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What have you been up to in December of 2005?


If you want to understand the blog and how it's laid out, go here.

1 Dec 29, 2005



Dec 29, 2005: Finally that update was released, but only a public beta and boy have I found a bunch of bugs already. Work on my 3D game can now finally begin again! Christmas was odd this year as well in two ways. My decision to upgrade to XP is now official.

#1 Update to 3DGS finally released: It's been 13 months since the last update to 3DGS, however, it's not an official release, but rather a public beta release. As you'd expect, I found bugs. 19 so far in MED (the model edittor) and one of which is severe (a reproducable crash), two are major, and the rest are generally minor. I have quite a few suggestions mixed in as well and includes steps to reproduce the bugs as short as I can get. From this, I can now start resuming my 3D game's development. Not much has been done in development though due to bugs blocking me from continuing on with anything much more than a simple object. I've redone the water (and the water color is customizable), made a die (you roll these things in some board games) of the low-quality version and started a medium-quality version, but MED kept crashing on me due to the severe bug I ran into. The biggest progress is a base plan for the house world's main floor which has been completed but there's more to it yet than that, however. So far, progress has been going okay, but it has been a little slow.
#2 My odd Christmas year: Christmas 2005 was odd in two ways. First, there was practically no snow on the ground due to it being extremely warm outside and little precipitation falling. There were patches scattered around, but nothing significant (unlike being a foot deep). Second, we opened presents earlier than normal. On Dec 24 at about 1:00 PM or so, we opened presents when it would normally be 6:00 AM or 7:00 AM on Dec 25. The reason for this is because my sister had to work on Christmas day and quite early. Considering that I wouldn't have been awake in time anyway if she did come over, we opened presents early.
#3 What I got for Christmas: I got two five-packs of underwear putting me at 18 available pairs (My dad has over 80 pairs of underwear!). I got a 1000-piece puzzle of which I don't have interest in doing at the moment as I lost interest around April 2005 due to excessive use. I also got an Xbox game called Madagascar, but my parents didn't know that I didn't have an Xbox so the game had to get returned. Considering that, in the last 4 months or so, I haven't touched my console systems and a 2-day burst at it during September, then a longer run of not touching the console systems, this wasn't an exciting gift to me. Rated E10+, it's acceptable in that concept and with 3DGS, I can make my own games. The other thing I got was a $50 gift card for Pizza Hut. Domino's, at least in my area, is cheaper, fullfills my orders, and tastes better, is preferred 3 times more than Pizza Hut, but Pizza Hut, in terms of taste, isn't all that bad either. My sister got me this.
#4 CD/DVD burner on the way: I made my decision to switch to Windows XP. Currently, this is in progress. However, I have an old CD burner (about 5 1/2 years old or so) that may not be compatible with XP. It's a critical component as it's used almost entirely for backup. Since it now takes 3 CD's to run backup, even after running Winzip on everything, it's a discouraging thought. With a DVD disk and DVD burner, I only need one disk for backup and I can fit two (almost three) copied of my backup on a single disk! Even with that slow 8X CD burner burning 3 CD's, it still takes 5 times longer to zip up everything than it does to use that slow CD burner. Once the CD/DVD burner arrives, I'll test it out. I then need to wait a month due to the spending limit having to be reset and once that's done, I can then officially get Windows XP. From what I'm getting on forums and other websites, it is possible to have Windows 98 on one partition and Windows XP on another partition for dual booting, even with an upgrade version. XP Pro upgrade is $199 and tossing in shipping, that adds another $5 or so (from newegg.com). With the CD/DVD burner, I'll come uncomfortably close to the spending limit. Besides that, the only old components left are the floppy drive (7 years old - no drivers needed), and keyboard (6 years old - no drivers needed). I meet system requirements for XP, although I would like to get more memory. For more memory, I'll need to wait another month after getting XP....
#5 4 more dreams added: Now at 321 dreams, four more have been added including one that seems to give an idea what it's like after death and before birth. See the dreams area for the list of new dreams.

2 Dec 18, 2005



Dec 18, 2005: First beta release of 2D game was made but with many hardships causing me to lose a lot of motivation. The entire "about me" section has been rewritten adding in a lot more detail, but without the nonsense I had before. I'm now up to 317 dreams.

#1 First 2D game beta release: The tutorial and challenges are done as well as updating the fog and doing 4 buildings. The first beta has been released as well. So far, everything is going well in terms of development progress. Unfortunately, the Dec 20 release will no longer be available. See news item #2 below for the reasons. It may now be clear until February or even March before it is released officially (not as a beta version, but an official release for sale). The price for it has seemingly been decided upon: US$8.95. Price per additional license has not yet been decided, but probably US$6.95. So far, what remains are 4 more sets of buildings, possibly more, redoing the hills and 5 sets of them, redoing the houses and 8 sets of those, adding in the cars, fixing the clouds, allowing for a free edition, and finally, a thorough testing at the end then updating the manual. I'm kind of thinking of adding in a river just before the hills. Figuring out how to set up shop may be a little tricky though. My webhost apparently comes with software for having a shop so that takes a big bulk of the troubles out of that part of it. There's no shipping involved as it's download delivery which makes it fast. To update you on the looks of the game, here are two screenshots:



Screenshot #1: Four sets of buildings have been done so far and you can see the effects. Although not exactly as I envisioned it a month ago, the same principal is used. Boy do those fractions get stubborn! Even with "nearest common fraction", it's still tricky at times to work with such graphics. Otherwise, the buildings are in good shape, except a road needs to be placed under the buildings rather than grass. I'm now thinking of a possibility in more than 8 sets of buildings, more around 12 or even 16. The further ones, because the windows would be so small and nearly invisible along with the objects on the roof being extremely small, would be extremely easy to do and otherwise quick.



Screenshot #2: This is my favorite screenshot so far. Here, I'm gliding by the mountains just short of the speed of sound. With 54-channel fog, the fade in the distance from fog is more realistic than ever. It's so smooth, you'd almost have to zoom in extremely close to see any seams. That's one of my targetted features of the full edition. It's one of the top ten reasons to get the full edition. As you can see, the hills haven't been done yet.
#2 Motivation for 2D dropped drastically: I was going very strongly with development until I ran into a lot of problems trying to release my first beta. First, WED didn't like the file name I had even though it appeared just fine. Second, even worse, publishing merely copied files which exposed my script of which anyone could read which makes my game utterly useless for selling. I was referred to Molebox, a file packer, but to buy it, I needed a nonfree E-mail address, something I don't have. My webhost supposedly supplies E-mails, however, I keep getting "invalid security certificate" or "security certificate expired" notices which prevent me from even accessing my control panel.... I've had this trouble ever since I used my webhost. Updating my site is done through FTP, which, of course, doesn't require the control panel. This prevented me from ordering Molebox for quite a long time. I finally managed to figure out a way of doing it: order it by phone. That worked out well and was finally able to pack up my first beta version and release it. Due to all this trouble spanning 10 days, my motivation was reduced to just 15% that of what I had. Beforehand, I never even went online from Nov 20 to Nov 23 doing only my 2D game on these days. After running into the first signs of trouble, the progress normally made in 1 day was done in 8 days.
#3 About me document redone: I've often been criticized about the old version of my history with excessive information that doesn't belong. I've finally got to updating it and there's more to it than just an update though. Everything now has far more detail than ever before and without the nonsense. The school document is now the largest single document on my website, twice as big as the recreation of one of my top favorite dreams having the best story of all my dreams. Get to know how school was like, what issues I had in school, my classes and how the classes worked. It's also sectionized so you can easily find something of a particular category. More details about the Triangle YMCA camp and my experiences there (and other special events as well) are also included. About 300KB of pure text has been rewritten almost from scratch. You can also get a sneak peek at some of my old imaginary friends, including hand-drawn images of most of them. The list just goes on. Indeed, it's such a huge update, it's a level 10 update! See the main index and category 4 for details.
#4 Christmas list 2005: My Christmas list for 2005, even to Dec 17, 2005 is otherwise blank. I can't really think of anything I want for Christmas. I'm debating on whether or not I should get a gig of RAM. I've heard from reports that Windows 98 SE doesn't support that much memory and that 512 MB is the limit. I'm still debating on whether or not I want XP. As far as I can think of now, practically all of my issues have been solved except my CD burner. My CD burner, rarely used as it is, mainly for backup (which makes it critically important), is 5 1/2 years old or so by now and the drivers it has may be incompatible with XP. I am, however, sort of thinking of getting a DVD-burner, again, mainly for backup. Currently, I need 3 CD's to do backup with when I could use just one DVD disk having two copies of my backup on a single disk. The MP3 player concept is still somewhat debated on, but not as intensely. So far, there's many things I'm seriously debating on that I might want.
#5 Opening presents late this year?: As my calculations are showing, it could be 11:00 AM that I open my Christmas presents at rather than the usual 6:00 or 7:00 AM. This is just one of the examples what my sleep-wake cycles does to me. By the time I open Christmas presents normally, I'd have only had 4 or 5 hours of sleep when I usually get twice that. This is just based on calculations though and otherwise won't be confirmed until the time comes.
#6 Up to 5x faster with dial-up - false statement in TV ad: There are two TV ads that state that high-speed dial-up is up to 5 times faster. Up to means that it cannot be anything higher. This is a false statement. Try uploading a text document somewhere with only a large bunch of capital U's in it with such a service and it should upload in less than a second, even if it was 100 KB in size (dial-up would normally take 20 seconds to download this, 40 seconds or so to upload). The download is almost instantaneous. It's more like 2 Mbps DSL speed rather than dial-up. Try uploading an allwhite BMP image somewhere and you'll see how fast this uploads. The TV ad says up to 5 times faster. Downloading a file like this is more around 50 times faster, perhaps even more. However, it mainly applies to viewing general webpages and they are right in that downloads of ZIP files, software updates, videos and other media don't really improve. Animated GIFs, however, are an exception as they download around 5 times faster. Why does this happen? File compression. There's an article on HowStuffWorks.com on how file compression works if you want to understand it.
#7 Boston Market - highest nutritional values: 75% of your daily fat needs, 50% of your daily sodium needs. Wow! Those are the highest numbers I've ever seen on one of those nutrition facts labels. If you were to look at Boston Market's Chicken Pot Pie, you'll see just this. These numbers are per serving and there's two servings. I've never seen anything like this, even half this. There was another one from Boston Market with extremely high values for the nutrition facts, but the Chicken Pot Pie one is the absolute highest I've ever seen. I was amazed when I saw that about a month ago when I actually saw it (but forgot to write it down). Disclaimer: I'm not against the company who makes these meals. This is merely a note of amazement.
#8 317 dreams and still counting: 8 more dreams have been added, all of which are from the times between the updates. For details, see the dreams document.
#9 The physics of Santa - yowsers!: Santa - he goes from chimney to chimney delivering presents at every house under the tree. The world is huge and there's probably a billion houses to go to within just 24 hours (or 86,400 seconds). At that kind of speed, you'd need to visit 10,000 houses per second, absolutely phenomenal. Having to deliver toys and other gifts, this is just crazy! The average spacing between houses is around 200 feet. This equates to 2 million feet per second or 1,363,636 4/11 miles per hour and this assumes that he keeps moving constantly without the chimneys and stuff. With the chimneys being added in, that could easily get to even 5 million miles per hour. The Earth goes around the Sun at 67,000 mph and the space shuttle in orbit goes 17,500 mph, tiny in comparison. This high speed, due to atmospheric friction, would fry everything and Santa would otherwise easily fly off into space. Yet, with all that stop and go, that's more accelerative force than gravity has on some stars or about 124533 G's and that's the smoothest possible! The Sun has 330,000 G's and Jupiter has 2.54 G's to put this in perspective. Having to deliver gifts, going through chimneys and back up, it's likely got to be nearly 5 times that having more gravitational acceleration than the Sun! These physics are too intense and otherwise cannot be possible so the concept of Santa going down the chimney is otherwise physically impossible. The only other possible way for him to be able to do that is if he slows down time which is currently not known on how it can be done. Those kinds of speeds involve time travel into the future, which actually adds more to the effect. These physics don't really add up. Those G forces could easily shatter the sleigh he rides in and the friction could otherwise burn up everything. Yet, just to do as Santa needs, he has to go even faster to work around the time travel into the future bit. It doesn't add up to much though, maybe a second or two, hardly anything so the time travel part would otherwise have almost no considerable effect.

3 Daily Events



Dec 1: Spent most of the day making the game manual for my 2D game. That is almost done, about 70% complete. I didn't go online at all during the day. Besides the 2D game manual, it was TV. I may have a way to allow for time control to have a huge range and still be fast. High precision matters more. Not sure if I got my motive back, but it seems so to some extent. Dec 20 release? Not sure. Woke up at 8:42 PM and went to bed at 11:41 AM.
Dec 2: No dream this time either. Now, I've got yet another problem to figure out. The help file was completed to what I can think of. Then I tried out Molebox, a file packer. That went well, better than expected except that the file size was 1 MB higher than I thought it would be. I then try to order Molebox, but the fact that my only E-mail address I have was not accepted at both available ordering sites, I was completely unable to order it. So I had to contact support. Yet another day down the drain. With this incident, I spent the rest of the day on the forums, and, again, watching TV, mostly CNN Headline News, one of my favorite channels. Tomorrow, I should check my E-mail for replies to this issue. If no response or don't get anywhere, I'm not sure what to do next. 54-channel fog would be the most likely rather than the current 36-channel fog. Late in the day, I'll go to the grocery store - need pizzas and cereal mainly. Woke up at 9:09 PM and went to bed at 11:52 AM (±2 minutes).
Dec 3: Woke up and spent 35 minutes writing details n a dream. I then went on the forums. After "cleaning" them out, I began redoing the 2D game's fog. It now uses 54-channel fog rather than 36-channel fog. The modifications were made and tested. Then, while trying to go grocery shopping, I took a shower. Afterwards, I began doing the buildings for my 2D game's city background. One layer of 8 expected is nearly done. Then, late in the day, I went out. First it was Wal-mart. I was left out in the van in the cold for about 20 minutes. Next, it was Menard's. My parents and housework is the cause. Finally, it was the grocery store where I got hung up in line due to some customer doing something. Doing a movie rental was the last thing. I didn't go in as I had no real need to. I'm surprised that it's been nearly a year since I last rented a game. Ten years ago, I couldn't go a day without playing my games. I returned home 4 hours later. During the trip, there was someone's house being a destination, supposedly to deliver hamburgers. Earlier, I tried to do an experiment where I scale the size of the background objects when the scaling is changed, but this didn't work out at all and was otherwise rejected immediately. Woke up at 11:30 PM (±5 minutes) and went to bed at 8:11 PM, awake for almost 24 hours (still less than half my record).
Dec 4: Another dream to add. Much of the day was spent on the forums and watching TV. The buildings for layer 1 are now completed and layer 2 is started. Layer 1 has been tested, but through some thinking, there is a chance, though small, that I'll need to redo them. Still no answers to my current issues. Woke up at 5:45 AM (±5 minutes) and went to bed at 6:58 PM.
Dec 5: The second set of buildings have been done. I finally figured out a way to get Molebox and released the first beta version soon after. Besides that, much of the day was spent on the forums and watching TV. Woke up at 5:28 AM and went to bed at 10:29 PM.
Dec 6: With a poll, my 2D game's ratings of componetns are all in positive territory, some quite well into it, even though it isn't entirely complete yet. In my poll, 3 stars counts as zero. 2 stars is -1 and 1 star is -2. 4 stars is +1 and 5 stars is +2. From 7 votes, all are at least +1 with quite a few at +7. That sort of came as a surprise to me. A third set of buildings have been processed. Outside that, and a lot of TV (mainly educational stuff and a few cartoons), nothing else happened. I plan on doing the 4th set of buildings tomorrow then updating my site. Woke up at 5:45 AM (±10 minutes) and went to bed at 9:59 PM.
Dec 7: The fourth set of buildings has now been done. I spent nearly two hours, however, trying to get maximum precision. It's those stubborn fractions and that trash after the decimal that makes it difficult. First it was setting the window widths and spacing as close as possible. Second, it was scaling the layers to the right size and spacing that really stole time, nearly 90 minutes. Despite all that, layer 4 is done. I also found a bug with the game. Set the scale of close mountains to, say, 500 and get up high, the ground looks weird. This was due to a speed improvement that I made. Between TV and the forums, that's what the day was all about. At the end, however, I began finishing up the "my school history" report. Woke up at 7:34 AM and went to bed at 1:52 AM.
Dec 8: Finally, I got another dream. Much of the day was spent on the forums and watching TV. I'm now much less motivated to visit HWW - one of my big enemies (compatibility at 207) became an admin. This'll cut my visits to 25% that of was I was doing the days before. Toss in the near-zero activity, that adds to it. A year ago, I was there around 20 hours a week. Recently, about just one hour, and with this, an hour a month. It's a huge difference. The 3DGS forums, however, have been increasing (ratio-wise in terms of visiting). I only made a few small changes though for my 2D game, very few. Woke up at 11:20 AM (±10 minutes) and went to bed at 1:13 AM.
Dec 9: Forums and TV were the first things. While checking my E-mail, I noticed that I had over 350 spam messages in my junk mail folder, which equates to nearly 500 spam messages per week! Normally, I get from 150 to 400 spam messages per week, but very rarely anything over 400. The range I've given is the typical range and it has stood generally true for a long time. Then, later in the day, I finished typing up details about my history with school. Another document is nearly done. I've got probably two more before the whole thing is done. The school document is just huge - over 100 KB! I'm also surprised in that, since that cold sore, I've had a bit split in my lips since, nearly a month later. Christmas is getting near, but I don't have any list yet. Also the physics and math behind Santa caught my attention. See news item #9 for details on this. Woke up at 11:57 AM and went to bed at 4:58 AM.
Dec 10: I woke up at 9:00 AM, 11:00 AM, noon, and finally at 1:43 PM. My nose was giving me trouble at the start. Other than that, I selpt fine. It's one of the main reasons why I hate my nose and why I wished that I never had one. When I woke up, however, I began watching CNN Headline News. Then, when I was going to take a shower, I had to wash my underwear so my mom would get the stuff at the grocery store that I needed a lot. I was in a rush to be in the shower before my parents got home. I washed them and planned out what I should do to optimize time usage. I used my time optimization skills and if I didn't, I'd have been late. When mom came home, I just had the water running for my shower and when they open the door, the water was running for just a half of a second. That's how close I was! Late in the day, I went on the forums. I then finished updating parts of my history. Stories section is completed and a small part of the major fears document is completed. Oh, and the major issues document was finished up beforehand as well. Woke up at 1:43 PM and went to bed at 3:32 AM.
Dec 11: Had a weird dream featuring a pencil eraser as a supertelescope and a supermicroscope. Much of the day was spent on the forums and updating the "my history" part. It should be done in about 3 days from now. I have to update my favorites and add in details about special events I've had. I checked out a forum that I found in my site's stats. Had another weird mind game event. In it, I was snowboarding trying to perform the best stunts and tricks. I casted create to create a special snowboard. I use the speed blast to blast off and take off on the half-pipe stunt course. In it, I do a jump a over 500 mph going straight up. I wait to decelerate and land again. I land perfectly, but going nearly 600 mph. At the other end, I jump and immediately use the flash attack giving me 746 mph straight up. At the top of this 3.9 mile jump, I use the pound stomp. I pound the ground at 1491 mph creating a shockwave so intense, it sends everyone watching nearly 500 feet away from me. The weird part is that the snowboard roke and I found an otherwise unknown underground cavern which caved in 6 seconds after impact. I don't recall anything else though. Woke up at 2:09 PM and went to bed at 5:56 AM.
Dec 12: Got another dream, a mix between exploration and video game, mostly exploration. Most of my day was spent watching TV. I watched CNN Headline News, Decoding the Past, and listening to Forensic Files. You might be wondering in that Forensic Files, often rated TV-14, is not for me. I only listen to these kinds of shows, I just don't watch them. Another common thing was being on the 3DGS forums as usual. I managed to finish the favorites part and I still have the "special events" part left along with finalization. After that is the usual update: blog and dreams. Oh, I also watched the original Toy Story as I haven't seen it in like 2 years. Woke up at 4:19 PM and went to bed at 5:11 AM.
Dec 14: The first half of the day was spent swapping between TV (space stuff mainly) and the forums. Beyond that, for the second half of the day, I spent it writing details about my experiences at Triangle YMCA Camp. That section is nearly completed in full. Rich, high detail without the "nonsense" I had earlier. Six sections are thought of so far, 1 of which, the biggest, is nearly done and 3 are short and/or quick. I'm also thinking of an "other" page which has things like marriage, the Jun 13, 2006 event predicted nearly 9 1/2 years ago, and other things. I also need to relook over the music section now that I think about it. It's like 4 months old or so. I've also returned to illage Zone, again. I returned after only 4 days away from it. Woke up at 5:28 PM and went to bed at 7:50 AM.
Dec 15: The special events part is done. Finalization is the main thing left then the usual thing - blog and dreams. I'm nearly finished! I didn't spend as much time watching TV as there really wasn't much on. According to some calculations, I'd be going to bed within an hour or two of opening presents on Christmas. I switched songs again to Winter Land. This isn't the Christmas song you might know, but it's round 5-1 from Ristar, a Sega Genesis game. I have another possible theory on the long lingering issue I have with Firefox. The theory is that, if the history is too long, the copy effect occurs. I'm still getting it, but much less often for some reason. Woke up at 6:15 PM and went to bed at 9:02 AM (±1 minute).
Dec 16: Rather than TV, forums, or my games, 2/3 of the day was spent drawing my imaginary friends for my website. 20% of the time drawing them was from calculating things, calculating curves mainly as well as getting lines parallel with each other. 50% of the time drawing them was spent erasing mistakes and trying to fix them. 25% of the time drawing them was spent scanning and fixing up the image. The remaining 5% was from finalization (such as doing a GIF versus PNG test, updating the document to contain this new information). While drawing them, I was so surprised at how high-res my vision is. I can see details as fine as 1/512 of an inch in complete focus and I could see the squiggly lines of my pencil marks. Also, when I scanned the images, I was surprised at how parallel the lines actually were! I didn't use a ruler either, just my high-resolution vision. The rest of the day was spent online. I checked my E-mail to see 340 spam messages, meaning about 476 spam messages per week which is quite a ways above my usual average. I couldn't go to the HWW forums due to a ton of strange warnings and errors and wow was everything messed up. There was hardly anthing on TV at all and the 3DGS forums were quite dull. 750 plays of Winter Land already (670 extras). It seems like 70% of the true speed is the best for this song with the 1K equalizer band maxed out and the 3K equalizer band set quite high. I still have the "other" section of my history update remaining, but now I'm despirate to updating my website as it's been nearly 3 weeks now. Still got the dreams and blog to update yet. Woke up at 7:01 PM and went to bed at 12:44 PM.
Dec 17: Most of the day was spent updating my website. 317 dreams is now my current count. A small part of the blog was updated, half of the headlines. I had to go grocery shopping as well as I was out of both pizzas and cereal. Before going, however, my dad had to fix a leaky faucet for someone and this was otherwise quick. After this, I went to the grocery store as expected. My dad had to stop at wal-mart as well. Then, since I wanted Domino's I got it as well. I showered as a result of doing this. When I came home, I ate then went to bed. I intend strongly on finishing the update to my site tomorrow. Also, maybe another first - opening presents late. Normally, it's 7:00 AM or so, but my calculations are now showing more around 11:00 AM, 4 hours later than normal. The song is still going strong and now it's stuck in my mind. Woke up at 9:58 PM and when to bed at 1:00 PM.
Dec 18: Much of the day was spent updating my website. Two documents still remain for the history section - my special abilities and other things. I was on the forums part of this time while updating, but mainly at the start of the day and after the final update. One of my dogs has been acting very strange lately. It is all over another dog and if forced away, it wines like crazy and otherwise extremely annoying. I doubled the normal bath time for him while I washed the other dog. Much of this double time was doing nothing to him. A few small, light whacks when whining got crazy was about it. For tomorrow, my intent is to finish those other parts that remain. 1600 plays on Winter Land already and still counting and going strong. Woke up at 12:03 AM and went to bed at 3:53 PM.
Dec 19: I woke up around 11:50 PM due to my stubborn nose. I couldn't get back to sleep again. Whine, whine, whine. That was all that stupid dog did. It got locked up to minimize the whining's loudness to me. Besides that, I made the E-mail logo graphic to replace the old link. It has a 3D design and sort of colorful - too colorful for GIF. Much of my day was spent on the forums. I don't recall much else though. Woke up at 11:50 PM and went to bed at 6:12 PM.
Dec 20: Had another dream with four recalled scenes and no real story to it. I contacted Spy Sweeper's support center by phone on my long-lingering issue. I was put on hold for 20 minutes and had to submit my system information (and NFO file). This was for escalation and for a higher level of tech support. Don't you just love that when you get put on hold for 20 minute just to submit system specs for evaluation? Almost the entire day was spent on the forums, although I did write an article for tips on buying a new computer and what to look for and more. Since I was at it, I updated the E-mail notice on my site. Woke up at an unknown time and went to bed at 9:59 PM.
Dec 21: It's the first day of winter. I made a Christmas card for a friend, but printer was and still is giving me trouble. I tried to contact HP for support, but wouldn't help without paying $30. Now that's bad tech support, the worst I've ever seen! (And no, I'm not against HP or its products). I had to use the forums for tech support (printer prints darker than it should with very little contrast compared to the image on my screen). Much of the day was spent on the forums. I washed my clothes and removed the last of the staples from the ceiling as nothing was going on on the forums at the time. The staples were from adding wallpaper to the ceiling a month earlier. Other than that, I don't recall anything else. Woke up at 5:38 AM and went to bed at 8:58 PM.
Dec 22: Most of the day was spent on the forums, occasionally with TV added in. I also asked if I qualify for joining the 3DGS beta team as it's too close to tell for me, especially the "tutorials" aspect. I watched the weather to see that the total rain for the year is at 23.99 inches when average is 18.26 inches, about 31 3/8% more. Woke up at 7:30 AM and went to bed at 10:08 PM (±2 minutes).
Dec 23: Forums, TV, and a new 2D animation meant to replace my old avatars on the forums. The animation is of a beach by a huge lake with aquatic green plants extending out. It demonstrates the pound stomp (and the shockwave) and took 6 hours to process the whole thing. This took up about half the day. I have yet to update the "image collection" document for this new animation. Had another dream, mostly fitting the weird category and a favorite. I'm now running at 4000 plays on Winter Land with probably another 400 to 500 on my MP3 player. Had a funny mind game event as well. A pirate on a pirate ship (as from the 1600's or something) tells me to do something. I refuse. The pirate mentions "walking the plank". I still refuse. The pirate takes me to the plank. At the edge, I jump a short ways, use the flash attack straight down into it bending the plank, jump at the fastest I can get then use the flash attack straight up going 280 mph at this point straight up. I look straight down at the confused pirates. At the top of the climb up, I pound stomp on the plank. I'm thrown up at 330-something mph with the flash attack giving 430-something. I wait to decelerate then use the bounce stomp then flash when heading up. I get 7 miles high from this. At the top, I pound stomp in the middle of the ship dealing tremendous damage. The collision with the water, due to the "walk on water" ability gives the huge shockwave which busts the pirate ship. I jump and immediately use the flash attack from here then glide away to safety while the pirate ship and pirates sink into the water. The shockwaves from the pound stomp at about 1700 mph create waves about 40 or so feet high! Woke up at 8:03 AM (±3 minutes) and went to bed at 11:01 PM.
Dec 24: It's Christmas Eve! The first public beta release for 3DGS was released yesterday and I didn't notice it until early today. Having seen it mentioned in one of the threads I read, I found it. Since then, I've been at using MED all day and found 12 bugs, one of which is major and the rest are generally minor, most of which I can reproduce. The new MED isn't as good as I thought it was, but it is considerably better and has the much-needed feature that stopped me from continuing on with my 3D game - external textures. There hasn't been much change in WED or SED though. I also opened Christmas gifts early. See news item #2 above for details on why and news item #3 for what I got for Christmas. Woke up at 9:01 AM and went to bed at 1:05 AM (±2 minutes).
Dec 25: My estimate time of 11:00 AM a week ago was only off by 40 minutes. Due to opening presents early, it's based on the time I wake up which is usually the time presents are opened. Much of the day was spent on the forums. While waiting for anything new, I redone my platforms to allow for many more different sizes. I'm now up to 18 bugs with MED including another major bug. I'm still learning the new version. I've now officially decided to get XP. First is replacing my old CD burner then waiting a month due to the spending limit. For further details, see news item #4 above. Finally, progress with my 3D game can take off. At the end of the day, I began modifying the 3D game's manual. The introduction, features, and goals were redone. I started the history part of the 3D game, the origins of it, but only fixed the basic formatting. Implementing LOD on my water should be the next thing I do - the water's already done and just needs to be imported and LOD programmed in. Woke up at 10:19 AM and went to bed at 3:03 AM.
Dec 26: Forums and researching digital cameras and MP3 players made up most of the day. Mom was supposedly going to get me a digital camera for Christmas, but didn't know what I wanted. Since I'm almost never out, I don't see much sense in getting a digital camera. An MP3 player makes more sense though. A previous attempt at getting an MP3 player failed due to a virus on the CD that made the MP3 player nothing more than a $100 stopwatch. I had to return it for this reason. I also tried modelling a die, but a rotational bug in MED is preventing me from doing much of it. The textures have been created, however and the calculations are done. Next, I typed up the "special abilities" section on my website leaving only the "other" section left. Finally, I finished most of the manual for George Game 13 reformatting it. I still need to write about the other modes I have and the manual should be complete up to the point where I can. It sort of functions as a design document. Woke up at 12:40 PM and went to bed at 4:07 AM.
Dec 27: Woke up at 7:20 AM with a severe stomach ache, but got rid of it. At the official wake up time, I was okay. I had a recalled dream as well. Much of the day was spent on the forums. I also found a severe bug in MED causing MED to crash and it can be easily reproduced. Yet, someone else could confirm the bug as well. 19 and still counting. Even someone from Conitec, the company that made 3DGS, was amazed on how many bugs I found. Everyone else has reported fewer bugs than I have as a total (like me having 19 and everyone else totalled gives 16, just as an example). I must be more thorough, I tend to notice things more often than others, or unlike others, I head for trying to break the program whereas others do normal things. Oh well, nothing else happened as far as I know. Woke up at 1:00 PM (official time) and went to bed at 5:55 AM (±3 minutes).
Dec 28: The day can be split into two parts. The first was swapping between TV and the forums about 3 times. Not much was going on in both. Then, recalling the house world of my 3D game and a mind game event, I began mapping out the base plan for the house world. It's about 40% done so far, the first floor being 85% done. So far, it's looking spectacular although the colors are kind of dull. It's the positioning and labelling that matters much more. Other than this, nothing else happened of significance. New CD/DVD burner should be arriving either tomorrow (doubtful) or the day after (most likely. This means running backup before installation and I'd like to update my site beforehand. Woke up at 2:04 PM and went to bed at 5:43 AM.
Dec 29: The main floor of the house map is done. I then updated my website. It didn't take long to do, much shorter than I thought. Toward the end of the day, I began writing the short story for George Game 13. It's about 1/3 completed. I'm now passing 6,000 plays with Winter Land with low signs of getting bored of it. I can expect to reach 8000 before the strong signs come. 9000 is my limit. Woke up at 3:37 PM and went to bed at 6:43 AM.
Dec 31: My CD/DVD burner came! After cleaning out the forums, I ran backup. For details on how the installation of my new CD/DVD burner went, read news item #3 for the Jan 2006 blog entry. Besides this, I also went grocery shopping, showering beforehand. The first store I went to is where I got everything except my pizzas as they didn't have any. When getting Hamburger Helper, I noticed an oddball in the prices. All Hamburger Helper prices (about 20) were $2.35, but one of them had $2.36 so I suspected a typo. I told the staff about it and they, too, thought it was odd, but it was correct. The price tag was actually 3 months old too. None of the staff even noticed it. Besides that episode, I got my pizzas at a different grocery store. I also went to the bank, Wal-mart (had to wait outside in the car - 99% of the store is blocked by mirrors), and one other place. I returned home, put groceries away, then went to bed. 2/3 of the story for George Game 13 has been completed and so far, it's going well. That was about the only other thing to note. I tested using a hex edittor to change the sample rate for WAV files just as WinDAT does, my 11 2/3-year-old program from the Windows 3.1 days. It worked flawlessly. The only thing that remains now is testing recording. Woke up at 3:27 PM and went to bed at 11:48 AM (±3 minutes).



Go to another time:
Earlier than 2005: Earlier than Nov 2004 | Nov 2004 (and late Oct 2004) | Dec 2004

Year 2005: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

Year 2006: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

Year 2007: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

Year 2008: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

Year 2009: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

Year 2010: Yet to arrive....

The news entry headlines in bold are color-coded for a reason. They tell how big the event was for the headlines and how good my day was for the daily entries. From May 2006 onward, a slightly different system is used, of which has triple the precision. For dates prior to this that use color coding, from the white color, skipping two to red and so on is used. Here's what each color represents (for updates to before May of 2006):

Extremely major event / Very good day
Major event / Good day
Somewhat major event / Somewhat good day
Normal event / Average day
Somewhat minor event / Somewhat bad day
Minor event / Bad day
Extremely minor event / Very bad day


Footnotes:
* My hypercount ability is a special ability that allows me to count extremely fast. It comes in two versions. The first is that I can almost instantly recognize 5 of something and every time a new object is added, I take twice as long to identify it. I usually only need a tenth of a second to identify 5 of something. If I had 9 of something, I normally take 2 seconds to count that many. The second version is useful with highly repetitive tasks as in the case of counting characters by repeatedly pressing the right arrow key. With hypercount, I can count to 64 in about 12 seconds actually. I slow down as it's hard on my hands using the 12-second speed. That's 5 counts per second. I call it "hypercount" as hyper, in the case of hypersonic and hypernova, means "extreme" or "well beyond". A normal, fairly fast human could count to 20 in the same time it takes me to use hypercount to 50! I can count to ten in under a second at my absolute fastest.