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What have you been up to in July of 2007?


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

Because the headlines span 2 1/2 months from early June to mid-August of 2007, they are repeated for the months of June, July, and August.

Aug 17, 2007



Aug 17, 2007: Major time was spent with Final Fantasy 12, with 5 videos of my oddities on YouTube. Only two good songs were present, but nothing compares to the record-holders, far below them. For Father's Day, I made a rather unusual self-created card for my father. I passed the 600 mark in recalled dreams (along with a discovery). Some progress has been made for the 2D games. A new card game has been added. I made a list of most every video game I've played at some point. I ran into difficulties with Paypal and I also had a close call with tornadoes. I made a discovery with taking digital photos but haven't found any solutions to the GameBridge-Genesis issue.

#1 Final Fantasy 12: For many days, I've been heavily involved with Final Fantasy 12. The daily entries cover things in far greater depth, but the headline will only contain the basic summary. For the most part, it started with gaining a few levels then defeating the first "semi-boss". From there, I went at levelling up so much, I reached the mid-thirties by the time I first got to see what it was like to have more than one character in the party. That lasted a short while, then continued levelling up to the low 50's when I first began to get the other party members. Balthier and Fran started at level 54 when I first got them. Yes, that's not a typo. I continued levelling up even more, maxing Vaan out at 99 before getting Ashe (starting on 86) and Penelo (starting at 93). From this, I spent many days trying to level every one up to the maximum. My videos on YouTube go in great depth explaining much more on this. During the time, I went after a big ball elemental, gnoma entite, and defeated it several times with inferior weapons and abilities. Sure it took 4 minutes to defeat, I liked doing it and, even funnier, I even had an enemy called "urstrix" watch the battle. That's no joke and I have a video on YouTube to prove it and see for yourself. I once had two urstrixes watching, but wasn't recording at the time (nor was my computer on). This was the funniest thing and I spent a few days trying to record it (since it spanned over July 4, my top favorite holiday of all with quadruple the motive). Once I found a much better way to level up, in Mosphoran Highwaste (another video available), I continued on until I maxed everyone out. Then, from there on, I could focus entirely on hunts, side quests, and the story. I progressed a bit with the story, went on a few more hunts taking whatever I could find, went on a few more side quests, progressed with the story more, and kept continuing until I reached the final part. I eventually completed the game on July 31, 2007 since I was getting bored of it.

Although I have the strategy guide, I only used it to figure out what you're supposed to do next, the slowest, most boring part, but for the battles, I used my own strategies of which I later found matched only about 40% of that in the guide (checked after the battle, if I actually did). The toughest enemy wasn't Yiazmut, with over 50 million HP, it was Omega Mark XII, of which I realized a misprint in the guide. The guide states of 10 million HP, but it actually only has a million instead. Getting reverse to work was the tricky part since it very frequently missed. My usual strategy was to have one major damage dealer become the enemy's sole target (with decoy) and have the other two characters both cast reverse on him at the same time (to boost the chance of success since it frequently misses). I usually have my major damage dealer go berserk if all is well. The support characters mainly just threw cure spells and status effect spells around - haste, protect, reverse, bravery (only on the damage dealer), faith (faith mainly on themselves and not the damage dealer), decoy (on the damage-dealer when reverse is finally put on), and probably some others. The support characters, especially the party leader, used ranged weapons (a bow in particular), to keep them separate minimizing the effects area spells have.

When I think of Final Fantasy, I usually think of it having good music. After all, the top three record-holding songs (that hold many records in one) are all from Final Fantasy: FF6 World version 1 (53 days of the same song, 17 of the same song and speed, and highest sustained compatibility), FF1 World (42 days of the same song, second-highest sustained compatibility), and Battle Zone (46 days of the same song, 12 days of the same song and speed, 107 days on the same source, highest known spike for anything (including outside music) at 3190, and fourth-highest sustained compatibility. I didn't find much of anything of interest in FF12. Ozmone Plain (700 sustained) is the highest, but is no match to FF6 World version 1, less than 1/3 of it). The next highest, Mosphoran Highwaste, is only at 220, just 1/10 that of FF6 World version 1. Rabanastre and that of Outpost are tied at third place with 90, just below the favorite mark (which is 100). Records are not likely going to happen, not even 5th place record held by OWTLI.

#2 FF6 World - 52 1/4 days plus bonuses - magical?: There's something strange about FF6 World, and I mean it. It led to my new record of 52 1/4 consecutive days at listening to it (17 days for the same song and speed). Then, just barely a week later, I went at it again for another 10 days. I returned to it again around early July but don't know how long I was at it and it didn't dominate the day as I was involved with FF12. I returned once more barely a month later on Aug 11 and, as of this update, I've remained at it since with no sign of letting up. Time and time again I kept returning to it, as if it was "luring me to it". Though it has a 2200 sustained compatibility, the highest of any song, even the next highest at 2100 doesn't "lure" me to it like this song does and that's less than a 5% difference. Although there is no such thing as magic (the kind in magic shows is actually just illusions - floating platforms blending into the background, trick mirrors, wires, and things like that), this song, strangely enough, seems magiced (sp.?). After getting bored of it, I get a chance encounter with it and off I'm at listening to it again for several days in a row. Even when I typed this headline, I was listening to it, for the fourth day at it. It may not set the record for the most listened to in a whole year (having random start points with the end being 365.242199 days later; held by OWTLI since it was one of very few songs I had at the time drastically limiting my choices), it may reach second place (Desert Zone) though but can't tell at this point). I don't know what the record is, but it's something around 200 or so days in a given year with the next highest around 100 or so. The 52 1/4 days followed by 9 7/8 and now 6 more puts it at 68 1/8 total days within just 4 1/2 months. The current value, with the start on Apr 3 at 1:00 AM, is around 68 days and continues to count onward.

#3 July 4 - not as good as I had hoped: Last year, I had a great time with launching fireworks on July 4 and was at it for a very long time. This year, things weren't anywhere near as exciting since I didn't get as much of the good stuff. For those who are new to me and/or not sure what's so special about this day, July 4 is Independence Day in the US and on that day, as I've done for more than 15 years, I launch fireworks as part of the celebration. At the time, I was heavily involved with FF12 (see news item #1 above). I got a few photos, but unlike last year, they weren't anywhere near as good. I thought I'd post two of them (click them to see a high-resolution version):

Ulillillia's fireworks for 2007


These are the fireworks I had this year. Note that I have two of the big ones. The reason for this is because the place had a "buy 1, get 1 free" deal on almost everything. The others are quite similar, but compared to last year, I have much less variety which is the main reason. I targetted 500 fuses, since I had many left over from last year. I had less than I thought I did.

a group of 10 smoke ball fireworks linked together


Here, I grouped many smoke balls together in a way that causes many to light up at once. Normally, I only do 1 to 3. When I light such combos, I arrange them in a way so that one of the fuses is as far apart as possible from the others. This area is pretty much right in the center of the image.

Last year, I had much more variety. I had only 6 different types (the two big ones count as a single - they're finales) this year.

#4 Parents, mirrors, and the blocked phones: With one mirror blocking the easiest, fastest, and most motivating route to the phone, it was bad enough. Now, a second mirror was placed that prevents access to that phone but I still had one more. Mom then got a fold-down mirror causing a criss-cross barrier. That is, one mirror in the far south part of the room "points" north and another, the new one, is on the east side pointing to the west. The phone is in the southwest corner. I can't get to the phone since a table is in the way, and to move one of the mirrors means having to get in front of other, essentially blocking my access to the phone. Two phones of two blocked and they expect me to answer it. It seems that my parents have been getting really dumb lately. What if I need to call the emergency number? Getting a long stick to fight the mirrors (at least 4 1/2 feet is what I need) will easily take about a minute or so (it'd be much faster for me to run to a neighbor's house, speak with the neighbor, and call from there, likely 20 seconds on a speed run, triple the speed of what it would take in my own house). Lately, I haven't been able to call anyone or anywhere, or even answer the phone. The parents are doing it to themselves.

#5 A very unusual father's day gift and card: About two weeks before Father's Day (June in the US), I envisioned a card for father's day, but only got to working on it the day before. It involves a brain repair kit, since he does and says some weird things at times. He actually liked it and I even took a photo of the final result. The front of the card showed a basic box (with very simple 3D effects) saying "brain repair kit" on it. A human brain was above this and on the right center, a green circle with "the solution to all your brain problems" was there, sort of looking like a box in a retail store would, even having a price ($34.95). At the bottom had "this isn't an ordinary father's day card". On the inside had more text with various tools and machine parts scattered around (bolts, a screw driver, a ratchet, and a few others). The back had usual card disclaimers, but in a very unusual way. Everyone in my family, even my dad when it came time to giving it to him, liked it a lot. I mainly just copied my near-photo quality visions two weeks prior.

There's still more to it though. My sister made a gift that looked like a normal gift (though, being a box, one could tell it was a box or some object with hard sharp edges just by looking at the wrapping paper). This box resembled the brain repair kit on the card and inside were... real tools (his own tools - mostly screw drivers, a few wrenches, and other things). Also included was the card I made. I'd say this is a very unusual card and gift, but I'm quite sure there's even weirder ones out there, self-made in particular.

Brain repair kit fathers day gift


#6 YouTube copyright scare: When I uploaded one of my Shrek the Third game videos, it was taken down two or so days later due to copyright-related issues. The main thing that bothered me wasn't entirely this, but it was not knowing what part(s) of the video crossed the borderline, since it was never indicated, that was. This bothered me for an entire 3 days preventing me from concentrating on almost anything. Even to today, I still don't know what caused it. It comes down to any of 4 possibilities though:

  1. Some story-related elements were included. The problem here is that, I've seen many videos with story-related elements in them.
  2. The fact that this was the last level and it was played in full. I've, again, seen many videos with the last level being played in full.
  3. The other two I've since forgotten.


It did, however, have one advantage - boosted cautiousness. In other words, I'm now much more cautious when processing videos. Anything with less than 90% certainty I hesitate when deciding if I want to upload it to YouTube. Below 75% certainty, then I reject the idea of uploading it to YouTube. Below 50% certainty, I hestitate with wanting to record it (which is enough to delay it for months, probably even a few years). Most cases hover around 95% and above though. One other video with Shrek the Third is where I make it through the entire "Catacomb Leap" minigame with 10 lives remaining. This has 75% certainty (mostly since it's the entire thing, even though no story elements and things are involved).

#7 Video processing program updated: My self-created program, of which I use to process videos with, was in need of updating in order for something to work. Thing is, I wanted to demonstrate how something is to be done, but the problem of the 10-minute time limit was as issue. Besides, quite a bit of it was fairly boring and thus I wanted a time-lapse system to quickly skip over but still give users the sense of what was going on. Virtual Dub's method is very inaccurate - frames are just deleted with the frame delay offset. The more accurate method to simulate this is by merging frames and since no known program could do this, and that I mostly had the know-how, I added this capability to my video-processing program. However, for quite a while, I've been debating on the more accurate frame-merging method - the "transparent frame" method and the "pixel color average" method. I'm thinking the "transparent frame" method is more accurate. What this is is that, if 4 frames are being merged, frame 4 would be the starting point and fully opaque. The previous frame, frame 3, would be drawn on top as 75% opaque (alpha of 191), with frames 2 and 1 being 50% and 25% (alphas of 128 and 64) being drawn on top with 2 first then 1. When hundreds of such frames are processed, it simulates the effect of being played back at a higher frame rate than it really is. The "pixel color average" method is much simpler and it merely involves taking an average of the the colors in frames to be merged. For 128, 64, 96, and 64 for the four color values of the frames (can be done in any order - addition is commutative), it gives 352/4 or 88 as the end result. Both methods produce the exact same result when 2 frames are being merged, but they start differing with more frames merged and the more, the greater the difference. Both methods simulate the effect of being played back at a faster frame rate than it really is.

#8 Graph-plot EQ for Winamp - 10% max boost to compatibility: This is more than a typical equalizer. I've been wanting an equalizer with numerous channels, more than even 30 since 10 often just doesn't cut it. Take FF6 World for instance. At true speed, frequencies from 100 to 400 Hz in the best area (the first 4 measures of part 2) has a significant boost to my compatibility but from 400 to 700, there's a small drop. From 700, it jumps significantly until 1700 Hz and from there on, it has a slight drop that increases with the pitch. With my sound card's 10-channel equalizer, I can only control 31, 62, 125, 250, 500, 1K, 2K, 4K, 8K, and 16K frequency bands. With Winamp, they are 60, 170, 310, 600, 1K, 3K, 6K, 12K, 14K, and 16K. Winamp seems to just have random values not really following the logarithmic scale at all whereas my sound card's equalizer does (it doubles every time with fractional parts chopped off). To get the 100 to 400 area, I'd boost the 125, 170, 250, and 310 bands quite a bit with some on the 500. I'd use the 600 Hz band to drop the amplitude of that area, but the 1K, 2K, and 3K bands raised. It's imprecise and I've always wanted more equalizer bands than this. With the new graph-plot equalizer, it's far better than the 30-channel equalizer I originally thought of. The only downside is that it doesn't follow the logarithmic scale and that for deamplification is inconsistent with that of the amplification part. Positive is evenly spaced when negative is awkwardly spaced (accelerative but again, not the logarithmic scale). Still, it's way better than any equalizer I've used, even Audacity's since it won't let me save settings (even after each use!) and it modifies the wave. It's with this equalizer that I found the optimal range and the consequence to this is a maximum of a 10% boost in compatibility. That doesn't seem like much, but it's enough to turn a song with a compatibility of 2000 to 2200 (The case with FF6 World is only a boost of 5%, from 2100 to 2200, of which is where it stands).

Graph plot equalizer in Winamp for FF6 World


This screenshot shows the graph plot equalizer and how it is for FF6 World. This is 96% true speed. Yep, 27,000 plays and still counting, all that in only 4 months and it doesn't include plays from the game itself nor on my MP3 player (which could boost it to 32,000). Like with OWTLI, if this kept up (and was about as long as OWTLI), this could very well reach a million plays in 11 years and by then, OWTLI would be an antique with video game songs and it may only rack up another 100,000 plays at most.

#9 A close call with tornadoes - 10 miles from me: On June 10, 2007, there were many tornado warnings in my area and one of the tornadoes got within just 10 miles of where I live. I've had a closer call with lightning than that though where a bolt of lightning was only 100 feet away just beyond the power lines. It was so close, I could make out the 14-inch diameter it has with that degree of precision (well, ±1 inch anyway). The tornado was too far away to see, but I'd have rather watched the TV to monitor the storms then look for it. When 15 miles away, me and my sister, the only two home (parents were at work), decided to get the dogs down in the basement where my sister carried them and I searched for them (still taking detours around the mirrors). I then thought that, when 5 miles away, I'd head down into the basement with my sister and continue to monitor the storms, but they didn't get that close. Usually, I get one within 30 miles from me in a given year, provided any tornadoes are even in the vicinity. It's very rare one creeps 10 miles from me. The last time I recall this happening is in the summer of one of the years from 1991 to 1994. It was before I got involved with Bubsy though.

#10 Some progress on my 2D game: Before I got involved with FF12, I was working on my 2D game making the character. I've done a few of the basic "actions" such as jumping, fall-gliding, and level gliding, but that was about it (without the lighting as that comes last (since adjustments means having to reprocess the lighting). I have many "actions" remaining though and other variations. Beyond this, not much else happened. Now that I'm away from FF12, progress on my 2D game can finally get going again.

#11 Paypal != pal - lost motive for selling on Ebay: When you buy or sell things on Ebay, you'll almost certainly think of Paypal as it's very common. However, "Paypal" seems more like "Payfoe" or "Payus" due to a recent episode I had. In short, a Paypal payment from selling a processor on Ebay was delayed a very long time. For an in-depth story, it all started with my computer problems back in late December of 2006 and early January and 2007. My computer was hard-freezing, even in the BIOS. Through asking on the forums using my dad's computer, I was getting the indication that my processor was at fault and I ordered one off Newegg. Once I received it, I put it in and it wouldn't run for some reason. Eventually, I needed to go to a computer service center to get it fixed up and since then, the processor has just been lying around in the box it came in. I've been wanting to sell it for a long time, but just didn't have the motive, then, in mid June, I finally got to listing it on Ebay. I applied my usual formula to determine the listing price and it worked out originally to $69.99. Two days later, I found that I made a mistake with my calculation and that $59.99 was the case but didn't bother changing it. Upon relisting it, I did put it as my original intended price and got two bids on it. The payment was supposedly made right away, but when I made a quick check on my Paypal, I found that the funds haven't been received and Ebay showed that the payment was pending. Normally, it takes 3 or 4 business days to clear a pending payment, a likely cause due to insufficient funds. What I mean by that is, pretend someone bought an item costing $20 and they only had $10 in their Paypal. They pay for the item, but, due to not enough being in Paypal, Paypal needs to withdraw from the bank account or credit card and this takes 3 to 4 days to clear from the two cases I've had this occur. It spanned over the 4th of July holiday and the weekend beforehand so I expected a longer delay. It still didn't clear by Friday so I waited one more business day, or the Monday right after the weekend. Since it still didn't clear, I investigated further and Paypal told me that, in order to even claim the payment, I needed to upgrade my account and I couldn't find any way around it. Upgrading the account meant that they'd take another $2 away. I was very disappointed and this added a monstrous -14 affector to my motive for having Paypal as a payment option, a very extreme affector, enough that I will no longer offer Paypal as a method of payment and with other methods being less secure and slower, my motive for selling things on Ebay dropped quite a bit too - a -3.5 affector (4 times better than that from Paypal so it's not that bad) so for now, it'll take a lot more motivation (3 1/2 times as much) before I bother to sell anything on Ebay. This, however, will not affect my motive (an affector of 1) when it comes to buying things on Ebay or using Paypal to make payments with. Beforehand, I got the payments without any trouble. This just happened out of nowhere.

#12 Some progress and new visions of my 2D RPG game: Between my (somewhat annoying) visions of my 2D RPG game, and other things I've got going on the computer, I've been having new thoughts on my 2D RPG game. I've mostly made progress with the plans (mainly just small updates), and especially lists. If you've seen strategy guides for RPG games, they list the various weapons, armor, enemies, abilities, and other things in them. These lists are what these are. The list of weapons is mainly done, but seems far too repetitive. Another list, of which is tricky to do in full, is that of enemies. I can get the stats for enemies (magic attack, defense, evasion, HP, etc.) in full for those you'd find early in the game, but for those found later in the game, only rough concepts are possible. The full details are not possible (along with finding out costs of items and the SP-usage of spells) without being able to test the game. Though I'm normally heavily involved with fighting enemies before progressing with the story, when testing, I'll do this way, and the way normally expected - progress with a few extra battles. I've got 85% of the major and moderate details worked out for the game. I just need to gain experience with programming and the main game I'm working on, the remake of "The Supernatural Olympics" will be the starting point.

I've been getting a lot of visions as well, near photo quality as well. One vision is where the characters have around 124,000 HP on average and I'm defeating a boss that has just over 20 million HP. I'm cycling between using fire21 and thunder20 of which do 450,000 and 800,000 damage. The boss deals around 25,000 in damage and it's a solo fight. This is based on the case where you're more focused toward the story rather than having extremely high levels for the point in the story. In one case, due to a critical hit, the character's HP drops to 13,000 causing the number in the stats to be a brilliant red, but a cure spell is on the way which restores around 100,000 HP. The character's special attack was used once and it did 3 million in damage (it was a critical hit). Near the end of the battle, the character's SP was getting rather low. I occasionally added status effects, mostly to the character (one boosting physical defense and another to increase the character's actions).

In another vision, it's the very beginning of the game where I'm battling simple enemies that do about 30 HP of damage. I have 3 characters attacking with a fourth (one more focused toward casting spells) casting cure on everyone doing about 140 HP in cure. This scene is rare.

#13 Survive the Flood UNO - a newly added game: It's been on my "to-do list" for months, probably over a year. It's the card game based on UNO where you play solo and formulate strategies. It's bizarre in many ways, but when you've got time to waste and have a deck of even regular cards (UNO cards are not required), you could play a game or two of this. This game has simple-enough rules, and that I have enough programming skills, I could write a program to allow you to play this. I wrote the rules for the game and included my custom-made card deck that has various nature themes such as the beach, space, or a rainbow. They're based largely on cards I made in at least 2002, but I couldn't find the originals and the previous ones were 4-bit color. The new versions, though they have simple cartoon-like graphics, are much more colorful than the originals, provided you factored dithering effects in as well to simulate more colors than those on the standard 16-color palette. My top favorites are those of the beach (3), desert (4), forest (5), and rainbow (7). The forest one is my top favorite followed by the desert, beach, then rainbow. If it wasn't for an E-mail I got, adding a +5 affector to the motive, it may have been delayed longer. It was practically right on neutral (well, -1.1 was what it was - it jumped to 4.5). Thanks for the E-mail (and boosting my motive for it).

#14 If only GameBridge worked with the Genesis...: I've been wanting it for a long while now - getting GameBridge to work with my Sega Genesis. All I get are distortions in the video. The audio comes out fine though. What do I mean by distortions? This screenshot explains it all:

Distortions GameBridge has with the Genesis (Bubsy in level 11 is shown)


Note the great distortions. No, it's not JPG artifacts (JPG quality 10 is a little better than this), it's actually the way it comes out. This is supposed to be level 11, one of 3 levels (world) in which OWTLI comes from. Can you make out Bubsy or what he's doing? You could barely make out Bubsy and without knowing the game, couldn't tell what he was doing. Can you make out the woolie or the object Bubsy is directly above? With thinking, you should be able to make out at least the enemy. Can you tell what the background is of? Again, it's difficult to make out anything except clouds. On my TV, it comes out crystal clear and you can see the individual pixels and their colors without any distortions at all. Like this, it's almost impossible to even play the game. I just tried messing around in this area as I've done for years and like this, it's very difficult, even with pausing the game to try to figure out what things are (and when going faster than 32 pixels per frame, it's even worse). I only got in this area through first playing it on my TV, pausing the game, hooking up GameBridge, then recording a video of the actions I was doing.

I first thought the issue was because of the non-original, non-official RF adapter I used since I lost the true original years ago. I got an official one off Ebay and even that didn't resolve the problem so the issue lies elsewhere. I've tried common troubleshooting methods - reinstalling the driver and software (with reboots after each step to help ensure I get it), downloading an updated driver but there weren't any, trying a different channel (3 instead of 4), jiggling the connection between the two devices, reconnecting it, trying many different games (Bubsy, Sonic, Crue Ball, and a Magic School Bus game), pretty much everything. Everything I did gave the exact same results each and every time. I've run out of ideas too and I'm not getting any help from the forums. Searching the internet doesn't give anything as I'm the only one having this issue. I have no idea what else I could try.

In case you're wondering, I'd like to get videos and screenshots (mostly videos) of various things I do. You then might be asking how I got Sonic-related screenshots and videos to come out. This is because I played it through the GameCube (Sonic Mega Collection) and this system works perfectly fine with GameBridge. For example, in Bubsy, I can get falling faster than 32 pixels per frame, much faster. I'd like to record a video showing the odd effects this has. Think Sonic is fast? Well, even Sonic 3 & Knuckles can't get a scrolling speed this fast. These games are limited to 24 pixels per frame. Though Sonic can certainly fall faster, to up to 128 pixels per frame, the screen won't scroll any faster than 24 pixels per frame. Bubsy, on the other hand, can get up to 96 pixels per frame falling and I've gotten 95 pixels per frame (causing the 32-scale backgrounds to slide almost 3 pixels every frame and it's so fast that you fall from the very top of the level to the very bottom, a span of 0x0600 pixels (or 1536 pixels in decimal units) in under 1/3 of a second, about as fast one's reaction time. How big is 0x0600? Think of Hydrocity Zone in Sonic 3, the first act. Beyond the first pool of water, from the very top of the level to the surface of the water is roughly that distance. Sonic 3's levels bottom out at 0x0C00, double that.

The only other alternative I can think of is using an emulator, but due to legal-related issues I've heard about many times, I'm afraid to even use them, even though I own the actual games I would otherwise intend on using it with (like Bubsy as I used GameBridge to get the screenshot above with).

#15 Another attempt at my story - cut short again: If you recall 3 or so years ago that I once write a story and was attempting to get published. This story was "The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters". I've tried many times to rewrite the story, but it just doesn't come out as good. On my last attempt, I only finished the first act, but lost my motivation, again. Like before, sometime in the future, there's almost certainly going to be another round at it. I once worked out that it takes just 10 days for me to write a full story like this (roughly 300 pages in the movie script format, 200 pages in my play format and 175 in book format), including 2 rounds of editting. The method combines most of the format of a movie script (particularly character speech and actions), some from the play format I used since 1996, and the rest with book format (complete sentences and proper grammer is used), all with a few rare exceptions. It's not the story in my 2D RPG game though, far from it.

#16 September vacation - slightly boosted odds: In an earlier blog entry, I stated of a possible vacation in September, the first in more than 7 years. I still don't know when in September it would be, but the earlier, the more motivating. At the time, my parents wanted me to get over the mirror thing (which had a 1% chance of working at the time until then). Lately, I've heard of the one I'm going to visit (family) really wants to which, to me, seems like a boost in odds, probably now 2.5%, but details are seriously lacking. It's been so long since I last had a vacation, I forgot what it's like to be on one. I've been getting quite a few vacation-related dreams lately though - I wonder if that means anything.

#17 27 new dreams recalled, there goes the 600-mark, and a dream-recalling discovery: While I played FF12, I mainly only recalled one dream per week when I normally recall one dream every 2 days on average. Once I got off FF12, 15 dreams in 15 waking days were recalled (one missed, another with 2 dreams in one). Then, on top of this, I've recalled the night's dream 12 times in a row, tying my old record (13 dreams in 12 consecutive days without a day where I didn't recall the dream). I wonder why there was a sudden dip. It seems that, if I'm heavily involved with something, I recall dreams less frequently, but when I'm not, the dream recall rate sky-rockets. I wonder what was going in October and November of 2006 that caused a very high dream-recall rate. There seems to be a pattern here that I've only now noticed. How to boost the chances of recalling multiple dreams in one night... that I don't know, but I think there's a similarity. One of the dreams has 10 parts to it and another is a lot of fun (though very far from my record that still stands since late 2002). It does have a very high nature rating (though still far from the record). Dream 8-5 is so far ahead of everything, it's not getting any "competition". 1300 compatibility versus 300 - dream 8-5 is liked more than 4 times as much. In addition, one very recent dream is 85% in tact and has been posted as a story as a result. Since the last update, however, I recalled 27 new dreams putting the total count at 607. Passing the 600 mark came quite late. Given my normal trend of 1 dream every 2 days, I'd have made the 600 mark from late June to mid July. I was heavily involved with FF12 at the time and even then, I was still a bit behind. It was only until August came along and I finally got away from FF12 that my dream-recall rate surged and then some.

#18 A list of video games I've played: Ever wonder what video games I've played, both past and present? I decided to make a list of every game that I can at least recall playing. I don't know any of the names of the Atari games, but I have many recalled scenes and things that can help explain what the games are.

#19 Animated GIF tutorial updated: I've updated the tutorial on how to make my complex-behaving animated GIFs to account for some of the newest information and details. The lighting formula is updated to include the double cosine function used. A few other updates as well have been made.

#20 First live TV shuttle launch watched - not as good as I thought: About 7 or so times beforehand, I wanted to see the space shuttle launch. The main problem was that the times it was to happen were all over the place and when I did have the opportunity/chance, either I forgot about it, I was too involved with something and didn't watch the clock, and/or it got cancelled due to weather or technical issues. Just recently, I got the chance but was disappointed in that it wasn't all that long. It was interesting, but it was way too short. I was thinking it'd be something around 8 minutes starting around 15 seconds before the launch. 8 minutes since that's about long it takes for it to get into orbit. Instead, only about a minute's worth was shown.

#21 Digital photo-taking discovery found: I very rarely take photos mainly because I don't have a digital camera and I don't really have much to take pictures of. Despite that, I made a photo-taking discovery. Before, many of my photos came out quite blurred. I knew about the case of partially holding the button in to focus since my first digital photo, but pressing it causes the camera to jerk and thus I get blur. The solution I found to this was to use the camera's self-timer and by comparing two photos with and without the self-timer used, I found a very noticable difference, even at the maximum resolution of 2272x1704 (roughly 4 megapixels). The photos, still, however, have a lot of red-orange in them. I use The GIMP to get this fixed up. I tend to avoid using the flash, even in indoor scenes, since the white causes oddities in the picture due to it being reflected. The top fireworks photo above was done using these techniques, including the adjustments to get as close as possible to true color. The photo of the "brain repair kit" didn't have this since I didn't know about it at the time.

#22 New Genesis game - Magic School Bus: About 3 to 5 years ago, the last time I played "The Magic School Bus: Space Exploration Game", I was attracted to 3 things. My biggest attraction was the "reflector" minigame, of which I recall reaching around level 53. I later reached level 73. This was my top-favorite minigame of all. My next favorite was the "orbiter" minigame, of which I recall getting to level 15 or something (getting 10 planets in orbit is quite tricky). The last thing involves the case where you take photos of various objects, some of which are very strange and humerous. I first only rented the game, but now I actually own it! There are many games I still want though - Tiny Toon Buster's Hidden Treasure, Sonic Spinball (although I've got it on the Gamecube's Sonic Mega Collection), and a few others for the Genesis I don't quite recall. There's other games for other systems too (and probably getting another SNES, though this is unlikely (Why get another? I've lost my other one about 3 years ago and I haven't been able to find it)). Looney Tunes Lost in Time is probably going to be my next one, but this may not happen for quite a while yet.

#23 Behind the scenes of video processing: Ever wonder what I do behind the scenes when I process videos for YouTube (and archiving)? Well, I uploaded a video to YouTube that demonstrates this and I narrate along the way explaining what I do. Watch the video here (opens in a new window).

#24 Thoughts of returning to FF5: When I started at playing FF5, I didn't like it as much as it took so long to level up and regular enemies were frightfully powerful, almost like bosses in a way. However, since around August 12, I've been getting intentions on returning to it.



Daily Events



Jul 1: Still pending payment.... As to FF12, I went at the levelling area and did a few rounds then thought of seeing how well I'd fare against "gnoma entite", a much more powerful version of "water elemental". I found it very entertaining and went at it for the rest of the day. I also recorded a few videos and uploaded 2 of them (stitched into 1) to YouTube. This thing is much tougher than any boss or mark, tougher even then "water elemental". It's the first time in 10+ days that I've had to keep a close eye not only on the HP, but the MP. Cura and shell take quite a bit, along with a special attack of its - fear. Woke up at 10:48 PM and went to bed at 4:53 PM.
Jul 2: I only slept 6 hours and was awake for barely 12 hours. I was already feeling tired after just 11. I'm really going to need to add hours as I'd be sleeping during the "prime time". For FF12, I spent a while taking out "gnoma entite" then went at my "levelling grounds". Penelo is level 95 with Balthier at 71. I slept just 5 hours and saw the solution. Now I just need to go out and get the stuff and I'm all set. I mostly played FF12 and got Penelo to 96. Once Balthier levelled up, I replaced him with Fran, the one with the lowest level. I went at taking out gnoma entite again and encountered something worth recording. As I'm taking out gnoma entite, an urstrix or two a bit away casts protect on itself then stands and watches the fight without moving. When protect expires, it recasts it. Once gnoma entite fades away with the EXP and LP amount showing, urstrix turns around and runs away. I wanted to get a video of this but couldn't. I went to bed after an hours' worth of attempts. 1800 plays on the Bubsy secrets video! It just suddenly jumped, nearly tripling! Woke up at 11:34 PM, went to bed at 11:37 AM, woke up again at 5:24 PM, and finally went to bed at 2:26 AM.
Jul 3: I checked Ebay, E-mail, and YouTube. I soon went to Wal-mart and to get fireworks. I then tried to record the "urstrix watching" case getting close on two occasions. Tiredness was settling in and I began watching TV for a bit but couldn't stay awake beyond 7:00 PM. Woke up at 9:02 AM and went to bed at 7:00 PM.
Jul 4: Barely 4 hours' sleep - I can really add hours and I did. I remained awake for a few hours mainly trying to get the "watching urstrix" recording. I have yet to get such a video. I slept about 5 hours. From when I woke up again, I ate then began to take photos of the fireworks and discovered a useful trick for reducing blurriness - the self-timer. I began to unwrap most everything while I watched TV. This was the day stuff and most of the night stuff. I resumed a bit later (about an hour). I stopped since I had night fireworks left. I resumed at 10:30 and finished at it until 12:10 AM. I watched TV for a bit then went to bed. Woke up at 11:35 PM, went to bed at 4:10 AM, woke up again at 10:24 AM, and went to bed again at 1:48 AM.
Jul 5: What a dream! Over an hour long (70 to 80 minutes), every major detail with a few moderate details recalled, quite fun, and around 300 for the nature rating! It's still quite far from the record though. I definitely want it to repeat! I slept 12 hours too.... I was awake for barely 8 hours. 1/2 of that went spent toward writing details on the dream. 1 was spent at Ebay, E-mail, and YouTube. 2/3 spent toward cleaning up fireworks scraps from yesterday, 2 at TV, then the remaining 1 1/3 at FF12. Just before I started FF12, I was already feeling tired! 3 attempts were made at the "watching urstrix" thing but failed. Woke up at 2:57 PM and went to bed at 10:18 PM.
Jul 6: Boy are my sleep-wake times erratic lately! I barely slept 6 hours; still, I was awake for about 17. Finally I got it! For the past few days, I've been after getting the case where an urstrix watches the fight with gnoma entite. Not only did I get it, but two consecutive cases of it! Once I got that, I spent most of the day processing the video. Most of my effort was in updating my video-processing program to get a time-lapse feature. Most programs simply just delete frames. My method gives the sense of a higher frame rate at a lower frame rate. I can now freely add time control by changing one variable. It took longer due to a stubborn bug unrelated to a new experience - read file data into a part of a 2D array. I processed the video, uploaded it, ate watching TV, then went to bed. Now I don't have a reason to record anything. Payment still pending in Ebay - contacting if still pending by tomorrow.... Woke up at 4:48 AM and went to bed at 9:02 PM.
Jul 7: All lucky 7's - 7/7/07 - that's mustly just superstition though. Payment still pending.... As to FF12, I continued my usual until Penelo hit level 99. I continued with the story and did 3 hunts (2 regular, 1 elite). I set up for 3 others. The guide is saying of avoiding elementals - I'm only moderately challenged by these. I could've likely even taken down the elite mark solo with Penelo. Something the guide says is tough or that I should run away from, I fight it instead taking it out with great ease. Tough boss fight? Just choose "attack", wait 5 to 10 seconds, and the battle's over. In one case, it took longer to run to the boss than it did to defeat it. 20,000 LP - Yowsers! Woke up at 8:19 AM and went to bed at 3:31 AM.
Jul 8: Ebay (still pending), E-mail, and YouTube were the first checks. I ate, took a shower, copied and processed the photos (some processed, all copied), went to an unexpected grocery store visit, then went at FF12. I've bumped the rank up quite a bit, even taking on rank 5 elite marks. I went on other side quests and explored the area north of Dalmasca Estersand. Woke up at 11:19 AM and went to bed at 2:45 AM.
Jul 9: Pay "pal"? The "pal" part of it seems wrong. With the payment still pending after eating (5:00 PM - 5 business days), I did some investigating and found that, in order to even receive the payment, I had to upgrade my Paypal account. I've received payments before without this happening. With a -6.5 affector on +2, I lost all motive and then some (now -3.2) for having "Payfoe" as a method of receiving payment and with it, selling anything on Ebay. This, however, doesn't mean using it to make payments with, it just means, unless it happens with buying stuff too, I'm highly unlikely to sell anything on Ebay in the next year or two with having "Payus" as an option. Other methods are slower and less secure. Storms struck around 6:00 PM and once cleared, I went at FF12 levelling up the weaklings - Fran in particular. I found a way to level up about 10% faster. Fran is level 72 and Ashe is 89. Woke up at 1:44 PM and went to bed at 5:03 AM.
Jul 10: A vaguely recalled semi-weird dream was recalled, but at least I recalled something. I first prepared to ship the package getting it all boxed up and ready to go but my "no transportation" issue prevented any further progress and was left in the dumps. I continued on with the rest of the routine and went at FF12 levelling up Fran and later, 2/3 of the way through, Basch. This is in the "Salikawood" area. I created a 263-chain in under an hour (3 times faster and double the record), proof that an 8-bit variable is not used. I'm not going for 32,767 or 65,535 though to check 16-bit. 999 is as about as close as I'll get to checking the max chain size. I'll need a faster method though. By 11:30 PM, I got involved with hooking up a new receiver (unexpected) and spent about 80 minutes on the phone due to troubles getting it activated. I sent DirecTV an E-mail for a bug report, processed a receipt, ate, then went to bed. Woke up at 1:12 PM and went to bed at 4:30 AM (±1 minute).
Jul 11: E-mail, FF12, eat, FF12, mom's work stuff, record video of FF12 for 300 chain, do something for sister, then FF12. Note how I keep returning to FF12. I spent the last segment of FF12, about 2 hours, processing the video but ran into a disk-space-related issue. I figured I'd rerecord the video at a lower resolution. It took an hour to do, but since I'm after level ups anyway, why not? Basch is level 83 now. Balthier is next. Woke up at 3:10 PM and went to bed at 5:50 AM.
Jul 13: Basch 85, Balthier 84 (from 72). First it was briefly checking Ebay, E-mail, and YouTube. I found that the package that my mom was supposed to deliver was still not delivered. I was about to look for a solution for the video recorded yesterday when, highly unexpectedly, I was to go out and not only deliver it, but get other things as well, including Pizza Hut. I got home and processed my video. Virtual Dub Mod had a "resize" filter and I resized the video to 480x320. I then just processed it accordingly. While processing, I played FF12 continuing to level up the weaklings. Once I got Basch to 85, I replaced him with Balthier but tried a new area - Mosphoran Highwaste. In only 6 hours, I got Balthier from level 72 to 84. I found a way to level up 40% faster than my Garamsythe Waterway method. That may seem extreme, but in 3.4 minutes, I gain 38,000 EXP. That's 11,000 EXP per minute (compare that to 8000). It takes a half hour for level 80. It's also "safer" since most every hit enemies do does zero damage. Only the narration remains for the video. That's about 6 minutes' worth or 2 days' processing. I'm after 99 for all. Once that's done, I'm clearing the license board then I'm focusing heavily on the story, side quests, and hunts. Woke up at 4:35 PM and went to bed at 8:06 AM.
Jul 14: I checked Ebay, E-mail, and YouTube then went at FF12. I was interrupted by surprise storms and ate during this time. I returned to FF12 for the remainder of the day. Balthier is now level 99. I prepared Ashe for her run at 99. Each "round" I do gives about 38,000 EXP and 24 LP. The LP I don't care one bit for - 31,000 to spend. I have an accessory that doubles LP - why bother using it? If I had anything for boosting EXP, I'd use it right away. 3 more days and everyone should be maxed. Woke up at 5:54 PM and went to bed at 8:41 AM.
Jul 15: I had a dream but forgot it when I was awake enough to write the details. Ashe is now 99 with Basch at 89. I was getting bored of what I was doing. I saw 2 side quests for obtaining extra espers while looking in the side quests section of the guide. The first one, cuchlainn was a real challenge. I made use of bubble, faith, and ashe's extreme magic(k) for cura to keep everyone cured. I used wait battle mode since this was very tough. I managed to defeat it though. I don't have dispel, haste, or other such useful spells either (no shop has them). I only got "faith" and "bubble" through the clan shop due to my clan rank. Esuma seems otherwise useless since it doesn't get rid of doom, slow, stop, immobilize, or disable. I have to use remedies for those. Through exploring the Zertinan caverns (solo even), I wound up on the ozmone plains, the only bit of progress with the story (it's practically nothing). I went off toward the Mosphoran Highwaste area then went to bed. Basch is level 91. Vaan was my primary attacker, Ashe was the healer (doing 7000 in cure with cura)) and Penelo was general use (cure and attack). These 3 are all level 99. I had to use "charge" a few time too (or ethers). Woke up at 6:54 PM and went to bed at 12:18 PM.
Jul 16: I slept only 6 hours. Basch is now maxed with Fran at 90. When Fran was at 87, I did some random exploring in Ozmone Plain and ran across a jungle with weird gates. I checked the Garamsythe Waterway in more depth making use of the immobilize spell on many of the level 40 enemies in there. I returned to my usual method. The video I recorded of the 300-chain - no narration (intended to be a tutorial, but wasn't tutorial material). I should have everyone at 99 by tomorrow. It's then clearing the license board and focusing much more on the story, hunts, and side quests. 41,000 LP too! Woke up at 7:37 PM and went to bed at 12:12 PM (±2 minutes).
Jul 17: I got Fran to level 92 in an hour then ate. I then checked Ebay, E-mail, and YouTube. I got Fran almost to 94 then had an idea - record a video of what I've been up to. I first needed to process my other video - finish anyway. I went at the other video and levelled up during this time. I recorded the video, processed it a bit, and, then spent 5 or so hours recording narration for it. I processed it and while waiting, continued to level up. I ate when uploaded to YouTube and continued for 80 more minutes then went to bed. Fran is now level 98 and 1/4 of the way to 99 - 10 more "rounds", about 30 minutes, and everyone would be at level 99. I then intend on clearing the license board, doing another side quest or two, then progressing with the story. That's my intent anyway. Woke up at 11:04 PM and went to bed at 2:45 PM.
Jul 18: 2 dreams in one night, the second of which is very vaguely recalled. The first takes a half page. I first checked E-mail, YouTube, then ate. I went at FF12 reaching level 99 in 30 minutes then spent 30 minutes getting my primary character's stuff set up. It was then 70 minutes at clearing the license board (obtaining every available license). Strangely enough, after using the gate crystal to save after doing so, I went off to the Westersand area for a side quest and saw something odd. First, when saving, I saw only the levels, party members, clan stuff, etc. but saw 3 disk-shaped objects lined up. I found that odd. When I went into the Westersand area, I checked the map right away and when done, I saw the MP for the characters as over 800 each. I found that odd and I looked at the stats. "804/268" is what I saw (for Vaan) and I found that very weird. I don't know what caused it and while I was at it, I took out a few gnoma entites. I did major progress with the story. I was interrupted for 2 hours at 10:00 AM as the power went out since the power company needed to replace a transformer. I returned continuing on. By day's end, I was involved with hunts with more left. The guide mentions of using a quickening on bosses. Tiamut hard? 15 seconds and he's defeated using nothing more than the frequently used "attack" command. One boss was down in 4 hits - no criticals either. I've yet to see a main-story boss as tough as those big ball elementals (like gnoma entite). Guests do 0 damage to even the weaker elementals, let alone the big balls. Elementals, in the big ball form, are fun to defeat. If I had immunity to both sleep and silence, I could very well solo the big balls. Woke up at 11:52 PM and went to bed at 7:14 PM.
Jul 19: I made moderate progress with the story and I finally came across better weapons. They're melee weapons, but well worth it in ways. For flying enemies, blizzaga works quite well, the first time I've seen that particular spell name in the series. I got curaja which seems to always do 9999 in cure. Curaga is the almost the same (non-magic users don't do 9999 in cure. It's the first time I've ever seen these strange spell names in the series. I'm used to "cure", "cure 2", "fire 3", "ice 2", etc.. It took me a while to figure out which was which by simply looking at them. I had to go by the MP cost, of which is always higher for higher-level spells. My favorite thing with spells is adding as many negative status effects to an enemy as possible. Seeing at least 5 tends to make me laugh. From trying to figure out how to get to a particular mark, I found another ball type elemental. I just started at more hunts by day's end. Woke up at 4:27 AM and went to bed at 9:10 PM.
Jul 20: I found an area 2 1/2 times faster for level ups and allows for super chains. In 2 1/2 hours, I maxed the chains at 999. Yep, you can't get a chain beyond 999. I took a shower for grocery shopping. I mainly did hunts and side quests, mostly hunts. I reached the highest rank according to the one in the clan hall. Even with casting curaja on skeleton enemies, I'm practically never less than 150 MP from the max. There's always charge I could make use of though. Get 6 skeletons in a small area, have two use curaja on one and all 6 go down. Mosphoran Highwaste has much better music though. I mainly use the guide for the puzzles, the most annoying and boring parts (how to find a mark, especially the elite ones is an example). I follow my own strategies - bravery and haste at the start, attack away, and cure/remedy when needed. I've been having many new thoughts and visions of my 2D RPG game, but unrelated to what I've seen with FF12 (well, except the common RPG aspects like HP, the involvement of status effects and spells, etc.. The forecast is telling of 100°+F weather - yowsers! Fortunately, I'm very resistant to heat. Woke up at 5:53 AM and went to bed at 10:37 PM.
Jul 21: 8 Espers, defeated Gilgamesh (2nd toughest fight, but distant from Cuchlainn), no story progress, but lots involving hunts and other side quests. At game start, I practically never used gate crystals to teleport. Lately, I've been doing that a lot more. Did 10,100 damage on Gilgamesh as the last hit - bubble, lots of missing HP (more than 9999) and the balance spell works wonders. It's the first time I've seen damage over 9999 in any Final Fantasy game. Woke up at 9:33 AM and went to bed at 12:25 AM.
Jul 22: I was first after obtaining lots of loot to see what new bazaar things I could get, using the "steal" command on almost everything, particularly high-level enemies (30+). After 5 or so hours at it, I got plenty of new bazaar items. I then went after the zodiac spear but saw it wasn't there, but I saw it in the Henne mines. I progressed a bit with the story then went after it but found I was blocked. I needed to get a tenth esper and ultima, found in the least-liked places of all (the Great Crystal - a key-based maze without the map). I spent the last 3 1/2 hours or so at getting there and back. I'd rather have battled ultima with triple the max HP then just getting there and back and it was a very tough fight. I'm now set for what I was after, 6 hours beforehand that is. I was also thinking of going after something with 9 million HP in the Sochen Cave Palace. Woke up at 9:50 AM and went to bed at 2:31 AM.
Jul 23: Now THAT was a fun, long battle, much better than I thought! I was after it yesterday - 9 million HP. Gnoma entite, when I had the videos on YouTube, took about 4 minutes. This was 2 hours, 30 times longer. I thought the boss health bar would deplete very slowly. Rather, it was many health bars with an indicator below as to how many remain. I was also surprised at just how huge that thing was. It was mostly just keeping status effects in check. Vaan was the main damage dealer and taking the most. Berserk, haste, bravery, bubble, and 2 others were used on him. The other 2, Ashe and Penelo, had bows equipped and were mainly support characters making use of cura and curaga, rarely curaja. They had bubble, faith, and haste. They made occasional attacks. When the last 15% or so of it's HP was left, that's when it got boring - heavy use of invert. I stopped berserk at that point, but kept haste and bravery active. Just attack, arise, cura (my favorite spell), curaga, curaja, and the related status effects were the only things used. I'd rather defeat the wyrm with 9 million HP twice than defeat Zodiark or some of those other esper battles. I made progress with the story and now at the last part of the story - time for hunts and side quests. I took on death gaze and a letter delivery side quest. My first issue of Astronomy came - the Sep 2007 issue, earlier than expected. Woke up at 12:17 PM and went to bed at 5:17 AM.
Jul 24: Eat, E-mail, then FF12. The first hour was spent trying to get blizzard for one of the marks. I soon gave up and went after other marks. I got 42 cleared (one taking even 4 hours to get due to needing numerous "black orbs". I once got a green 21,000-something pop out of Ashe using "Arise". I then unexpectedly got what I was after with the blizzard - Fafnir. I spent some time trying to obtain an aquarius gem for a well-wanted item. I went on for the Behemoth King hunt. Woke up at 3:44 PM and went to bed at 7:18 AM.
Jul 25: What ever happened to my dream recalling? All but one hunt is done. The last one is one with over 50 million HP, nearly sextuple that of the original. I got the weapon I was after but it was worse than I thought. I finished the Behemoth King hunt using my usual strategy - berserked Vaan with haste, bravery, bubble, and occasional others. The others are support - having status effect spells flying around (Ashe's main job), and curing the main fighter who does the damage (and takes most every hit; Penelo's job). At the end, I was thinking of going after Omega Mark XII. The guide has no map of the area and doesn't tell at all just how to get to Capricorn 2 or Aquarius 1. I made a map on paper but it had faults. Omega Mark XII has 11 million HP, so I expect a 3-hour battle (or so). Woke up at 2:37 PM and went to bed at 5:15 AM.
Jul 26: I redid the map and soon reached the area I was after. 10 million HP? Wrong! 1 million HP seems much more like it. That was indeed tough so I made use of reverse (which frequently missed making things difficult) and decoy and even then, I still had quite a bit of difficulty. I did manage to defeat it though. It was much harder getting to it. I went off to attempt to get other spells and technicks I was missing. I finished that and set up for the battle with Yiazmut. Earlier, I was seeing if I can get the level 99 red chcobo but didn't get it after about 20 runs. I ate again (pizza rolls at first part of day, regular pizza the second time). Tomorrow, it's the big battle - better do it before parents are problematic. Woke up at 4:54 PM and went to bed at 5:58 AM.
Jul 28: I slept 11 hours.... Since the pizza cooker tray was not washed and no one was home, I watched TV for a bit. I ate an hour later then went on to the other starter things - E-mail and YouTube. When done, I took out FF12 then spent 10 hours, 43 minutes going at Yiazmut. At first, I mostly kept status effects in check. Only the "death strike" attack was problematic, much more than even "cyclone" was. When 10 minibars of 50 remained, that's where I really began to slow down. One time with 30 minibars left, it used death strike 50+ times in a row which made things very difficult. I found the secret though and had little trouble for quite a ways. By 10 minibars, I was more focused on keeping protect up. The last 5 minibars took twice as long to get as 10 bars bars at the start did and I needed to formulate a new strategy. I ran around a corner out of the enemy's sight and began restoring everyone and adding a bunch of status effects (the enemy did as well). I came out when prepared and I typically took 1/3 of a minibar away. A minibar is a million HP. When nearly doomed, I retreated and reprepared. Once done, I dispelled the enemy and went at it keeping Vaan attacking (often with berserk). I ran out of Chronos Tears and resorted to remedies to cure "stop" status. At the end, reverse (provided I could get it to go) and decoy were very useful. After the battle, I did the usual for hunts - claim the bounty. I restocked supplies then went to bed. Woke up at 5:57 PM and went to bed at 10:18 AM.
Jul 29: Slept 11 hours again!? Eat, E-mail, attemping to get the zodiac spear, an experiment with FF12, status effect fun, eat, then attempting at getting the level 99 Red Chocobo was what I did and made up the day. I was barely awake for 12 hours too (out of bed anyway). Normally, it's around 15 hours. While attempting for the zodiac spear, I ran into a small problem - the chest wasn't appearing. I wanted to know under what conditions do the treasures respawn. It turns out that 3 zones away is what I needed. Enemies respawn just 2 zones away. That was the experiment. I then went on to see if I can get more elixirs since most of what I had was used up in the 10-hour battle with Yiazmut. I got side tracked due to the humor that adding tons and tons of status effects to enemies has - on those urutan things. Along the way, I somehow got an extension to the story involving barries on a rare flower that I never saw. I checked the guide for this and found out more. 15% damage? I think, at the time, this was where I defeated a boss in just 2 to 4 hits, where a single noncritical hit would do more than that, close to double (quadruple if critical). I'm after 4 things - elixirs, megalixers, zodiac spear, and ribbons. The level 99 Red Chocobo has Ribbon, and Henne Mines has the zodiac spear and the others (especially megalixirs). Woke up at 9:47 PM and went to bed at 9:10 AM.
Jul 30: Woke up at 5:20 PM with a bizarre 1-page-of-details dream recalled. I spent 50 minutes writing details then went back to bed. I woke up later to eat, check E-mail, then go at FF12. I first got 2 songs from the game - Mosphoran Highwaste and Ozmone Plain. Ozmone Plain is the best in the entire game - 700 sustained compatibility. Mosphoran Highwaste is only 220 with Salikawood and Rabanastre tied at 90. These are the sustained compatibiity values. I cropped the song as I normally do then went at 2 things - attempting for the zodiac spear and the level 99 Red Chocobo. I got the chocobo and a ribbon. The most attractive thing while doing this is the big ball elemental and the ally. I like adding status effects to the ally - haste and protect are the most common. I once almost had the ally (Garif Hunter) watch a battle with sylphi entite, the big ball elemental. He/she was heading toward the area but the enemy was defeated only seeing the green HP bar when every party member used cura causing a lot of green numbers to pop up (the ally was out of range), around 4000 HP in cure. Before this, it was the zodiac spear in the Henne mines. I then went to Cerobi Steppe to see if I could get more elixirs and megalixirs along with Ribbon. I returned to the better level 99 Red Chocobo method then went at processing the 2 songs. I encountered a "tick" in Ozmone Plain and wanted to get it again and did. I processed the new version that didn't have this for my MP3 player. It is now the song I've got playing. Woke up at 9:18 PM and went to bed at 12:15 PM.
Jul 31: E-mail and checking YouTube started the day followed by eating and FF12. I was really getting bored of it just 4 more hours in so I decided to go to the final area and complete the game. I finished around 6:00 AM then went on to get my new thoughts of my 2D RPG game out of my mind - I reprocessed my design document and made the adjustments. One of which involves the stats. Another involves a resolution change from 640x480 to 1024x768, a common one nowadays. A third involves the world map. A fourth involves movement being finer. I spent the last 7 1/2 hours on this. One thought, involving the lists was using landscape orientation and smaller fonts with bigger zoom to get more details on some items. I'm still at Ozmone Plain, but today only counts as a half day. 8 predicted days remain. Woke up at 10:34 PM and went to bed at 2:05 PM (±2 minutes).



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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
Major event / Good day
Somewhat major event / Somewhat good day
Normal event / Average day
Somewhat minor event / Somewhat bad day
Minor event / Bad day
Extremely minor event / Very bad day


Footnotes:
None