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What have you been up to in April of 2006?


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

Apr 23, 2006



Apr 23, 2006: I finally got the BMP to GIF and XCF to GIF batch converter I've been after and batch processed all known previous animations. Along with that, I made a new animation and wrote a detailed, in-depth tutorial on how to make animated GIFs along with it. I got a sound card as well. Began the main plan for the city world for my 3D game. I didn't make any progress for my 2D game, except plan finalization. My website's indexes have been redesigned. Two of my dogs had surgery (to spay/neuter them). I set a new record as well - listening to a single song more than 22 consecutive days with only speed changes made. 9 new dreams recalled.

#1 BMP to GIF batch converter: I've finally, after 2 years (more precisely, 21 or 22 months) of searching, got my BMP to GIF batch converter. It also works with XCF. From this, I batch converted all of my previous known animations. Now, instead of the complicated process of unzipping AVI videos and having huge 50+ MB files on your hard drive, it's just one click and you're watching it. This means I also made a modification to the videos page. Included is a new feature to allow you to zoom in on the animation at 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8x zoom. It took me but an hour to batch process my ten completed spell effects and 40 minutes to batch process two long animations (641 frames and 793), the biggest whack on the batch converter. This is the first case in which my 1.5 GB memory came in handy. I still haven't dropped below 600 MB free memory yet....
#2 No more limits!: Okay, so an 800-frame animated GIF seems a bit crazy, but this is nothing compared to my potential. Care for a 3000-frame animated GIF? Before, just to make the frames, it would take me several days to process. Put together with 3DGS and the batch converter, the only limit I have for making animations is hardware, particularly memory. 90% of the process is automated. The only manual part is coming up with the plan, doing the scenery and adjusting the script used with 3DGS. For 3000 frames, excluding the time to plan it and draw the scenery, it takes but maybe 2 hours to make it. The planning takes about 60 to 150 minutes for that length, depending on complexity. Drawing the scenery will take about another 30 to 240 minutes, depending on resolution used and complexity. In short, I could have a single 3000-frame animated GIF done in only one day with time to spare.
#3 Animation tutorial: In light of the fact I now have a BMP to GIF batch converter, I decided to write a tutorial explaining in depth how I make my animations. The previous tutorial I had was about 2 to 3 years old and was highly outdated. I rewrote the tutorial from scratch going in far greater depth down to the finest of details. You can, indeed, make flash-like animated GIFs with this tutorial. I made a new animation from writing this tutorial. See category 3 for details on this.
#4 Got a sound card: If I already have sound, why would I get a sound card? Two main reasons: I want to switch motherboards for PCI-express to upgrade my video card, and so I don't have to be dependent on onboard sound all the time. I got the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card in case you're wondering. My current motherboard doesn't have PCI-express, only the now-being-phased-out AGP. Although Radeon 9600 XT isn't that old, I'd like to upgrade to something like the Radeon X1600 or something like that. The X1600 costs just about what I paid for for the Radeon 9600 XT and by the time the time comes to getting it, it'll be another $10 cheaper. I know ATI more than nVidia so I'm basing it on that. NVidia is not out of the question though, I'm just unfamiliar with them. At the time I was looking for video cards (see the blog entries around February 2005 for more details), I saw that nVidia has a much lower core clock speed. Clock speed doesn't always mean better performance.
#5 Another cold, but minor: Just before my 22nd birthday, I caught a cold, of which had a runny nose and cough. On April 17 or 18, I caught another cold, as my mom gave it to me. Although the runny nose was about as bad as my last cold, I practically didn't cough at all or even had the need to. I figure that, if mucus gets into my throat, it causes the cough so, to counter that, I blew my nose much more often than normal and it seems to have worked. Before confirming it, I need one more case. I didn't even need to take any pills and my cold went away in just two days!
#6 City world plan: So far, my city world has gone through 5 revisions and now a 6th is in the works. The previous versions were not all that much life-like. The 6th revision is practically the master plan and will be much more life-like. Unlike before with a lot of sky scrapers, it's more like a mid-sized town, like one with 40,000 residents. I otherwise lack big city experience so I have no idea what it's like to have skyscrapers all around. There aren't any big cities of 100,000 residents or more within 500 miles from where I live. This revision, even from the starting point of making the plan, looks very decent and much better than the current system I had. This plan also gives several other advantages. Not only will it be easier to design the scenery, but it'll also work well for a game map.
#7 No considerable progress with 2D game: Between batch converting animations, writing that tutorial, debating on designs, the forums, and the city world plan, I haven't had any considerable progress with my 2D game. There aren't any new screenshots, the only things done were deciding how the cars should work and making adjustments for the clouds to get them spaced out more evenly from that of the spacing between layers.
#8 Could it be? A vacation!?: It's been close to 6 years since I've last been on vacation of any kind. Only recently has there been some signs of this, or at least looking into having one. This is rather early in the decision so I don't have a clue on the outcome. The last vacation I had was before my website was even in existance and before I even began using online forums or even before I had E-mail. 6 years is an extremely long time to comprehend. From the online forums, I'm often seeing others going on vacation at least twice a year, sometimes once a year, but 6 years without one seems a bit too long. July 23, 2001 (±1 day) was when I started using online forums, May or June of 2001 since I began using E-mail, even before I heard of Gamestudio, of which was in December 2000 or so. Back when I had my last vacation, I was just barely into high school, I didn't have a dream journal or a computer. I used cassettes for my music and was actively playing video games. 6 years is a long time and so much has happened since.
#9 Dogs had surgery: Because the dogs were going nuts earlier and Kujo whining like crazy when separated from the dog he sniffs like crazy, we spayed/neutered them to prevent from having any more babies as 6 is hard enough to deal with - we don't need any more. We'll be doing it again for the other male dog we have, BA.
#10 Look out OWTLI!: Ever since I made the EQ'ed version of Winter Land, my compatibility with Winter Land shot up so high that some peaks actually are above the average compatibility with Out Where the Lake Is, my all-time top favorite song. Ever since the start of April, I've been going at it constantly racking up 15,000+ plays in Winamp. The version on my MP3 player has peaks at 988.4 (1850 times better than neutral). OWTLI's average is at 988.2 (1800 times better than neutral). Unlike OWTLI, Winter Land is liked all the way through, all 32 measures and with remarkable consistancy. OWTLI has only the first two parts (16 measures) well-liked, especially the the start of the second part (measures 6 through 14) where it peaks above 2500 times better than neutral. Compare using this graph and chart and you'll see what I mean:

graph comparing my top favorite songs, Out Where the Lake Is and recently Winter Land, and at the best-sounding speeds



Do note that these values are only rough approximations and have a 20% margin of error. It does, however, give a rough idea on how the two songs compare. Both songs are 32 measures each and are based on the best speed. For Winter Land, it's 112% true speed and for OWTLI, it's 63% true speed. Note how constant Winter Land is. There are hardly any variations. Note how OWTLI varies considerably with large jumps. Note that there is a huge spike after measure 5 and a huge drop after measure 14. This is a screenshot of Winamp and the extremely high play counts I have:

Winamp shows Winter Land and it's versions with over 30,000 combined plays, for a 1-minute loop.


Do note that there are two versions. The enhanced version is the big, obvious one, but there's another with just over 9000 plays and one just short of 100. That's a monsterous 30,000 plays!

#11 Almost my longest shower ever: How long does it take you to take a shower? 5 minutes? 10? 20? How about 50? 50 is extremely high and excessively long, but this is almost the longest shower I've ever had. The cause - cold. I, myself, was cold, but warming up usually only take an extra 5 minutes. The big problem was the fact that the bathroom window was left open and the shampoos and body wash were very cold. The normal time is 30 minutes. Warming up added on another 5. It took about 4 minutes to warm up the shampoo. The body wash, which seems to be the coldest, took 11 minutes to get warm enough and even then it was still a bit chilly but much better. Then, after I got out of the shower, one of the big reasons why I hate taking showers (or baths), is that I was left cold for quite a while, even shivering. This is the worst time of year for me taking showers because my parents often turn off the heat (as it gets to 65 to 70° outside - cold to me). It may seem warm to others, but just for me to keep warm, I need to use my blankets. 70°F is rather a bit chilly for me. 74 to 78°F is my optimal range.
#12 I set a new music-related record: Would you bother listening to the same song (with only the speed being changed) for 23 days constantly without end? That's my old record. To most of you, 1 day is hard enough. 5 days is typical and 10 days is hard enough for me. 23 days is extremely high and with the way things are still going, I could make 27 days. The only thing changed is the sample rate which changes the speed. Changing the song resets the count to zero. Speeds that sound horrible are rejected. Why is this happening? Look at the compatibility comparison chart above and you'll see. As a consequence, as you might expect, the song is stuck in my head and when I "play" it back in my mind, it otherwise is an exact copy on how I'm hearing it. The magic speed seems to be from 108 to 116% true speed and the special EQ'ed version I made where I amplify my favorite parts of the song and soften my least liked parts. Doing this, alone, doubled the impact on neutral from around 850 to just over 1700. At the time of this update, it's been almost 25 days to the hour and I still have some juice left for another 2 days.
#13 9 new dreams: Although many are not well-recalled, including one close to having X's across the board, I have 9 more dreams available now putting me at 373 dreams, still right on track with the prediction I made of having 500 by the end of the year.

Apr 5, 2006



Apr 5, 2006: All 27 cloud layers in my 2D game have been completed. I've also got an updated photo of myself. Also are photos of probably the biggest mess you've ever seen, due to remodelling. Only 4 dreams have been recalled, 3 of which vaguely recalled.

#1 All cloud layers done: During the last update, 12 layers were done. After this update, the remaining 15 layers were done, doing a near-constant 2 layers per day. The only thing left with the clouds now are to enable visibility adjustments and setting the scaling. The scene looks, well, you decide with these nice-looking screenshots:

Screenshot #1: Since the furthest clouds are hard to decern their position, I got this screenshot from near the highest possible. You can still get another 800 feet higher than this though. You can easily see the mountain peaks peaking above the clouds.

Screenshot #2: This is an even better view of the clouds, closer to them. This is my top-favorite scene of the four available screenshots currently now used as my desktop background. You can easily see the 3D effects between the first and second screenshots.

Screenshot #3: I took out the mountains and hills in this screenshot leaving nothing more than the ground and clouds visible. From just above the cloud tops, you can clearly see how the clouds look. This is my second-favorite scene of the four available screenshots.

Screenshot #4: Also without the mountains and hills, this is what it looks like below the cloud tops 1/3 of a mile up. The dark bluish color is supposed to be like that. With a sky like this, you'll see objects appearing like that. Just look how small the furthest clouds are compared to the closer ones.

Screenshot #5: From just below the clouds with all objects, this is what the scene looks like. Compared to the March 26, 2006 blog entry, which has a very similar screenshot, you can tell the difference between the scenes.

I may redo, to some extent, the closer cloud layers as their style doesn't match those far away (mainly noticeable when you zoom in on the image). The two closest cloud layers, however, don't need to be redone leaving just ten layers to update. I could almost now put a "done" stamp on it (after Monster House). Right now, I'm more concerned and focused on just getting the game available for sale. My next plans, after the visibility options and scaling options are made available, are between doing the cars on the road (of which the system has not been finalized), allowing braking while gliding (this is quick), fixing the mountains so they are closer together and look better (this shouldn't take long either), redoing the player character, or doing the hills. It's still seems like quite a bit of work left, but, overall, I'm 75% done with the game as for what I have planned for the start of my sales. I'll, hopefully, be done by May.
#2 Finally a working BMP to GIF batch converter: I'm now able to batch convert BMPs to GIF exactly as it should (with an added bonus), of which took 2 years and 70+ downloaded programs to find. I only tested it, however, with an 18-frame animation. It'd normally take me 6 minutes to process. GIMP, though very slow, did it in just 4 seconds, a mere 1% of the time if I did it manually. Not only that, but it also automatically sets the time delay between frames making the process even faster. Right now, I find my 2D game more important so I don't have much intent to batch convert my animations to GIF. I'd like to give credit and a big thanks to the user "soulgoode" on the gimptalk forums for this.
#3 Remodelling gives huge mess: Here's a question for you, what is the biggest mess you've seen? If you've seen Clean Sweep on TV, you'd have seen pretty big messes. The mess caused from remodelling is comparable to what you see on that show. I almost never see it as I have almost no interest in it. I did, however, take some photos, many of which underexposed (the dark background my site uses helps with this):

Photo #1 - this is the kitchen. Can you figure out what's missing in this picture? This is extremely close to true color. LAF = 1; // see note below for meaning Mess_severity = 2; // low

Photo #2 - this is what is around that corner. The lighting is slightly darker than it should be but otherwise correct. LAF = 1.1; Mess_severity = 6; // high

Photo #3 - From the same position but looking behind. This photo is half as dark as it should be. LAF = 2.2; Mess_severity = 7; // very high

Photo #4 - 70° to the right from the above photo is what you have here. The background is very dark and the light causes incorrect coloring. LAF = 2.5; // for the background Mess_severity = 7; // very high

Photo #5 - From the first photo, only directly behind. Some things got moved to here, but, even though this looks messy, it's nothing compared to numbers 3 and 4. LAF = 1.6; Mess_severity = 4; // medium

Photo #6 - In case you can't figure out what is missing in the first photo, you can see it here. LAF = 0.9; Mess_severity = 3; // medium-low

LAF stands for "light adjustment factor". To get closer to true color, just multiply the RGB colors of each pixel in this photo by this number to get considerably close to true color. The values are not exact, but give a rough idea. The mess was so bad, even going 2 mph was too fast. Now, I can charge at 10 mph (or more) without too much worry of running into something.
#4 Another song with over 20,000 plays: I've been going very heavy on listening to "Winter Land" (from round 5-1 on Ristar, a Sega Genesis game, also on Sonic Mega Collection). At the time of this update, I have 20,500 plays. This is still hardly anything compared to how many times I've listened to my all-time top favorite song, Out Where the Lake Is, of which has nearly one million total plays (that's just 2%, but there's also another 50,000 plays outside Winamp.
#5 Updated photo of myself: The last photo was from April 9, 2005 (±1 day). The new photos were taken almost a full year later. Care to figure out my 2D game? That's what I have on my monitor (when 22 of the 27 cloud layers were done).


High res version (1440x810)


Here's one view of me and my 2D game. The scene on the monitor is blurred out, but it's the same as the one in the photo below.


High res version (2048x1536)


This is the clearest picture of me and my 2D game. It's so clear, you could read the text on the monitor. Also, this, except the image on the monitor, is very close to true color.


High res version (960x540)


Don't believe I have so many dogs? That's 6 dogs you're seeing. That's six bundles of shedding fur that need lots of belly rubs. From left to right: Luna (baby ~7 months), Kujo (father, ~1.5 years (the "annoying, whining dog" as I refer to in my blog)), BA (pronounced as if spelling it, like BJ; baby ~7 months), Precious (mother ~4 years), Misty (baby ~7 months), Jenna (~9.8 years - blind dog). The babies weigh 10 pounds each, Kujo is 16 pounds, Precious is just 6, and Jenna is at 25 (and climbing). That's 77 pounds in dogs to care for.
#6 4 new dreams: Unlike last time where I had 6 dreams recalled in 8 days, I had only 4 dreams recalled during a longer time period which is still not too bad. Unlike earlier, many of these aren't as well recalled, except one where lots of high-detailed scenes are recalled but with little story. This puts me at 364 dreams.
#7 The longest MP3 player battery life yet: 18 hours 41 minutes is the longest play time I've had with a single charge on my MP3 player's battery, 4/3 as long as advertised. I theorize that I'll reach 19 hours at the absolute highest.
#8 My June 13, 2006 prediction (again): You may probably have known about my prediction to be fullfilled on June 13, 2006 and that something special will happen. I made this prediction ten years ago and I've got numerous instances of it in my blog. First I thought it was going to be with my scripts, but that didn't turn out to be the case. With my 2D game so close to finished, I'm now suspecting that this prediction will be related to it. It's still over 2 months away though.

Daily Events



Apr 1: No dream recalled, despite waking up and going to bed three times. I showered so I can go grocery shopping. My MP3 player got 18 hours 41 minutes, the longest yet (news item #7 has a few more details). While I was out, I convinced my dad to get a digital camera in town, since he needed one, so we now have a 4 megapixel digital camera with 3X optical zoom. I also went to Menard's, the bank, Wal-mart (had to wait outside), Bestbuy (only to look at digital cameras), OfficeMax (don't recall what for), and Staples (for paper, CD-RW's, and DVD-R's, mainly for backup reasons). From the new digital camera, I got an updated photo of myself. See news item #5 for more details on this. I wanted a retake due to strong JPG artifacts, but my parents left and took too long to return as I was getting too tired. I did, finally, process the kitchen remodelling photos I had. No progress was made in my 2D game, except finding an easily reproduced method to getting a nice view for screenshots. Woke up at 1:55 AM and went to bed at 7:01 PM.
Apr 2: No dream recalled again. Daylight savings time starts. Others complain of losing an hour of sleep because of it. I'm not affected, although it does throw my calculations off. The start of the day was spent doing that remodelling stuff, mainly installing a new window. The window was a horizontal slider type placed vertically instead, something unexpected to begin with. Next, it was getting that photo again, of which I couldn't due to parents not present. The first attempt had the flash on the monitor which looked bad. I then tried the self-timer feature, of which didn't work well enough - it was too short. The third attempt was the charm. Although bright (even without the flash), it came out moderately well, except the scene on my monitor. After this, I just went on to cropping the scenes and making smaller thumbnails. I then went on the forums. I went to bed afterwards. I couldn't connect to the gimptalk forums after 50 minutes of trying. This I later found out to be because of a denial-of-service attack. Woke up at 6:52 AM and went to bed at 8:52 PM.
Apr 3: Two more cloud layers done making only 3 remain. I've spent most of the day on the forums. The dogs were being a pain for 7 hours with constant barking and wanting in and out. Tiredness also played a role to the slower development. At the end of the day, it was mainly just TV. Woke up at 7:00 AM and went to bed at 11:00 PM.
Apr 4: Finally a dream recalled, but lacks a lot of detail. All 27 cloud layers are now done, except the part of the remaining customizability (visibility and scaling). I started updating my site as well. The blog's headlines mainly. Much of the day was spent on the forums. Also, it seems like today or tomorrow (April 5 or 6), severe thunderstorms seems possible. The Red River near Fargo has flooded. It got to a very high 65°F today. Just 69 days to my predicted June 13, 2006 time I predicted nearly 10 years ago. Woke up at 9:31 AM and went to bed at 12:34 AM.
Apr 5: Recalled another dream. Website was updated. Much of the day was spent on the forums. I did manage to get the glide ability to allow for slowing down and I fixed the basic and obvious bugs. I now have (yet) to check if the movement is correct (0 to 600 mph gives exactly 10 miles, and going back should give exactly 20 miles or 4.32 million for the horizontal position). My next updates will be with the player, likely doubling the size. Winter Land has now passed 12,000 plays. Woke up at 10:10 AM and went to bed at 1:10 AM.
Apr 6: No dream was recalled. Much of the day was spent on the forums, as usual. I redid the sky and space effect in my 2D game to get the smoothest possible gradient. It is now so smooth, even 16x zoom isn't enough. However, I ran across a strange bug where I have a black area on the right from extreme stretching. The first test run with doing the sky and space effect had a severe flaw and I had to spend an additional hour on top of 2 beforehand to fix it. I'm still going strong with Wither Land. Since the update, I've logged another 1500 or so plays. The storms missed us (went south), but the winds were strong. Two dogs went to the vet to get spayed/neutered. See news item #9 for details on this. Woke up at 11:54 AM and went to bed at 2:31 AM.
Apr 7: The internet went down after 6:00 PM. Since then, I made a special equalized version of Winter Land which took 4 hours to do it. I also did an equalized version of Desert Zone taking 4 more hours. I didn't finish the Desert Zone version entirely, just saving the WAV files then converting to MP3 and transferring the MP3's to my MP3 player are all that really remain. The EQ-ed version of Winter Land sounds nearly twice as good as the original putting it dangerously close to that of Out Where the Lake Is. See news item #10 for details on this. I'm also using 24 Kbps MP3 instead of 16 and 24 has virtually no distortions that I can detect. It's the same amount of loss as 192 Kbps for CD-quality music. It seems that the 41667 speed is the best (83 1/3% (5/6) true speed). Woke up at 3:12 PM and went to bed at an unknown time.
Apr 8: First it was TV then cleaning out the forums having trouble connecting at the start. Then, after a little more TV, I began writing a tutorial on how I make my realistic-looking flash-like animations. For details on this, see news item #3. So far, I've finished the introduction, including the history. I've also finished the part about planning and making a spreadsheet. I left off on the part of creating the scenery. I have 6 formulas related to art (one for motion, used with animated art, like animated GIFs). 23,000 plays with Winter Land and another 2000 on my MP3 player. Woke up at 2:03 PM and went to bed at 7:34 AM.
Apr 10: First it was TV then cleaning out the forums. Next was taking a shower so my dad would stop complaining. I started at 11:40-something PM. After my shower, I recleaned the forums. When nothing was going on, I continued my animation tutorial. I've now created the scenery required and I'm now ready to animate it. I'm still going strong with Winter Land. 115 to 125% true speed seems to be another favorite. Woke up at 6:11 PM and went to bed at 9:30 AM.
Apr 11: I finally finished the animation and tested it. The tutorial is not quite finished yet, but very close. I still need to break it up into several pages as a 95 KB SHTML document is a bit big.I spent the last nearly 2/3 of the day working on this animation. The first 1/3 was spent watching TV at first then cleaning out the forums. I'm still going strong with Winter Land, even stronger with the EQ-ed version on my MP3 player. Woke up at 5:29 and went to bed at 11:16 AM.
Apr 12: Finally another dream recalled. I did a few touchups to the tutorial: broke it up into multiple pages, saving the screenshots and their thumbnails, then I began testing it and fixing bugs. Afterwards, I went on the forums and began by posting my animation tutorial on the gimptalk forums, of which, 6 hours later, I still haven't gotten a reply yet. Along with that, I replaced my old avatars on the forums with scaled down versions of the animation. I got two responses, both decent, on the 3DGS forums. I didn't get any response from HWW though. I'm still going strong with Winter Land now putting one of my old records in focus. I still have another 8 or so days before I set the record and there is a considerable chance I'll set it or at least get very close to it and have a new second-place value. While I went to bed, I compiled a detailed compatibility chart for Winter Land down to the individual measure (4 beats). Woke up at 8:36 PM (±4 minutes) and went to bed at 1:18 PM.
Apr 13: Another dream was recalled, of which has practically no story, but 3 scenes. A few things happened. First is that all GIF-compatible animations have been processed as a GIF file using my long-wanted BMP to GIF batch converter. I also processed one with 641 frames and another with 793 frames, the biggest bangs on the converter taking 200 to 400 MB memory just to handle all the layers and for optimizing it. I also processed 10 other known spell effect animations, the entire fire and holy series and the two I did for ice, of which no progress was made for nearly 2 years. It all took an hour to convert all that when it would manually take the entire day, possibly even a second day. Close to 2000 frames were batch-converted. Another thing on my list was getting details for getting a sound card. I found one that looked promising for $75. I also reported another bug for GIMP while one submitted yesterday was confirmed. Still going heavy with Winter Land.... 2 months now remain until my predicted June 13, 2006 event occurs. Woke up at 11:46 PM and went to bed at 2:28 PM.
Apr 14: Another dream was recalled, but lacks details. I ordered the sound card, Audigy 2 ZS. For details on this, see news item #4. Although a considerable chunk of the day was spent on the forums, two things worth nothing occurred. The first, from comments on the 3DGS forums, was to find a method on making the clouds more evenly spaced. A stretch of 1.5 seems sufficient. More calculations are needed to verify it and some minor adjustments are needed. The last 5 hours were spent making a detailed map of the city world for my 3D game. It was using nearly 300 MB memory and I still had 800 MB free memory! That 1 1/2 GB has sure come in handy. Even with an unoptimized 800-frame 320x240 animated GIF loaded in GIMP, I still have 600 MB free memory. So far, the central lake, and basic road layout has been done. The roads need to be refined. Two buildings have been mapped. Still going strong with Winter Land, but getting signs of boredom for the computer version, likely that another speed change is in order. Woke up at 2:34 AM and went to bed at 7:02 PM.
Apr 15: The would-be tax day, but it was shifted to later due to it falling on the weekend. I woke up earlier than expected, getting only 7 hours' sleep, and I couldn't get back to sleep. A nearly forgotten dream was recalled, however. I took a shower so I could go grocery shopping. Unlike most cases, this shower lasted 50 minutes. See news item #11 for details on why. I did clean out the forums and process my city a little bit, but having to rake leaves and doing other housework caused a slow down, along with only getting 7 hours' sleep adding sleepiness to the mix. Easter is tomorrow, a holiday I have no interest in (I have no interest in religion or religious stuff). Woke up at 4:39 AM and went to bed at 5:15 PM.
Apr 16: It's Easter. I slept for 11 hours, a bit longer than I normally do. Must of the day was spent doing housework stuff. First it was the forums then eating. I then went on doing the housework stuff which lasted for 8 hours. At the end, I watched TV. I did make a crucial fix to the city world street map. Toward the end of the day, mom was looking at details about a vacation getaway to a lake in Minnesota, of which is far from new. For details on this vacation-related thing, see news item #8. I'm now very close to setting that record - just 3 or 4 days remain. My blog came in handy for me - finding the birth date of baby dogs. It was accurate to within an hour or two. My next plan is to get my website updated as it has been taking longer than expected. A minor thunderstorm came through. Just the bangs of thunder and an immeasurably small amount of rain (about 40% of the porch was covered from rain drops). Woke up at 5:16 AM and went to bed at 9:06 PM.
Apr 17: It's tax day. Wanna pay tax? Not much of the day was spent on the forums. The big chunk was that city map. The western commercial district is about 2/3 done. This map will take a long time to complete. However, not only will it form the basic plan, it'll come in use in other ways as well. I seemed to have caught a cold again, likely from my mom. My sound card should arrive tomorrow (unlikely) or the day after. I should update my website - it's been practically two weeks. I'm still going at Winter Land. It now seems that I might as well even set the record. Woke up at 7:06 AM and went to bed at 9:32 PM.
Apr 18: Another dream recalled. I seemed to be tired and drowsy for most of the day. I did manage to clean out the forums and get a big start on the headlines but was too tired and drowsy to do much. I slept for 85 minutes then woke up again. I managed to finish about 90% of the headlines, but didn't get much anywhere else. I watched TV for quite some time, nearly 4 hours outside the usual 90 minutes for eating. I cleaned out the forums again, gave two comments to bugs related to GIMP and another feature request (choice between global and local palettes for animated GIFs). My cold only, currently, has a runny nose, but no considerable cough. That's two this year so far. At the end of the day, I did more stuff for my mother's work place - making a duty checklist, or at least a template anyway. It took nearly as long to print all 3 as it did to make just one. The main cause was that the printer either didn't take the paper (the most common case), it took the whole stash (ten sheets at once), or, due to an annoying bug in Excel, printed in green instead of black and white. I'm still going at Winter Land.... Woke up at 7:05 AM, went to bed at 1:57 PM, woke up again at 3:27 PM then went to bed at 2:01 AM.
Apr 19: Another dream recalled with moderate detail. Sound card arrived - ran backup then installed it. I cleaned out the forums beforehand and watched quite a bit of TV as well. Upon plugging it in, I began testing it out and seeing what it can do. For details on the sound card, see news item #4. My cold is practically gone, all without any coughing. It's now been 15 days since the last update and - I should avoid the forums until I finish. This is tricky to do. I spent 3 hours making a simple animated GIF for bugzilla and a sample. Woke up at 12:16 PM and went to bed at 6:45 AM (±8 minutes).
Apr 20: A third dream in a row has been recalled. I cleaned out the forums, gave another demonstation on the enhanced smoothing technique for Bugzilla, ate, then washed tree litter off the dogs (sticky things that practically glue to their fur). This took 3 hours to do - much longer than I thought. I then went on adding the blog headline featuring my unusual cold then modifying the animation collection list to include all known past animations and I had more animations than I expected - a total hovering around 30. A big chunk of which were done in the first half of 2004 during the prime time. There are even a few unfinished animations and I know there are some from version 2 and 3 of my website somewhere on my hard drive. I'm still going at Winter Land and I just broke the previous record and I still have juice left to continue smashing it into smaller pieces. The sound card improved the quality of Winter Land further enhancing my chances. Woke up at 3:33 PM and went to bed at 7:08 AM.
Apr 21: I only slept for 6 hours and I couldn't get back to sleep. A 4th dream in a row was recalled though. A big chunk of the day was spent updating my website. The animation list is now 100% done, except for testing it. All 8 dreams have been added to my dream journal and the headlines are almost finalized. The indexes and sitemap need their styles updated and converted to SHTML (the main index will remain at HTML for now. The spells part has had a minor change to accompany the GIF animations, not the AVIs, but the documents are otherwise unchanged. The daily entries remain as well. I should, hopefully, finish before midnight, provided I'm not forced to do housework or get too involved with the forums. I watched some TV and cleaned out the forums submitting two new bugs for GIMP, a feature request and a minor bug for the preview of optimized animated GIFs in the preview when opening a file. Woke up at 2:38 PM and went to bed at 6:42 AM.
Apr 23: Woke up around 3:30 PM due to a nosebleed and couldn't get back to sleep afterwards. A fifth dream in a row was recalled meaning another update to the dream journal was needed. I finally got my website updated but had a major bug with the table being much wider than I expected and I otherwise had to recreate the entire table, probably using 1/4 tube's worth of copy paste just to do it. I was about to go to bed at 9:40 AM, but my parents got me at some unexpected housework, but it was otherwise minor. I'm still going at Winter Land, even though I broke the record. Every little bit further makes the record more impressive and more difficult to break again. I watched TV (cool fuel for the main thing) at the beginning and cleaned out the forums as well. First it was adding the new dream then it was adding the several daily entries I had, nearly two week's worth. I then went on redesigning the main index and the category indexes. By 6:40 AM, 7 hours later, I was ready to test, but I couldn't connect to the net. I had to restart my computer in order to fix it. Seems like yet another bug with XP as it didn't occur at all on Windows 98 SE, even after being offline for 9 hours. I then began uploading things and fixing bugs. I don't know what I intend on doing next though. Woke up at 5:08 PM and went to bed at 10:12 AM.
Apr 24: That's the 6th dream in a row, tied with the last known record. A huge chunk of the day was spent on the forums. When nothing was going on, I went looking at monitors giving Newegg suggestions for it's search feature. I got a brief start on the "making levels in MED" tutorial, but only going as far as forming the main plan. If left off on the part just when starting to make the scene. Bugs, annoyances, and other limitations in MED prevent me from continuing. I'm still going at Winter Land, but nearly out of juice. I got started on the player for my 2D game. Woke up at 8:56 PM and went to bed at 9:07 AM.
Apr 25: For a week straight, I recalled the night's dream making it 7 in a row. 27 days is the final result for the record. I switched to Out Where the Lake Is. The day can be categorized in three parts. The first part was cleaning out the forums. The second was doing mom's duty checklist. The third part was a combination of the forums and my 2D game's character. This character sets a record as well - the biggest drawing of a human I've ever made with the degree of accuracy involved. The player is now 7/3 as large which makes 18 pixels a whole foot. Woke up at 6:59 PM and went to bed at 10:50 AM.
Apr 26: 8 dreams in a row, still setting records. The standing right player character state is otherwise done except anti-aliasing. The lighting is very nice and really gives a 3D effect (calculations anyone?). Much of the day was spent on the forums. I made a sample MDL terrain for a thread on the forums. The internet went down again - ISP-related. I tried continuing with my ruler, but a strange bug in MED is preventing me from doing it. When the internet went down, and right when I was going to send a post, I processed Desert Zone's EQ'ed version of which I didn't finish earlier. I finished it using 24 Kbps MP3. I cannot hear any distortions, even with the volume at 80% of the maximum (the highest I can stand) in a very quiet setting. I could clearly hear them with 16 Kbps. I'm still going at OWTLI, but still have another 25 days before I set the record again. I'm already having signs of getting bored of it. Even if I return to Winter Land, I'd have to wait 27 days to even tie the record and I cannot switch songs (but I can change the speed). Woke up at 9:53 PM and went to bed at 1:21 PM (±2 minutes).
Apr 27: That's 9 dreams in a row. This time, I have moderate detail. The record just keeps on getting better! Three things happened. I began by watching TV until 5:00 AM. This also included trigonmetry, something I never learned while in school as the school I went to didn't have anything related to it. I still don't fully get it, but I took lots of notes to help and I got a rough idea. I tried connecting to the net when done, but I still couldn't. Since I had nothing better to do, I began writing a program using 3DGS to automate my animation-creation process. Short of testing it and missing images, it's done. I'm doing a remake of the "Float-running Through the Mountains" animation, only with some differences. For details on this, see news items #1 and #2. My next plan is an animation where I'm float-running up a mountain. My new-found trig knowledge should help with this. Still, slope ratios are better to work with. First is to test and fix the bugs. Next would be to attempt my longest and most complex animation ever, and probably even the world's longest animated GIF with the most frames. 2000 frames is hardly anything to my limits, it's only hardware that limits it. Woke up at 12:17 AM and went to bed at 4:17 PM.
Apr 28: I woke up around 1:25 AM (±8 minutes) with a fun water dream now with ten dreams in a row recalled really smashing the old record. I couldn't get back to sleep as my mind wouldn't shut off, despite laying in bed for two hours. Requested RMA for the sound card due to the bug and that I want a different card instead. Today is also the first anniversary that I got DSL. First it was TV - Assignment Discovery included. Then it was the forums since the internet was up and ready. I had lots to catch up on. Once cleaned out, I contacted Newegg to return my sound card. Once done, I continued with my animation creator program. Just when I was going to test it, I had script syntax errors to fix. From about 25 errors, I got it down to 6, of which I couldn't explain. A post on the forums got me down to 3, of which the last three I couldn't explain and others couldn't either. When responses stopped, I looked at my site's statistics and saw an unusually high number of searches for "hirsute". Further searches turned up a blog entry about me. See news item #10 for details. At the end, I began working on the mind game events document since I still didn't have any responses. I nearly finished - one section remains. Although attempted earlier, I used the wrong format. This time, I'm using a format that closely matches what I originally planned. 3 times today the sound card bug occurred. After playing for 3 to 5 hours, just all of a sudden the sound cuts out and I have to stop the music and play it again. Creative's website didn't have any available drivers as the exact card wasn't listed. Woke up at 1:25 AM (±8 minutes) and went to bed at 7:04 PM.
Apr 29: Rats, no dream recalled which makes ten the new official record. I was about to return my faulty sound card but realized UPS and FedEx weren't open on weekends (one of the major reasons why I hate weekends). I also showered which took 40 minutes. Again, the window was open, but I wasn't cold so that helped. First it was Wal-mart where I was left out in the car. Since I had nothing to do but wait, I examined the bar code I got from Newegg and found out how to read it and likely how the scanner will read it. I went to two grocery stores and got Domino's as well. I checked that promotional offer thing Domino's had and seeing that I had to register just to see if I won or not prevented me from making any use of it. See news item #9 for further details on this. When I got home, I ate and checked out that promotional offer. It was the forums for a bit then a short bit at housework. I returned to the forums. I still have no response to the unexplained script errors problem. I'm still going at OWTLI, but with considerable signs of getting bored of it already. Woke up at 6:36 AM and went to bed at 8:56 PM.
Apr 30: Another dream recalled, but due to not recalling one yesterday, I no longer have the record. I didn't end up doing as much housework as expected. At first it was the usual - the forums. Then, I went to go get door latches for mom's van with my dad. I returned to help install them. They didn't work, but noticed an off-balanced effect due to a loose hinge. The car is now a parts car. I did manage to finish the jump right state for the player character. I then thought of a way for high-quality buildings to be made for my 2D game. I then watched TV for two hours and went to bed. May is next, of which is somewhat liked, but with neutral luck. Woke up at 7:07 AM and went to bed at 10:59 PM (±1 minute).


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

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

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

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

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

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

Year 2010: Yet to arrive....

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

MeasureOWTLIWinter
Land		MeasureOWTLIWinter
Land
P
A
R
T

1		1178018401717001730P
A
R
T

3
2189018401817801780
3177016401915601730
4179015202015101750
5171018402116501700
6219018402217301780
7212016402315801790
8226015202412901820
P
A
R
T

2		9247015202513601600P
A
R
T

4
10211018402615801710
11253015102717901830
12210014902813401780
13221015202915001750
14244018403018201780
15172016703116401820
16131017503217301730
Extremely major event / Very good day
Major event / Good day
Somewhat major event / Somewhat good day
Normal event / Average day
Somewhat minor event / Somewhat bad day
Minor event / Bad day
Extremely minor event / Very bad day


Footnotes:
None