| Feature | Old MP3 player | New MP3 player |
| Capacity | 700 MB (4 1/7 days of nontop music*), but extendable by changing CD's | 4 GB (24 3/11 days nonstop music*) |
| Equalizer | Bass-boost on or off | 4 channels - not as good as I was hoping for, but sufficient enough |
| Navigation | Push the "next track" button 120+ times to get to a song/speed in the middle | Folder navigation means super fast |
| Song-count maximum | 300 - past this, they are discarded (annoying!) | Unknown |
| Adding or replacing songs | Waste 30¢ and about 5 minutes to burn another CD for even the simplest of change | Just delete the old and retransfer the update and I'm all set |
| Long-lasting runs | Mysteriously pauses (at end of track), or stops and turns off on it's own at random intervals (longest run was 8 days nonstop, shortest at just 2 minutes) | Unknown (14 hours by battery) |
| Listening device | Earphones - but I use speakers hooked to the earphone jack for this | Earphones - speakers could be used instead |
* Because I can't hear much of a difference between the original WAV file and 16 Kbps MP3 (constant bit rate), I use 16 Kbps. Some songs are good at even 8 Kbps (such as Out Where the Lake is) and others sound too dull at 16 so I go with 24 which averages out to 16 Kbps. From there, I just punched numbers into the calculator and got my result from there.
#4 My 22nd birthday: The calendar birthday is Jan 10 at 2:14 AM (±5 minutes due to clock inaccuracies). The scientific birthday (based solely on Earth's orbit around the Sun) was Jan 10 at 10:07 AM. Although 22 is my unlucky number, if I think of it as 22.009 or something like that, it doesn't seem as bad. Age, measured in years and years, allowing fractions, makes this possible. I've pinpointed my age to 6 decimal places (clock inaccuracies prevent any further accuracy than this, but it requires a spreadsheet to do this with that much precision). So far, my luck hasn't been all that much negative yet, more around where it was beforehand.... Oddly enough, I got 2 recalled dreams on my birthday with one recalled dream before and after this. I wonder who gave me this birthday present? What did I get? Well, that MP3 player has part of it. My sister gave me a DVD called "Tom and Jerry's Greatest Chases". I haven't messed with it yet (just looked at the disk). Considering that I've seen the episodes on Satellite TV at least 15 times each (and still counting), it doesn't seem that exciting, but it does have at least 5 (6?) of my highest favorite episodes. I like the original ones best and those from the Chuck Jones era aren't as bad either.
#5 Winter Land passes the 10,000 mark: Although I got bored of Winter Land (Ristar in Round 5-1) earlier, I returned less than a week later and racked up another 4000 plays.... As of this update, I've got just over 11,000 plays almost 12,000. This spans only one month and the song is about 70 seconds at true speed (88 seconds at the average, 103 seconds at one of my most listened to favorite speeds (68%)). This is the only song that really sounds good at true speed. Almost every other song sounds good from the 60 to 75% true speed range.
#6 5 new dreams added: I've added 5 new dreams, one old, and two of which on the same day (my birthday). Two other dreams were near my birthday that were recalled so I had 4 dreams around my birthday, a strange kind of birthday gift. 4 dreams were recent, another recalled while typing the details of the last dream (the water dream). This puts the count at 331.
#7 Pizza Hut and Dominos - what a surprise: As usual, I'm always up to running calculations on things. Pizza Hut has a large pizza with a 14-inch diameter (153 15/16 square inches). Domino's has a 16-inch pizza (201 1/16 square inches). Pizza Hut, with 3 extra toppings of cheese costs a little over $18.40 (and you seem to only get 1 extra topping; 11 34/35¢ per square inch). With a coupon, this reduces to $14.30-something for the same pizza (I pretended that I forgot my coupon so I can find out; 9 2/7¢ per square inch). Domino's, with 3 extra toppings of cheese costs $11.98 and you get about double that of what Pizza Hut would (5 23/24 per square inch). Without any coupons, I only need to pay $11.98 for the same pizza. It's slightly over 30.6% bigger (remember - it's area, not diameter), with a lot more cheese and it's for less price than a smaller pizza with a coupon. This really doesn't add up well. Bigger, more toppings, no coupons used, and still cheaper. Without coupons, Domino's is half the price as that of Pizza Hut without coupons, about 36% less than Pizza Hut with coupons (based on the price per square inch and the same pizza toppings). They taste equally well, however. This applies to my home town though and I don't know how it is elsewhere.
#8 A return of school?: If you're in school right now, you've probably heard of "Assignment Discovery". Well, it just so happened that I found it on Discovery Channel at 4:00 AM Central time. The one I saw featured the Alkine metals (elements in group one (the far left column of the periodic table)). Considering that I haven't been in school since May 2003 (due to high school graduation), I've still got my "need" for education. In school, the teacher often pauses the program when the questions come up. As I was seeing it, there were no pauses or breaks for advertising and there were two parts to it. The first part covers the basics of the lesson involved and the second part gives a real-world example of what the first part covered (such as using metal alloys for ship building). I've watched 4 episodes of it from Jan 17 until Jan 20 where my sleep-wake cycle seems to be going to block watching it (I'd be waking up at the time it's going on). I like the format of the lessons. Considering the program was made in 2005, it's more recent than I've learned and it's more around my level (about grade 10 or so) rather than something for kids (including Sesame Street and the Magic School Bus).
Jan 9, 2006
Jan 9, 2006: I caught a minor cold. I've also got my CD/DVD burner that I needed. Some progress has been made toward my 3D game, but not much. 5 more dreams were also added, two of which are well-recalled. I recently had 2nd-place record for spam in my E-mail. I've been going crazy with Pink Panther lately as well. I'm having troubles finding an MP3 player that I could use - supposedly for Christmas (and late). My birthday is also right around the corner.
#1 I caught a minor cold: I caught a minor cold since about Jan 5, 2006. It was of moderate severity (a 4 on a scale from 0 to 10 where 10 is very severe) for 2 days but got somewhat better after that. I went through 2 full boxes of Kleenex tissues in just 3 days. The cold was otherwise minor (about a 3 on the same scale as an overall average).
#2 I'm on my way to XP: Due to the fact that the CD burner was a critical component (used almost entirely for backup and installing software from CD's after reinstalling Windows), and that it was 5 years old (December 2000 is date of manufacture - confirmed as I see it on the CD burner itself), it may have not been compatible with XP. I've got my new CD/DVD burner and it works well. It took 18 minutes to burn my 1.8 GB in backup (ZIP files) at 4X DVD speed. I go with the lower speeds as lower speeds means enhanced probability of a successful burn. 18 minutes is nothing though compared to how long it takes to take out Winzip and ZIP up everything so it can be burned to CD. I can leave Winzip running for even 90 minutes to 2 hours. I just gotta love the use of Winzip. It's a very powerful utility. The use of the hex edittor to change sample rates has been tested and is flawless, exactly as I expected. It only takes about 20 seconds to change the sample rate from the moment I click on the start menu to bring up the hex edittor to the time I'm listening to the modified speed. Just go to hex address 18 and encode a 4-byte integer for the speed you need and repeat for hex address 1C, save, and you're done. Ain't much to it. I, however, haven't tested recording though, as from Audacity. It supports 50,000 Hz sample rates for recording, but not 100,000 as far as I know. WinDAT can record in any sample rate, but only limited by the microphone and sound card. I've once even recorded at 1,000,000 Hz sample rates, but the sound didn't come even close to correct as it "copied" samples, although it was completely possible. I have no need to go that high, however. I have a few touch-ups left, however such as converting the MSWorks files (from version 4.5a, a really old version) into Excel (most common case) and Word. From what I know, XP doesn't support MSWorks 4.5a. I'll only be able to get XP (order it) on Jan 26 or so, and it should take about 3 more days to deliver. The decision has been final from the day I first ordered the CD/DVD burner.
#3 CD/DVD burner installation troubles: All was well until the old CD-writer kept crashing saying that it caused an invalid page fault in module px.dll. I tried many things, but they didn't work - reinstalling the software (twice), browsing the CD running any EXE file I found, and since it was a Windows file (in the C:\windows\system directory), it was too risky to delete. I did a quick google search and the results I got seemed to point to Winamp a lot so I used the Winamp forums again. I tried a clean install of Winamp - didn't work. After 90 minutes of no responses, I decided to just go ahead and install my new CD/DVD burner. I ran into another problem doing this. One of the screws anchoring it was damaged and was otherwise extremely difficult to get it lose to get rid of the old CD/DVD burner. I was abruptly haulted by my nose. For details on this nosebleed, the second-worst, see news item #4 directly below. I had a 420-drip nosebleed, a severe one. It started dripping 3 times a second, so fast, it was hard for me to count, but my hypercount ability came in handy for this. It became my second-worst single nosebleed. As for that screw, my mom had to get it out and finally managed to do it. From there on, it was easy to install. I was finally up and running again. I tested the burner by burning my backup CD from my new 25-pack of DVD-R disks. It burnt the 1.8 GB in backup (zipped up of course).
#4 My second-worst nosebleed: I had a 420-drip nosebleed, a severe one. It started dripping 3 times a second, so fast, it was hard for me to count, but my hypercount ability came in handy for this. It became my second-worst single nosebleed. My worst was around 530 drips. This happened when I was at the North Dakota State Fair for my first year (in 2003). It lasted for almost 20 minutes. Anything past 80 is quite rare, but past 300 is rediculous.
#5 Record-setting spam: There are 626 messages in the junk-mail folder (still far from my record) dating back 5 days. 1/3 of the messages have an attachment, generally a small attachment. 3% of my 250MB mailbox is used, 99.5% of which is from all that spam. Does this seem about what you have? I kind of doubt it, but I took a screenshot of this amazing thing. This is actually more than double my upper range of the common area (from 150 to 400 messages per week (or 107 to 286 messages in the junk-mail folder at once)). It's crazy just how much spam I tend to get. I even took measures to try to cut back on it, but apparently it hasn't worked. Oh well. The high numbers do amaze me though. The worst you may ask? 1020-something spam messages in just 12 hours! That only happened once though and it was about 2-3 years ago.
Click the image to view the full-size version. This is just a thumbnail reduced to half the size.
#6 Pink this, pink that, my Pink Panther craze: I've been watching Pink Panther a lot on Boomerang. Ever since I saw the episode titled "Pinkcome tax", I've been thinking pink this, pink that. Two of my highest favorite episodes are "Pink-tubular" featuring a tuba player heading into the woods to play his tuba and one of which I don't know the name for but involves trying to paint things blue or pink. These two are very funny which is why I like them the most. Pink Panther is one of my favorites along with the usual in the cartoon category: Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, and Popeye (Popeye is borderline - 807 compatibility).
#7 MP3 player almost impossible to find: I've been after an MP3 player that meets only a few specs, but just one of them eliminates 98% of the possibilities and it shouldn't be all that difficult to have support for. I'm supposedly going to get one from Christmas 2005 and for my nearby birthday. What are my minimum requirements you may ask? It's not much:
1. It must have an AC adapter. The reason is because I mainly listen to my MP3's when I go to bed and I'm not going to pay $1 a day for batteries (or $15 for rechargables plus a recharger added in as well, however much they cost.) when I can only pay like 5¢ or 6¢ per day (calculated based on 60-watts power usage for 11 hours at 8¢ per kilowatt-hour) if I took it from the grid (from the wall plug). Oddly enough, this is the biggest obstacle I've come across and it's severely limiting my search. Obstacle severity: 9 - very severe.
2. It must have at least 1 gigabyte of space. This is almost not an obstacle at all as almost any MP3 player nowadays has at least ten times my limit. Calculations show that 768 MB is the absolute minimum, but they don't come with that so 1 GB is the next best. This is only a minor obstacle. Obstacle severity: 1 - very minor.
3. It must have an equalizer of at least 5 bands (5 frequencies that is) and it must have at least one that I can define myself. I make use of the equalizer on my computer all the time dimming out unimportant or unwanted frequencies and amplifying my favorites for a particular song. Equalizers are fairly common and most MP3 players have at least 5 bands. This is a moderately-weak obstacle. Obstacle severity: 3 - low
4. Maximum cost: $200 absolute maximum, $150 recommended maximum and this is based after shipping and any (rare) sales tax. For my specs, this isn't much of an obstacle. Obstacle severity: 4 - moderately low.
5. It must be able to support 16 Kbps MP3's. I can't tell much of a difference between the original and 16 Kbps MP3 (constant bit rate) so I use the lowest quality I can. Oddly enough, my current, weak, glitched, and feature-limited MP3 player says it supports from 32 to 320, but it has played 8 Kbps just fine. This might not be as big of an obstacle as I thought. Obstacle severity: 3 - low.
6. It must not be from Rio. Their software had a virus on it and made me have to return the first MP3 player because of it, even though it was so promising. Obstacle severity: 2 - minor.
7. It does not need to be able to view photos, play video, or anything like that, just simply play MP3's. WMA's I don't know much about. They can be included, but they are very unlikely to be used. Obstacle severity: 1 - very minor.
Although this list is long, much of it is no big deal. It's that first one that's a real pain. The others after that aren't anything significant. I don't care for portability - I have almost no use for it. Out of 40 products in my local area, only 1 had an available AC adapter (and for $250, I don't think so). Add it up and you'll see what I mean. With, say, 20,000 different products available, I'm limited to just 500 from this (calculated based on my known facts). That's a major blow. From this 500, the 1 GB limit takes about maybe 20 on the high end, most likely 10. The equalizer takes out probably 100 leaving 390 available. Cost would take out about another 150 for the minimum requirements. Supporting the 16Kbps minimum for MP3's would take out probably another 30 now leaving about 210 available. Not being from Rio takes out probably another 30 which leaves 180 available. I could have from 150 to 200 available options that meet these. If AC adapters (or something much like it) weren't a problem, it could be well into the thousands of possibilities. This is highly discouraging to me. Everything else only eliminates about 2/3 of the possibilities (66 2/3%) whereas just the first one eliminates 98% of the possibilities, a huge amount for something otherwise so simple.
#8 My birthday is very soon: From the time of this update, my birthday is less than 24 hours away. I'll turn 22. It's my unlucky number, not exactly sure why though. The main thing I want is an MP3 player, a device with only a few minimum requirements. Just a few rather minor requirements and it's tricky to find one due to the most important. See news item #7 above for details.
#9 5 new dreams added: I've added another five dreams to my large collection of them with two of which well-recalled. I'm now up to 326 dreams and still counting. I predict that I'll reach 500 by the end of 2006. One involves the Mall of America, and the other involves my trip to Canada (I'm still getting those). The one that isn't recalled as well features something relating to classic NES-style video games (only with a bigger palette involved). Then, while adding the Mall of America dream, I recalled another one (an older one from the past) and when adding details on that one, I recalled a second previous one.
Daily Events
Jan 1: It's the new year, but I woke up 106 minutes before it started. George Game 13's story is now finished. Much of the day was spent on the forums. What my plans are next, that I don't fully know. I've still got a lot left. I ran into too many hindering bugs to design my levels in MED any further. I can, however, make plans for the worlds, especially the more complex indoor worlds. Just 9 more days and it's my birthday, unlucky 22 that is. After going to bed, I had an idea for my buildings and did a bunch of math doodling to get it (Math doodling is merely math questions being worked out on paper for almost no reason - generally multiplication and division in this case and solving a proportion.). Woke up at 10:14 PM and went to bed at 10:37 AM (±1 minute).
Jan 2: At the start of the day, I cleaned out the forums then ate. After eating, it was continuing to watch TV while on the forums and once 3:00 AM came, I was on the forums for the rest of the day. One major event involved file associations with Winamp for someone on the Winamp forums. That went successful. Another event involved running an experiment for clipping of unseen polygons in a model in the engine for faster rendering. At the end of the day, I worked on the basement map of the house world. The basement is done, and even the pipes and duct work (for heat) have been mapped out as well. I switched songs to "Bahamas Zone" since yesterday. Winter Land still plays on my MP3 player though. The use of the hex edittor is working out very well for changing the sample rate. Woke up at 11:01 PM and went to bed at 12:54 PM.
Jan 3: Almost the entire day was spent on the forums. I finished the outdoor area of my house map for what I can think of. I got bored of Bahamas Zone and switched again to Desert Zone. Winter Land is still playing on my MP3 player though, even though the disk in there does have Desert Zone. Winter Land sounds much better on my MP3 player, especially the 41,667 and 31,250 Hz sample rate versions of the WAV files (about 83 1/3 and 62 1/2% of the true speed). Oddly enough, even from the same base WAV file at the same speed, the version on my MP3 player sounds much different than that of on my computer. Some of my favorite parts from on my computer are almost inaudible, but are clearly audible on my computer. In some cases though, the version on my computer sounds better than that of on my MP3 player. My CD-based MP3 player has many disadvantages. DVD-based, well, that's better, but still has many limitations. Woke up at 10:23 PM and went to bed at 1:29 PM.
Jan 4: I think I came down with a cold. My throat has been bothering me. I can "feel" something (a lump or small "hill"), especially when I swallow. Repeatedly trying to clear my throat didn't work. I also have a somewhat runny nose. I've gone through as many Kleenexes in one day as I normally go through in one month. Much of the day was spent on the forums while I wait for the update to MED. When the forums were dull (lacking anything new), I watched TV. Woke up at 1:32 AM and went to bed at 4:06 PM.
Jan 5: No change in my condition. My runny nose is the major issue, but my cough has weakened somewhat. The entire day was spent on the forums and watching TV. I repeatedly swapped between the two throughout the day. Just before my 22nd birthday, I get it. 22 is my unlucky number ya know. Woke up at an unknown time and went to bed at 4:28 PM.
Jan 6: Almost the entire day was spent on the forums with TV mixed in. My runny nose still exists getting only a little better, but my cough got worse though, but not much worse. Medication that I took made me sleepy (medication.side_effect = drowsiness;). Woke up at 4:39 AM and went to bed at 2:08 PM.
Jan 7: My cold got much better, both in coughing and my runny nose. Most of the day was spent on the forums. However, two odd things outside this occurred. One of which was going to the grocery store. I showered beforehand though. My dad convinced me to go so I did. While there, I noticed that there was no price sticker for a particular product that I wanted so I notified the staff about it. Two staff members didn't see it either. I just have a tendency to notice things like that, as I have spotted some math errors in the "price per unit". The other oddity is the fact that I realized that I had 620 spam messages in the junk mail folder with 3% mailbox usage. See news item #5 above for further details on this. Just before checking my E-mail, however, I was looking at old textures from my abandoned project for any new ideas. I once had a baseball diamond in my first version of my abandoned project. I was looking at two textures in particular. The base texture (white with a few randomly scattered light gray pixels - for the bases except home plate) and the grass texture for this (of alternating bands of green with, you guessed it, random pixels scattered around, but the colors were the opposite that of the green used for that band. It's amazing how far I've come in 18 months' time. I also began planning a ruler for my indoor worlds. The power of 2 rule and the max texture size of 1024 are the biggest pains to work with. Also, since yesterday, I keep thinking of "pinkcome tax" after the title of one of the episodes of Pink Panther. For details on this, see news item #6. Woke up at 1:06 AM and went to bed at 6:56 PM.
Jan 8: Almost the entire day was spent on the forums. I washed the ferrets as well. Very little TV was involved until the end of the day. I began modelling the ruler, but along the way, I ran into 2 new bugs. One of which is another crash (reproducable as well) and the other involves movement snapping in the skin edittor. That's 21 bugs so far for the 6.4 update and first public beta release. The main thing, however, is that the textures are 95% done - only the markings remain. I began updating my website, mainly only doing the headlines, most of them anyway. I had 6 nosebleeds in just one 24-hour period. One of which was major with 288 drips. The rest didn't make it past 60 (one at 57, two in the 30's, and the others even less (one of which was just two)). It ties my record for the most in one 24-hour period, but it's far from the worst day. Woke up at 5:54 AM and went to bed at 10:03 PM.
Jan 9: I had another dream, a favorite and very strongly recalled one featuring the Mall of America. Other than that, I finished updating my website. That went successfully although it took a little longer than I expected it to. Two other dreams were recalled while updating. I updated the blog's FAQ with two new questions added. Almost the entire day was spent on the forums. My 22nd birthday came and I was awake by the official calendar time, but, scientifically, based on Earth's orbit, I won't be until 10:07 AM. I'll be most of the way through my sleep by then though. Woke up at 9:09 AM and went to bed at 2:02 AM (±2 minutes).
Jan 10: It's my birthday! I got two new recalled dreams in one night, probably as a birthday present. For details on what I got for my birthday, see news item #3 and #4. Most of the day was spent on the forums. I still have over 500 spam messages in my E-mail, but 2% mailbox usage rather than 3%. I searched around again for MP3 players, but with a rechargable, replacable battery instead and found one that was twice as good as my first "good" one. It doesn't mention what operating systems it supports though. Since my dad doesn't like typing in long URLs (the kind that have a bunch of variables in it after the ?), I wrote a simple HTML file to simplify this for him so he could look into it. At the end of the day, I was looking through Wikipedia for computer-related thoughs, though I started with Pink Panther. Woke up at 1:09 PM and went to bed at 4:00 AM.
Jan 11: No other changes have occurred so far and it's already a million seconds into the new year (near my bed time). It was almost entirely the forums with TV mixed in for 2.5 hours' time. I began remaking the favicon.ico file for my website, but got bored of it. The sky and ground are done, however. Toward the end of the day, I reported 2 bugs for the GIMP. One was that the firewall was blocking something the moment the "GIMP startup" window appeared and doesn't occur otherwise. The other involves mathematical inaccuracies of the blur command. My cold has also gone away except for a minor cough. Woke up at 2:25 PM and went to bed at 3:37 AM.
Jan 12: At first, it was mainly the forums and TV. The forums were quite dull though so boredom rose. I soon got involved in updating the math-related tips and tricks. They are almost done with only the calculator trick remaining. The group multiplication and multiplication shortcuts have been redone. I did this as I checked my website's statistics and found that there were a few searches for shortcuts in multiplication which added my motive. I returned to Winter Land again. Woke up at 2:17 PM and went to bed at 5:25 AM.
Jan 13: It's Friday the thirteenth. Nope, no real bad luck for me on this day. As usual, it was the forums (which were dull) and TV (which had hardly anthing on of interest). I tested recording with audacity and that worked well. I haven't tested saving as WAV though. When nothing was going on after that, I then began continuing the story for the abandoned project. About 2/3 of part 1 is done. Only 13 days to go until XP, plus more for shipping. Then I need to wait another month so I can get more memory. Boy do I hate waiting.... Woke up at 2:46 PM and went to bed at 4:40 AM.
Jan 14: First, it was cleaning out the forums. Then, in hopes of going grocery shopping and getting Pizza Hut pizza, I took a shower. I didn't get to go as my dad already went (while I was sleeping) and mom had a headache and was tired. Then, I continued writing my abandoned project's story outline. I didn't get that far into it though. Part 1 of the story is about done. Boredom struck after this. Finally, at the end of the day, I searched through Wikipedia for any stubs (short articles) that I could expand on. I added a few details on two (possibly 3) articles and one article about Felix the Cat (the NES game) was expanded on entirely short of a screenshot. I'm still going strong with Winter Land. Woke up at 3:06 PM and went to bed at 6:11 AM.
Jan 16: After waking up, I cleaned out the forums. I then went grocery shopping at 8:00 PM. Along the way, I got Pizza Hut. For details on the price calculations and things, see news item #7. I used the gift card that I got from my sister during Christmas. With this gift card, I guess I think I should try running an experiment with Pizza Hut and test a few things. Not much else happened when I got home. I watched "Assignment Discovery" at 4:00 AM. At the end of the day, I started working on the design document for George Game 13, mainly the special abilities. Woke up at 5:54 PM and went to bed at 9:18 AM.
Jan 17: Had a nice, but a little weird water dream. Much of the day was spent on the forums and watching TV. Then, late in the day, I worked mainly on George Game 13's design document mainly doing the level creator and my 3 goals (the goals is part of the manual, not the design document, but related). The visions in my mind are so strong and photo-like, it's almost as if I'm playing the game. I watched "Assignment Discovery" again. It took two hours for me to get to sleep due to a sudden cough and a dry throat mixed in. Woke up at 8:48 PM and went to bed at 10:10 AM.
Jan 18: Lots of TV at first, almost entirely educational stuff. After watching "Assignment Discovery" again, I then went on the forums for some time. Once I cleaned the forums out and checking my E-mail, I contined writing George Game 13's design document. I first described the game's modes, then the game objects, followed by one other thing. For details about the surprise I got from writing this design document, see news item #1. I have over 9000 plays of Winter Land now and just about to reach the 10,000 mark. I seem to actually like from 96 to 104% of the true speed. Also, the second round at getting an MP3 player has just started. My dad got one off ebay. I don't like getting it off ebay as there's a greater risk than from a store, but the plus side is that it is often cheaper on Ebay. I'm almost never there (I prefer newegg). Woke up at 9:57 PM and went to bed at 12:30 PM.
Jan 19: Due to a doctor appointment set by my mom on Jan 30 at 2:40 PM, I need to add several hours to my sleep-wake cycle. My calculations show that I'll be waking up at the same time of the appointment. My sleep-wake cycle, under normal conditions, does have some randomness to it which makes this too close to tell and it's already been postponed once (on Jan 13 at 1-something PM - I'd be sleeping at that time according to my calculations). It's easier to add or advance my sleep-wake cycle then it is to subtract from it so I'm better off adding time. The start of the day involved about 5 or 6 hours of TV, 2/3 of that time was spent watching educational stuff, including "Assignment Discovery" again. It was then cleaning out the forums and checking my E-mail. I'm now down to 1% mailbox usage and still 264 spam messages, but this is the upper end of my usual range, but under it by about 30. It's typical that I get this. I guess my usual range should be from 200 to 500 spam messages per week rather than 150 to 400. Oh well. Afterwards, I was working on the design document again. The bulk of what I did was explaining how the tutorials would work. The manual is a simplified version of the design document. The main design document is a far more expanded version. Later on, I added another section to the "goals" area to explain the reasons for the game's features and why there were implemented. Winter Land is now past 10,000 plays just short of 11,000. This doesn't include my CD-based MP3 player which would add another 1200 plays or so to that. Woke up at 9:56 PM and went to bed at 3:27 PM.
Jan 20: TV for three hours started the day where I watched Pink Panther, CNN Healine News, and Assignment Discovery. Afterwards, I cleaned out the forums. When done with that, I updated my website, mostly just the blog and dreams. After that, which was clear until 1:00 PM, I recleaned the forums and searched Google images as, according to my site stats, Google's image robot came. This led to an idea for the forums. Since nothing was going on, boredom struck. When mixed in with being tired, I went to bed. Woke up at 2:42 AM (±5 minutes) and went to bed at 3:29 PM.
Jan 21: I had another dream that I can add, a school-related one and somewhat weird. First it was the forums as usual, then about 6 hours of TV (2 hours of mythbusters, but no "Assignment Discovery" as it wasn't on due to it being the weekend. At 10:00 AM or so, I was to sand wood. That went okay. Since my parents wanted to go out somewhere and that I wanted to go grocery shopping, the sanding was cut short. When I went out, an hour went away so I could take a shower. First it was Menard's where about 90 minutes were spent. There was also a petshop, Wal-mart (of which I can't go inside due to being 99% blocked by mirrors), bread store, and the Salvation Army before going to the grocery store. After the grocery store, a second pet shop was visitted. Once I returned home, I cleaned out the forums again. Woke up at 12:47 AM and went to bed at 7:44 PM.
Jan 22: I first ate, then continued sanding those cabinet doors being built. Soon, it was off to getting Norton Internet Security at OfficeMax. When I tried installing it, nothing but errors came up. The box says that it is compatible with Windows 98 (The 2006 version isn't, but 2005 is). I tried uninstalling the old Norton SystemWorks 2005 that I had and trying again. That didn't work either. I tried different setup options and it didn't work either. I snagged two screenshots of the errors. I was able to reinstall Norton SystemWorks 2005 just fine, however. I did this after six attempts at it, all of which caused an error. I went on the forums to see if I could get help, but I didn't get anywhere. Late in the day, someone came over to take the ferrets as we no longer wanted them and we gave them away. I then remained on the forums. Still 4 more days remaining. I'm just passing 11,500 plays of Winter Land and still going strong at it. Woke up at 7:05 AM (±10 minutes) and went to bed at 10:20 PM.
Jan 23: 6.40.2 was released for Gamestudio. Only half of the bugs I reported for MED were fixed, but the crash caused from passing 16 groups still exists. Much of the day was spent on the forums. I messed around with MED again. I completed the die almost in full as I'm not sure if any extra high quality version should be made though. I didn't watch much TV though, but otherwise, not much happened. Adding hours has been successful so far and, if normal after today, I'd be really close. Just 3 days left until ordering XP! 12,000 plays and still counting. Woke up at 7:07 AM and went to bed at 1:23 AM.
Jan 24: First, it was the forums for quite a long time until about 5:00 PM when the news was on. I briefly returned to the forums until 7:00 PM when lots of good space stuff was on. Once over with at 10:00 PM, I tried making an animation using a new technique. The frames are done, but I lost interest quickly due to a bunch of mistakes, but most of which are not on my end. I returned to the forums for a short time then watched TV again. I ended with "Assignment Discovery", but was 3/4 asleep during the last ten minutes of it. Woke up at 10:25 AM and went to bed at 4:55 AM.
Jan 26: The reversal is going well so far. I was awake for 21 1/2 hours (time being out of bed). It's only about 40% of my record though. I'm now on track to making that doctor appointment. The long awake time is broken up into 6 parts. First it was cleaning out the forums. I ate next watching TV. I revisited the forums then continued on with my 3D animation. I worked on the 3D animation for about 5 hours which went very well. The downside, however, is the 400 KB file size I wasn't hoping for. I managed to complete it entirely and it looks very nice. However, I had to manually add in tune-ups such as the sky. The animation went well and it was a new technique that I haven't tried before. At the end, it was more TV, then the forums and looking into XP. Unfortunately, I need to wait yet one more day as Newegg was out of stock. It was expected to arrive on Jan 27 (hopefully). I won't be getting my MP3 player either as it broke before shipping it and so another long attempt is done. Here we go with yet another delay. Is my bad luck from unlucky 22 getting at me finally? Woke up at 2:40 PM and went to bed at 12:13 PM (this is 21.55 hours, my record is 53 hours).
Jan 27: After sleeping for only 8 hours, I woke up unable to get back to sleep although I was somewhat sleepy. I only checked my E-mail and cleaned out the 3DGS forums then went back to bed again. I woke up again spending 70 minutes writing 2 1/3 pages on a very well-recalled dream. Throughout the day, I repeatedly checked Newegg for XP as it was out of stock and yesterday, it said that the estimated time of arrival was the 27th, today. I kept anxiously checking Newegg for it. It remained out of stock. The bulk of the day was spent on the forums, continually rechecking Newegg usually once every hour or so. While on the forums, I watched TV, mainly CNN Headline News. I had diahrea lasting all day, having 5 runs at it. This sort of thing is very rare to me, usually twice a year lasting only for one day. It's about the only thing that happened throughout the day. Woke up at 9:05 PM (±5 minutes), went to bed at 10:21 PM, woke up again at 3:50 AM, then went to bed at 10:30 PM.
Jan 28: No dream this time. I cleaned out the forums then showered to go grocery shopping. I spent two hours at Menard's as my mother kept changing her mind between copper and antique brass. We got paint and door knobs (and the related by function such as door handles, hinges, etc.; they were 50% off) as well as a new counter top. Wal-mart was next followed by the grocery store. Once I got home and checked the availability of XP, it now looks like I won't be able to get it until Feb 3, plus time for shipping! First it was for Jan 27, but it never arrived. It seems like my bad luck from 22 is getting at me. Considering the mishap with the MP3 player just recently along with installation problems with Norton Internet Security, it seems to be the case right now. I was on the forums most of the day only watching TV at the end about the challenger space flight. Today, an odd new forum was added to the 3DGS forums. First it was called "infinity", then "Hilbert's Hotel". The banner at the top takes you to a site with a weird name (given the .de top level domain, it's likely a German word for something). Many other users were puzzled over it as well. Woke up at 10:08 AM and went to bed at 1:26 AM.
Jan 29: I woke up at 5:00-ish AM with another dream to add. Most of the day was spent on the forums and checking Newegg once every two hours on average just in case the Feb 3 ETA was wrong. It is, after all, estimated. Only occasional TV was mixed in, but that was it. Nothing much was on on TV and not much was going on on the forums either. Winter Land is now close to 16,000 plays, but now getting really bored of it. I got a doctor apointment tomorrow at 2:40 PM. I'd be waking up around noon giving me two hours to spare. Woke up at 12:54 PM and went to bed at 12:34 AM.
Jan 30: Doctor appointment got cancelled. Mom had to go to work and due to this, there was no way I could get there then (walking 6 hours in the freezing cold is a bad idea). Also, I finally managed to order Windows XP! After repeated checking of Newegg, it was available at last. It was a good thing I still kept repeatedly checking Newegg. ETA (estimated time of arrival), afterall, is only estimated. Much of the day was spent on the forums. Oddly enough, I'm not getting anywhere with my long-lingering lighting issue. I also ran an experiment to find out what effect a high vertex:polygon ratio had over a high polygon:vertex ratio. 60,000 vertices and 30,000 polygons (triangles) had half the frame rate and used 30% more memory and disk space than that of 60,000 polygons (triangles) and 30,351 vertices. Other users even found this as a surprise. It was just an experiment though. I still haven't gotten anything with this although I am getting closer now. At the end of the day, when I checked for the availability of XP seeing "in stock", I rushed to ordering it. Later on, I done what I had planned 5 days before. I started updating my website at the very end. All 3 dreams were added including the one that was 98% in tact. I have the daily entries and the rest of the blog remaining, however. While adding my dreams and the story due to the long one, I checked to see what other stories I had and found that there was a dream that I had not mentioned on my dream journal anywhere so I went and added that as well since I still had it fresh in my mind. Woke up at 11:53 AM and went to bed at 3:27 AM.
Jan 31: No dream this time either.... I first cleaned out the forums then continued updating my site. I then began watching space stuff. I returned to the forums as usual. Not much was going on so I redid the goal and start platforms to take advantage of the tiling and multiple textures features. The file size dropped, but, being simple and small, I don't notice a difference in the frame rate. I then went on to remake the springs. The springs are now done as well. Only the scripting of them remains, but I need the player first. It's now February, another neutral-luck month as was January. Just 2 days remain! I also submitted details on a prereported bug with saving files in the GIMP. The doctor appointment got rescheduled to Feb 13 at 1:00 PM and according to my calculations, I should have 3 hours to spare so I don't need to add hours. Woke up at 1:49 PM and went to bed at 4:56 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: 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 |
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| Major event / Good day |
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| Somewhat major event / Somewhat good day |
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| Normal event / Average day |
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| Somewhat minor event / Somewhat bad day |
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| Minor event / Bad day |
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| Extremely minor event / Very bad day |
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Footnotes:
None
