Jul 22, 2006

Jul 22, 2006: A stubborn, highly unexplained bug with the save/load system is preventing my 2D game from getting any major progress. I've still got about 10 hours to add to my sleep-wake cycle so I can go to Rice Lake on August 9. I also recalled 6 new dreams, one case is where I had two very well-recalled dreams in the same night, an extremely rare case. I had two cases of recalling two dreams in one night within just two weeks, another rarity. Other than this, not much really happened.

#1 That stubborn bug!: I should've had my 2D game released by now, but I have a stubborn bug with the save/load system that I'm completely unable to explain the cause to so I can fix it as it occurs in purely random areas. With an unexceptably high 50% chance of either not saving or loading properly, there's little use in such a highly buggy feature. Due to it's extreme importance, I want to implement this feature before releasing the game. This time, it's not Gamestudio at fault as far as I can tell. I tested the file_asc_write instruction in depth and found no faults with it so the problem very likely lies on my end. With this occurring in random locations at random times, without even changing a variable, this happens. It's so unpredictable, the directory containing the save files is bloated with backups from testing it. With 2500 things being saved and being so random, I don't see any meaningful way in tracking the cause. So, at the moment, I'm faced with a tricky decision with three choices. I could:

1. Drop the save/load system altogether and release the game sooner. The up side to this is that you'll be able to get the game sooner, even a few weeks sooner. The down side is that you won't be able to save high scores, menu configuration settings (like how long to display the rules, or whether or not you want the flash attack's flash enabled), or other such important settings, even the useful stuff won't be saved nor the unimportant and not useful things.
2. Have it as is and save only high scores. The up side is that the most important aspect of the game will be saved. It would also relate to a faster release. The downside is that there's still an unacceptably high 1 in 30 chance (based on the statistics I have) that this unexplained bug will cause the high scores to not get saved properly otherwise resetting them which could pose some problems, especially annoyance to the player. This is against my philosophy - player freedom.
3. Fix the bug and have everything saved. The up side is that everything will be able to be saved, both important and unimportant, useful, and not useful. The downside is that this could cause a long delay in the release of the game. It's already caused a week's delay and it's also causing me to lose valuable motive for developing the game.

Even help from the Gamestudio forums isn't getting me anywhere. If all else fails, I may have to wait until Lite-C is released. Lite-C will provide so much more for my 2D game, much of which not currently possible with C-script. I'm trying to figure out ways of resolving it. Being so random, it's tricky to find the cause. What I need are leads. Like a detective solving a mystery, what I need are clues (and no, not fingerprints, DNA, hairs, fibers, and that sort of stuff). At the moment, it's almost like the case is about to go cold. There's pretty much no clues to even aid in the case.

#2 Some minor progress with George Game 13: With my new-found trig knowledge and someone wanting a sample project to explain what I mean by "background scaling", I made the sample project. In it, I provided acceleration in all directions rather than just on a single axis. Now, unlike before, I can zip along in any direction, not just due north, due east, straight up, or that, but even the screwiest of angles and not just horizontally, but also on the vertical along with it. Why do this? Unless you feel like waiting 6 minutes just to get to the other side of a level (diagonally from the start, it's 4 1/4 miles to the edge from the center) to see the area being worked on using the built-in system (going only 40 mph), with this, I can get to the other side of the level in just a few seconds and get an extreme amount of speed. Also, I can move the camera at different acceleration rates. With acceleration, I can start off slow to see areas with fine detail and check over it, or I can go fast and zip across to the other side of the level, even reaching beyond 1500 mph. I can also get a feel for what it's really like to go 999 mph in real 3D. This has a powerful use in the development of the game. Plus, when I ran the game, instead of the 40 or so fps with everything in view, my new video card is getting 150 fps. I was shocked when I saw that. Without any further changes to the code, the frame rate, merely by upgrading the motherboard and video card, has been tripled, almost as I had theorized. I find this bizarre as, from my Benchmark Tester, there was only a 20% increase in the frame rate. Here, I'm getting a 200% increase. I checked the math and everything and this is indeed the correct observation. I otherwise didn't make any further progress to the game itself, but I have updated the document on my website that has the details about George Game 13 to greater depth. Until I get the needed feature as explained at the bottom of the main document, progress will indeed be very slow. I could modify the design document and add more to it, but that's about it until then.
#3 Extreme heat - 108°F air temps!: Now this isn't anything I've seen recently. 108°F for the air temp has got to be a scorcher! The dew points were in the low to mid 30's with the relative humidity at just 10%, that of the desert. I even recall my local meteorologist saying this this was the sort of temperature found in Phoenix (of Arizona).
#4 6 new dreams: I had a recent, very rare event with my dreams. Within one day, I had a dream recalled that took a page in details. Then, within the same day (just 3 or so hours later), I recalled a second dream that is so well-recalled, taking two pages of detail, that it goes into the stories category (which is complete with very accurate scale maps). It's 92% in tact! That's not new, however, as I have three cases of 98% in tact so far out of all my 421 dreams. Two well-recalled dreams in one day. Now that is rare! If that's not enough, within an 8-day period, I had two cases of having two dreams recalled in one night. Along with this, I have 2 other dreams recalled, both of which aren't well-recalled.
#5 X on going to the fair: Because I'm on the night shift, going to the fair is not only impossible, but since I don't have any way of going, there's no sufficient chance of being able to do anything. Plus, if I went, that means not being able to go to Rice Lake either as, even if I was on the day shift, I'd be on the night shift by then, just ten days later.
#6 Getting a forum? My official decision: Earlier, I mentioned of possibly getting a forum. So, what do you think my official decision is? Well, first, let's compare the E-mail form to the forum and it should stick out from there:

Feature or task	E-mail form	Forum
Creation of it	2 points I can only do the HTML part, not the scripting part	4 points Just head over to PHPBB2 and go from there. Installing it is tricky, however, from my past experiences.
Managing bug reports	1 point Has to be done manually, short of having a script to doing so	5 points All nice and organized within a forum
Managing suggestions	1 point Has to be done manually, short of having a script to doing so	5 points All nice and organized within a forum
Time to get a response	2 points Typically about 12 hours	5 points Because other users can respond to similar issues, response times are rarely more than an hour. Forums also have a built-in search feature as well to help.
Getting required information	5 points All required fields have to be filled in	2 points Provided it's legal to do and that I can figure out how, I could embed the required information into the forum when making a new post, but very useful things like DirectX version or the game version and edition could be left out.
Monitoring	5 points It's easier for me to monitor an E-mail form for bad behavior and the such	3 points I can't monitor a forum 24/7, but there are moderators and I use forums on a daily basis so this part helps to some extent
Tracking warez users	4 points Although not certain, it's possible IP's and things can be tracked down and traced	5 points IP's are almost always logged so it'd be easier to do.
Ease of use	5 points Just fill out the form as needed and click submit. Then wait for the response.	3 points Forums often require registration before posting, but are otherwise easy to use as they are quite common.
Interaction	2 points Communicate with me only and a rather simple form design	3 points Communicate with any users, complete with avatars, private-messaging, custom styles, and many other things.
Totals	27 points	35 points

To help hunt down and fix bugs or being able to collect and implement any suggestions for the game, managing them is important. With the E-mail form, I need to manually copy and paste contents into some list. With the forum, this is already done the moment the post is sent. Because forums have a search feature and many users can also help others out, the response times can be in the matter of minutes or a few hours. With E-mail forms, since it's entirely up to me, it can take considerably longer, even days for tricky things I'm not able to resolve that someone else could. Because knowing what version and edition a user has as well as DirectX version, video card, and other factors is very important in troubleshooting issues. With forums, this data has the possibility of being left out which can hinder the progress. With an E-mail forum, a notice appears when something hasn't been filled out and the form doesn't send. With an E-mail forum, there's a much less chance of having bad content publicly available since I'm the only one that would see it. A forum has the disadvantage in this case of this data being publicly available immediately. Warez users are users who use an illegal copy of the software, such as the code being modified (except as permitted by the license agreement) or a user is using a duplicate license. Tracking them down is important. Lastly, an E-mail form just requires choosing values and typing text with clicking the submit button when done - easy. A forum often requires registration in order to use and post anything, but this isn't always the case and due to being rather common, they're fairly familiar. Interaction, although less important, does help play a role. Since my website, at the moment, otherwise has no form of interaction besides navigating through categories, subcategories, topics, subtopics, and pages from simple links. There's no scripting on my site because I don't know any webscripting. This will help with my site to some extent. Given that the forums have 35 points, it certainly leads so I'm very likely to add a forum to my website. Before I install the forum, I'd like to first check to see if my webhost fixes their issues. See news item #9 below for more details on this.

#7 Almost 70 days now: Since the last update, my MP3 player is still going at Battle Zone with small signs of getting bored of it. I changed the speed to 65% true speed, still within a fairly narrow range, and I gained the interest back very quickly. 70 days for my MP3 player.... Although my computer had Winter Land playing for about week (again), then switching to OWTLI, and considering my MP3 player has both songs, Battle Zone still has a considerably much higher priority for my MP3 player. I still haven't gotten above the 3190 spike I had (which is what is causing this extremely long streak).
#8 Want credit card spam postal mail?: Do you want postal mail in the form of a credit card advertisement? I didn't think so. Just in the last update, I got two such things related from filing the trade name registration a little while back. I've been getting spam as postal mail. As usual, I've been getting a ton of E-mail spam, about 90 per week at the moment. This is still only 3/4 of what my maximum is and a tiny 4.5% of my fastest rate. The first one was for a credit card with 3 1/4% APR and a 25¢ fee per transaction. The APR is suspiciously low and the 25¢ fee per transaction is something I've never seen in credit cards before. Since I found it suspicious, I went off to the junk mail bin. The second one was a bunch of little cards telling of various things for a startup business. One is for having a website - uh, already got one. Another is for eHealthInsurance, of which I otherwise already have in a different form. The third is another credit card advertisement with a variable APR from 9.9 to 19.8% and a 0% APR introductory offer - credit cards mean debt (to me) and are easily X-ed off my list. They have "every dollar gets one mile". Since it takes 25,000 "miles" for a free trip when tickets are around $300, each dollar you spend gives just one cent back. It's hardly anything. The fourth is for a business desktop (Athlon 64 3800+ processor (I got something a little slower, but similar), XP Pro (already got it), 512 MB memory (I have triple this), 40 GB SMART III hard drive (don't know exactly what this is, but I already have hard drive upgrades planned), DVD±RW Drive with Lightscribe (I have such a drive, but don't have (or need) lightscribe), a free 17-inch flat panel display (LCD monitors - yuck!), has Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2003 (I already have office, but for what I do, I otherwise don't need it)), and considering my system is custom-built with much more to it than this (it doesn't mention the video card, if there's a sound card (or onboard sound)), I have more flexibility in specifications and upgrades than an off-the-shelf computer (which is often bloated with unneccessary software that I would otherwise never really use). Plus, it says that the offer ends on Jun 30, 2006 and I got it well after this date making it automatically useless. The fifth advertisement card is something for CompUSA. Since I'm an individual selling software programs (when I fix the bug in my 2D game), their offer doesn't apply to me. The sixth card is for a printer - already got one. Although I intend on replacing it to get a much needed feature, for what I do, printing isn't entirely of high priority (unless you consider the writing of the 0's and 1's for the programs on the hard drive as printing). The seventh card is related to "score", of which I don't really seem to need much. The last is for AT&T Yellow Pages, of which I have no need for. A ninth object is a small letter, of which doesn't otherwise have much use.
#9 Switching webhosts is even more likely: Guess what now? I'm now getting "security certificate expired" notices from the main page of the webhost and their flaw with the help desk has not even been fixed yet. When August starts, that's the end of it, unless changes are made. I made the third attempt at contacting them with the E-mails provided, this time, the one for billing since it seems to be my last hope. As baseball goes, 3 strikes and you're out. There have been two strikes right now and with the third pitch, will it be a homerun or a strikeout?
#10 14 mph in a dash - it's been so long: Although certainly not my record, it's impressive. In a mad dash across the road to where I was parked when I went to the grocery store on July 15, I peaked 14 mph. I was running faster than the cars on the road in the parking lot, 5 times as fast as my dad was! I find it surprising as it's been nearly two years since I last ran that fast. It's not my record though. 15.1 mph is my record. It's so fast, it makes the others seem like they were standing still. When I slammed on my brakes, I mentioned aloud "I don't need to be going no 14 mph!" where I spelled out "mph".

Jul 10, 2006

Jul 10, 2006: My 2D game only has the licensing stuff left and the logo is officially done. I got a good deal for fireworks and great photos of them including an in-depth process on how I do things each year. The new motherboard and video card came and work well. I also made a benchmark tester program to find out how many polygons and vertices per second are being rendered. 47 days is the new official record for the same song with different speeds used, almost twice my old record. I might also be switching webhosts as well. 5 more dreams have been recalled.

#1 Just licensing stuff remains: From the last update, the trade name has been registered successfully, the logo has been completed hopefully for sure, and the EULA is close to finished. The only thing needed now before being able to release the game for sale is to finish the EULA (end-user license agreement) and get the license key. Then it's figuring out how to list the game for sale and I'd finally have my first ever game for sale. I then found another way for the save/load system to work and spent a few days working on it, but I keep getting unexplained loading problems. In one way, it works fine. In several other ways it works fine, but at some random time, without even changing anything in the script, it doesn't. I have yet to figure out what's going on and why this is happening. I may still have the very important save/load system available, but I'm not sure if it'll go or not. If all else fails, I may need to wait for Lite-C to work, but I still have other ideas yet to try and fix the issue so I may be able to get it available on the first release. If I run out of ideas, it may need to wait until the next 2.5 update, of which has yet to be done.
#2 Fireworks and some good photos: My compatibility with the activity of lighting fireworks is near 1200, so high, I would rather do that than go to the lake or use the computer. This time, I went with $120 in fireworks. I ended up getting $77 in freebies, making the actual total almost $200. Freebies as in they had a lot of specials going on (especially buy one get one free deals and they even had big bonuses). Like last year, I got photos of my fireworks, only in much better quality. You may recognize a few of them from last year (see the July 2005 blog entries for details). Unlike last year, I took several other photos to explain the process I use to light fireworks with. Along with that, I managed to get two excellent-quality photos and 4 good-quality ones of the artillery shells. I knew it was dark so I knew I needed to crank up the exposure a bit and +1 eV seemed to work very well. It took good timing skills to get them as the first few I had didn't come out at all as the camera took 3 or 4 seconds to actually "grab" the photo. Because this description is so long, I created a separate page for it. You can find it here.
#3 New motherboard and video card: With the new motherboard and video card I got, I wanted to install them so I can try them out. I installed the new motherboard and video card almost entirely on my own. Before I could do that, I needed to run backup. It took a few hours to run backup and I needed to burn 2 data DVD's. Why 2? The "songs for MP3" folder, of which is used for my MP3 player took almost a full DVD to store. The CD-RW's I got wouldn't do as they were extremely slow at just 4X speed and it would take 4 to 6 hours to burn all that at that slow speed. I ended up having to use DVD-R's since I didn't have any DVD±RW's. Once that was done, it was writing zeros to the hard drive to completely erase it for the cleanest of installs possible (gwscan is very good for that!). When this was done, I began trying to install the new motherboard first taking out the old one. I was able to take the hardware out without too much difficulty, but there were three screws that I couldn't get out. I spent nearly 40 minutes trying to get three screws out but tiredness settled in and I otherwise had to go to bed. When I woke up, I returned to it still unable to until my dad woke up. I turned out to use the wrong screw driver size. I didn't know that there were 3 different head sizes and that I needed a type 2 rather than a type 1 (1 is the smallest, 2 is medium-sized). That otherwise fixed the problem and I then went on to swapping out the motherboards. To help with the part of static build-up, the power supply, a good grounded surface, is a decent way to discharge the body's natural static build-up. Since I needed both hands to do it, my feet came in handy. I'm much more comfortable working on the floor than on a desk and doing this on the floor helps. With the top part of one of my feet constantly touching the power supply, I had both hands available to more easily work with things. Feet aren't just for walking on (considering I can pick up things quite well with them too). It was a bit tricky getting the screw holes aligned due to the plate the keyboard, mouse, and USB cables plug into being in the way. I ran a few calculations in my mind to figure out the best method and found it. I got the screws in successfully and then it was installing the processor so I could put the old motherboard back in the static shielding bag the new one came in. It was my first time with working and handling a processor. Those things barely even take a square inch in area and only 1/16 of an inch high, almost nothing, but it has immense power. Inserting it is nothing more than playing a shape-matching game (such as putting the square block into the square hole and the triangle block into the triangle hole). Rather than holes, it's a layout pattern of various contact points. There's only one way it can go in so that all points match up. Next was installing the CPU fan of which was fairly easy to do. It was the memory and sound card next after this followed by the drives. However, when installing the IDE cables, since I only had one such connector available, the cable came up short to connect both the CD/DVD drive. I had to move the CD/DVD drive in order to connect them (and move the jumper on the CD/DVD drive from master as it was before, to slave. Until I get a SATA hard drive, I'm stuck with the IDE drive. I, however, ran into a problem with the floppy drive. The cable provided didn't have the missing pin usually there and since pin 1 wasn't marked on where it was on the floppy drive nor on the motherboard (and even the manual), I set that on the side for use with calling tech support for. Then it was off to connecting everything to the power supply once I inserted the power supply. That went well except for a few things. When done, I contacted tech support to get the answers to the problems. Even they knew of the unmarked pin 1 issue, of which I find rather strange. With all but the floppy drive cleared, it was time to do a first test to make sure it all worked. Of greatest importance was watching the temperatures to make sure the fan was working properly. I monitored the temperatures for quite a while, almost an hour. The CPU peaked at 81°C and the system temp was at 52°C. The 52°C was otherwise the same as the temp I've been mentioning in earlier blog reports and that there was a 12°C cooler temperature when the cover was off. With all that set and reading the manual to find out what the BIOS settings were and what I needed to change, I then began installing software. All those drivers, and other programs were installed. While doing the backup and stuff (except hardware installation), I took out the Sega Genesis and started drowning Tails the fox as I like doing.
#4 Benchmark tester program: Ever wonder how many polygons and vertices your computer can render per second? Since I was about to change video cards and motherboard, I wanted to get a good overview on how much of a performance boost I can get. With the Radeon 9600 XT video card, I was getting about 19.3 million polygons per second peak and even noticed that the peak shown in Gamestudio's debug panel is wrong and shows a value half of what it actually is. My previous experiment showed 7 million polygons per second. I redid it and did the high precision test too as well (which focuses in on the 1000 to 10,000 polygon range). This, in turn tells that, for best results, I should focus after 4000 to 6000 polygons per model for pretty much each model. After getting everything installed and stuff, I redid my test and got 23.1 million polygons per second peak, about a 20% increase. It wasn't as much as I was hoping for, but it's an improvement. This means that I can have nearly 350,000 polygons on the view and still get 60 fps. This doesn't include collision nor textures though. If I include LOD in my levels and apply this, I can have insanely large levels all in view with high detail, and still get beyond 60 fps. Remember those old screenshots of George Game 13 and that I was getting just 24 fps? If I applied my optimization tricks for this, I could, in theory, get well over 120 fps, even close to 200 fps and that's without LOD! Tossing in LOD and, well, you get the picture. Even better about it is that the program is now listed on the downloads page of Gamestudio's website! I found it as a useful tool and it does have it's uses.
#5 If only I had that feature in MED...: Remember my 3D game, George Game 13? If you haven't noticed yet, it hasn't been worked on for so long. Have you wondered why? September 2005 was the last time I actively worked on it. This was because I needed the external textures feature in the new MED and the update was taking forever to be released. So, I got the new update and was able to do a bit more, however, the part with setting a scale for the skin vertices still remained, a big time-consumer (and it's just flat boring). The new system used is much better than the old system which seemingly had random values. The new version stretches it so it fills the entire texture area. In some cases, this is okay, but in other cases it's not. Setting a texture scale will fix my last remaining issue. If I have an area that covers 48x20 coordinate units and I have have a 64x64 texture, importing this causes this long rectangle to become a 64x64 square and it messes things up. With what I need, if I scaled the vertices to 4, for example, the vertices would stretch 192x80 texture pixels (and tile as well) and the texture would not only keep a constant aspect ratio, but if I keep the scale consistant, textures would line up nicely and make my work much easier and far faster. Without this very important feature, it requires using calculator to manually do it and this can take even a whole day for a 2500-vertex model rather than a split second. Without this feature, I have negative motive for working on my 3D game in otherwise any form. With this feature, my motive jumps to 100 times better than what it is putting me well into positive territory, at 70 times that of neutral (instead of about -1.4). That's a HUGE jump. Getting the primitives to work right and having tool options for all tools are only very minor compared to this and would only tack on another 40% (to about 100 times that of neutral instead of 70). Someone from the Gamestudio forums tried to help, but the SDK for MED didn't even allow for this so I'm forced to wait even longer before I can do anything besides very simple stuff (and planning, of which is also fairly boring). I have very vivid visions (almost photo-quality even) on the game play and even the look and feel of the game. I can almost just "play" the game the visions are that vivid. And with 300,000 visible polygons allowed, what wonders in shape detail and level size I could have! Yep, 30 square miles per world (over 110,000 square feet for the indoor worlds; calculated, not including extra floors and roof tops, but otherwise overall space). Even gliding 800 mph above would require a good 30 to cross the shortest path from end to end in each world (over 40 seconds diagonally). It's not the size of the world that's the problem, it's this all important feature that's the problem.
#6 Just a few more computer upgrades remain: My computer is almost finished with upgrading. The only things left now are the monitor upgrade (for 1920x1440 resolution) and upgrading the hard drive (getting a SATA hard drive and at least 80 GB, enough to last me a while). What I don't get is why is a monitor supporting 2048x1536 resolution double the price of 1920x1440 which has barely any difference. That's the only thing I don't get. It's 2 3/4 megapixels, but I find the high resolution of great use. If I could, I'd even get 3200x2400 resolution, but I've never seen any monitor going above 2048x1536. The only other thing after that is getting a SATA hard drive, of which is supposedly faster than ATA. I only intend on getting it for the higher speed. Capacity isn't my concern, it's the speed I have more interest in. Despite having 15 GB free space, I have a lot of temporary files and I otherwise need to do a clean up (or just zip up unused areas, especially AVIs). These aren't Windows temporary files nor browser cache files, but rather user-created ones (like snagging a screenshot for temporary reasons and saving it - the BMP needs to be erased and any clean up program won't do that). I'm thinking of getting something around 80 GB so it'll last me a while. Whichever is cheapest per unit is likely where I'll go with. If it means 120 GB, I may get it, but I have otherwise no need for anything much beyond even 60 GB. The monitor will be the last big thing I get. Hard drives don't cost much more than $70 for my target range. The monitor supporting 1920x1440 is about $200 (one supporting 2048x1536 is beyond $400). I'll only get CRT's as they have more advantages than LCD's (especially in both cost, features, color quality, and no dead pixels). They may be big and heavy, but they're not a concern as I have quite a bit of space available for it. After this, I have no further intentions on upgrading my computer, maybe just better speakers or a better microphone, but, like the hard drive, these things are cheap.
#7 46 days!? No way!: When I last posted the update, I had 41 days of listening to the same song. I went clear until Jun 29 before I finally changed songs (but not (and still not) on my MP3 player because it sounds so much better on my MP3 player than that of my computer). But, afterall, 46 days of listening to the same song rarely even changing the speed is definitely a monster of a record. It's over double that of my old second-place record before the case of 27 days, and that's still about 70% higher than that of the recently set record! Despite that, even to today, my MP3 player still uses the same song at pretty much the same speed. I still haven't gotten any peaks over 3190 times better than neutral, but I've gotten the 3190 peak at least twice further. I've still gotten several cases above 3100. As for the MP3 player, I'm still going well past 50 days straight and I still think I have a few more days (or even weeks) yet and I may even make 60 or 70 days straight. A good chunk of May and almost all but two days of June was spent listening to the same song, such a huge time frame, it's impressive!
#8 Is Pluto a planet?: Here's the question: is Pluto a planet? The debate between scientists, after watching something on the Science Channel about it, is from having no formal definition of a planet. How would you define a planet? My definition would be something like this:

A planet is any object that doesn't orbit another larger solid object within the solar system it belongs to, it's not part of a belt of objects, has a diameter of at least 3000 kilometers, a gravitational field where the average acceleration on the surface is no less than 0.1 meter per square second, a magnetic field no weaker than 100 times stronger than that of the background.

Let's go through this to further explain:

The Moon may almost be a planet, but since it orbits the Earth, a solid object, it's not. Since the Moon orbits the Earth, of which the Earth is larger, the Moon doesn't classify as a planet in this case either. Pluto orbits only the Sun and nothing else. Charon, the largest moon around Pluto, is still smaller, and since Pluto is still the largest object, it has a chance in this case. Pluto isn't directly a part of a belt of objects (like the Kuiper Belt or Asteroid Belt) as it has it's own orbital plane.
Since Pluto orbits the Sun (and the galactic center to some extent) it classifies as a planet in this case. However, since Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit (as it can be between Uranus and Neptune), but only temporarily without any third object, this is where it's borderline classify as a planet.
The diameter of Pluto is something like 3500 kilometers, just barely big enough to classify as a planet.
The gravitational field on the surface of the Earth is 9.81 meters per square second. The Moon has a gravitational field of 1.65 meters per square second (or something like that). I don't recall what Pluto has, but, if it has at least 0.1 meters per square second acceleration at the surface, it would classify as a planet.
The part about the magnetic field is unknown because I don't know what units are used and I otherwise don't know how strong the background magnetic field is (likely from that of the galaxy), if it's at least 100 times stronger (not known due to the lack of information available), it would classify as a planet.

It's about the best I can do to define a planet. Even I'm uncertain whether Pluto would be a planet or not. Yep, the debate goes on. I wonder who'll win (Pluto is a planet or Pluto isn't a planet). I'd likely consider Pluto an asterlanet, a cross between an asteroid and a planet.
#9 Switching webhosts?: Lately, things have gotten worse with the way my webhost is going. At the start, I only got one security warning dialog when accessing the control panel, saying that the security certificate is not recognized. It happens in IE as well. Since I almost never use the control panel, this wasn't of much concern. Then, later on, I ended up getting additional dialogs when accessing the control panel now saying of a domain name mismatch and that security certificate expired. Still, because I was rarely using the control panel, this wasn't much of a concern at all. Then, all the trouble started a little after Jun 14, 2006. The website statistics were no longer being updated at all when they used to get updated every day, once a day. I refreshed the browser and even reloading Windows XP and everything else (as from news item #3 above) didn't so I could easily rule out the cache as the problem. Making things even worse, the help desk no longer works and is so flawed with all the "domain name mismatch" dialogs coming up that I can't get rid of. Each time I click a link, I get anywhere from 8 to 12 of these popping up and that's EVERY time I click a link and it's extremely annoying. It's the only way to contact them about this as well. If this keeps up, I'll be switching webhosts very soon so if my website is down for a few days, that means that I've searched for and changed webhosts and the change has yet to propagate through the internet (which takes up to 48 hours). I have no other way to contact them besides the E-mails listed that are only used for noncustomers (of which don't apply to me), except the billing one, of which also doesn't apply to me since it's not a billing question but rather a tech support question. Just to finally log in to the help desk, I have to go through about 20 of these dialogs and none of the images are even loading because of it (and I can't close the Firefox window without first getting rid of all the dialogs - annoying!). Along with this, nothing has been updated or anything. The control panel says I get 39.7 GB bandwidth per month and 1 GB disk space. That's what it was in early October of 2004, when I first signed up. Even to today, nothing has been updated, not even the control panel, security certificate, or anything. The only thing even changing is my website's files (that I make and modify) and that's it. If this isn't resolved or improved by the start of August (giving a good 20 days), I'm changing webhosts. At the time, my compatibility with them was about 20 times that of neutral. Now it's hovering right next to that neutral mark (and slowly dropping about 2 to 4% per day).
#10 Going to the fairgrounds?: The fair is just two weeks away and I don't know if I want to go to it or not. I went in 2003 and 2004, but not in 2005. It's a 9-day event starting on a Friday, the date nearest to July 23. In order for me to go, I first need to reverse my sleep-wake cycle so that, when it starts, I'm on the day shift. Next, I need to figure out how to even get there. The number one problem isn't my sleep-wake cycle, it's no availability of transportation. The last thing is having the money for gate fees and the megaride pass wristband. This is $60 total. With my intentions on upgrading my computer, this would be a tricky thing. By then, I should, hopefully, have my 2D game out for sale and what I get from sales could help. It only takes about 5 or 6 sales to get this amount of money available which really isn't all that much, but in about a weeks' time, who knows. It's possible that I could have 100 sales by then or just 3, but what counts to me is that it just adds up. Once I fully decide, I should be set otherwise to go.
#11 Rice Lake: As from last year, I went to Rice Lake, as part of the car club. On August 9, 2006, I'll be headed there myself, although, by calculations, I need to add about 12 to 18 hours to my sleep-wake cycle to get a chance to go. Although I like going to the lake more than using the computer, I never get to do it because I have no way of getting there to do it (even the public swimming pool), short of paying a very expensive $50 for a taxi to do it. During the last 2 or 3 years, I've only gone swimming just once. If only I had another way to get there....
#12 5 more dreams recalled: Guess what? On July 4, I get two recalled dreams as a bonus treat. Along with that, I have 3 other recalled dreams, two of which with considerable detail.

Daily Events

Jul 1: Boohoo! Still no dream recalled. It's now July! I realized I forgot to write down the time I woke up when I finished eating giving a big, but still managable margin of error. The first thing I did was eat. Once done, I cleaned out the cage for the hamsters then showered. I did a small clean-up afterwords, the garage and moving a low-grade, damaged couch. I left a few minutes later. I also got the certificate of registration of my trade name, of which was successful. The first stop was Wal-mart, of which, again, I have to stay in the van. Then it was Kmart where I got my fiber tabs and some DVD+RW's for backup. Next, it was Menard's. Finally, the grocery store was next, of which they still don't have my good drinks. I returned home to put stuff away. I then went to get fireworks. From $121 for the purchase, I got $77 in freebies, more than I needed. See news item #2 above for more details, great photos, and an indepth look at how I light fireworks each year. I then went on the forums and cleaned them out. I got the plug-in for scaling the vertices, but it only affects the model's mesh otherwise never affecting the more important skin vertices, but it's a good start though and this does have some uses. For details on this, see news item #5 for details. Woke up at 8:10 AM (±30 minutes) and went to bed at 10:27 PM.
Jul 2: Again, no dream recalled. How much longer will it be before I recall another dream! Watching TV and enhancing my logo made up most of the day. Installing an air conditioner that got fixed was another part. Processing the photos for my fireworks is also another big factor, bigger than that of the air conditioner. The new version of my logo looks 5 times better than the old one I made 2 1/2 weeks ago. Just tomorrow is left and the day after and it's showtime! I did spent quite a bit of time on the forums though, but often as a task in the background. I looked into Regnow and asked them about the usage of a key file. While in bed, I ran some calculations to approximate the sky diving scenario often depicted in my mind game. There'd have to be a few seconds delay before I started along with a lower-than-expected jumping altitude (not 13,000 feet, but more around a mere 5000 feet). Woke up at 9:33 AM and went to bed at 11:53 PM.
Jul 3: I woke up to find that I couldn't eat. The Pizzazz cooker tray was not cleaned and since the milk was beyond the expiration date, I couldn't have Hamburger Helper either. I had to otherwise wait until my parents came home 6 hours later. This is nothing new to me as, during school, I'd often eat very little or even go a whole day without eating. To help, I pigged out on two bags of my 94% fat free popcorn. I made modifications to the logo now including the slogan, "play your way" with the word "your" double underlined. The logo has yet to be finalized. I did, however, finish the near-entire saving part of the save/load system for my 2D game. I have yet to test the seventh part, the last one. Last is the loading part, of which should be simpler to do as it's just the reverse of saving. The file is going on 5 KB which is hardly anything. Due to typical cluster size, I can go up to 8 KB without wasting additional disk space (on the NTFS file system). I was mainly on the forums throughout the entire day. I made a few updates to the logo for a while after TV and eating. I recleaned the forums and went to working on the last of the save/load system now that I thought of a solution to the panel visibility. I finished the scripting for all 7 main save options and I tested 6 of them. For tomorrow, I plan on eating first, opening up all my fireworks from their packaging, then launching them. Woke up at 11:05 AM and went to bed at 2:30 AM.
Jul 4: Two dreams recalled in one night and on the 4th of July!? What a coincidence! I first ate watching the Tom and Jerry Slamfest (a day-long series of Tom and Jerry cartoons). While watching it, when done eating, I unpacked all of my fireworks so that I didn't have to waste time (making a big mess along with it) opening packages. When that was done, I was told to help wash a car. I mainly just scrubbed and otherwise had to do some rather complex moves to get to the top. The CBS Evening News was on by then, something I've almost always watched. When the weather was over at 6:15 PM, I gathered up my stuff I needed and began lighting fireworks. At some point, my sister came. Near the end of the fireworks stuff, the big, colorful ones came out, most notably the artillery shells and my monster one. Along the way, I got a few photos. For the photos and additional details about how I do fireworks each year, see news item #2 above. The most notable event was my sisters' artillery shells. They were a bit flawed in a few cases. 3 of them shot up about ten feet and exploded at that super short height. That was the only scary part of the whole thing. That's right, ten feet. Normally, applying some angle calculations, artillery shells get about 120 feet high. The fuse on the faulty ones in my sister's artillery shells burned unusually slowly. When this was encountered, I found it suspicious and told my sister to run for it just in case. Even running back 80 feet from the launch tube wasn't enough and was still too close. It was the only scary part. When done with everything, I processed the photos then went online to briefly clean out the forums and post the very best of the photos I took while shooting off the artillery shells. I had to press the shutter button 3/4 of a second before the artillery shell launched in order to get the photo to come out. Slow camera for some reason when it's dark (bug?). I got very good remarks on them, even I was stunned at the two 5-star-quality photos (numbers 10 and 15 on the second page of the photo gallery (see news item #2 above for details)). Woke up at 12:01 PM and went to bed at 3:26 AM (±2 minutes).
Jul 5: Next up is either the North Dakota State Fair or Rice Lake (see news items #10 and #11 for details on these). I even sent one of my 5-star photos to my local news station for airing as a background for the "first look" part. The logo is nearly done. I'm on the fifth revision of it. Since I couldn't eat in my usual manner due to the pizza thing not being washed and expired milk, I ended up having a bag of popcorn as a brief supplement. After the news, I cleaned out the forums. I began doing revsion number four of the logo which was twice as good. I then went onward to finishing my save/load system. All saving stuff is done, but needs thorough testing. I began on the loading part and ran into a strange bug. The byte, 99 (the hex number), is being read as 161, not 153 and this is causing trouble. It's written correctly and I've tested and confirmed it, but it's not reading correctly. I have a way to work around this, but requires considerable investigation for possible work arounds. I may have found another bug with Gamestudio, but I need to confirm if it's a fault on my end or with Gamestudio. Before testing the loading part, I made logo revision number 5. GIMP crashed twice, again from using the menus. Scratch GTK 2.8.18 and I'm back to the older 2.6.10 as it's much more stable. It's also a pain to terminate, often taking 5 minutes. With 100% CPU usage, everything is really slow. Woke up at 2:28 PM and went to bed at 4:53 AM (±2 minutes).
Jul 6: Another dream has been added, of moderate detail filling a whole page. It's a good one too. The save/load system is getting a much slower amount of progress than I expected. It works well with one setting, but doesn't with others. I spent 2 1/2 hours trying to figure out a very stubborn bug. Once that was resolved, I was able to cruise along better, but frequently ran into unexplained bugs that took several minutes to investigate. So far, the file header data and high scores are done with player positions almost done. Almost done as in I'm still getting odd bugs and I need a more thorough test. Once done in full, then it's a thorough test for everything. Due to the high importance, I'll need a lot of testing of pretty much everything to hunt for bugs. It's those unexplained ones that seem to have the biggest impact of all. I first started to clean out the forums. I was then interrupted to otherwise fix a flat tire. I then watched the news while eating. I resumed cleaning out the forums then went on to working on my 2D game. At around 2:10 AM or so, I began building a new cage for the two hamsters. I nearly finished it but ran into a noncritical problem - do I add the woodchips? Once done, taking about 45 minutes, I returned to working on the save/load system. At the end of the day, I moved the hamsters to the new cage. When one went on the wheel, I ran calculations to see how fast it could get. With a 6 1/2-inch diameter rotating a peak of 600 degrees per second (tricky to gauge as it's at the upper limit of my hypercount ability - 6 counts per second). I got 2 5/6 feet per second which is 1 14/15 mph (with a 30% margin of error on that). Woke up at 2:41 PM and went to bed at 6:02 AM.
Jul 8: As usual, it was TV (without eating due to unclean pizza cooker tray and expired milk) then the forums. I then got a good start on the EULA, but I still have a feeling I'm missing something. It seems much more authentic than my 3 previous attempts. I also continued on with the save/load system still running into this unexplained bug. Right near the end of the day, I thought of a more worthy solution. Once I ran out of ideas, I went on to updating my website starting with the headlines. I otherwise had nothing else going on. When I ate, of which I had Digiorno Wheat Harvest, the pizza tasts a shocking 2.7 times better than Red Baron's equivelent so I'm likely, to a limited extent, to change brands. Shocking as this is an unusually high jump in the case of pizzas. The only factor is cost and availability. At 2.7 times better, it would take a cost of over 65% of what Red Baron is before I won't look into it. I don't like having to eat as I find it a waste of time, so it's the compatibility that plays a bigger role. Woke up at 4:58 PM and went to bed at 8:36 AM.
Jul 9: I got the first mail with my trade name on it. It was a credit card advertisement (1.33% interest with a 25¢ feet per transaction - suspicious). So, where's that stamp with "junk" on it? Anyway, my website is nearly done being updated. All that remains is just the daily entries, of which I have one done. As usual, it's the forums. Ready for another long run at the same song? It's now been 3 days at Carnival Night (Act 1 from Sonic 3), which is still a tiny 6% of the record. When starting to work on the daily entries, I got interrupted to doing housework - lifting air conditioners and moving bags and some other objects around. I should have my website updated soon after I wake up. The dreams are done, including two maps, unless I get one when I wake up. I have yet to try my new idea for the save/load system. I then have the key file to make, fixing up the EULA, and, I'm at long last done with the first release. When that's done, I'll then implement some of the other enhancements, likely starting with the traffic. I now have a system planned out, I just need to make the images and test it. Woke up at 7:37 PM and went to bed at 10:22 AM.
Jul 10: Website updated. Logo revision number 6 is almost done, at least the stars in the background anyway. This revision has a starry background (as for space) and, although not yet created, there'll be a city in space. I'm almost done with the stars background. All I need now is the dome thing. It was the forums as usual, but with eating and TV mixed in. I rechecked the forums every now and then while updating my site. Otherwise, nothing much really happened. Woke up at 9:18 PM and went to bed at 12:54 PM.
Jul 11: Not only did I recall two dreams in one night, but both dreams are well-recalled. Both dreams take 3 pages in detail total. A nosebleed woke me up and when I woke up, I had a dream recalled. I went back to bed again and woke up 3 hours later with another dream recalled, one so well-recalled, it goes in the stories category. Much of the day was spent on the forums. I first started finishing up with the first run at revision number 6 of the logo. The stars are done, and the resulting scaled down version looks even better. When the city in space is added, it'll look even better. Other than making revision number 6 of the logo, I was looking at Newegg at hard drives, monitors, and other things. Then I ran across a bug in Winamp. Also, I had a hard time deciding what song to use next so I was switching songs a dozen times. I landed on Winter Land (again). 45 more days to go before setting the record.... I have no intention on breaking it. My MP3 player is still at Battle Zone, however, so it won't affect the record, even if I went on for 100 days. Woke up at 12:39 AM and went to bed at 4:01 PM (±3 minutes).
Jul 12: Rats! I didn't have a dream recalled. I first ate and watched TV. I then cleaned out the forums then spent several hours updating the document for George Game 13. I ran into a problem that I encountered around July or August of 2005 with including an include within an include and that the included include doesn't include (tongue twisters anyone?). I don't have a solution and the question went unanswered the last time. Without the solution, indexes don't get updated as easily (they have to be manually updated by copy paste, of which I'm trying to avoid having to do). Either that, or it's breaking it up into having several more (unnecessary files). I then got a restart on the city world map until severe storms struck. Bismarck got to 105°F! I monitored the storms for some time, but was too tired to continue much further. At least it adds onto the 12 hours needed so I can get to Rice Lake on August 9. Winter Land day 2 on my computer, and Battle Zone still continues on my MP3 player. Woke up at 1:35 AM and went to bed at 6:31 PM.
Jul 13: No dream recalled again. I implemented the full save/load system and fixed all but one bug, the same one that caused trouble earlier. Much of the day was spent on the forums and working on the save/load system. I'm using the same formula in both cases, but the results have a 1 in 4 chance of not saving properly. Faults occur at random spots and the difference is sometimes as much as 0.03 or even 64 (as from bit misplacement). This is causing big problems. See news item #1 for more details on this stubborn bug. Woke up at 4:08 AM and went to bed at 9:01 PM.
Jul 14: I recalled another dream, but doesn't have much detail. Bismarck's forecast for tomorrow is 108°F. The humidity in my area is 11%, that of deserts. See news item #3 for more details. It makes me think of my song Desert Zone. I also finished up the update for George Game 13's details document. I first had to get the solution to the year-long problem I haven't solved. Includes within an include weren't included and the include within the include would only work if included as an include within the main document and not within an include as it was being treated as an ordinary HTML comment rather than a server-side include (How many times did I use "include" and it's other forms?). I released the updated document. I spent a large chunk of the day on the forums. I still have no word on the unexplained bug with the save/load system. I only got a very brief start of the city world map for George Game 13, but lost interest. At the end of the day, I watched two hours of TV. I also showered. Winter Land is still going on my computer and Battle Zone is still going on on my MP3 player. That should now be 60 days for my MP3 player. That's two months! Woke up at 6:21 AM and went to bed at 9:30 PM.
Jul 15: No dream again. I first cleaned out the forums then left for the grocery store. First it was Wal-mart then Kmart. Next was the grocery store (still none of my good drinks) and the credit union (where I just waited outside). I returned home to eat. I started to reclean the forums. I was interrupted to move a bunch of boxes and things around. I returned to the forums and watched 90 minutes of TV. I returned to the forums yet again and finally watched TV at the end. The bug still goes unexplained. I did, however, find one bug on my end that I fixed, but it didn't resolve the problem. It reduced the frequency of errors occurring a little, but that was about it. I still otherwise have no leads. Woke up at 7:56 AM and went to bed at 11:01 PM.
Jul 16: No dream recalled again. First it was eating then cleaning out the forums, as usual. At one point, for 80 minutes, I was flattening boxes. I recleaned the forums then began watching TV. At 7:00 PM, I washed one of the dogs since nothing was on and the dog had a veterinarian (sp.?) appointment tomorrow. Once done, I watched "Global Warming: What you need to know" as I've been looking forward to it since I first saw the ads for it. I then watched "Haunting Evidence". When it was over with, I returned to the forums again. I'm still at Battle Zone for my MP3 player and ran into a surprise. With the spike at 3190 at the very highest on my MP3 player, and just past 2200 on my computer, it's theoretically possible I could last for 100 days at it. It's already been 60. Since I'm using another song on my computer, the record of 46 days still stands as is without going higher. The interesting thing is that the speed range used on my MP3 player is very narrow, from 55 to 62.5% true speed and rarely changing. Woke up at 9:00 AM and went to bed at 1:11 AM.
Jul 17: Again, no dream. I found another bug with the save/load system, but the frequency of the errors is otherwise unchanged. I'm now to the point where I'm debating whether or not I should include the save/load system. A huge chunk of the day was spent on the forums. I washed another one of the dogs. Other than this and some TV, nothing else happened. Still at Winter Land and Battle Zone.... Woke up at 10:03 AM and went to bed at 1:11 AM.
Jul 18: Yay! Two dreams recalled in one night, and only a week apart from the last episode of this. This time I had 1 1/2 pages of detail total with one taking up a whole page. I spent 63 minutes writing details on them. I spent a lot of the time on the forums though. I tried a new method for the save/load system someone else suggested, but it doesn't work either as fractional values are ignored. I also made a sample level for someone, using the cosine function for camera movement. It was to explain something for someone on the forums. That took about two hours to do. Nothing else really happened that I can recall. Still no change in songs (computer at Winter Land, and MP3 player at Battle Zone).... Woke up at 11:17 AM and went to bed at 3:31 AM (±2 minutes).
Jul 19: Another dream recalled. I figured out the movement system and to get it to work on all 3 axes. I modified that earlier sample project I made yesterday and tested the system out. I realized that it would come in very handy for George Game 13's development. See news item #2 for more details on this. Still no solution on the save/load system though. I was mainly on the forums or watching TV. I did try figuring a few things out, however. I didn't get anywhere. I'm still at Winter Land and Battle Zone. I also tried to get contact with someone who could assist in writing an EULA. Woke up at 1:02 PM and went to bed at 6:04 AM.
Jul 21: Rats! I had no dream recalled. I got another run of the code, but here again, it has the same behavior as before. My old version of the code and this other, weirder approach, have the exact same symptoms, frequency of errors, and what the error is. I'm now beginning to wonder if it's the main code itself. Between lots of TV, the forums, then later starting to update my website, I didn't do much. I switched songs to Out Where the Lake Is on my computer at 82% true speed. My MP3 player, however, is still going at Battle Zone. I should have close to 70 days by now for Battle Zone on my MP3 player. Woke up at 3:54 PM and went to bed at 8:20 AM.
Jul 22: No dream recalled, again. I started off doing my usual, cleaning out the forums and watching TV. I finished updating my site a day earlier than expected. Once done, I took a shower then went grocery shopping, part of my plan of adding those 12 hours I needed. First it was the bank then the police department. Where there? We dropped something off, something someone working there was wanting, nothing legal-related though. A brief stop was next then one of two grocery stores. One store only had two of my frozen pizzas, the Digiorno's. The other had what I needed. I returned home then ate. I found another way to test the bug with the save/load system as well. Woke up at 4:57 PM and went to bed at 1:58 PM, awake for 22 1/2 actual hours, but far from my record.
Jul 23: Today is my 5-year anniversary of using forums. For more details on this, see news item #5 on the August 2006 blog. I tested my new method for testing the save/load system. Now the problem is even more bizarre. With a random number from 0 to 50,000 and subtracting this by 50,000, it can be cycling through 60,000 numbers per second for ten minutes (36 million numbers in all), without an error, but when subtracting 28,000 and 42,000 instead, I get the error after about 20,000 to 40,000 numbers being cycled. Each time the error occurs, only one number is at fault and never changes. The value written is always 64 units less than when the encryption formula is used. The number at fault is always the same. This is a huge lead. Yet, the numbers seem to be faulty when above -0.3 but below 0. Besides the usual TV and forums, the only other things are that I got Zonealarm Pro and moved two big, bulky mattresses from outside to the basement. For details on Zonealarm Pro, see news item #7 on the August 2006 blog. I'm still going at Out Where the Lake Is and Battle Zone. 30 more days of BZ remain, according to my theories. Woke up at 12:56 AM and went to bed at 4:29 PM.
Jul 24: I woke up unexpectedly early, but couldn't get back to sleep. I did, however, recall another dream, number 422. I finally fixed the save/load system. Rather than dropping the system or having it save high scores only (and unreliably). See news item #1 on the August 2006 blog for further details on this. I mainly was on the forums, fixing the save/load system bug and extensively testing it for hours afterwards. I got yet another credit card advertisement - that's 3. I otherwise didn't watch much TV, just Tom and Jerry at the start. I contacted Mrs. Lund as well. My sister came over with a game called "Ragnarok Online". It's an RPG-like game that's supposedly played online. Online part - X on that! Style of gameplay - 4 out of 5 stars. For more details on this, see news item #6 on the August 2006 blog. I've now added enough hours to warrant a 70% chance of going to Rice Lake. GIMP also crashed, but this time, so severely, I had to use the reset button on my computer since even task manager stopped responding. Man I wished I had a way to get that stack dump thing GIMP's bugzilla is asking for.... GIMP normally takes about 5 minutes just to close, long because it's using 100% CPU usage otherwise indefinitely long (due to a loop that never becomes false). There doesn't seem to be a way to get this stack dump either, at least for Windows XP that is (or any Windows operating system). Woke up at 11:24 PM (±3 minutes) and went to bed at 6:13 PM.
Jul 25: No dream this time. I first cleaned out the forums then began working on making the key file. I ate then resumed working on it. The whole key file system has a done stamp on it. Now all I need is the EULA and I'm done. Listing it on Regnow and setting up the forum is what's after that, not technically part of the game's development. The error log system I made from the save/load system came in very handy for fixing a bug with the key. At the end of the day, I was using the key file to turn the free edition into the full edition. I'm still going at Out Where the Lake Is and Battle Zone. I'm really pushing past that 70-days mark.... Woke up at 3:14 AM and went to bed at 7:21 PM.
Jul 26: Yes! Dream number 423 recalled. I implemented and tested the EULA system. I also implemented a backup system when saving. This way, if a load error does occur, you can use the backup to use your last good setting with the backup file. If the next save is faulty, a backup of the original backup is created yet again. The other thing I did was fill out the form for copyright. Besides these, it was the forums and a little TV. I've been hovering around 500 spam messages in the junk mail folder again, sometimes nearly reaching 600. That's 100 spam mails per day or 4 per hour. Woke up at 2:43 AM and went to bed at 9:01 PM.
Jul 27: I got around to testing the published version of my 2D game and otherwise just playing at it hunting for bugs. I found one with the save/load system with class 3 severity. It, however, was easily fixed. I tried updating Molebox, but it wasn't possible, converting the full version into the trial version and in order to install the old version again, I had to completely erase the entire Molebox folder terminating a process in the task manager that shouldn't have been running first. Next, for the hosting upgrade, to make things more bizarre, they didn't have the billing info on their records. I didn't get this. I was hoping I could start setting up the forum and stuff, but that wasn't the case. A huge chunk of the day was spent on the forums and testing my 2D game. I checked my E-mail unusually frequently for responses to the hosting upgrade thing. I'm still at Out Where the Lake Is and Battle Zone. Woke up at 6:14 AM and went to bed at 11:21 PM.
Jul 28: No dream recalled. Hosting upgrade was done. I installed the forum, but before I can set things up, I have to wait for DNS propigation to take effect. I found a big, frustrating bug with the saving of background scenery positions. Most of it was easy to fix, but the city buildings were bad. The reason is because of the very complex algorithm used to work around the accuracy problem of the var. I went through two concepts to try fixing it, but didn't get anywhere. I have one other idea, however. The day has 5 parts to it. The first is eating and TV, cleaning out the forums, doing the server migration stuff, testing my 2D game some more, and TV at the end. During the full backup, WS_FTP LE was giving me problems, an error called "broken pipe". After extensive transferring, it didn't like files above 51 KB as they downloaded part way (to 51 KB) then suddenly stopped in the middle of it. To fix that, I had to close and reopen the program about 4 times. Because of this, some files may not have transferred properly and may even be cut short. I also found out that my song "Out Where the Lake Is" is actually called "Bluegrass Bobcat". Woke up at 8:06 AM and went to bed at 10:03 PM.
Jul 29: I'm now falling behind on my added hours.... I first ate. I then mowed the grass, then showered with an upset stomach (I drank too much). I left to get groceries. Unlike all of my past visits to the grocery store for about 18 months, I went to the new Wal-mart Supercenter. For details on this, see news item number 4 on the August 2006 blog. When I returned home, I cleaned out the forums then began getting my forum set up. I recleaned the forums then began watching TV at the end. I was 3/4 asleep. I also got new speakers for my computer. They even have a tone-control feature and and it makes it very comparable to my MP3 player's speakers. I switched songs on my computer to Desert Zone, but my MP3 player is still at Battle Zone. Woke up at 8:41 AM and went to bed at 1:29 AM.
Jul 30: How much longer is it going to be before recalling another dream!? I first cleaned out the forums then a new idea for the "game design index" animation was thought of. I made the animation in full then ate. I recleaned the forums then went on to fixing the bug I encountered a few days earlier. The var's accuracy issue and the most complex system I have to work around it caused some considerable trouble. It added to my frustration and the major reason why I'm after using doubles in Lite-C. I've also been noticing strange sounds coming from the hard drive. For more details on this, see news item #3 on the August 2006 blog. I looked into hard drives for about an hour on Newegg. Thankfully I rejected getting the bigger monitor in this case. August is very close and is my most unlucky month. When I was done searching for hard drives, I continued playing my 2D game to hunt for bugs using my usual bug-finding technique. 23 minutes later, I began watching two TV shows I missed earlier lasting an hour, then I went to bed. My new speakers make Desert Zone as good as my MP3 player's version, better in some other cases. That was never the case with my old speakers which barely even managed half of the compatibility. My MP3 player is still going at Battle Zone. That should be day 80 by now. Theoretically, I have another 20 days to go before losing motive and switch. It's a first in that Desert Zone on my computer at 94% true speed can now sound a million times better than some of the worst and most annoying TV ads (those with whistling (biggest impact), extreme repetition, and/or occurs too often). Woke up at 10:54 AM and went to bed at 3:01 AM (±2 minutes).
Jul 31: Again, no dream. I first cleaned out the forums then started working on my 2D game. Because the pizza tray was not washed and I woke up when no one was around for 6 hours, I ate a half loaf of french bread. I finally got to start eating at 5:20 PM. With otherwise nothing on on TV at all, I spent extra time testing my 2D game, a whole 4 hours' worth. I checked the interactive tutorial and went through each lesson and found nothing more than a factual mistake on lesson 8 in full edition mode. A gigajoule is 277 7/9 kilowatt-hours, not 555 5/9 (that's what a unit of spell power is). After all that time, messing with the challenges (even successfully completing all 8 challenges in master difficulty), the interactive tutorial, and going around the world (25,000 miles on the "distance moved" screen stat), I made the final EXE file, checked that it woked and began modifying the more-details document for the 2D game, including getting all of the screenshots updated. At the end, I began updating my website. I wouldn't be able to release my 2D game until a little later. I started on the headlines. My computer is now going at Desert Zone at 97% true speed. The song spikes at 1950 times better than neutral, something never obtained with my new speakers which barely managed 700 times better than neutral at the highest spike. My MP3 player is still at Battle Zone. Yep, I should definitely have 80 days by now. Windows also had a stop error (it blue-screened). For details on Windows XP having the blue-screen of death, see news item #8. Woke up at an unknown time and went to bed at 6:09 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
	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:
None