. I had a group of nearly 200 pieces, but the border consisted of only 130-something so I only got credit for the 120-something. I scored 7626 when I could've scored more than double that, possibly even triple if only I extended on the border.... But still, I scored a monstrous 20655 points from that 500-piece puzzle. Now that I look at it another way, getting 30% of the maximum is of a difficulty around medium instead of extreme. I'm going to have to modify that document with the puzzle game to include updates. I see a fairly easy way to score even 80% of the maximum, which should be the extreme level. Basically, the new modifications should be: 80% - extreme, 50% - hard, 30% - medium, 15% - easy, 10% - baby. This would mean that I'd qualify to beat the medium difficulty level. If I could've fixed the border to make it larger, there would be a chance I'd beat the hard level, but I overlooked that. Remember, it's the smallest group that counts for the most points. I've now drawn a 750-piece puzzle out of the box and I've scored just over 3000 points from the border alone (consisting of about 120 pieces). That could be quite close to the extreme level if it was a 120-piece puzzle, though I don't know what the maximum is for that particular size. If you want to know, you can use the process given in the footnote on the document containing the game's rules. The process isn't too difficult to work with. It's just working backwards and using a little logic and lots of math. Calculators are nice for figuring out the math. As of now, I've scored just a bit over 5800 points for this puzzle. I've got 4 pages of nothing but scoring notations, 7 sides with with the 8th side 40% full. I'm surprised how common 1's seem to be. 3's appear only 10% as much as an approximation. When I'm done doing all ten puzzles, I'm going to tally up the counts for each. The spreadsheet will come in handy, though I may end up with several thousand rows mainly from ones. Anything much above a group of 10 (scoring 55) is rather hard to come by, though it is easy to make and score tons of 78's.
#8 Shower log for Apr 20, 2005: In addition to a travel log, I'm tallying up a shower log as well to take notes of times and numbers. The total time I spent for my shower is 49 minutes. This comprises of 6 minutes finding a shirt and underwear. One shirt had a large hole at the bottom so I had to discard it otherwise I'll pick at the hole and make it bigger making me have to get another shirt anyway. I then spent about 6 minutes adjusting the temperature and getting used of the shower environment (I'm slow at this). The temperature thing is very sensitive. If I move the knob just 1/64th of an inch, the water temperature changed by even 5 degrees Fahrenheit. It's very hard to get it to the right temperature, which is close to body temperature. Then, the time it took me for the actual shower was 32 minutes, which is on my high end. I was distracted by my mental thoughts trying to think of something (don't remember what), which added another 5 or so minutes to the actual time. Then, when I was done, I spent about 5 minutes drying off. Because 90% of the towels are stained, it would take three to four times longer on average to find a towel so I just dry off naturally, by evaporation. The water was running for about 38 minutes. From what I've seen, the cost of the shower is $9.50 (10 cents per gallon at 2.5 gallons per minute). Since the last update, I haven't taken another shower since though my parents are starting to complain again.
#9 Travel log for Apr 20, 2005: I went to go see my sister's new ferret, which is a baby one. It's only like 6 to 7 inches long for the bulk part (not including the tail and feet if stretched). Yet, the baby ferret was shorter than I expected it to be. On my adult ferrets, the span between the legs is nearly a foot for the one 16 inches long (the fat one). The baby is about half as long and is more "scrunched". After that, I went to the car club at Hardee's and did some planning for my game. I got two ideas for new worlds from this plus some measurement ideas to go by. The other two came the next day.
#10 Missing time?: For some reason, when I was going to update my website, it seemed only like 3 days have passed since I last updated it and it seems only like 10 days since I created that animation. It's as if there's some missing time involved somewhere. I can recall a time jump of 5 missing minutes while I was in school. Supposedly, I was getting ready to correct a test I took and the teacher had to go copy something. I stood by the table, watched the teacher leave and started to correct the test. My body formed about a 155° angle while I corrected the test. However, while correcting the test, about even 5 seconds later (likely less), the teacher returned with the stuff copied. I asked her if she just found the stuff already copied (a logical way to look at getting it within 5 seconds), but she said that she did copy everything as needed. I got confused. I asked how she copied the stuff in only 5 seconds. I think she got confused from that as well as myself being confused. So, in short, the only explanation I have for this event is that I somehow ended up with a sudden time jump of about 5 minutes or so. This is my second all-time favorite school-related event. My all-time favorite deals with 8th grade math class about parallel lines in a quadrilateral (a 4-sided polygon without any equal sides or angles). One student thought that lines (forming about even a 30° angle) were parallel. The teacher tried to confirm whether or not they were parallel and the student said that they were. The teacher extended the lines that were believed to be parallel by the student. The teacher then asks if the lines were parallel, even though they very noticably criss-cross each other. The student still believed that they were parallel. This event still makes me laugh today, even six years later. I've had intentions on making an animation featuring this, an animated GIF in particular.
5. Apr 28, 2005
Apr 28, 2005: As you may have expected, I now actually have DSL. I've mass-moved the dreams around to recategorize them and formed three new categories, one you might've expected. Five new dreams have been added as well.
#1 I now have DSL!: As expected from the previous updates, I was going to get DSL on this day and indeed, I did. Boy, I can't believe how fast 1 Mbps is! Before this time, I've never seen a computer load a website using DSL, even this late in the internet days. Now, just because I got DSL doesn't mean my site is going to have bigger files. My site will still be focused toward dial-up users so it loads fast for them. This means still having strong compression, not having tons of images around, nor complicated scripting. It's still a test between GIF and PNG on which compresses better (I still can't tell that well). What very few JPGs I have will still be of the same quality. Although I know about the internet connection trick in the tips and tricks category to tell of how your connection works, I have yet to experiment with DSL before I expand on it and fill up the questionables. Unlike dial-up, there aren't any monitors to indicate data transfer. The next alternative I have for this is the status bar. This update is the first update to my website of my DSL times. Believe it or not, the connection speed has very little to do with the time it takes to update my website. 95% or more of my time is spent typing. This often means an hour or so. It takes but 5 to 10 minutes to upload everything over dial-up. It should be about the same with DSL, however, most of the time is spent trying to get to the right folders. I wonder if there's compression involved. That is, if I upload a blank BMP file (all white with nothing in it of about 640x480), it'd take about 10 seconds to upload with dial-up because a blank BMP compresses extremely well (like 1000 to 1, perhaps better). If DSL uses compression, in which I doubt it, then that blank BMP file would upload in a rather tiny fraction of a second (a blank 640x480 BMP at 24-bit color is 921654 bytes).
#2 Dreams have been mass-moved: The dreams have been mass-moved. I created three new categories for dreams, one you might've expected if you've read the past news stories in my blog (or just remember them). Two aren't so obvious: school and computer. These two categories were mainly used to reduce the list of dreams in the "other" category which took out 12 total. The one you might have heard about are the ones dealing with the travel dreams. If you still don't know, I broke up the travel dreams into two categories: regular travel dreams with little exploration involved (such as simple vacations or vaguely remembered ones), and exploration dreams where I'm exploring certain areas. It took nearly five hours to process all that! All that copying and pasting to move stuff around. Due to this, some of the higher page numbers, especially the last page, have been blanked out and a notice has been put in. The other dreams category now has just ten items in there and I could almost cut that in half by creating a twelfth category: dangerous dreams (as from storms and other otherwise deadly or dangerous situations). I'm debating on this, however. Also in this mass-move update, I've included the most noteworthy dreams in each category.
#3 Five new dreams have been added: In addition to the mass-moving of dreams, five more have been added. The new additions are dreams 5-21 (featuring a flight to California in an unusual airplane), 7-15 (featuring a house on three contients), 9-4 (featuring a high-tech map site), 11-24 (featuring a speeding taxi on slippery roads and a small swim in a river), and 11-31 (featuring a one-year-old dream taking place on another planet). The first four dreams have been the nightly ones and the fifth one is a dream recalled from a while ago. I'm now at 185 documented dreams. Why 185 instead of 184? I noticed that I forgot to add the one featuring the 2D top-down cave game with the low health to the official count for some reason. Sorry about that.
#4 My script: I still haven't heard back from the company yet so I'm starting to get suspicions. I E-mailed the guy again about two or three days ago, but he/she hasn't responded yet. It's a long script so it should take a long time to read, even 3 hours for the fastest readers (those who read in excess of 800 words per minute). I didn't calculate the numbers so this is only a mere guess.
#5 Game development: I've added three new screenshots to my game development (see category 9). Also, I've redesigned the various platforms so you can get a much bigger choice of colors although the choice of sizes still remains the same.
#6 Possibly over even 100,000 points!: Though you may not believe this, on the current 750-piece puzzle I'm working on, I could get even 100,000 points, possibly even 110,000 (of 142697 possible points (maximum), that's 70 to 77% of the maximum)! Even if the extreme level was 80%, it's very possible to make. You just have to plain well, and the bigger the groups get, the more you should plan to score maximum points. With the puzzle only half finished, I've already got 24,300 points. I scored a monstrous 17391 points from inserting a huge group of 186 pieces. I have the potential to score even 73,000 points in one shot!
#7 Shower log for Apr 28, 2005: As my continuing logs go, I'm monitoring various things. This time, my shower took about 35 minutes ± 5 minutes (I failed to check the clock when I went into the shower).
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