What have you been up to in July of 2005?

1 Jul 7, 2005

Jul 7, 2005: Definitely some records have been set for this year's Independence Day. New hard drive installed - all on my own too. MP3 player is also coming. A massive update for my website is now in the works, but slowly. 6 new dreams have been added.
#1 Fireworks Galore: It happened exactly as I had it planned since March except for one part: my sister had work late that day. Although I had intentions of getting like $150 in fireworks, the actual amount came to $102.98, very close to what I was intending on. This is with 7% tales tax included. All other years, it was usually no more than $30 total and last year, the limit was only $15, very discouraging. This year, however, I've more than tripled that. From my calculations, I had a total of about 1102 fuses to light. This was a bad decision. I spent a whole hour just trying to unwrap everything. I started lighting them at 6:20 PM. My sister did come and with a stash of $34 worth. I spent more than triple that, but then again, I have an extremely high interest in these things. However, unlike most anything else, I got a monster in my stash as well. Not wanting to forget this record-setting year, I took four photos. To enlarge the photos, just simply click on them. I've shrunk them to half the size because they're 1152x864, too big for many.

Ever wonder what $103 in fireworks looks like? This is what it looks like. The unpacked objects are punks, things to light fireworks with. However, there are two odd things with this photo. Can you figure out what they are?

For the last three years, I've gotten these things. The two years beforehand, these were the biggest fireworks I got. However, these aren't all that much compared to the monster.

This is the monster. It's the biggest firework that even the entire family has ever gotten! It costed $40 for it (without sales tax). This thing was quite impressive, like a bunch of artillery shells going off in short succession.

The special thing about this fireworks is what's on this label. Sorry about it being blurred, I have no other photos available. If you can't read it, it says "maximum powder allowed by law". I find that surprising. Well, 500 grams of powder does seem a bit much and this thing does seem quite heavy, a lot of the weight coming from the cardboard inside.

#2 New hard drive installed on my own: My new hard drive arrived on Jul 5. Knowing the events from around November 2004 about the unusually high frequency of defective computer products, I wanted to test this. This hard drive came from newegg. Why did I get the hard drive you may ask? Two reasons, speed being the main reason. The other reason was that the old hard drive was 5 1/2 years old which bothered me some. Capacity was at the bottom of the list of my concern. The hard drive is actually 37.5 gigabytes for capacity. I have 30 gigs of free space meaning that only 7.5 gigs have been used. The interesting thing about the hard drive is that I installed it all on my own with practically no help at all needed. The minus about this is that I had to do a partition and format as well, I wasn't directly expecting that although it was possible. When you buy floppies, you don't have to go by and format every single one of them to make them be useful. I figured that I didn't have to do that with the hard drive. Running the backup took far longer than expected. I'm now at the edge of having to use 3 CD's to run backup. I spent six hours doing the backup but about 2 to 3 hours installing drivers and programs. This gives some need to get a DVD burner because DVD's have 4.7 GB capacity, I can fit three copies of my backup on just one DVD disk which is quite substantial. Also, when trying to do the partition and format, my computer kept trying to boot from the CD drive instead of the floppy drive, even though I made that change in the BIOS, it somehow reverted back again. Program installation went slower than expected, however, it's likely my 4-year-old CD burner that may be the cause. It has an 8x write speed for sure and, I think, a 12x read speed. Unlike a full system restoration, I didn't have to write zeros to the hard drive which takes another 80 minutes to do. This completely erases everything, including any viruses that are stored on the hard drive and formats can't do this as, from what I know, a regular format only strips the headers off of each file which causes a mess. I finally finished at 6:40 AM, way later than expected. If my new hard drive works well for some time, I'll likely sell my old one on Ebay for a small return. It's still in good condition, though it's very slow with limited capacity.

#3 MP3 player also coming: Why would I get an MP3 player when I already have one? Lots of good, strong reasons. Consider this comparison table between my old one and the new one and answer for yourself:

Feature	Old player	New player (supposedly)	Usefulness (0 to 10 with 5 being neutral)
Capacity^***	700 MB (287539.2 seconds (3 1/3 days) of nonstop music) - swap disks to get more	1.5 GB (629145.6 seconds (7 2/7 days) of nonstop music) - don't know if it's expandable or not	3 - low
Fixing mistakes	Spend 30¢ and 25 minutes to burn another CD	Just replace the file or delete the existing one	8 - high
Perfecting the speeds available	Burn about 6 or 7 CD's for experimenting	Just transfer freely - delete ones that don't sound good or add more that can potentially be better.	8 - high
Add-ons	Bass control only	5-channel equalizer - far better	7 - medium-high
Problems	Can't use track repeat for extended time - machine will turn off on it's own or suddenly pause without warning	Don't know fully yet, but the refurbished fact bothers me strongly^*	6 - medium
Sound hookup	Big bulky speakers connected through a not-so-tight wire that have too strong of bass.	Don't know yet	ERR
Song count limit	300 files - very annoying	Supposedly unlimited, but uncertain^**	9 - very high
Getting to songs	Pressing the "next track" key nearly a hundred times or more or by searching, which is even slower	Uncertain	ERR

Table footnotes:
* From the November experience, I got a refurbished monitor and it was defective each time. This strongly bothers me, but couldn't find anything else in my budget. Things are returnable, however.
** If you don't know what I mean, the old MP3 player has a limit of 300 songs, period. Even if only 2 megabytes were used on the CD, you couldn't get any more than 300 songs on that MP3 player. The real limit should actually be disk space or memory. If I have a bunch of 150 KB songs, I should easily be able to get at least 10,000 songs on that MP3 player.
*** The length of time the music can last nonstop is calculated. Since my CD's tend to store 702 MB and I usually use 16 or 24 Kbps, mostly 16 but occasionally 32, I considered the average of 20 Kbps or 2.5 kilobytes per second.

As you can tell from this, the advantages are strong and powerful. Yet, because my current MP3 player is in decent condition, I could sell it on Ebay for a decent return.
#4 Massive site update: To make navigation easier and to help me with the footnotes, a massive update is in the works. The new style is basically the same, except much more categorized and organized. Instead of just individual sections, you'll now see subsections and subsections within those to further organize it and help point to things in the massive footnote index yet to be made. The colors, however, will remain practically the same except the banner colors highlighting different sections. The documents that haven't been updated in a long time will be done first. The footnote index will be the last thing I process. With everything changing, it's tough to point to something when it just ends up getting changed later. The mind game report is almost finished and I've got higher quality images being used for it. My extreme activity with the online forums really slows everything down. I can't seem to keep away from even using them to some extent and when I'm finished and hardly anything is going on, I have a hard time getting off. It's been almost 4 years since I've been with them....
#5 6 new dreams added: Now at 227 dreams, 6 new ones have been added. The new dreams are 2-29 (featuring Metroid and a strange case with the lava), 4-7 and 4-8 (both featuring a dog), 5-29 (featuring a stay at an undecorated hotel with a strange thing in the upper floors), 5-30 (featuring gliding through my Canada trip's route), and 10-14 (featuring a race in a school in which the school is weird; 85% in tact!). Boy, I can only remember the days when I had only ten dreams on my site and it was days or weeks before one was even added. I can even remember the days in which I had only 50 dreams, but, by then, the count really shot up and my dream journal has really accelerated now passing 220 dreams. The list of dreams is just so long and increasing rapidly. I'm helping to speed it up by writing everything down as I encounter them. It's about the only way I'm going to remember dreams with a high in tact percentage....
#6 Other daily events: Now for the unimportant stuff, just things that have gone on during the times between updates.
Jun 30: I began working on my main game again. I've redone the buildings part way far faster than I did before. Why did I redo them after 5 days of work? Easy: speed, poly count, and better design. I had a bit short of 700 buildings before with 14,000 polies. This was hurting the frame rate, dropping it by 24 fps (from 30 with them to 54 without them). The new version has exactly 1200 buildings, 12,000 polies (exactly) and I have far more choices for building textures than I did before. I could almost use 9 different textures instead of the single one texture I've got now. Time needed to make: far less. Why far less? Now what do you suppose copying and pasting is all about? However, changing the buildings means that I'm going to need to change the roads as well, but, again, copying and pasting should come in very handy for this. The new design could also allow for the sloped roads again as well but that means a lot of work to being able to process that.... The only thing missing is the detail mapping, which gives roughness to the objects. Also spent some of the day updating my website as well.
Jul 1: My original plan for the surprising my sister was unlikely to happen. This means that also going to the fair is next to impossible as well, although still possible. A taxi is definitely out of the question - I don't feel like paying $15 to get there and back. Admission fees for three days costs more than that! I managed to save up $380 worth. I used some of these savings for the hard drive and MP3 player, but I can get a return from those by selling what I'm replacing on Ebay as they're in good condition and should sell quite well. I've been having some small intentions on getting XP, but, from what I can recall, it's $200 for it! It's awefully expensive and quite well out of the question. Much of my hard ware is compatible with XP though the CD burner is questioned (it's 4 years old, maybe a little older) and the keyboard strongly questioned (5 1/2 years old). Don't know exactly about my motherboard however, though it seems possible. The processor is rather on the slow end, but these things are very pricy.
Jul 2: Went to the fireworks store and set my target for $100. It all worked out exactly as I had it planned for myself anyway. I also bought some pencils. I had two short ones that were less than 4 inches long each and had no others. So, I bought a pack of 60 of them. Without pencils, I'd have to use pens. In order to remember all this some to this great of detail, I definitely need to write it down or the chances of forgetting are 80% which is not acceptable at all. Since around April, I've been doing this to help remember. Even though I haven't played Sonic (or any video game at that outside my own creation), I'm still thinking about fox and blue water. I started the massive update for my website as well beginning with the mind game report. If you probably remember from 2002 or so, I had that Shakespeare play going on during June (with the severe storm at the end that I predicted with great accuracy). During the play, while waiting for my cue, I had my mind game running. I had two characters from the early 1800's in my party and I levelled them up to the extremes. What does this have to do with it? The menu screen is more comprehensive and high resolution with better image quality (lighting in particular). The accuracy of it is far greater than what it is currently. Also, because house repairs and modifications are in the works and because it was the dumb weekend (bad luck for me), I had to yank staples out from where the old carpet was. This stopped me from finishing my image I was working on.
Jul 3: Got into a small fight around 10:45 AM, mostly a verbal one. Again, it's stupidity that was the cause. From earlier, my dad wouldn't change the channel to monitor the severe weather heading for us, this caused a long arguement and it was pure stupidity that was to blame. This case was the same too, stupidity. Basically, I was trying to eat my pizza rolls. I had no where else to eat except by the door due to the big mess in my two other areas. Suddenly the dogs began barking like crazy. Being dumb, my dad tried to step over me which would end up making him step in my food. There was a clear path around me with a much shorter distance and he just couldn't use that. I blocked him from doing it and a verbal fight began. He eventually did go around to get what he was after sitting 4 feet away (perhaps a little more) from where he was trying to get from (hard to reach), but, if he just went around, even though I told him many times to do so, he would've only had to reach out two feet, perhaps a little less. He threw a pickle/pepper top (can't tell what, they look identical) which very likely hit my food. My last three pizza rolls out of nearly 40 (and they were getting cold) were wasted. I quickly picked them up and threw them gently at the door for the dogs to get to. I picked up my 18 or so paper towels from degreasing and threw them in the trash. I then washed my hands quickly then went to my room as if going on a self-induced time out to settle down. Usually, children hate time outs and stuff, but there's a strong, good reason for them - to settle down. I go to my room on my own to settle down in the same fashion as a time out, however, I do get some privileges, mainly music, paper and pencil. I had paper and pencil to write stuff down and music to help me relax faster. From this high grade stupidity, his compatibility dropped 33 units in just that 1-minute verbal fight. Though it seems like a lot, it really isn't much around the 750 area. This had double the impact from the weather impact. A friend is anyone who has a compatibilty of 800 or higher. Dad, now in the low 700's, is below that quite a bit. Dumb, weird math formulas make it hard to figure the precise values in great depth (the formula to calculate compatibilty strength is quite screwy). The only family member I live with that is considered a friend is my mom, who's in the high 800's (which is about 5 to 7 times stronger than what my dad has (yes, it's a screwy formula, this is just an estimate from memorized values)). He, eventually, apologized for the event and I accepted the apology. Such things are very rare. In fact, the last time I had something this intense or worse was over 2 years ago (don't recall the type though). Just like dogs and any other organism, humans do get into fights as well, thankfully this was just a verbal one. I later spent the early part of the day helping with the floor - forced to by parents (low-luck weekends). Later on, I bought an MP3 player, from suggestions within the forums I frequent. The rest of the day was spent on the forums. I'm also having strong intentions of making a board game - one following the concepts from a very long time ago (well over a decade even).
Jul 4: Early part of day was spent watching TV. I also ordered Domino's again. The funny thing is is that they let me have the pizza for 20% off of what the coupons offered! However, I didn't get as much cheese as I did before, probably because I got thin curst. I'll try again later with menu priced hand tossed, which is what I like most. Much of the day's events are covered above.
Jul 5: Spent first part of the day on the forums then began doing backup and stuff to try out my new hard drive. A large portion of the day was spent doing just this. During the process, I captured another 4 screenshots, two of which are of the unusual free space readings. I often see programs showing something like 4095 MB, 999,999 KB, etc.. Don't know why programs don't recognize that the hard drive actually has about 32.7 GB free space instead of 999,999 KB (less than 1 GB) or 4095 MB (just short of 4 GB). It's a weird phenomenon that I just can't quite explain. I also had to pick up the remainder of the fireworks, the stuff already exploded.

#7 What a surprise: Who's ever thought of a very old program being better than any newer program? I have this situation. I've done extensive searching and got some others to help, but I still can't find any WAV editting program with the capabilities of my 16-bit program! Yowsers! Think about it. This program is so small, it can be copied three times on a single floppy without even needing compression. Yet, it has all of the features I want. The closest coming to it is audacity, but they have no support for 8-bit WAVs and all but three of my files are 8-bit WAVs which defeats the use of getting it. It also doesn't allow sample rates up to 500,000 Hz (or 4,150,000 if you so choose) which is very unusual. Why have these nonsense limitations when other programs can handle it just fine? If you can use a 32-bit variable, use it to all of it's extent, not just to 999,999. An example of this is with the classic Sonic games. The score maxes out at 9,999,990 which is basically a 32-bit variable. Why can't the score just go out to 42,949,672,950 or something, nearly 400 times higher? The lives counter goes clear up to 255 (though it acts weird when passing 99). It makes little sense at all. This is one of the most annoying things I find in programs: limits without any real meaning when it could be exceeded. It just so happens that WinDAT, my primary sound program (and will still probably be so for a few more years yet and it's already 11 years old) doesn't have these limitations at all. Also, you could just use a 32-bit variable instead of a 16-bit variable to provide more mathematical options for two measely bytes of memory more. 2 bytes of memory on 262,291,456 bytes (256 megabytes (this is on the low end actually)) is like nothing at all, a penny to the volume of a room, nothing much really even noticable. Because I have a strong dislike in these annoying nonsense limits, that's one of the main things in my game development. There are some limits I can see meaning in, however, but thinks like lives and scores I definitely don't. Boy, I may almost just have to write my own WAV editting program to accomidate these limits that almost all modern programs have. Modern usually is better, but at 2 megs or so, often more, why bother with them if they don't support what you need when something 1/6 the size does better? It's a strange twist.

2 Jul 11, 2005

Jul 11, 2005: One area down, many more to go with the mass update. New file type used as well because of it. Another severe storm swept through as well and now it's 100°F air temps! Nothing much new has happened though outside another dream being added.
#1 One down many to go: Yep, I've been at mass-updating my website. However, you might want to take note of the file extention as well: SHTML. Yep, that's right. Why use that? To help cut down on the workload needed for mass-updating my website because of all that repetition. The new website layout is a BIG improvement over the last version, so big, it's going to be a whole new version, 6.0. Boy, I can hardly remember the version 1.x or 2.x days nearly three years ago! The indexes are more extensive, the documents are better organized with improved sectionizing, even the footnotes index thought of months ago is in the works. What have I done so far? Only my mind game report. I've expanded on my mind game's history some. If you remember from version 3.x on my site, you may recall someone named Chief Mandar. Well, I've expanded on the history of this in great detail. I've also brought up the longest amount of time spent playing my mind game in a single week, a shocking.... Well, find out yourself by clicking on the links below. However, because of the switch from HTML to SHTML, you'll definitely need to update your book marks. The old HTML files will remain for another month past the point in which the final update is made, plenty of time. I should almost just go more. Because this is the beginning stages and that it could be until the end of July before the big update is done, there isn't much need to update your bookmarks at this point.
#2 Another severe storm - I missed out: Yep, another severe storm came through, however, this time, I missed out on it. Only yellow came through at the most intense when there was a band of deep reds to the north and south. Also, I found the cause to why I was having problems with the TV station reception. The jumper cable (to switch between my video games and the satellite receiver) was halfway between the two settings causing an incomplete signal. Didn't even need the rabbit ears for better reception. I discovered this while playing Bubsy as the screen was in grayscale and full of static. Now I can monitor storms from in my room without much worry at all (unless the power goes out or a tornado is heading for my house). I was playing Bubsy while waiting for the computer to format and stuff. This storm, however, was very powerful. There was baseball-size hail in the Bottineau area and some tornadoes forming in a few areas (Doppler indicated). Now that's HUGE! Just imagine basketball-size hail!
#3 100°F heat: Add this up: It's 100°F outside (38°C) + the dew points are in the 60's or 70's. What do you get? High heat indexes. Strangely enough, I slept through it entirely as if I wasn't affected at all. This was on Jul 9, 2005 by the way.
#4 10,000 plays on two another songs: Having a way to back up the play counts in Winamp, I've now reached 10,000 plays on another two of my songs: Desert Zone and Out Where the Lake Is (both from Bubsy). Desert Zone is passing the 11,000 mark and Out Where the Lake Is (actually having two loops before restarting as I really like that intro), is now passing the 10,000 mark (or 20,000 plays). I could've almost listened to OWTLI about 2 million times by now (in all forms like tapes, CD's, and from my MP3 player and computer, not including while sleeping; and still counting yet as I'm listening to it while typing this). It's what you get when a song has a compatibility of 988 (which is 4 times better than the next favorite song (approximate - a screwy formula doesn't help)).
#5 MP3 player hasn't arrived yet: UPS ground = slow. From the tracking of the item, it should certainly arrive tomorrow. That's one thing I hate about weekends - no mail delivery service. I have a lot of other reasons why I strongly dislike weekends as well. Also, on July 9, the day with the high temps, I went to Kmart, the Grocery store, and Domino's. It wasn't during the day, but at around 9:20 PM. Even at 11:00 PM, it was till 86°F outside, 30°C. I went to Kmart to get better speakers. The ones I had had too strong of a bass when I like the mid range better. The wind helped to some extent plus air conditioning. You may recall that for many years, I disliked air conditioning. Well, there are some exceptions. I don't like it going when it's 75°F outside, but if it was 90°F, then I would certainly accept it. My room is the hottest place in the house, but a fan helps to some minor extent.
#6 One new dream added: Dream 5-31, featuring my Canada trip route (again) is my newest dream making the count 228. However, this one is different from the other one I had.
#7 I made a board game: This isn't new to me. I've made board games like crazy when I was younger. This board game is no different from those, except the title and design. It's called "Toxic River" after my fear of blue water from before 1997. This game is hand-drawn. Why hand-drawn? I can't use my computer while lightning is going on and since I had to wait for storms to go through, I made this to keep company while waiting for further reports of the weather conditions. I might make this in Gamestudio (and much bigger with greater color quality) as well. Here's what it looks like using a low-res version.

#8 Other events between updates:
Jul 6: I spent about three hours watching my usual things on TV. Went to bed at 6:45 AM on Jul 7.
Jul 7: Spent much of the early part of the day updating my website. I'm also back at listening to Out Where the Lake Is again, my all-time top favorite song nearly 4 times better than my other songs (screwy formula makes estimating hard). Also, I haven't been eating much for two days at this time (Jul 6 and Jul 7). I drink quite a bit, however and take multi-vitamins. Went to bed at 3:35 AM on Jul 8.
Jul 8: The mind game report was next to finished, thanks to help from the Web Developer forums (yep, more forums). So far, the new hard drive seems to be working quite well. I haven't encountered a single problem yet either. My computer boots up faster for one, and it takes 14 seconds to write a 192 MB file (a 24-bit bitmap of 8192x8192 (exactly 192 MB)). My old hard drive could only write at 5.4 MB per second. This, after doing mental math, comes out to 13.7 MB per second, roughly 2 1/2 times faster, a big improvement, but not exactly what I was hoping for. IDE isn't worth it obviously. I guess, to make use of SCSI or something, I'll need another motherboard. The main point was for speed, but this is significant. Went to bed at 5:45 AM on Jul 9.
Jul 9: Went to Kmart to get speakers for my new MP3 player that's yet to come. I left at around 9:20 PM. The new speakers are rather small, but certainly better than the other one I had. I'm not strongly focused on bass, I like the mid ranges better, usually from about 400 Hz to about 2,000 Hz. I also went to the grocery store, but they didn't have what I came for. I was after pizza rolls, which were $2.50 each as usually they're $4 each. This is for a bag of 40 by the way, about two medium-sized meals. Finally, I got Domino's again. I've figured it out now. For the most cheese, get hand-tossed crust with triple cheese toppings. Yep, it's cheaper without the coupon for some odd reason. The coupon lists it at $14.99 for an extra large pizza. I got the same size, but only for $13.35 or so (rounded up to the next nickle) and this is without the coupon. Yes, something doesn't add up here.... The mind game report is now done at this point. Went to bed at 8:05 AM on Jul 10.

3 Jul 12, 2005

Jul 12, 2005: Two areas down! The entire Status System report, having not been updated in likely a whole year, has finally been updated.
#1 Status System report finally updated: The entire Status System report is now finished and updated. It hasn't been updated in a whole year! What's new you might ask? Plenty. Some formulas have been removed that are no longer true, the confirmation status of laws, theories, formulas, and certain statements is also given. A few things are confirmed while others are unconfirmed. A very few are debated on (uncertain). It's been completely sectionized in great detail and boy, there's more sections than I thought there were going to be. About the Tertiary Status is the most important, the rest have declined in importance. Some new, higher resolution images have been added as well, including an insight on how the Ninth Status looks in my mind game. A big change done in just one day seems impressive, but then again, that's what you get when you don't visit the forums.
#2 Footnotes index - another concept: Instead of using a frame, I've got another way to do the footnotes and I'm already using it. Doesn't seem like it, bu the SHTML extention may give you a clue. I can almost keep the same style for footnotes, but I'd only have to edit one file to change the footnotes on 8 different pages. That's not a joke either. My website now contains close to 300 pages (which includes 4 temporary, experimental files). Because of all that repetition, merely using copy and paste in the long run can be excessively time consuming having to open up files like crazy. This way, only one file has to be editted and any files that "include" the fragments that repeat like crazy will be updated instantly because of it. Also, things frequently referred to, such as the compatibility rankings chart (recently updated), can be embedded in other documents and get get updated quite quickly from only having to edit one file. The list of advantages of this is just tremendous!
#3 MP3 Player arrived: My new MP3 Player has arrived. I haven't tested it yet, but it looks okay, and way smaller than expected. I was expecting this thing to be like 5 inches tall by 3 inches wide not 2 inches tall by 1 1/2 inches wide, 20% of the size. I haven't had time to mess with it: been too busy working on updating my website.

4 Jul 16, 2005

#1 Record-setting dream: You probably know about my ever-expanding dream journal by now, but now, even with over 230 dreams in it (officially, it's 23* dreams), my newest dream to date is a major record setter. It sets the record for the longest lasting, most in tact dream of all. Normally, from what I've learned in school, dreams last about 45 minutes on average. This one is around 75 minutes long, almost a feature-length movie! To top that out, it's 97% in tact, something I haven't had in months. My most in tact dream is 98%, the one titled "The Master Minds". Being as long as this dream lasted, it's very impressive. Finally, to add more to it, the story rating is extremely high, a powerful 9.82! That's 771.6 times better than neutral! The scary rating, however dropped the general liking of the dream down quite a bit, but the high story rating is too powerful of an influence on it, even a scary rating of 7 (a nightmare) would still keep it better than neutral!
#2 MP3 player has virus on CD!?: Being a refurbished product, I figured that it would be defective. Well, this is completely unexpected. When I tried to install the software to be able to transfer the files to the MP3 player to test to see if it worked, Norton was reporting a malicious script that was being run. Soon afterward, another error popped up saying something about undoing something you've done, then a third error came up saying a missing DLL was involved. Two attempts have failed from on the CD. Next, I tried downloading the latest versions of the software, but didn't get anywhere at all as they, too, had this same problem, only with a different error at the end. Both the 2.61 and 2.90 versions were faulty. Without installing the software, the MP3 player is useless. All I can do is turn it off and on and browse the menus. It can't play music or anything as there's nothing on it and can't get anything on it without the software installation. Now this is a strange case of it being defective. However, it might not be defective. From posts on the forums I frequent, with one guy really testing it, nothing was found suspicious about the software which makes me think that something is screwy. I do happen to have five screenshots of the installation problems. Here are the five screenshots (click on them to get a full-sized version as these are thumbnails):

This is the first of the errors I get. Norton is telling of a malicious script and that it's high risk. I choose to stop the script thinking it's a virus.

After that, it seems to go okay for some time. However, about 30 seconds later, this weird error comes up. I don't understand this and what needs to be undone, but I click "yes" to undo whatever was trying to be undone.

Again, it goes okay, but then, the installation fails saying of a missing DLL, one I don't recognize but suspect has to do with the MP3 player. It's a Rio Nitrus. I'm highly confused about this.... These first three are from installing it from the CD I received.

On a second attempt at it, I get the same thing. This is an error with trying to install the 2.90 version of the software. Before this error appeared, I got the same errors as shown in the first two screenshots above in the same order.

Using the 2.61 version, at the installation failure point, this is what I end up getting. I've gotten the first two errors in this run as well. Note: I've editted the desktop background out on the big version because the file size would end up being 700 KB quite easily.

With the 2.61 version, I was able to get a little further, but nothing was cooperating. I then noticed that there was a faulty driver installation so I then tried to update it and just ended up with the "Add new hardware wizard" actually freezing, something that I've never encountered before.

Now, why would I spend $100 just to get a virus? Thankfully no virus was actually installed, but it was a close call. I may have to return it, but, given the case that someone scanned the software very thoroughly with five programs. It's very confusing and I don't get it. To add more to the list, I've installed a lot of other programs after installing Norton, like ten or something. I never got anything like this from installing those. It's only with the MP3 player so I'm quite confused.

#3 Returned to game design: I'm now back at working on my main project. I've fixed the brightness issue. Everything is now in true color, the way it was supposed to be. Also, the city's buildings have been almost fully redone as well. The rooves have 14 main different textures as well with a 15th being used for the special mayor's office. There are now two different colors for the buildings and the mayor's office now has a sky bridge and a sign. I don't have any screenshots of them right now, however, but the sides are textured in full and half of the rooves have been textured. The skin editor is so slow it's hard to really cruise at a sufficient speed. It's, however, not that big of a problem. There were only 700 buildings in the old version and there wasn't much in the way of detail at all with 14,000 polygons total. The new version has 1200 buildings, two current building color choices (would like to use 8), 15 roof textures, 14 main ones, and a sky bridge all using just 12,000 polygons. What a difference! The odd thing is, I did all this in 40% of the time it took to do the old version. Using copy paste really helps for some of that. It's very impressive if you think about it. It gives such a variety and more realism. However, this means having to update the roads as well. Plus, I'm also thinking of implementing some graphics options. If one has a low-end card, for example, I'd have options to reduce the number of buildings and things, or whether or not to use decals such as more realistic roof tops instead of plain textured ones that mimic the effect. The beach decals, however, still need to be done yet. Yet, another option for the intensity of the decals could also be used. Imagine having nothing at all or a huge quantity of them for very high end cards. I'm also thinking of redoing the clouds. It was an old texture, but I now have a new, very fast technique on how to make clouds. Yep, more options for them as well including to choose the setting on how many cloud layers to use (one is the default but could go up to 4). Why have all these options? Player freedom is my ultimate goal. You could customize practically anything to almost any extent and only limited by your hardware.
#4 3 new dreams added: In addition to to the record setting dream in the first entry, I have added more dreams. In all, I've added another 3 dreams pushing the count to 231. The newest are: dream 6-13 (featuring alien visitation (almost entirely forgotten)), dream 10-15 (featuring another university visit where I drive on a moped and show off a squirrel), and dream 11-39 (featuring strange potions with an evil side effect to them (the record-setting dream)). Yep, 231 at this moment and still counting.
#5 A million times in all: Now think about it. Would you ever want to listen to a single song a million times within 11 years? Most couldn't stand a thousand times per year, let alone a hundred times more than that. My top favorite song is Out Where the Lake Is. I first got it in 1994 and it came from Bubsy, a Sega Genesis game. It has a compatibility rating of 988, so high, it's twice as good as my second favorite song at 983 (using my spreadsheet to do the math). It's this extreme rating that keeps me listening to the same song for so much. In fact, through some calculations and estimate, I've listened to it about one million times throughout my entire life. That's one million loops in all. The only difference is changing the speed. Since around Dec, 20, 2004 or so, the time in which the play counts have started, I have logged 24,500 plays with Out Where the Lake Is. This only, however, includes computer time. I then have my MP3 player playing it as well adding about another 12000 plays from it. It's quite an impressive statistic! This may only seem to get you around 700,000 plays. However, ead a much smr song collection with a far fewer choice of speeds available. In these times, I was listening to it a lot more often. To the best of my ability, I've listened to the song at least 900,000 times in all to up to 1.2 million times.
#6 Other daily events between updates:
Jul 11: I began with my Status System report in the big updates. I finished up to the Secondary Status. I updated my website as well and did a complete redo of the design. Went to bed at 8:30 AM.
Jul 12: Much of the day was spent updating website as part of mass update. My math shows that I need to advance my sleep-wake cycle 8 to 9 hours in order to be able to make it to Canada on July 25. My MP3 player also arrived and it was smaller than expected. I spent the day charging it up. Went to bed at 10:15 AM.
Jul 13: Tried to install software for MP3 player to check it out. For details on this, see news item 2 for this update. I'm debating on the style on how I should do the footnotes. I have 3 styles now thought of. One of which is a frame containing them all, but then I'd have to worry about search engines not being able to index it. Another idea is to incorporate what I'm doing with the other stuff, using the SSI include command to, in a sense, copy and paste a piece of a file into the main page. Also, I finally returned to my main game's development with the detail mapping stuff. The detail mapping, however, didn't work as expected and don't know what's wrong. Also, the brightness has been fixed as well, now everything in in true color, the way it was meant to be. Went to bed at 4:25 PM as part of speeding up my sleep-wake cycle.
Jul 14: Spent the first 20% of the day watching TV then waiting for a small storm to go through. The next 25% or so was for the forums, not much was going on. The remaining 55% of the day was spent redoing the buildings. Making the base skin image took 65% of this time. The sides are done and only the northern 8 rows of buildings are done. Went to bed at 6:30 PM - woke up after only 7 hours of sleep or something.
Jul 15: This is my third day of advancing my sleep-wake cycle and the biggest jump. I was awake for 20 hours. At this moment, I have 9.5 days to advance my sleep-wake cycle 6 to 7 hours. 8 is the absolute maximum, 7 is my target, though 5 would be okay and is the absolute minimum. Half of the roof tops of the buildings have been textured. I also made the sign and submitted 3 more bug reports for MED, the model editor. 17 bugs have been submitted by me for MED, most of which are minor and otherwise harmless to development. Went to bed at 9:55 PM a big boost.

5 Jul 27, 2005

Jul 27, 2005: I'm not going to the fair. The second trip to Canada didn't happen, this time, not entirely on my side. A tutorial was written for 3D Gamestudio and is now the single biggest document on my website. The MP3 player has been returned as well. I might be getting a job, but it's questioned. Finally, 2 new dreams have been added.
#1 No fair!: You might be wondering why I didn't go to the fair. The reason isn't because of the lack of transportation (although this does have a strong influence on it), it's because the rides area, the main area I'm at, barely even changed since last year. The last two years I went, I was in the rides area for 95% of the time. Because everything is almost entirely the same as it was last year, I'm abandoning the idea of going. Yes, I have a lack of transportation as well, but the sameness has a bigger impact. It's expensive to get in and stuff so I'd rather save up for computer upgrades.
#2 Second trip to Canada never happened: My second trip to Canada, supposedly on Jul 25, 2005, never happened. The reasons for it are not all on my side. Two or three days before, the doctor had an emergency. My mom also had to work that day as well so it didn't add up to going.
#3 Another tutorial for 3D Gamestudio: Before, my biggest single document was around 53 KB. Now the biggest single document on my site is 84 KB. This tutorial features how to make levels in MED, the model editor. Because of my tremendous devotion to speed, I've focused on ways on how to make the sample model at high speed. It's, so far, the only document to get 6 levels in of subsections. That is, section 1.2.3.4.5.6 would be six levels in. Seeing 1 and 2 levels in is very common 3 levels is also quite common. More than 3 isn't that common.
#4 Bye bye MP3 player and virus: Without the software, the MP3 player is almost entirely useless for its purpose. The software won't install because I get loads of errors and this thing has a virus on it! So, I returned the product and requested a full refund for it. I have intentions on getting an even better MP3 player than the one I got. I don't ask for much: an equalizer of at least 5 channels, about 5 gigs of storage. It must come with an AC adapter as well. It must have support for all qualities of MP3 files. It must not have a limit on how many songs I can have on it*. Navigation to reach a song should be easier than having to press the "next track" button a few hundred times to find something.
#5 Getting a job?: I might be able to get a job sometime soon. My sleep-wake cycle might seem to be a problem, but, with the way things look, it seems like it can be worked around. The biggest issue is transportation. I called my local taxi service to find out what the rates are and I was very shocked. To work at Menard's, for example, I'd need to work 6 2/3 hours just to make up taxi fees each day (!). For even the nearest work place, that's still about 3 hours of work to make up taxi fees. It's an awful lot so it limits the possibility even more. My parents, however, are figuring out a way to work around this number one issue. Now, what would I do with an extra $480 a month (from calculations not including taxes)? That's about $290 a month more than what I could take and this is based on part-time (20 hours a week at $6 an hour). This means that, instead of saving up $80 each month at the most, it's $280 a month, a big number to me. That means that my computer can be radically upgraded to very recent in only two or three months whereas it could take a whole year otherwise. My graphics card, being $140, could be saved up in only two weeks whereas it took two months to save up. From calculations, I need about $190 a month in food and drinks.
#6 2 new dreams added: Now going onto 233 dreams in all. This includes one more fun dream (dream 8-17 featuring a strange Jello-like "cat" and a theme park - 75% in tact!) and a computer dream (dream 9-6 featuring a website selling a warez version of Gamestudio).
#7 It's an Irish jig: According to one of my long-time friends that I called recently, that song that I've listened to a million times is an Irish jig. I cannot confirm it as I can't tell Rock from Jazz simply by listening to the song! It seems unusual, considering that I've had the song since 1994, but I have practically no preference to music types. It just needs to sound good. Winamp now shows 29,700 plays for the song (Although it's much less in Winamp, the main one is actually two loops in one, with the "intro".). That's more combined plays than my two other most listened-to songs (17,121 and 11,051 plays and plays). Again, the reason for it is the extremely high compatiblity, 988, giving me 1700 times more motivation to listen to it compared to a neutral song. On my last update, I had 24,500 plays, now I've added another 5000 in just that 11 day time period (but then, you've got the MP3 player to add in there as well) so, in just those 11 days, I've logged another 7000 plays or so.
#8 The city redone again?: More thoughts have come to mind. How about 3000 buildings? How about that being done in only 3 hours? Seem impossible? My latest techniques make this extremely possible. You might be thinking that 3000 is way too high, but the number of buildings will be configurable through the options. Have as few as 400 (or 4000 polies) to up to 3000 (maybe more) or even more. Roof tops will be redone (again) and configurable. My latest technique, the stacking technique is extremely powerful. Instead of spending a day or two skinning (texturing) 5000 buildings, I just need to do one side to get all those at once. It's so fast, it's almost as if you're at rocket speed! This also means waves for the water (configurable) and in various "qualities". If you think texturing is going to be a problem, remember the stacking technique. In fact, my latest techniques could mean being able to do that entire city world within just one day! I'm so devoted toward speed, if I find a way to do something faster, I'll use it. This is nearly 20 times faster and has no "dangers" or "risks" involved, something I can't pass up.
#9 Still puzzled on the design for the footnotes: Yet a fourth design concept for the footnotes has emerged. My newest is that I follow my old technique (the stars and daggers), but, sometimes, footnotes appear within other footnotes. A workaround for this is to have subfootnotes "blockquoted" using the HTML "blockquote" tag then using another include for that footnote's content. Figuring out just how to do the footnotes is puzzling....
#10 Other daily events between updates: Jul 16: Severe storm number 5 came. It had baseball-size hail... again. I also showered. I went to the grocery store mainly to get my lemonades. I'm now on schedule for getting to Canada. I also discovered that a true 24-hour day cycle DOES seem possible, but I'd have to run an experiment to prove it. I also discovered a new multiplication shortcut for mental math. It's an estimation though and it's very accurate. It makes use of the nearest common fraction technique (see FAQ page for details on "nearest common fraction"). I discovered it as I was trying to figure out the size of my city world after the changes. It was 26,624 quants in diameter and circular. I was trying to find the area it covered in square miles and the 6624 caught my attention as 2/3. I thought of it as 8/3E04 and squared that to get 64/9E08 or 711,111,111 1/9 (as if a square). The actual value is 708,837,376, extremely close. After all the processing, this means that the level is 1 1/4 square miles, an impressive size.
Jul 17: Still on track with the sleep-wake cycle. I also spent 5 hours (in just one game) playing Mario 3, a game I haven't played in years. I still knew many of my old techniques, but I lost a lot more lives than I did when I was actively playing it, but still never got a game over notice (one reason why I never see the continue screen - 99 lives to burn off gaining 200 per hour). I also experimented with high-speed cloud-making techniques. I make two sets of clouds in only 30 minutes (!) including the time to test them. It was mainly the texturing that I was doing, not modelling them.
Jul 19: (skipping 18 because I was awake more on the 19th than the 18th) I slept for 18 hours waking up after 7 hours or something then going back to bed after 15 minutes sleeping for another 11 hours. 18 hours of nonstop sleep seems impressive, but my record is actually 25 hours as a whole, whether waking up in the middle for a short duration or all the way through. In fact, it seemed like I slept for only one hour, but in fact, a whole day went by not even knowing it until my mom told me. I went to bed an hour late. I also reported another bug for MED - a skin resizing bug. That's 18 known bugs that I've reported for MED. I fixed my game's sign and fixed a small texture bug with my buildings. The view from the top of the sign on the mayor's office is awesome at a visibility of 65536 quants (or 8192 feet). I would like to extend the visibility to natural values - like 12 miles, or 506,880 quants. That seems ridiculously high, but, even with the whole level in the view, I'm getting 32 fps with my latest building designs. This is bearable to most, and this is configurable to add more buildings or less.
Jul 20: Going to Canada is doubtful - monetary reasons. Going to the fair is doubtful - lack of transportation. I've finished my buildings but haven't finished the roads. Nothing else happened.
Jul 21: Messed around a lot on Wikipedia - wrote two new articles and added details about another as well as fixing a type in another. Another severe storm came, but missed me by a long distance. Idea of going to the fair is rejected and has been officially declared that.
Jul 22: The would've been first day at the fair, but due to the lack of change, I didn't see any real reason to go. I also dumped a shipload of questions on the howwhatwhy forums, questions that have piled up for weeks. I also called my favorite teacher and discovered that Out Where the Lake Is, my top favorite song that I've listen to a million loops of, is an Irish jig. Much of the day was spent on the forums from the big flock of questions I had. I also made another animation with the GIMP, mainly for one of the posts on the forums - swimming in wavy water. I made a 25-frame animated GIF in about an hour and includes rich detail. The time was based for saving the individual frames, not in making the simple images. Moving and positioning things is incredibly easy to do!
Jul 23: Began writing the tutorial on how to make levels in MED. The early part of the day was spent on the forums. I then read a thread about someone asking on how to make levels in MED, especially texturing. I've had intentions earlier on writing a tutorial on this, and this thread finally gave me the strong motive on doing it. My first concept was a maze, but ran into a lot of spacing problems and it was too confusing otherwise. The new concept is better than expected. The hotel part was finished in construction (but not texturing). I also got Domino's again. I was hungry, but got full after just two slices. I won't be able to return the MP3 player until Monday. Also, my annoying parents expect me to do some of the house work - when I was expecting to wake up.
Jul 24: Using my good ol' thinking, I devised a way to avoid the house work so I can get on with writing the tutorial. Even three hours later after the expected time, they still didn't tell me to do anything, and when I had to go to the bathroom, even speaking to my mom, she never did anything about it. WHEW! The tutorial is taking longer than expected. Only the final stages remain. I'm also now passing 30 screenshots. I also might have a job soon, the status is uncertain. I still haven't delivered the MP3 player yet - stupid weekends!
Jul 25: Tutorial finished plus! Plus as in I've got more tricks up my sleeve, more than I had when first starting the tutorial. From this tutorial, it is now very possible for me to make 3000 buildings in less time than it took for the 1200 buildings which took a lot less time than it took for 700 buildings. It seems weird and senseless, but this is a true fact. I finally sent the MP3 player. I also dropped off my job application and got more lemonades, taking all that was on the shelf (as usual). While I was out, time was critical, so I used my high speed rule. This rule goes as follows. If the path up ahead is empty and in the open (not near an intersection), I can then go fast - like 7 mph. But, when nearing any kind of intersection, or getting close to someone I then slow down to normal walking speed speeding back up again when permitting.
Jul 26: I watched 5 hours of TV - made an image of the plan for the tutorial as suggested by someone on the related forums (in some extent anyway). The end of the day was spent on the forums, nothing else at all.

News footnotes:
* An obvious limit is capacity, but this isn't what I'm referring to. What I'm referring to is that, with my old MP3 player, it won't allow any more than 300 songs whether it fills a full 700 MB CD or just 10 MB. This is a nonsense limitation and makes no sense at all.

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