1 Nov 25, 2005

Nov 25, 2005: Tutorial and challenges for 2D game are done. I had a 98% in tact dream, a first-place tie for the most in tact dream I've had. I might also be able to run in 2048x1536 resolution, but not sure how to use it. New song - 7500 plays already.

#1 Lots more 2D game progress: You may have expected it. Yep, I've made a lot more progress in my 2D game. The tutorial has been rewritten in full and the challenges have been done, now with a fourth difficulty setting: master. Master is harder than hard and is for true experts. Easy has become easier. Medium and hard have no real change. The challenges took much longer than I thought, often due to having to change some core components of the game. This change also gives some more advantages as well. Also, rather than 7 challenges, I now have 8. Classic games involve 8 worlds with some levels within each world. 8 challenges with 4 difficulties isn't much different from this. The challenges are fully functional and thoroughly tested. I'm also lately thinking of having 54-channel fog rather than the current 36-channel fog. This makes the seam much less noticable, half in fact, providing a very smooth fade. It'll only add another 13 1/2 kilobytes to the total file size, less than 1% of the total thus hardly any impact on the ending file size. There isn't much left now for the game. Just having the scenery done is all that really remains as well as having the limitations of the free edition implemented. Here are some new screenshots of the latest updates:

Screenshot #1: While messing around with the challenges, I came across a great looking spot in the scenery and wanted a screenshot of it. This is that screenshot. I especially like the area 1/3 of the way to the right from the left edge and I like how those very distant mountains appear against the background. The scenery from 11,000 to 13,000 feet is very nice for the mountains at their default scales.

Screenshot #2: A short ways into the tutorial, just so you can see how it is, this is what it is like. The text box explains things and you press enter at any time to advance to the next batch of text. At the end of lessons 2 through 10 (11?), you can try out what you learn (and you can skip this part too if you wanted). When you try out what you learn, a summary is given.

Screenshot #3: Here's what the challenges are like. In this screenshot, I'm quite a ways into the medium difficulty. The "Ready" at the top is part of that common race thing: "Ready, set, go!". You are given some time (configurable through my expansive menus) to read the rules and after that, the round begins. The "best possible" part was used as my basis for determining the time requirements and took the most time to figure out. I take notes and give the best possible scores for each. As an example, I needed almost an hour and a half to determine the best possible for this challenge shown.

Screenshot #4: To explain what I mean by 36-channel fog, take this screenshot as an example. I took out the mountains and the old hills (using my menus) so you can see the fog in full detail. It is very tricky to see any seams, but if you look carefully enough, especially at the bottom of the image (the closer area), you can see them. 54-channel fog will look twice as good. The free edition will use 18-channel fog making the seams somewhat noticeable. My calculations show that the visibility is about 20 5/11 miles (or 20 1/2 for a simpler value).

Screenshot #5: These are my roads. They took a lot longer to figure out, mainly to work around the "power of 2" texture size limitation you find in almost every game you play. For example, the background in the first area of Hydrocity (Act 1) in the high areas, it is 512 pixels, a power of 2. Other textures you see are 16's, 32's and others. My game has to follow this same rule as well. This made doing the lines very difficult and took nearly 7 hours to figure out. Through my mathematical skills, I found an ingenious workaround to this issue and I created this very strong 3D effect. Remember now, this is done with nothing but 2D drawings. It seems so realistic, it'd almost take an expert to figure out if it's 2D or 3D! When I first saw them, I was amazed, just as with the fog when I first saw it at maximum exposure (as shown in the screenshot above this one).

#2 New dream 98% in tact: Beforehand, the record holder was the dream "The Master Minds". One fairly recent dream is about as in tact as that dream so two dreams now hold the first place record for being the most recalled. I have two full pages (one piece of paper, two sides) having details about this dream and it took a very long time to write down all those details, nearly an hour! 98% in tact means that almost every single detail has been recalled, even some (but not all) minor ones otherwise unimportant. Recently, however, I've had quite a few other strongly in tact dreams of at least 40% in tact. Details on the "in tact" rating and its meaning are on the main dreams page. That puts me even further past that 300 mark I recently passed. I'm now at 309 dreams and still counting.
#3 That G is screwed up: In the October part of my blog, you can see that I've had a new recent obsession with a certain type of lowercase "G". It now seems that, every time I see it, I exaggerate the sound of it, as I did with the "T" having big, long t-tails (as with the Courier New font). The sound I exaggerate is the hard G sound as in the G in "again". If the G is "normal", as with the font Arial (my website's main font as it has been since it was first created in August 2001), I say it normally, but if "messed up", as in the case of the "Book Antiqua" or "Times New Roman" fonts, I exaggerate it (prolong the sound). I'd say these things (or think of it), the exact same statement, in a completely different way:

The seventh letter of the English alphabet is g. There are eight g's in this statement. Whether "regular" or "messed up", going in straight lines isn't possible.

The seventh letter of the English alphabet is g. There are eight g's in this statement. Whether "regular" or "messed up", going in straight lines isn't possible.

I have chosen fonts that are common in almost any Windows computer: Arial and Times New Roman. Arial is easier to read in general (and it reminds me of those banners on the wall during first grade or kindergarten having the entire alphabet on it) and thus I use it for this main reason. I wonder how long this one will last.... As with many of my other cases, it could be several months, clear into even May of 2006.

#4 New song - 7500 plays and still counting: To most, it seems crazy listening to the same song even just a dozen times, let alone a few thousand times. Quite recently, in September I think, I had a case where I got a new 40-second song and got 10,000 plays in just one week of playing it. I was expecting 50% more, but, due to computer issues with swapping motherboards from upgrading my processor, I was completely unable to add more plays onto that. This caused my loss of interest. My new song is about 55 seconds long at my average speed (67% true speed) and I've already got 7500 plays logged. From my calculations, I could expect to about 9000 or even 10,000 plays before losing interest in it and switching. At this moment, I'm getting signs of getting bored of it, but I still can handle another 1000 plays at least. What I don't understand is how come I'm able to listen to the same song for hundreds of times on end when most others can barely manage ten times. The only difference is that I change the speed (which changes pitch and tempo proportionally), but that happens once every 400 plays on average, sometimes even as many as a thousand plays. I've logged one million plays of my all-time top favorite song within the 11 years I've had it. The total time is 2 years' worth of nonstop play (about 61.5 million seconds (63 1/9 million seconds is almost exactly two years.) - 23 1/2 months). I still wonder why this is. The only thing I can think of is that it relates to my severe OCD.

#5 I like comparing my top favorite song: When I watch TV ads of music for sale, I often compare them to my all-time top favorite song, Out Where the Lake Is. This song is about 1820 times better than neutral (hence the reason for logging one million plays in 11 years). Most songs on TV ads don't get much above double making OWTLI nearly a thousand times better. A few of them peak into the 700's, but usually the low 700's (about 3 times better than neutral). The lyrics often drastically reduce my compatibility toward the song. Most songs advertised on TV are neutral or above and it's very rarely below 400 (50% worse than neutral). It isn't just TV ads featuring music for sale, but TV ads and background music (theme songs included) are also compared. Sometimes, even the sound track is compared in general. I often press the mute button on TV ads where the compatibility drops below 300. The ad featuring a guy with lots of question marks on his short has a compatibility of just 70 (about 51 times worse than neutral making OWTLI over 93,000 times better (which is like comparing a rating of 998.36 to neutral (500), so big you almost never see it)), almost entirely due to the tone. A small part of it is due to the repetition of this ad (using just 1 or 2 onto the 51). If whistling is involved, the compatibility almost instantly spikes below 100. I often say, to myself, "When dealing with 'Out Where the Lake Is' in comparisons, you deal with huge numbers in the difference in impact".

#6 Two highly-liked favorite ads: How does a TV ad nearly 70 times better than neutral sound to you? That ad featuring the "talking" toilet saying something very close to this: "Please stop the running. No... no... not the old handle jiggle, it's the oldest trick in the book." The best part, spiking in the 965 area (about 200 times better than neutral), is "Hello, broken toilet on line 2". A third high favorite (with a rating of about 960 (150 times better than neutral)) is the line "Running like... a guy who runs a lot". Another ad from the same company features a bush that was brown. This one spikes into the 960 area, but vaguely recalled. In case you're wondering, it's an ad for Ace, a hardware store (not computer hardware). Such high ratings mean actually wanting to see the ad a few dozen times. Thus, it isn't just music that means listening to hundreds of times on end, it's anything (food, drink, an activity, a number, anything).

#7 A gig of RAM or not: Yet another thing I'm debating on. I'm now thinking of getting a 1 GB stick of memory. I seem to be doing pretty well on my current 512 MB (1/2 GB). With Firefox taking nearly 100 MB memory just to load (still an unexplained mystery), I almost can't run my game without some stuff going into the swap file. A clean startup gives me 220 MB of free memory. Run Firefox, I drop to 120 MB free. Toss in running my 3D game especially, I'm often near 20 MB. After a lot of use of my computer and downloading webpages (as from the forums, simply starting my game means using up more memory than what is left (causing stuff to go into the swap file). Adding in a 1 GB stick of memory, I could have 1 gigabyte of free memory upon a clean startup and after a long time, it'd only drain to about 600 megabytes of free memory, still a lot. I have a 333 MHz stick and a 400 MHz stick, both of 256 MB. I'd replace the 333 MHz stick. This would be especially useful when it comes to working on my 3D game. Without the update (which STILL hasn't been released), I cannot do anything in my 3D game at all. Indirectly, however, from working on my 2D game, I now have the know-how on making menus and more practice with scripting which can be put to use in my 3D game. The biggest thing that bothers me is compatibility with this memory. From what I've experienced, even XP couldn't take over 512 MB of memory (32 bits) as the system kept on rebooting after loading partway through. This was with my dad's computer though. I figured it was possibly a motherboard compatibility issue or a bad stick of RAM.

#8 Maybe 2048x1536 resolution?: My monitor supports up to a 96KHz scan frequency, according to the box. 1600x1200 resolution at 60 Hz needs 72,000 scans per second. I can run at 75 Hz without any problems (which is 90,000 scans per second). I can't detect any difference between 60 Hz and 75 Hz for a monitor refresh rate. Doing the math, I could certainly run at 2048x1536 resolution at 60 Hz (92,160 scans per second) or 1920x1440 (86,400 scans per second). According to ATI's website, Radeon 9600 XT supports the 2048x1536 resolution at 32-bit color. Given this information, I should have no problems at all running in 2048x1536 at 60 Hz refresh rate. Oddly enough, I cannot seem to choose a resolution that high, even though my video card and monitor both can support it. Odd.... Now, if only I could find a way to run at that resolution....

2 Nov 13, 2005

Nov 13, 2005: I made my first menu screens! Other major work has been done on my 2D game and I'm almost going out of the way of everything else to work on it. I also had a very weird shopping experience. Dreams page updated to include the latest additions now putting the total count past 300, older dreams don't have their ratings fully processed. Also, evolution/Creationism have been a hot debate in the US and I have my own concepts that put both in one.
#1 My first menu screens: You just use the up and down arrow keys to select something and enter to confirm your selected item. That's how you configure things now with my first ever menu screen. Earlier, you had to reference either the manual or the quick guide on the bottom left to do the same thing and this was confusing. Press M (M for menu) to bring up the menus at any time. Simple design, simple to use, and allows for 2 main advantages: Adaptation to different screen resolutions is possible (although it was beforehand, I was limited to 2, now it's 3), and you have more configuration options (and then some). Before, it was tough to be able to, say, make the mountains disappear (or reappear). With the menus, just go to the "configuration > scenery > visibility > mountains" menu and you can toggle the visibility of any of the ranges as you please, not just all or none only. Want the second, third, and fifth mountain ranges visible, you can! A strangely simple design, but you can configure virtually everything! From a blank, empty scene to being rich in detail. Yet, due to the way I designed the menus, moving options around is easy, even top level items in the main menu! In addition to the menus, 4 out of the 5 mountain ranges have been completed. You can also run in 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768 resolution. Changing the resolution merely changes the field of view. A higher resolution just means a larger field of view. Ironically, being a waste of time to some, being on the forums seems to help me get going on this. When waiting for replies or anything new, I'm working on the mountains. Here are 5 more screenshots of the latest updates. They are of mixed resolutions so you can see that the game has been adapted to run at different resolutions:

Screenshot #1: This is a 1024x768 screenshot of the mountain ranges from about 500 feet short of the height of Mount Everest. Note how those black panels on the sides are gone and there are 10 pieces of screen information? You can also tell whether or not you've used certain abilities like the stomp or the fall-glide-hop.

Screenshot #2: Here's a view of the menus. In this 800x600 screenshot, you can see where the scaling information has gone to. If I wanted to change the scaling of the second mountain range, I just highlight the item and press enter to bring up the question. Type what scaling you want to use and press enter to confirm. Wanna change another objects' scaling, just select it and go. Who'd want to press the 1-8 keys to do this same? Also, note the "menu help" area. This area explains what each menu item is and/or what it does. Also, note the "current values" column. This column tells you what the current state or value a particular setting is. The "Back" command lets you go up a level in the menu screens. At the top of the menus is where you can tell where you're at in the menus.

Screenshot #3: After toggling away the three closest mountain ranges and the fifth (which hasn't been redone yet), you can leave only the fourth mountain range visible. To do this, you access this area of the menus and press the enter key to toggle. Simple huh? You may notice that the state isn't shown for the third mountain range and beyond. I'll need to fix this, and I plan on fixing it after I do the fifth mountain range. Also note the fog. Isn't it pretty? This is a 640x480 screenshot as well. Note the speed as well. Yep, 2000 mph... straight down. You can certainly get faster than that though.

Screenshot #4: This is the main menu. The game logo needs to be redesigned, but that shouldn't take long to do. The city, houses, hills, roads, fence, etc. haven't been done yet. I just "had" to get a screenshot of the puffs, they are my favorite things.

Screenshot #5: From this part of the menu, you can learn about various things about this game. You can also see where the various errors are when you get errors. I deliberately caused this one to occur so you can see where they are and how they are different.

#2 I'm so despirate to finishing my 2D game: I've now become so despirate at doing this (I've set a release deadline), I'm now really trying to avoid unwanted things like housework in particular, the stuff that takes 3 or 4 hours to do. The 10-minute stuff such as laundry and putting dishes away really don't count (10 minutes is about 5% of 3 hours, very considerable). I'm even avoiding TV and some of my favorite shows to working on this, only watching them while taking the 90 minutes I do from eating. Since the night shift is my best time for doing this, as the chances of having to do housework are low, I'm trying to stay on the night shift as much as I can. Boy, if only I never had to sleep, I could save about 11 hours or so each day. If I didn't have to sleep in the last 3 days, I would've had all 5 mountain ranges completed. In case you're wondering, I'm going to be releasing the first beta version on Nov 20, 2005. This will not be a public beta, however. The official release will be *before* Dec 20, 2005. It would make a decent Christmas gift and thus the reason why I'm getting so despirate to working on this game. I still have the hills to process, the city, houses, roads, cars, and fence. The hills will, according to my estimates, take about 10 days to do. The city and houses, together, should take about 5 days or so for all (2 days for the houses and 3 for the city). The fence only needs 30 minutes and that seems on the high end. The roads should take about 40 to 60 minutes. The cars, however, may take about 2 days. I still have to redo the clouds as well and this could take another 6 or 7 days (completely uncertain). I also have to finish updating the challenges, and rewriting the tutorial. Given this, the official release could be around Dec 12, 2005 at the earliest. The first beta will mainly just test the game mechanics. After I finish the fifth mountain range and do at least one set of the hills, buildings, and houses as well as updating the challenges and tutorial, the first beta will be released then.
#3 My weirdest shopping experience ever: I had a very unusual shopping experience and when I mean unusual, I mean it. Here's what happened:

As I was heading out to get more cereal (for snacks), my mother was in a rush. She had an hour to get to work in. We left at just shortly after noon, 2 or 3 minutes or so. When I arrived, my mother told me to be quick. Since I was in a race against the clock, I applied my speed rule*. I got my cereal, pizzas, and cheese all within like 8 minutes, including the checkout. I was a lot faster than my mom expected. When it came to the checkout, things really went weird. First, after writing the check, the store clerk gave the check to me forgetting (s)he even had it. (S)he accidentally gave the check to me. That's not all though. Being in the rush I was in, taking 8 minutes to get in and back out, I went outside, in a small snowstorm (not a blizzard as there was practically no wind), and found that my mom parked in an odd spot and in a screwy way. She locked the van so I couldn't put my groceries away. I stood outside for ten minutes. Since I didn't have gloves, and that I was holding my receipts and stuff, I put the receipts in my coat pocket. It was then that I noticed that I had the check that I just wrote. That's still not the end of it. Next, after being outside for ten minutes, I hollered at one of the store clerks bringing carts in from outside. He came and assisted. When he arrived, I got assistance as my mom still didn't come out to the van after ten minutes. I told him my problem, then dug into my pockets where I put my check and told him that the cashier gave me the check I just wrote and I handed it to him. I then walked into the store and tried to get a page for my mom who I believed went inside. Even the manager was impressed about me returning the check that was at fault by the cashier. They were amazed about that. But, even after another ten minutes of waiting, my mom still never came and thus I went back outside again to find her parked there outside finally ready to take me back home. Strangely enough, she went and... went inside to get stuff then got tacos from Taco Bell? She was already late. But then, since she was already late what did she do? She stopped at the gas station near home to get a cup of coffee and toxic waste sticks (this added another 5 minutes). It really doesn't add up! She finally returned home already 8 minutes late. It takes another ten minutes just to get to work.

#4 I've now got over 300 dreams: Due to my 2D game taking highest priority, I've only done the HTML > SHTML conversion for my dreams and added the latest. I've had nearly 13 pages of dreams to add (26 sides), way too much. In other words, only the newest additions have their ratings processed. The ratings will not be processed for the older dreams until my 2D game is released. At this moment, I now have 302 dreams. That's right, 302. I predicted long ago (about 3 to 5 months or so), that I'd reach 300 by the end of this year. Well, I've passed the 300 mark on Nov 10 or Nov 11 of 2005, having another 50 days before the end of the year. I could almost get close to 350 by the end of this year and even 600 by the end of 2006. There are so many new additions, considering I left out those from the last update leaving me a month behind, I won't bother telling what they are about. I had to reprocess the dreams section so that, when I later have more dreams to add, there won't be as much work to process. To find the newest dreams, see section 3.2 on the new updated version.
#5 Evolution/Creationism thoughts: With all the debates going on at least in the US between evolution and Creationism, I have some interesting concepts that puts both together in one. I'm completely nonreligious - having no interest at all in any religion, except one small part that even my science-only concepts seem to agree on. Consider this: how long has life been around? 4 gigayears**. How long is a typical human life span? About 75 years. How long does it take for a certain species to evolve? Tens of thousands of years. What percent of a human life span is, say, 150,000 years? 0.05%. The numbers are just plain huge! Humans cannot easily comprehend a million years, let alone 4 billion. That's how it generally is. Too big of time frames for humans to comprehend well. Sometimes, particles from space, neutrinos or cosmic rays, slice through DNA causing it to change. These changes can be very bad or it can be very good to the organism. These changes, though very remote, only become more worthy after thousands of years. Scientists have evidence to support this concept.

However, how could life have arisen when all the matter that makes up life had to be created somehow? As far as science goes, matter cannot be created, but can be converted to or from energy. But then, how did that energy even come about in the first place? This creates a long, endless chain:

Where did the salt in our bodies come from? Salt mines and from the ocean.
Where did the salt mines come from? Weathering and erosion over thousands of years.
Where did the wind come from to help cause weathering and erosion? The Sun and Earth's rotation.
Where did the Earth come from? It came from billions and trillions of collisions of tiny parts of matter from the birth of our Solar System.
Where did the Solar System come from? Remains of dead stars that exploded likely 5 gigayears ago.
Where did those stars come from? From the large clumps of matter from the start of the universe.
Where did the universe come from? Two membranes or something collided 13.7 gigayears ago***.
Where did the membranes come from? Unknown.

Once the answer to that last question is answered, like from X making them, you'll ask where X came from. This chain is endless. Something had to create them and thus, to some extent, Creationism.

#6 I've finally found that formula!: I had the idea on the formula, and after about 40 minutes of doodling and running numbers through my mind, I finally found that formula! The formula is how to find a color when two transparent colors overlap and what color they produce (not on a solid-colored background though - that's easy and has been known for over a year now). Mixing the alpha (transparency) was the easy part. It was the resulting color you get that still is the tricky part and I still don't seem to get it to work or even look right. Here's the formula to find the resulting alpha, the only one I have so far, the easy one.

RA = (FG�255 � (1-BG�255) + BG�255) � 255;

RA is the resulting alpha you get. FG is the foreground color's alpha and BG is the background color's alpha.

Footnotes: * My speed rule is simple. If I'm in an open area where there are no customers or no chance of customers coming out from somewhere (such as around a corner), I then kick up my speed to like 6 mph. When a customer is nearby or when near a corner, I then slow down to a normal 3 mph speeding up again when conditions are good. This minimizes the chance of running into someone but having the greatest speed.
** A gigayear, if you know the meaning of the metric prefix "giga" is a billion years. 4 gigayears is 4 billion (4,000,000,000) years.
*** In the show on the Science Channel (The "Cosmic Dimension" series from 7:00 PM Tuesday until about 4:00 PM Wednesday) called "parallel universes", this is covered and thus my source for this one. The Science Channel is one of my favorite channels and is nothing but educational programming, the kind I like.

3 Day-by-day events

Nov 1: I fixed a textual mistake that someone else pointed out from the showcase forum and four more from the idea given that weren't otherwise visible, except to me. I also redone the general scenery menu (visibility) to be able to toggle things as one pleases one layer at a time rather than how many layers are visible - more player freedom and a shorter script in return. I also got started on figuring out how to adjust for different resolutions. The concept is done, just need to figure out the rest from that. I also contacted Microsoft by phone, the only way I can, to find out more information on XP. It wasn't as promising as I had hoped. Seemingly similar to 98 with only a few differences. I had just one group of trick-or-treaters come. Remote area = boring Halloween. Woke up at 1:40 AM (�10 minutes) and went to bed at 6:23 PM.
Nov 2: Forums, menus, TV (space stuff including Cosmos), more forums, and menus after that. I've finally finished adding the feature to show the current values of settings. Only thing left is the scenery and, perhaps, adding the > for items in the menu having a submenu. I also began the demo to show the free edition users what the full edition is like and make the computer play the game for full edition users. I plan on releasing the game before Dec 20 - it'll make a good Christmas gift. When in bed, I think I figured out how to get a color from two merged transparent colors. The resulting alpha was easy, but the RGB color was tricky and still unsolved, but I have a lot of leads to go by. I think I figured out the RGB part of it though. Not tested but in my mind and from what I can tell, it's correct. If 1/4 transparent black background (about an alpha of 64) had a 1/3 transparent (an alpha of 85) white foreground (the foreground is the color on top), the alpha would be 128 (about half transparent) and the resulting color would be 213 (212.5 to be exact) for red, green, and blue. The formula is shown in news item #6. Alpha and the RGB color have two separate formulas. For multi-layered colors, work from the bottom (most distant background) up one layer at a time. Woke up at 2:45 AM and went to bed at 5:17 PM.
Nov 3: Forums, a strange case with grocery shopping (see news item number 3 for details), and updating the dreams section were the main things for the day. I began modifying the dreams document for update coming. HTML to SHTML conversion is mostly done. 20 out of 270 dreams' ratings have been reprocessed. Banners (base ratings that are empty) and headers are also processed. I also got Domino's - it's been a long time since I've had them. I also showered. Woke up at an unknown time and went to bed at 6:20 PM (�3 minutes).
Nov 4: 50 more dreams have been processed for ratings updates. I can look at the title of a dream and recall, with great certainty, what was involved with that dream. All mud dreams have been processed and all but one page of the video game dreams have been processed. I lost my temptation to continue with this due to the urge to continue on with my 2D game. I started on the third set of mountains. The shape, grass, ice caps, and fog are all done (this is the easy part). One mountain of 15 has the lighting done with the second set only fully prepared to start. Since I don't have to "fight" the low-quality 16-stage lighting, I actually now think I'm doing it faster than before. I also, quite literally, called the city government to suggest an idea depicted in one of my dreams that I had (the one featuring the parade drive through history tour). I was going to do it earlier, but the 100th anniversary has already passed by. Just today, I looked up the year again and did some math and found out that the 125th, another specialty, was only 5.5 years away (June 1886). 125 is an eighth of a thousand so I thought it would be possible after all. With about 290 dreams at this time, who knows what ideas I can get from them. Hard to believe that only a year ago I only had 50 or 60! By June 2011, the 125th anniversary, I could, with an 80% chance, have at least a thousand dreams (I'm predicting around 550 by the end of 2006). I do have another suggestion - a contest to come up with scary-sounding names for what I call "toxic waste sticks" or "poison sticks" and the scariest and worst-sounding should get posted in areas where these "cancer sticks" are sold. I finished my pizza from Domino's as well. Woke up at an unknown time and went to get at 8:17 PM.
Nov 5: 8 mountains now have their lighting processed. Slower than expected due to work-wanting parents. Tomorrow is a dreaded day in terms of a slow down. Mom wants me to help put up wallpaper. In the time that would take, I could do another 5 mountains (assuming 3 hours - calculated estimate). I wished I was on the night shift now. I will be in a week though. Sunday = bad luck! Had 3 nose bleeds, two minor, one moderately-small. Yep, I still wished I never had a nose - it gives nothing but trouble and has practically no real uses for me. Had a well-recalled dream as well, a video game dream. No dreams were reprocessed still leaving 27% complete. Yet again, after a week of listening to Desert Zone, I'm back at listening to Out Where the Lake Is adding more to the one million total plays. I also seem to have found a clue to Firefox's copy effect stuff - past 120 MB usage, it happens. Before that, it doesn't happen. I've posted my long list of clues on the Firefox forums to help solve this long lingering bug and now it seems like I'm not the only one having the difficulties. When I began getting the copy effect stuff, I closed Firefox and noticed that I gained 123 MB of memory. Woke up 6:38 AM and went to bed at 9:22 PM.
Nov 6: Waking up at around 7:10 AM, I spent about 40 minutes writing details of a dream over 90% in tact. I finished mountain #8 and half of #9. I also "cleaned out" the forums. I then started the feared work at 10:40 AM which lasted about 1.5 hours. After finishing the work, I continued on to #12 where I was haulted for more work. After that, I continued working on them. I finished all 15 mountains for the lighting and finished two of them for the anti-aliasing. 13 remain for anti-aliasing and finalization remains. No dreams have been processed. If I didn't spend the two hours from working, I'd have the third (of 5) set of mountains done. Nov 15, hopefully, would be my target date for a first beta release for my 2D game. I have like 8 or 9 sheets of paper containing dreams - I really need to add those before I lose those papers. 2D game takes priority though. I also got a cold sore. Tomorrow's plans are to finish the mountains and allow adaptation to different resolutions. If done, the 4th set of mountains are next. Woke up at 7:52 AM and went to bed at 9:41 PM.
Nov 7: Woke up due to really bad upset stomach, likely due to diarea (sp.? - I know there's an H in there somewhere; diarea is very rare to me, last case was in June of 2005). Then, just as I was getting underwear, my stupid nose decided it was time to bleed again. Man do I hate my nose! I finished the third set of mountains (in 3 days). After that, I began moving the screen stats around. Where to put the error messages is something I don't know yet. I also figured out how to 46,180-something feet in my 2D game, before I couldn't get above 45,774.14 feet (and I didn't change the game mechanics either). That should be something for the master difficulty for the challenges - figure out how to get above 46,000 feet of height. I had a dream a few days ago where I got up really high from slopes - likely a hint or clue that I was going to get up really high (and that was a good dream too). It seems as if my dreams can, to some extent, predict the future, but only indirectly from clues given in them. I didn't process any more dreams, but now I'm getting the urge to update my website and, especially, add those dream from the previous update and the latest at this point. Then, just as I woke up, I had another dream featuring great heights, a modern sonic-like game. Woke up at 2:55 AM due to major stomach ache, went to bed at 3:20 AM, then woke up again at 9:18 AM and went to bed at 11:41 PM.
Nov 8: Another strongly in tact dream - 25 minutes writing details. My 2D game now works in 3 different resolutions: 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768. The side panels have been removed so you only see the main scene. That involved a bunch of calculations (mostly done mentally with my very strong mental math ability - hint: my shortcuts) mainly done to center things and adding (or subtracting) offsets. I also had to update the sky from that. A higher resolution just means a wider field of view so you can see more of the scene. Much of the day, besides the forums and space stuff, was spent allowing for this change. Rewriting the tutorial, updating the challenges, and finishing up the background scenery is all that remains before the official release, well, and some testing of course. Organizing the debug panel (for beta testers) is also needed, but not that important right now. My estimates, calculated based on experience, are explained in news item #2 above. Rather than Nov 15, given these calculations, it now seems that Nov 20 will be the expected beta release (nonpublic though). Woke up at 10:26 AM and went to bed at 2:17 AM.
Nov 9: Another dream.... Though moderately well-forgotten, two scenes are recalled quite well. Began the 4th set of mountains. I completed the shapes phase and done the lighting for 9 of 24 mountains. I lucked out in potential work. It also seems that my original estimates for time was off. I figured that it could be 10% less time. I'm also debating on whether or not I should do a sixth mountain range, closer than the closest ones now. All that's left are the other 15 mountains' lighting, anti-aliasing, and finalization. The number of mountains doesn't really matter, nor the height. What matters is the width of the mountains (wider mountains force less mountains per texture thus less work), width of the image (that's obvious), and how much the mountains overlap each other (more overlapping means that more mountains can fit in the same sized texture thus more work). Many of these mountains are "shorties". I need to be on the night shift to work in peace - low chance of doing house work (high chance when on the day shift). Typical things like laundry and putting dishes away are minor (10 to 15 minutes) compared to the stuff I fear (taking in excess of an hour). I'm now really becoming despirate to working on this 2D game. Thanks to my mom's 4 1/2 hour doctor appointment, I lucked out in potential highly unwanted work. I need all the time I can get for doing my 2D game and prefer working on it even a thousand times more than doing house work. Although the forums may seem like a slowdown, they are actually speeding me up with this by adding motive to doing it. It's quite ironic. This also allows others on the 3DGS forums to get answers to their questions at the same time - a double bonus. I recalled a past dream as well - 40% certain it has been added though. Woke up at 12:02 PM and went to bed at 5:08 AM.
Nov 10: No recalled dreams this time. I started off with internet problems - wouldn't connect to any site. Seems like my onboard NIC driver isn't functioning properly all of a sudden. The one I spoke with was amazed in how much I knew about computers, since I mentioned that I was a game designer. I did this while waiting for my system to reboot. Everything was okay after that for some time though. At the end of the day, it got slow again. I sometimes had to repeatedly click the refresh button like ten times due to a time out error - long enough that I completed another mountains' lighting while waiting for it to occur. This happened twice. Besides that, all but two of the mountains' lighting have been completed out of the 24 total. Halfway through the 21st mountain, I recalled an old dream well enough, I have a half of a page for it's description, generally a scenery description. However, due to my mom, I fear I may end up with 3 hours' worth lost progress due to highly unwanted housework. I'm hoping mom gets called in to work. My intent for tomorrow is to finish the 4th set of mountains in full and finally update my website - dreams and my blog. I'm almost a month behind in my dreams. This would almost take all day. I'm not processing the ratings though for the older dreams, I'm just adding the new ones only. I should be pretty close to 300 dreams by now, another milestone. I also changed songs to "Village Zone", one rarely mentioned. It, too, is from Bubsy, the first level even. Woke up at 2:09 PM and went to get at 4:18 AM (�5 minutes).
Nov 11: Due to some good thinking, I managed to avoid the feared work. Since mom has to go to work before I wake up, another free day is available. She may only have an hour on Sunday. She'll likely have to wait until next weekend (it will happen with 90% certainty, even if I try to avoid it, I can see it coming as I'll be on the day shift then). After finishing the 4th set of mountains, being quiet since mom was home (I heard it say "Are you up yet?") I began updating my website. From 268 to 278 dreams, I added ten more and I've likely got another 20 or so to add on top of that. I'm ignoring the part of rating the older dreams already listed except the 70 I've already processed a while ago. Finishing up the updating are my plans for when I wake up. I've got 14 sheets of paper to type up. 2 down already. Fortunately, I can type moderately fast - up to 50 words per minute (250 characters per minute). I also messed around with Audacity to see if it was of any use. It doesn't directly support the changing of the sample rate (which affects both pitch and tempo together, but not the wave itself - Audacity affects the wave itself in addition, not what I want), but it does have a bunch of useful features I could consider. The equalization feature comes in handy for figuring out the best parts of a song and how to optimize it for an equalizer. The "filter noise" feature might also come in handy, but can be very tricky to use since I've already cropped the file down. Perhaps, however, I can use the source of noise from other files I've got to filter it out. You guessed it - Out Where the Lake Is was my test subject. The hex editor (though not tested yet) should take care of the main part of changing the sample rate without affecting the wave itself. This program should do for recording, but haven't bothered testing it to see if it supports 50 KHz (or 100KHz sample rates for recording - at 16-bit mono). I don't know if this program works with 8-bit files though, but the version I used was my new 16-bit version recorded at 100,000 Hz. Woke up at 2:56 PM and went to bed at 6:24 AM.
Nov 13: Another recalled dream from the night. At 12:02 PM, only 4.5 hours into my sleep, my mom woke me up so I could go to the grocery store, but, not only did I have to take a shower, I would've been way too tired anyway. There was a big storm supposedly about to happen and thus the reason why she did this. Besides that, after "officially" waking up, I spent the entire day updating my website. While doing so, I figured out a possible time-saver that puts my high speed math abilities and my hypercount ability* to use to process the lighting even 30% faster (mind game simulation estimate). The lighting is the slowest part and takes a whole day just to process. Rather than 10 hours, I could reduce it to just 7, but this is untested and will be tomorrow when I do the most distant mountains. It'll even work for the hills. It won't have much use for the houses and almost no use at all for the city, but these two don't need the complex lighting. Because mom woke me up at noon, she added about 30 minutes or so. She wants that work done and does this to further ruin the chance of it? With over 90% certainty, but not 100%, the work I'm trying to avoid will get done. Slowly but surely, I'll get back on the day shift. Next weekend is the most likely time. I've tested my RGB color formula with bilevel transparency and proved my original concept very incorrect. I used the same technique I did before with color averaging. The formula for finding the resulting alpha was confirmed and was the easy one. I'll find the other part one way or another. Plugging numbers into a spreadsheet really didn't help much. The big clue is that the foreground color has a stronger influence over the background and the background color does have an effect. Woke up at 5:08 PM and went to bed at 7:51 AM.
Nov 14: One day, a whole mountain range done, the last one too. The new method, after a successful test, is now much faster, 25% faster to be precise. That was about as fast as my mind game simulation was saying. My mind game simulation told me I could expect 30% faster, correct at the fastest I can go, but 25% faster is my median. Rather than 10 days for those hills, it could now be just 8. That inevitable housework, being probably 3 hours, should be that bad now. It's going to happen anyway. I'm out of lemonades so I have to use my Powerades that I have. At 2 1/2 per day, I have enough for 12 days. I'm still having internet troubles - it'll connect just fine for some time, but then won't load any site for even 15 minutes. After getting bored of Village Zone, having 1200 plays total, I switched to the ending theme song from Cosmos. I got this when I first figured out how to record above 50,000 Hz sample rates. I never played it until now as I didn't bother to crop it. At the end of the day, I was already at 500 plays. The song is best from 63 to 70% of the true speed, especially 66% true speed. COM is already above 960.... Yep, here we go again - new song, 7000 plays are likely before getting bored of it. Tomorrow, I'll be doing the roads and fence. I'll then do the hills after that. To do the roads means having to solve a puzzle: one scaling unit is how much distance? It's the same on all resolutions. I'm getting a 1:40 ratio, or 1 scaling unit is 40 feet. I just need to plug in some numbers and go from there. Woke up at 5:04 PM and went to bed at 8:53 AM.
Nov 15: I woke up having another dream to jot details on. The fence concept has been rejected and the roads are in progress. The lines are the tough part. The roads themselves are now mostly done. Just the feature to toggle the lines' visibility remains and that is simple compared to the lines' general behavior. In fact, they look and behave so 3D-like, it'd almost take an expert to determine if it was 2D or 3D. The cars will be the tricky part. A "power of 2" system is my intent. The high density setting will be 4 times that of the low density setting and medium will be double. This really doesn't seem quite right if I look at it right. The biggest trouble spot is having to work around the power of 2 limitation of textures while preserving accuracy, the reason why the roads took much longer than I thought. It took 3 hours to do the lines and another 2 hours to fix bugs related to this and test. Adding in the line togglability feature will likely take an hour to do. November 20 is my target beta release date. 5 days remain to do the tutorial, modify the challenges, and do at least one set of hills along with some buildings and houses. The hills should be maybe one day knowing my new shortcut. The tutorial and buildings/houses should be another the challenges should be another, and more for organizing the debug panel. 3 expected days to do the general plan before release, 5 days left. Plans for tomorrow are to allow for the line visibility toggle and do a set of hills. I'm still debating on a closer set of mountains. I've never change the speed of that song once today. 66% true speed is the best of the best. The compatibility is at 976 and still climbing. TV ads of songs have songs rarely above 700 (3x), tiny compared to 976 (434x) or even 988.3 (1820x). Woke up at 7:41 PM and went to bed at 10:43 AM.
Nov 16: Woke up with a weird dream - spent 30 minutes writing the strongly in tact dream (about 90%). I also had to wash my blackets as I stepped in something not knowing I did and got it all over my bed. That went okay, except that I was cold for quite some time and got two holes in my pillow. As for the 2D game, the lines are now togglable and 2 lessons for the tutorial are completed. I had to change some game mechanics in order to get lesson 2 to work well. This change also fixes a long-lingering problem! For 3 attempts or so, when advancing a frame, the stats and background didn't behave properly when at, say, 4x time. This issue has finally been solved. Allowing for smooth movements below 1x time isn't in my agenda for the Nov 20 release. The tutorial and challenges, right now, take priority. Finishing the rest of the tutorial is tomorrow's main intent. Getting it started was the tricky part. Finishing up is the easy part. I now have a way to count to 64 even faster than my hypercount would with less effort. Rather than 15 seconds (�2 seconds) per 64, it's around 5 seconds. Also, it isn't hard on my hands either as I don't have to press the right arrow key 800 times per lesson. When I went to bed, more trouble began. My lamp's light burnt out and couldn't find my reserve. I'm now using an ordinary bulb. If only I could go to the grocery store, I'd get one. This is highly unlikely until Saturday. I'm out of the big pizzas. As for that song, 1900 plays so far with no change in the compatibility. Woke up at 10:20 PM and went to bed at 2:23 PM.
Nov 17: Had another weird dream. It featured a needle and a similar case 3 times. I have 3 newborn dogs so I think that they may be getting their first shot (vaccine) and I'll be involved. My dreams seem to predict the future, but extremely indirectly. I tried Tony's Cheese Quaesadea (sp.?) pizza, but it tasted horrible (compatibility at 150). Even my mom didn't like it at all either. Mom got it for me. When I first opened the package, I didn't like the way it looked with a yellow sauce rather than the usual darkish red-orange color. I also watched CNN student news (without the classroom). When I was in school, I often heard about CNN student news and that a tape was involved. At 2:10 AM Central time, you can watch it on CNN headline news (channel 204 on DirecTV). Now I know how those teachers seemingly get those CNN news things. I mainly watch the news and educational shows on TV with a rare case of cartoons (classic cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry). As for my 2D game, the tutorial is completely written and 11 lessons of 13 have been tested. 13 likely needs to be rewritten once the challenges are done. I like the style of the tutorial - much better than the old version. I got too tired to test it any further. The November 20 release date seems to be working out so far. My math says that I should have one day to spare. Tomorrow, I plan on testing the two remaining lessons and finish updating the challenges. I started updating them a few months ago, but lost interest. To do one of the lessons, I had to change some game mechanics. Along the way, I fixed another bug involving the speed blast and movement. 2800 plays and still counting. That method of having "123456789A123456789B1234..." commented out directly above a string is really a super fast way to count characters inserting line feeds (noted as \n in programming) after every 64 characters maximum (functioning like word wrap (see screenshots above for details)). It takes a mere 4 seconds now to process one line feed whereas it took four times longer the old way adding in tension to my hand from repeatedly pressing the arrow keys using my hypercount ability. Woke up at 12:30 AM and went to bed at 4:00 PM.
Nov 18: The tutorial is officially done. There may be a stray mistake hidden, but that is unlikely considering that I went through it like 5 times by now from testing. I got a brief start on the hills, but lost interest due to too much debating on how I want to do them. I began editting the challenges as well. I spent 3 hours trying to fix a long list of bugs I had from the first challenge. Getting set up was the tricky part and the most time-consuming. Once working well, doing the other challenges is quick and much easier thanks to that famous copy paste. I now have a new top favorite TV ad (see news item #6 for details on this). Nothing else happened though. Woke up at 1:56 AM and went to bed at 4:11 PM.
Nov 19: I woke up at 1:08 AM (�2 minutes) and spent 45 minutes writing details on a very strongly in tact mud dream nearly 98% in tact tying the first place record. It's a new favorite, but far from the best (dream 8-5 is the best, even 30 times better). I went on to working on those challenges. The third challenge was being a pain and took nearly two hours to get working right. I had to change core components of my game in order to fix it. It is working now though. During the fixing of the third challenge, I thought of an idea for another challenge now making 8 total. The 4th, my newest, is almost up and running, except for one minor problem. I also had to shower so I could go to the grocery store, but had to go to Mendard's as well which took nearly 90 minutes. Wal-mart was included, but I had to stay in the car since I'm completely blocked by mirrors that they put in. The grocery store (Market Place) was next. I had a tough time finding the cereal, but got my lemonades - 8 of them since I was completely out. I returned home nearly 4 hours later. I continued on with the fourth challenge having it almost ready to go. Updating the challenges is taking much longer than expected. Tomorrow doesn't seem like a release though. Parents = work. It is almost inevitable. I fixed a bug with the position involving the bounce stomp and fall-glide. I went to bed and added a few more details about my latest dream that I recalled making it likely 98% in tact. Woke up at 1:54 AM and went to bed at 7:08 PM (�1 minute).
Nov 20: I woke up at 3:00 AM to find out that my new bulb burnt out already. I had to sleep with my main bedroom light on. 6 challenges are done now. The fifth challenge had an unexplained bug that took 2 1/2 hours to figure out. I had to change some core components of my game in order to get this to work right. I also got to adding a new feature to choose how long you get to read the briefing. It took ten minutes to implement this. Having to wait ten seconds to test or retry a challenge every time was getting annoying so I did this to make it faster and better, not for me, but long-time users as well as it's more convienient. Why wait ten seconds to read through the rules if you already know them? The seventh challenge is about 15% done by the end of the day. Getting the time limit requirement (around 150 seconds) at the best possible (which is used as my base) will take quite a while at this one. It took an hour to get challenge #6's best possible score. Testing in the master difficulty is tough due to its nature. With all my gaming experience and knowledge of the controls, this helps a lot. I can normally survive up to 4 challenges in master once getting to number 6. The major (dreaded) slow down was that housework I was trying to avoid last week. That took 2 hours. Take out the 4-hour shopping trip and this housework, I could've had all 8 challenges completed. I didn't go on the forums, watch TV (except while eating and only that time), check my E-mail or anything. If I wasn't doing housework, I was working on my 2D games' challenges. My plans for tomorrow are to finish all of the challenges and release the 2.2 beta version. No forums or anything until then and hopefully, no housework! Woke up at 6:11 AM and went to bed at 6:41 PM.
Nov 21: Another dream recalled with just two scenes and almost no story (X for the story's rating). All 8 challenges are done and in working order. I spent the last 90 minutes trying to find the cause to an unexplained bug involving the speed blast. It's extremely hard to reproduce, but if it occurs, you can't jump, move, or anything without pressing the left shift key, the key used to execute the speed blast. Even if I'm 5 feet away from the keyboard, I can still see the speed blast being charged up well beyond it's limit (you just don't blast off). It seems to occur when I try to jump and/or after stopping and/or a pause caused from a challenge starting up or rerunning. Got around to calling the city government as well to try and give that suggestion I had earlier. I find out that it isn't quite their field and to contact some other place related to it. I called the library afterward and the one in charge liked my idea - said it was an 8 or a 9 on a 0 to 10 scale. Although much different from the version in my dream, the basic idea remains and the version I have will be much cheaper to do and almost as good. With over 300 dreams now, who knows what ideas I can get from them. I didn't go on the forums or anything today either. I need to finish testing the challenges and then the first beta can be released. These are my general plans for tomorrow. Woke up at an unknown time and went to bed at 9:48 PM (�5 minutes).
Nov 22: Seven more bugs were found with the challenges, mostly minor ones. Besides that, all is well. When I wake up I plan on releasing it. I've got the screenshots including a new favorite. Those challenges took a long time to do, far longer than expected. Again, another day without even going on the internet except one small case to download an update to Zonealarm. I'm now considering buying the full version of Zonealarm rather than the free version. Everything for my 2D game is now in good working order. I had to almost rewrite lesson 13 of the tutorial to get the information updated for the the challenges. At the end, I updated (mostly), the document containing the feature list of my 2D game. It was a month old. The screenshots showing the features aren't updated though. My plans for tomorrow are to simply release the beta version, "clean out the forums", check my E-mail, then update my site - blog and dreams mainly though. After 6500 plays of that song, I'm now getting signs of getting bored of it. Probably 1500 more is my limit. Woke up at 10:05 AM and went to bed at 1:43 AM.
Nov 23: Much of the day was spent on the forums - I had 3 days of things to catch up on. I tried to publish but ran into two major problems, one of which is bizarre. WED doesn't like the filename I gave, yet it runs fine otherwise. It publishes fine and even appears fine, but the name pointed to in the EXE has been cut off mysteriously (not the filename as seen in explorer, but the script name in the engine window). The other reason is even worse. Anyone who downloads and unzips the game can simly open the WDL file in Notepad and see the script and thus a major security hazard. Until a work around to both of these issues (the first one being dumb), especially the second, is found, there won't be any releases, even beta releases. I also downloaded and tried out the omega drivers for ATI supposedly for custom resolutions higher than 1600x1200, but that created a lot more trouble than it's even worth. Since my monitor (Scanport NB 1904 is the model and brand) supports a 96,000 Hz scan frequency and my video card (Radeon 9600 XT) supports 2048x1536 resolution and that there appears to be no difference between a 60 Hz and 75 Hz refresh rate, my calculations show that I can run at 2048x1536 at 60 Hz without any problems (92,160 scans per second). At 1600x1200, each pixel is 1/120th of an inch and at 2048x1536, nearly 1/150th of an inch. I can read text at size two (as from a word processing document) if printed out very clearly without much trouble even without any aids to my eyes. See news item #8 for details on this. Nothing shows up in the task bar making it nearly impossible to change windows without minimizing a bunch. The display of these tiny windows were messed up when minimized. I had to use Goback to undo this change going back to normal. Near the end, I began updating my website as I had planned and finished the headlines of my blog. The dreams and the rest of my blog remain. Woke up at 11:12 AM and went to bed at 2:22 AM.
Nov 24: Today was Thanksgiving. Didn't get any recalled dreams. I spent the entire day updating my website, although I did visit the forums earlier. Because the feast was at my sister's place, where I couldn't work on updating my website or my 2D game, I didn't want to go. I'm that despirate. They even watched a movie and my 2D game takes 30 times higher priority than that. Christmas, however, might be more different as I, hopefully, should have my 2D game done. I looked into Molebox. It's a file packer and it looks very promising. $59 for Molebox standard isn't worrysome, but $400 for Molebox pro corporate is. Since I'm not really a company, the $400 doesn't apply to me (plus, I couldn't get it anyway due to exceeding my spending limit). Weird name for the program, but very nice and handy. Woke up at 12:22 PM and went to bed at 1:43 AM.
Nov 25: Much of the day was spent on the forums. Due to major publishing issues and that bug with the filename being cut off and with that update to 3DGS seemingly taking forever to be released, I have lost a big chunk of my motive to working on my 2D game. It could be another 3 months by the time that update is actually available. I hope not. At 11:20 PM, I was at that housework once more, supposedly for the last time. 100 minutes went by from that. Near the end of the day, I began working on my logo - it needs to be redone. I'm using a spreadsheet document to draw very precisely in 3D. It's coming out extremely well already and very strongly in 3D. I got several vertices plotted already, enough for two buildings. Nothing else happened as far as I can tell. Woke up at 1:48 PM and went to bed at 5:37 AM.
Nov 26: Lost my motive for my 2D game almost entirely. I'm still not getting any answers to my publishing problem. The logo has been cut short as, it's much faster and easier to make it with 3DGS, but the current version has lots of missing features or too many limitations. With no sign of the update coming any time soon, I'm discouraged to continue on as it could be 3 months before it's released, an extremely discouraging thought. My boredom has spiked again. Although I can still do the graphics for the 2D game, I'm no longer able to do anything else until that update is actually released meaning that the Dec 20 release will almost certainly not happen. I can't do anything in my 3D game due to the need of the update and especially the new MED. Without the update released, I'm stuck. I switched to Desert Zone after 9500 plays of the previous song. I began updating history report on my website completing the math skills part. Woke up at an unknown time and went to bed at 4:43 AM.
Nov 28: Another dream well-remembered. Forums, TV, and Wikipedia made up the day. I updated the Gamestudio article, including the screenshots were I ran into some strange bug with Wikipedia involving uploading files saying of an invalid hash even though it loaded just fine. I also watched two episodes of Survivorman. Seems like the stupidity is into that 9 out of 10 category. Why would anyone risk their lives for something like that? I was bored and nothing was really on so I thought I'd see what it was like. Compatibility is 508, just a tiny fraction better than neutral, a very tiny fraction. Outside this, nothing else happened. Woke up at 3:37 PM and went to bed at 8:34 AM.
Nov 29: Forums then 6 hours of TV. I often watched TV while on the forums. I watched a show on the History Channel about Edgar Cayce, a modern prophet. Afterwards, I looked at the site featuring his work to see what lies beyond 2010, but couldn't get much out of it. Woke up at 6:10 PM and went to bed at 6:30 AM (�3 minutes).
Nov 30: Woke up at 3:00 AM with a dream, but was too tired to really concentrate on writing details thus I left the important info and the one scene from the dream that is very vivid. It's a favorite. I went back to bed soon after. Much of the day was spent on the forums and watching TV. However, what happened at the end of the day may be promising. I began writing the manual for my 2D game. This might help spur my motive back. It's too early to tell if it has any impact though. Other than that, and getting near that record boredom mark (still far from it), nothing else happened. December is another neutral luck month, though a little into the good zone. Woke up at an unknown time (not 3:00 AM), and went to bed at 9:43 AM.

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

Year 2011: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

Year 2012: 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
	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
	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.