December 31, 2008

December 31, 2008: Story (from 1999) done; waiting for copyright registration. I almost got to vote for the first time, but had unexpected problems. A new fourth place record for the longest song streak occurred - 38 1/5 days at Mountains So Far Away). I also finally found the long-wanted gliding formula without known problems. Microsoft Access was figured out, helping in my 2D RPG game's plans. My 2D game's plans for the landscape (version 6), city, roads, and another challenge (for the long-wanted 56) are done. 3 buildings are also done to what I can do. I got my first meteorite. I had the worst Christmas in at least a decade. I got Super Monkey Ball Adventure, a game that needs improvement. A nightmare came true. I found FF8. 29 new dreams were recalled, 3 of which in one night (again), another a major favorite, and yet another is very well-recalled.

#1 Story done, but a long wait for copyright registration remains: The story was originally hand-written in June or so 1999... 9 1/2 years ago. It contained a lot of "junk" and "useless speak". Junk, or illogical events, included something like walking in gooey mud neck deep on Mount Everest when you wouldn't find this kind of thing. Around 2002, I rewrote it to take this stuff out, but didn't consider the "useless speak" part. By this, I mean character communication with little or no use to the story. This rewrite is version 3 (version 2 was the typed version of the original hand-written version 1).

In early 2004, having troubles with publishing, I thought of having it as a movie and got involved with the movie format. I liked the format a lot outside its strict, paper-wasting design. Version 4 was version 3 converted to movie format. While I got 2 requests, one was rejected due to it being "too complex", likely due to the spell-casting and other special effects. The other, strangely, was one of those 40% that didn't arrive. Yes, when I mail something, I have a 60% chance of it actually arriving, based on actual observations.

I lost interest for a few years. On occasion, I'd return, but I, mysteriously, couldn't get past scene 3, starting 4. Scene 4 and 5 are two of my favorites (along with 1, 2, 8, 14, 15, 18, and 21). I tried book format, but due to difficulties with using quotes, and using a variety of words, I wasn't highly motivated. My old play format I used since 1996 is confusing to read, even to me, so it wasn't an option. Movie format was too strict and wastes too much paper. I soon thought of combining the best of each, but even then, it still took a few tries before I got past scene 4 and I finally did in early April of this year.

However, just as I was about finished with version 5, I was after updating my website. Once I did this, I ended up losing a large chunk of my motive, causing it to go negative, for working on my story. It's this very reason why this update was much further out than usual.

It wasn't until October 30, 2008 that I finally got started on it again. Having realized the pattern where, if I update my website in the middle of something when my motive is strong toward it, I don't return for months, even years. I didn't want that to happen this time so I deliberately postponed all updates to my website until I either finished, or active neutralization naturally brought the motive down low enough so that something of higher motive took over. I couldn't tell for a while which would come first. Even when I started round 5 of editing, I still couldn't tell which would occur first. When I finally finished round 5, on December 16, 2008, I didn't have enough motive to for round 6, likely to be the last round. I was already starting to have motivational problems 2/3 of the way through round 5. I knew I wouldn't be able to go through round 6 although it likely would've been the last. I didn't find many problems in round 5. Given this, I think that both of them occurred at the same time - active neutralization reduced my motive, and I essentially finished. Round 6 would've gone by pretty quick as most of the flaws and problems were found and fixed during round 5, so it was mostly just a quick read-through for round 6. I could likely do this before I finally release the book.

There are essentially 5 rounds of editing done (a sixth planned, but not yet done). The first, the initial writing (done in April), counts because I often go back a bit and make corrections. These are described and explained in the table below:

Round	What was intended
1	Write the whole story
2	Adjust the formatting to save pages; Add and delete as necessary; Get rid of useless speak; Add placemarkers for images; Write the preface; write the appendix
3	Create the images; Reword paragraphs to significantly cut down on the page count; Do research on various story elements and adjust accordingly; Fix a flaw spotted with damage amounts; Get rid of useless speak
4	Make the book's front cover; Continue rewording paragraphs to cut down on the page count; Fix any mistakes/oddities in the images; Write program to adjust color images (and convert to grayscale) matching apparent brightness
5	Find and fix any remaining grammar errors; Improve sentence clarity; Improvement the smoothness of the story's flow
6	Finishing touches; Find and fix any last remaining grammar errors; Publish after copyright registration is successful

This was what the steps of editing were. Before the editing was writing the whole story, done during April. I had a lot to do during the first few rounds so they took quite a long time, 6 or so days. The later rounds had less to do so they went faster, taking only 3 days. The images took about 4 or so days, ignoring the front cover which had many redos and took nearly a week.

The images needed special attention. Color costs 15¢ per page to print and I can't have just one or two select pages with color. It's either everything is in grayscale, which costs 2¢ per page, or it's in color, costing 15¢ per page. Color is not of much importance to the book's interior and the 2¢ per page case is a much better route, considering that most images are just fine in grayscale, such as diagrams and maps. Maps and images are the most common; it's the images that are often in color. As a result, grayscale was the best route, but color to grayscale conversions have a problem.

Color to grayscale conversions, including color printing, has brightness and contrast problems. It's easy to see this - make an image with a grayscale gradient from black to white in the center, put green (exactly 00FF00) on the top and some other color (like cyan) on the bottom. Zoom in a lot and scroll horizontally. The point at which the green is hardest to see against the grayscale gradient, due to it being the same brightness, is the the brightness of that color. If you use the color-picker tool, you should get a value close to 212. Now, convert it to grayscale. I get 153 for green, a huge difference. How big? Compare these ############ and see. There's no contest - a difference of 59 is very big, right next to my "suggested minimum" I often use for checking others' web pages for readability. I suggest 64 as the contrast. The difference from 59 to 64 is very small and hard to make out, unlike 212 to 153. Now, print this in color. You can see that the green falls around the 140 area, a lot darker. This causes a loss of contrast in printed images (and grayscale conversions).

To counter this problem, I wrote a program (in C) using information from past experiments to determine how the colors are to be adjusted. For grayscale images, I needed the base gray shade (the 212 for green, 120 for red, 239 for yellow, etc.) as a starting point. I also needed to get the hue, saturation, and value as well. Grayscale needs just the hue and saturation - hue to determine the base gray shade, and the saturation to determine the mix ratio. For color, white must be added. How much white is determined on the saturation and value numbers, and it maxes at 50% for a ratio of 2 parts original and 1 part white. Gray shades print out correctly, but colors don't, getting less accurate as saturation increases. You can see the difference by simply comparing these highly scaled down images from the front cover:

Color conversion comparison

This image has four sections. The second one is the original image (unaltered, except for being scaled down from 1800x2700 pixels to 200x300), as labeled. The one on the left is what traditional grayscale conversion has. Notice how the last "l" on "elemental" appears to have darkened, along with Knuckles (who is standing in the center) though the seats and the "ball" look unchanged? The one on the right of the original is what my grayscale conversion method returns as output. Although it does need quite a bit of tweaking, the output is a considerable improvement, based on apparent brightness. The ultimate test is a color grid, showing every color possible that is a multiple of 32 (including 255, which means 0, 32, 64, 96, 128, 159 (not 160, for rounding reasons), 191 (same here), 223 (here as well), and 255), 9 color values), giving 729 possible colors. If they all match, then I'm good to go. Better yet, try a multiple of 15 instead - that's 4913 colors - or even 5 - that's 132,651 colors, too many to test visually in reasonable time (one every 10 seconds means 15 1/3 days, working at it 24/7 without sleep, eating, etc.), let alone the full 16,777,216 possible (transparency doesn't count). The version on the far right is what I'd use for printing, to account for the darkening I see from printing.

So, what now? I've sent my story into copyright for registration, the third one by now (since there's quite a bit of change over the previous version). Until it is successfully registered, I'm not releasing my book to Lulu.

Speaking of which, there's one thing I don't like about Lulu, just one that I know of. There's no way you can manipulate the book's spine using readily-made GIF, JPG, or PNG images - it has to be a PDF. I don't have any way to make PDFs of any kind. I went around looking for programs that convert BMP or PNG images to PDF with only three requirements needed. It has to be purely freeware - no demos, shareware, or anything else. Google makes this difficult as it doesn't provide a way to filter things very well. I include "+freeware" into my search, without the quotes here, and almost everything found is shareware, not freeware. If it is listed as freeware, it happens to be a demo or trial version, of which I quickly uninstall since it's useless for me later on down the road. It took 3 hours of searching, and was almost about to give up and ask on the forums (Ever wonder why I ask there instead of searching on Google? I get far too many irrelvant (or misleading) results.). It also needed to keep the image resolution. One program I found didn't, causing the image of 3849 pixels wide to be slightly more than 40 inches wide (and for a 6x9-inch book size, that's not right, not even close - it used 96 dpi, based on simple calculations). The third, of which I cannot test until it comes to releasing my book, is whether or not Lulu will accept it. For the book interior, I see that the PDFs must be "distilled", whatever that means. For the cover, I cannot tell if that's the case. Of the 4 programs tried out (compare that to a whopping 70 around 2003 through 2005 or so for finding a working version for batch-converting BMPs to GIFs, the current worst), the first I downloaded wouldn't install at all, the second installed just fine, but it didn't keep the all-important resolution (but kept the compression), the third was suspicious requiring a restart upon installing (of which I uninstalled before I restarted and ran a virus scan just in case), and the fourth, Graphics2PDF, installed just fine, kept the resolution, but didn't keep the compression. With compression, it's 3,623,635 bytes (3.456 MiB), but without, it's a huge 30,768,409 bytes (29.343 MiB), 8.491 times bigger. Hopefully Lulu will take something that big, otherwise, I'm out to finding another program that keeps compression as well as resolution, works with Lulu, and is purely freeware which is really going to make things a pain to find.

The main thing I need assistance with is the "sales pitch" part of the back cover - what the book is about. Even something semi-decent is much harder than making my 2D game which is much harder to do than writing a book, even though it's just one short paragraph. This are some rough ideas:

A criminal from the distant future causes mayhem in the present while searching for legendary masters of the elements. Knuckles, a powerful, spell-casting alien, must find out what is going on and why it's happening, and stop him within just 55 hours.

A criminal from the distant future causes mayhem in the present. Knuckles, a spell-casting alien, must figure out, in 55 hours, what is going on and what the legendary masters of the elements have to do with this.

Based on the first one of these (the top), the first part I've pretty much decided on (starting with "a criminal" and ending with "present"), but the rest I'm stumped on and can't make up my mind. Although Lulu has a service for designing covers, this includes everything, not just this one single part (and the output is a JPG, of which I don't like - PNG is acceptable). I've probably got about a dozen versions of this, but they all start the same way (though sometimes, instead of "causes mayhem", I used "wreaks havoc" which has the same meaning. The second sentence often starts with "can Knuckles, a spell-casting alien", sometimes with "powerful" mixed in. The "55 hours" part is only occasionally present. From searching Google, I find that this "sales pitch" paragraph needs to be short, but not too short. They say 8 seconds is all you're given for the back cover. I take about that long to read just that first sentence at my fastest. They must be referring to those who can read 250 words a minute, of which I can only dream of (with at least a 70% comprehension rate - at that speed, now, I'm almost left to making random guesses). Then again, I'm a slow reader, barely managing 90 to 110 words per minute (is that normal?) with around a 70% comprehension rate around the 110 area. It takes me 40 to 50 minutes to read an 8-page article in my magazines I subscribe to (Scientific American and Astronomy).

Once copyright is registered (which I'm thinking is going to take 6 months - based on previous experience and knowing the "faster" processing of online filing), then I'll have my book available on Lulu. What's the price? $12.95 is likely but not fully decided on. It's 265 pages. The base cost for materials and printing is $9.80, so you can see where I'm getting this. (See for yourself: choose "standard" as the paper type (since it ships worldwide, instead of just the US only), "paperback" as the book type, "black & white" as the color (which should be grayscale, 8-bit, not 1-bit), "US trade (6" x 9")" as the size, "perfect bound" as the binding type, 265 for the page count, and 1 for the number of copies.). Once I see how the sales are going, then I may take the next stage - distribution (get this: I never heard of "Barnes & Noble" just a year ago). If my motive is up high enough, then I may consider making an audio book. I may only have vocalized sound effects, often for spell effects, and I may not have strong dramatization, so keep that in mind. In addition, it's roughly about 20-36 hours of audio, so it'd going to need a lot of audio CD's to store it. Even using an ABR MP3 of 58 Kbps, 48 KHz, mono, (which is what I use for my music, and I can't tell if any "compression artifacts" are present; I've used experiments to find this value) you're still looking at a download size of 713.671875 MiB, much too big although it would be segmented. To fit snugly on an MP3 CD, it'd have to be 57 Kbps.... ABR provides the advantage of cutting back on disk space usage (about 1/3 or so saved) without a loss in quality. The 128 Kbps CBR CD equivalent would be around 80 Kbps for ABR (40 Kbps for mono).

#2 Voting, oh so close: I'm not into political stuff much. Most of the time, I simply lack knowledge about the candidates making it very hard or almost impossible to decide on. I barely know much about how these things work as it is in the first place. For starters, I was hearing a lot about delegates and superdelegates, of which I don't know what they are. Although I got the details on the forums from asking once, I don't recall them any more.... In addition, I never knew registration was needed or even that North Dakota, the place I live, doesn't require it (the only one in the US). I hardly knew what the differences were between Obama and McCain. What little I got was from the brief day-to-day details CNN Headline News had, which is barely about a minute's worth, if that. Because CNN doesn't mention much about state elections, I have zero knowledge on the candidates in ND; even their names were completely unknown. I don't even know the difference between a republican and a democrat! You can probably see why, even on the good end, I'm 53% toward A and 47% toward B. It's the most common to see 51% toward A and 49% toward B. Unless the ratio gets to at least 60% toward one of them, voting, for me, is pretty much left to random chance. The primary obstacle is lack of knowledge, especially for the governer or city's mayor. About two or so months before election day, I barely had the threshold. On election day, I was 63% toward Obama and 37% toward McCain, enough of a difference that a vote is definitive where I wouldn't use random chance.

I normally have two major obstacles that take out any chance of doing pretty much anything. My sleep-wake cycle being 25 2/3 hours instead of 24 is one of them, but the biggest factor is my lack of a way to get there, no transportation. The latter eliminates more than 99.9% of all jobs right there alone. It prevents me from doing many things I would otherwise like to do, such as swimming. My frequent mind drifts make it dangerous for me to drive so that is not an option. I, however, had a plan. I was awake pretty much a normal day that day so the sleep-wake cycle part is ruled out. I thought I'd go to dad's work place for the day, since there was something dad wanted me to do there, and, when done, I'd have him drop me off. That part worked okay. However, there was a problem, that still prevented it: dad was not feeling good and could not bother with it. His route doesn't take him anywhere near the places of voting. A taxi would cost $30, at least, and for one measely vote, that's not justified. I had no choice but to forfeit. I'm disappointed by the fact that voting is one day only. Given what I saw on CNN Headline News, with lines going back miles and waiting times measuring in hours, I think that the voting should go on for 3 days, such as Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I'm suggesting Saturday since this when most have a day off, and don't have to work, giving them a better opportunity.

If I could've voted, I'd have voted for Obama due to being 63% toward him. For state governer and city mayor, this would have to be left to true random chance since I have zero knowledge about any of the candidates.

#3 Mountains So Far Away - a new fourth place record: If you recall my records for the most number of days I listened to the same song, should be aware of my extremes with music. My top five longest streaks for the same song are 52 1/4, 46, 42, 27, then 22 days. For the same song and speed, they are 17, 12, then 10. I started the streak with Mountains So Far Away (play the "Azure Lake" level in Sonic 3's competition mode; I don't know its real name) on November 19, 2008 about halfway through the day (which puts the time at about 2:00 PM). I stopped on December 27, 2008, halfway through (putting the time at about 7:30 PM). This is a whopping 38 1/5 days at the song, about 5/7 of the way to my record. The order is now 52 1/4, 46, 42, 38 1/5, then 27. I had a close call once, right on the borderline, but the next few days after it confirmed that it was part of the streak. It was half dominance of my waking hours (including while I'm in bed, since I'm consciously aware of it, but not while I'm sleeping). To make it count, I had to have at least 80% dominance the next day though I got 95%. The day after was 75%, which still counted due to the 95% from the day before. The next was 90% which was all I needed to really confirm it. Following were another 90 and a 75, which absolutely confirmed it.

What's keeping me at the song? Measure 7 (of part 1) is what's doing it, spiking at 900 compatibility during the third beat. This song, with a 4/4 time signature from what I can tell (I can't tell the difference from 4/4 to 8/8 or 2/2, but I can with 3/4, 5/4, etc. against 4/4) has 3 parts to it and 34 measures in all. A part, for those of you who don't know, is a group of measures with a similar style of play. A note or beat is like a sentence in a book, for a simile. A group of notes make a measure, a paragraph. A group of measures make a part, a chapter. A group of parts makes a song, the whole book. A group of songs, an album, is like the whole volume. Parts 1 has 8 measures, part 2 has 8 measures nearly repeating the first 8 (totalling 16), and part 3 seems to have 10. I like part 1 the best, liking all of it strongly (the graph below gives a big hint of this, always 3 digits), especially the last 2 measures which are past the upper end of the 3-figure area (I define this as from 500 to below 1000). Part 3 is the only let down - look how low it stays until the end! Measures 9 through 11 and 17 through 19 are also decent. The song sounds its best from about 65 to 75% of the true speed which seems to be where many songs sound best at. The best zone for my MP3 processing program (the WAV file sample rate generator) has the song from 50 to 120% true speed.

How is the compatibility distributed? A graph is the best way to visualize it. Note the obvious spike in measure 7, especially the second half. Note how part 3 is quite constant but low, averaging just 11 (remember, the scale is logarithmic so you multiply the values then take the X root of this, where X is the number of numbers multiplied)? Note measures 13 and 21 and how low they are. That one area in measure 7 is liked more than 200 times as much! Part 1, the best, averages 178 (considered as 180) and part 2, in the middle, averages 42 (considered as 40). The area on the right side shows measures 6 and 7 zoomed in, accurate to the beat (a quarter note), so you can see where the spike is really occurring. This is for 71% true speed (where each measure is 2.25578 seconds), right in the middle of this best zone. The compatibilities are accurate to within about 15% logarithmically (that is, the margin of error applies to the exponent, not the number itself). The song, as a whole, measures 39.6 (considered as 40 as well). That seems surprisingly low, given other songs.

Compatibility distribution of the song Mountains So Far Away

Compatibility distribution of the song Mountains So Far Away

There's one thing to keep in mind, however: I tend to spend more time focused toward the areas of the spikes. It's rare that you see anything above 50, but 900, 18 times that, is very extreme. It's the bias toward the compatibility spikes in songs that cause me to highly overestimate the actual compatibility. The best song may only be 200 for the whole thing, but biased toward 1100 due to the spikes and tendency to listen to those areas the most. Compatibility directly affects motive; it's the primary affector. There's also a 2.2 affector for listening to music over silence which adds to the motive. Then, factor in the theory of choice, where one does whichever activity has the highest motive (unless they can be done at the same time), this explains the bias toward the spikes and it often influences how long I can keep at the song.

I'm thinking that, in my "WAV file sample rate generator" program, there should be 4 zone types instead of 2. Zone 1 is the real best zone, which is where the song sounds its best and where I spend most of the time listening to it due to the highest compatibility. This zone is often very narrow. The speeds in this zone are very closely packed, the same "density" as I currently have. Zone 2 is for where it also sounds at its best, but not particularly where I spend most of my time listening to it. The density is halved in zone 2. Zone 3 is the current "normal zone" where the song sounds somewhat decent, but isn't listened to that often. The density is the current 1/5 of what zone 1 would have. The last zone, zone 4, is related to that of samplers. It uses the fewest loops, always two, and has the same density as the normal zone. It also covers the entire range of speeds from 12.5% to 800%. Special 20-lap versions would use both zones 1 and 2 only (and their speeds) while samplers follow the same rules as they currently do - using all speeds with an extending speed range.

Because playing FF8 would mean a great chance of breaking this streak (as happened with the record and playing Shrek the Third), I'll delay it until I get bored of the song, which is about to happen....

#4 Gliding formula finally found: Looking for a complex algorithm? Try the formulas used for gliding, as is done in my story and in my mind game (and my 2D game). I've often claimed that I found it, but there was an unforeseen problem. In one case, by pitching about 14° upwards, you could climb at over 100 mph vertically with a 800 mph base speed (in the direction of travel). To counter that, I increased the descent rate variable, but this caused another problem - you'd extremely quickly slow down when pitching up, but extremely quickly speed up when pitching down. I didn't have a solution for this... until after round 5 of editing my story was done. It turns out that there's much more to it as I originally thought. There are actually 5 formulas, two of which, the first two, are independent of each other - one of them must be done but not the other. Why two? What do computers do when you take the square root of a negative number? They error, right? Well, most do, even most calculators. They don't work with the imaginary number, i. One formula is used for positive tilt (pitching up), while the other is used for negative tilt (pitching down). These are the 5 formulas:

If pitching up (errors if negative (pitching down)):
AccelerationRate = (((1-sin(PitchAngle))-1)*-1)^0.654317989965143*-20 + 5*cos(PitchAngle);

If pitching down (errors if positive (pitching up)):
AccelerationRate = (sin(PitchAngle)*-1)^0.654317989965143*20 + 5*cos(PitchAngle);

For the vertical descent rate (two feet per second when level):
VerticalDescentSpeed = (15/11) * cos(PitchAngle) + (sin(PitchAngle)*cos(PitchAngle)*BaseSpeed);

For the vertical speed (the speed going up and down):
VerticalSpeed = sin(PitchAngle)*BaseSpeed - (cos(PitchAngle)*VerticalDescentSpeed);

For the horizontal speed (the speed horizontally (over the ground)):
HorizontalSpeed = sqrt(BaseSpeed^2-VerticalSpeed^2);

AccelerationRate – acceleration in the glide’s direction (in mph per second)
sin – the sine function
cos – the cosine function
PitchAngle – the angle of the pitch (this is positive if pitching up)
VerticalDescentSpeed – the speed of the vertical descent
BaseSpeed – the current diagonal speed (acceleration applied)
VerticalSpeed – vertical speed
HorizontalSpeed – horizontal speed
sqrt – the square root function

Complex enough? At maximum speed, if the angle is 6.827994177089...°, your vertical speed and acceleration is exactly zero. That is what I'd like and it's where the rather screwy 0.654317989965143... value comes from - to get this exact effect. If not at maximum speed, there will always be some form of descent. You can't glide faster than 800, so pitching up to this angle will, in a sense, allow you to glide forever. That's what the rather weird exponent comes from - it's to get this very effect. The 20 and -20 come from the acceleration of gravity. I use this for simplicity reasons (and an ability that converts a little of the force of gravity into energy), even though I know the actual is around 21.9, quite a bit different.

To use this set of formulas, first, determine the acceleration rate. If pitching up, use the top one, otherwise, use the one below it. If level, then it doesn't matter which one you use - you get 5 on both without an error (0 to any power is always 0 (except 0^0 where it has two solutions, 0 and 1). With that in mind, find the vertical descent speed. If level, it's 2 feet per second (which is where the "15/11" comes from). See what happens when you use an angle of 30°. With this now known, determine the vertical speed which requires the vertical decent speed. Lastly, the horizontal speed is determined, which should be a formula you recognize - the Pythagorean Theorem (solved for side length instead of the hypotenuse which is why you see subtraction).

This was one complicated and tough algorithm to find. My story slightly needs it. My 2D game definitely needs it - it is an essential component used in several of the challenges and at least once in every one of the now 7 tournaments.

#5 Microsoft Access figured out, finally: I recall around the 1998 area making a form where I filled out various fields that I could arrange on a field on something resembling a piece of paper. It was supposedly something in Microsoft Works, rather than Microsoft Office. Microsoft Access is supposedly similar, but when I first tried it several months ago, I encountered problems. I couldn't get a table to save if I had calculations involved that depended on other values in the table. This was used to determine the basic value of something. However, if I had a default value that was a simple number, things were fine. I made sure the types matched and that I formatted it correctly (using the help document to assist), but got nowhere. Then, on December 21, and 22, I figured it out and got everything set up, at least for spells. There's still abilities (other abilities outside spells), enemies, and equipment, at least, as well. I did struggle with getting Access to create new records as the "new record" button was grayed out. I found out that I needed a table, to identify what goes in each field (such as text or numbers, and the type of text or numbers). Upon finally resolving the issue, I filled out the form 8 times for some of the restorative spells. It is now, officially, my first database used for practical reasons (planning for my game rather than "just for fun".

Before using Access, I used Word, which has the major disadvantage of it being hard to rearrange or add fields. This is because I have to manually go in and change/move around everything to each page one by one. Word, however, provides the advantage of viewing the details of a spell, ability, etc. at a quick glance. Before Word, it was Excel. Its advantage was the ease of moving and adding fields as needed. The main down side is that I cannot get a look at the specs that easily. Access provides both of these advantages (quick glance and ease of moving/adding fields), but does have a down side - it's trickier to work with (it's not as straight forward as Word or Excel). This table compares and contrasts the three:

Program	Pros	Cons
Word	Can view all details in a quick glance User-friendly clean layout	Must manually change fields on each page one by one when adding/moving fields Not very flexible
Excel	Straight forward design Easy to compare details Easy to move fields around	Layout is not user-friendly Hard to gauge details without excessive horizontal scrolling Not very flexible
Access	Can view all details in a quick glance User-friendly clean layout Easy to add/move fields Easy to compare details Can run filters to search Flexible design	Difficult to get set up
Program comments	Details are visible for quick reference while programming	Little organization Layout is not user-friendly Formating makes it hard to find details

The last one seems a bit odd. In programming, you often use comments, either with "/*" and "*/" for comment blocks or "//" for end-of-line comments (without the quotes on any of these). These details are intended to be put into the program (game) itself, but for planning, it's very handy to keep the details out. If I spot a problem (such as a conflict in the details) or need to add another field, this can mean a fairly large redo if it's already in the program itself. I have no programming for my 2D RPG game at all, and hardly anything in the way of images. I have lots of planning though, nearly 90 pages and that doesn't include the list of spells, abilities, equipment, enemies, and whatever else there might be.

#6 2D game landscape and city planning - 3 buildings done: Before working on my story, I worked on my 2D game, particularly planning out the landscape (for version 6), city (since no planning was done at all), and making 3 of the many buildings. What 3? The names are randomly thought of as I do them. "Andrea's restaurant" is the first; it is one of 2 or 3 restaurants. "Krumispett Gas Co." is the sole gas station present (from what is visible - most of the city is behind, unseen). It is my favorite, especially when you watch the columns. "Seventh Avenue Thrift Store" is the third, which has a bunch of "sale" signs on it. Why "seventh avenue"? This is based on the street layout. The city is 20 streets from west to east (-10 to +10). The far northern area, right up against the Northern Mebna Hills, doesn't have a street so the far northern one is nineth avenue. Tenth avenue would be in the hills. There are three "avenues" visible, 3 blocks. Blocks, here, are 220 feet apart instead of 440 (the latter is 1/12 of a mile). The buildings at the very closest are based on the 7th avenue, but the thrift store is actually nearest to 8th avenue (which means, yes, it needs a name change).

The Supernatural Olympics - the city welcome sign

The Supernatural Olympics - the city welcome sign

The welcome sign is my favorite of all for the city so far. It's A- grade, rare for artwork, makes this a prized item to me.

The Supernatural Olympics - City with 3 mostly complete buildings

The Supernatural Olympics - City with 3 mostly complete buildings

These are the three completed buildings, for what I can do anyway for their completion. Note the perspective effects of the gas station's name and the columns. The pumps need a redo - place them between the columns all in a row, not between sections.

There's one problem though with adding the roofs and sides - the draw count. 2000 draws per frame is too low, way too low, which makes using DirectX more important, and finding that function supposedly 50 times faster. Without this, those roofs are easily going to add another 1000 draws (with all visible), even with quality 20 and all of my current optimization tactics. AlphaBlend is just too slow to execute, but it draws extremely fast. The related "SelectObject" is also rather slow to use. The roads, lakes, and especially the landscape also have this same problem.

Another option is to use real 3D, but this strays heavily from my original plans. This has many advantages, but also has several problems. The big advantage is an even more realistic feel. The big downside is that it means a near-complete redo of everything. Another big advantage is that it provides an improved shape for everything. Another downside is the way lighting works - I struggled a lot with that with Gamestudio (when I last used it several years ago) as flat edges had odd lighting and unexpected gouraud shading. I wanted it based on the direction the surface normal pointed for all faces, even ones meant for a curved surface. Another big advantage is that scenery objects are likely easier and faster to make, although texturing them may be a bit rough.

If you thought planning for the city and landscape weren't enough, along with the making of the buildings, you might want to try something else. It is now official that there are 56 challenges, in 7 tournaments. Before this update, I only needed one more challenge thought of for the seventh tournament and out of the blue, while in bed just before going to sleep, of all things, I thought of a new challenge that would make the full 7 tournaments. Another 8 more would result in 64 challenges being available, but for that to happen with reasonable chances, I'd need to program the abilities in (which means the character has to be finished), finalize the landscape (6 revisions is already getting a bit out of hand), and start fiddling around. Some of the challenges are based on common mind game events. One way would be to include Olympic-style games. This has one big problem - the character. The character would need many new states in order for that to work (but memory usage is essentially not affected in that regard since those never used during this can simply be offloaded with the new stuff required for it loaded in (and when done, the originals are reloaded). The objects (e.g. dumbbells, jump-height bars, etc.) are no where near as much of a problem as the character, in terms of motive.

The highway is also planned out, including the cars. No progress has been here though, outside planning.

The landscape, for version 6, to use a vertex-based system, has been planned out. It is essentially identical to version 5 in terms of the heights and basic layout design, but with a few unique differences. The first is that I use an adequate amount of mountains. Though 46.1 miles is a bit much, it is close enough to my original 45 miles. The lakes are otherwise unchanged, but there are more islands (large and small), dedicated forests (unlike before which were absent), and other new additions. What was known as the "Quredda Plains" is now known as the "Quredda Desert".

#7 My first meteorite - a sample from Astronomy Magazine: I almost lost it. I had troubles with getting a DVD player to work since they always come with RCA cables instead of a coaxial RF cable. Routing the RCA cables into the back of a VCR or my DirecTV receiver didn't work and I tried every combination I could. It was only until I got an RF modulator for it that I finally got it to work. On the day I got it, that was when I discovered that mom cleaned my room, almost trashing the envelope and form I needed. If it wasn't for searching through those two bags for 2 hours total, I wouldn't have had it. If I bought the item I got, a DVD, I'd get a piece of the Campo del Cielo meteorite. The piece is around 2 or so grams (an estimate - I don't have a way to weigh it), a centimeter long, and 3 millimeters in diameter, roughly. It was a bit smaller than I thought it was going to be (around 5 grams with twice this volume).

#8 Wavy blue water down below fox bottom: It's a group of words related to a favorite thing to do on Sonic 3 & Knuckles: The fox (Tails) goes in the water below (which has a bluish color and is wavy) below, by going down. The fox remains at the bottom of it. There's some variants to this phrase, but always using these same words: "blue fox bottom", "blue below fox bottom", and some others I don't quite recall. Frequently, in my mind game, I have a scene where Sonic is high on a cliff and the fox is nearby. It jumps over the edge and falls (goes down) for roughly 3 1/4 seconds (which results in a speed of about 42 2/3 px/fr, without falling off the screen. The fox splashes in the water below, and, a second later, unlike that poem with "splish splash" repeating, goes "buong" 1.1 seconds after splashing in. A new one appears and it, too, does the same. The new one is up against spikes, of which is used to "launch" the fox, though the fox occasionally lands on them, but unlike the mechanics of Sonic, a splash occurs upon falling in the water. The movement of the 64-scale mountain BG, 32-scale lake far edge, 16-scale lake close edge, and probably 2 or so for the lake far edge the fox goes in. 128-scale mountains are also visible and there are no clouds. The motion is ultra smooth, as if being rendered at 5120x3584 (16 times the game's normal resolution). I would like to make an animated GIF or even a video (at 60 fps) of this. I have to write that animation-processing program first though and I just don't have the motive (as it has been for over a year by now)....

#9 "Fallout" and "Ready? Go!": I think I've been playing SMB too much. If something falls off of a table, falls over, or something like that, I often say "fallout" almost in the same way SMB2 (Super Monkey Ball 2) it. When I'm about to start something, such as a task where I need to wait for the computer to do something, I often say "ready?" then "go!" as SMBA does it (Super Monkey Ball Adventure), which has the variety, especially on the "go!" part.

#10 Christmas 2008 the worst in at least a decade: Christmas is my second favorite holiday of the year, a close second; Independence Day is in first place. However, this year was one of the worst in a long time. We had company over, something extremely rare, and both parents wouldn't let me go out of my room due to a reason that's confidential. I had a solution, a blanket (which worked before), but my parents wouldn't allow it due to a supposed "rule". This ruined this year's Christmas. As a consequence, I'm now taking counter measures for what they did - not doing things they want when they tell me to. In addition, I'm not going to get them any where near as much in the way of gifts next year, and canceling any birthday gifts. I had one for my dad, but now I'm not going to get him it because he played a role with this. At least one was friendly and had sympathy, my sister. She won't be affected by the counter measures. As a consequence, I was not able to participate in the gift-opening (I was still lucky enough to get a photo), or even the family games. Instead of doing this, with nothing else for me to do otherwise, I worked on my web site update.

I got something from my sister, but beyond that, I have no idea what else I'm getting. As usual, however, I had a Christmas list. One item you may very likely expect to see, but the others are unique:

My Christmas list for 2008:

Visual Studio 2008 Standard. I wanted it last year, but never got it; "I don't know what it is" claims my parents. Uh, I gave the name. It's the primary thing I want.
True color poster of the world map. While working on my story, and struggling a lot to download it due to a long-lingering problem, I found images on the Visible Earth page and I since wanted a poster of this. However, the rectangle I didn't want/like because, toward the poles, distances between parts get increasingly less accurate. It also doesn't account for Earth's equatorial bulge. So, from what I did in my story, I converted the projection type to using an ellipse. Rather than a 2:1 ellipse of 21,600x10,800, it's 21,600x10,782 instead, to account for the equatorial bulge. This way, measurements are as precise as I could get. The 10,782 size provides another advantage - covering the 3-foot paper width with room to spare (about 1/32 of an inch) when using the industry-standard of 300 dots per inch. With the four corners available, I put in extra details - a colorful title, legal stuff (since it came from the Visible Earth project by NASA), a distance meter (to gauge distances and scale), and numerous, high-precision facts about Earth taken from Wikipedia.
Image printed on shirts. I have two images I'd like printed on some shirts. One of which, the title (front cover) image of my story, is the first one, of which is essentially complete. The other is the logo for my games, seen at the top of the main index page. I'm not doing this one because there's a problem - the text does not follow my most recent design. The city and stars are good as is and thus don't need a redo, but the text does. The text does not follow my most recent design (variable width), and the curve's width is not the same as that of the rest. At the time I made this text, using MED from Gamestudio (of which I stopped around 2006, giving a hint as to its age), I didn't know the formula. The outside part should be using a wider-radius circle than the inside. Think about a donut once. The outside edge has its angle, per inch, change less than that of the smaller inside which has a quicker angle change. It's essentially a large circle with a small circle cut out. That's not what I used so the text needs a redo. Unlike using MED, from before, I have all the formulas I need to redo it - lighting, rotation, and 3D. It's finding the position that's going to be a bit tough....
Double the odds of going to South Dakota. If the odds were above 50% beforehand, this would cause mathematical problems as probability cannot go above 1. It can be exactly 1, but not over it. At the low end, like 2%, this isn't going to have much of an effect, but at the high end, it will. Take 45%, where 9 out of every 20 will work. Double that means 90%, or 9 out of every 10 (or 18 out of 20 for like demoninators). If it was 50%, then it's guaranteed. 49.5% means 99%. 2% means 4% which doesn't really help much. Currently, I feel as if the odds are about 30%. Why South Dakota? It wasn't my idea, it was mom's. I'm only taking it as it's new; I haven't been that far southwest yet.... Details haven't been worked out much either.

So, what did I get for Christmas this year? This is what I got, for sure:

Underwear - this is nothing new....
Story front cover image printed on shirts - it came out better than I expected in terms of the colors, but worse in terms of overall appearance (likely due to the fabric threading/weaving). I also wanted my logo as seen on the main index (of my site) at the top, but it needs fixing first.
Painted scene of the planets. This is something my sister did.
True color world map image - I don't have this yet as of this update - the place has been closed but mom promised it.

There are some that I'm uncertain of on whether or not I got them:

Visual Studio 2008 Standard. The odds seem about 90% from what I can tell that I got it. "I don't know what it is" says mom, along with "I don't know how you get it".... Knowing what it is is not required, except just the name. I stated twice on how to get it this year alone (and like 3 more times last year...).
Double the odds of going to South Dakota. The odds seem about 20% from what I can tell on whether or not I got this. I even asked, but I'm unable to make out anything....

I did the bulk of the wrapping; I wrapped everyone's gifts, except my own (the latter is expected). Although I generally lack experience, I use the same level of planning detail as I do with my games. My 2D RPG game, for example, hovers around 75 pages in the design, and this doesn't include town layouts or even the story (the story only as an outline, marking when certain events are to take place). My main 2D game already takes 20 pages. I'm running "if statements" through my mind and think ahead. "If I do this, what would happen? If that happens, then would happen next?" It can take a few tries, but I do this quite fast. Neatness isn't a strong focus, especially on odd-shaped items like mugs. If it was toward someone else beyond the family (such as stuff from mom's work place), then I do focus a bit more toward neatness.

#11 Getting my own Action Replay codes - only one thing stops me: Action Replay, check. Gamecube, check. Action Replay encrypter/decrypter, check. Knowing the memory address... no check. I've kept it secret for a while. Remember that "sonic moon jump" code? I originally stated I got it from a forum. The real source was using both a hex editor (to get the value I want) and GCNcrypt from "Action Replay Central". All I did to get it was to change the variable's value from the default 26 or whatever to 135 (for exactly 1 m/s climbing speed) then 762. For a while, I've been wanting a code to stop the movement on the X and Z axes in SMB2 so I can make better use of bead screen. Trouble is, what is the memory address? I used my computer skills to figure this out. The memory addresses of structs are often adjacent, separated by the size of the variable. Since I know that floats are used (as opposed to doubles), they were spaced 4 pixels apart. I changed the memory address, using GCNcrypt so it was 4 before and 4 after and did tests and I finally got that code. There's other codes that I'd especially like:

Super Monkey Ball:
Moon jump - rise at the same speed while holding a button or combination of buttons. Only the PAL version has it and the NTSC version doesn't. There's nothing around the speed, position, etc. area to use so I'm left to purely random chance for finding what the memory address is. Without this, SMB is not fun at all (ever wonder why SMB2 has 900 hours' play when SMB has barely 100?).

Super Monkey Ball 2:
Play in target or race mode in the main game stages. I tried to get it, but the monkey's motion stops and doesn't move when I attempt. The "mode" value would not change although I could get "submode" to change. I'd like this as I'd like the drag and flight to be included. It also adds unique challenges.
Low gravity. Earth's gravitational acceleration is 21.9 mph/s (9.81 m/s/s). SMB2 thinks its 79.5 mph/s (among other games). This would make the game more fun and provide some unique challenges. For this to work, acceleration just needs to be multiplied by 0.2754717.
No fallout. This would only be used in practice mode. No matter where I'm at, I wouldn't get fallout. This way, I can explore more of the background scenery.
Roll along all BG scenery. This would be a wonderful treat, especially if combined with the "no fallout" one. It would allow me to roll over the scenery, all of it, and make up my own challenges. I would especially like to do this with worlds 5, 6, and 7. I can, indirectly, do it for worlds 1, 3, and 10, however, thanks to those extra stages in debug mode.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles (on Sonic Mega Collection):
Low gravity. Just like SMB2, the acceleration while falling in this game, too, is very extreme, nearly 4 times that of what it should be. When you jump in the water, the acceleration is practically right on. However, you can't do this on, say, ice cap's mountain or launch base act 1.
Play as Tails on all of Ice cap's mountain with the mountain BG. This aspect takes all the fun away. It's either I get the mountain BG (which is my favorite of all in the Sonic series) and can't do anything on the mountain (even with debug) or I can get Tails to cover the entire mountain, but without being able to have the mountain BG, not both like I can get with Sonic and Knuckles.
Have the scrolling speed max out at 32 px/fr instead of 24. Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 both use 16 which is extremely easy to pass. Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, and Sonic 3 & Knuckles use 24 which is still fairly easy to pass. Why 32? 32 is difficult to get and its a nice number for computers (a power of 2). I can still pass it in a few areas, but it's very difficult with normal game play. I can best do it with Knuckles, thanks to the glide hop, but getting all the way off the screen is only possible in at least 2 known areas. The first should be obvious - ice cap's mountain. The second, though uncertain, is lava reef act 2 where Knuckles sends Sonic down with a rock.

Most of what I'd like in S3K I'd also like in the other main Sonic games (Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic 2 & Knuckles, Sonic 3, and Sonic & Knuckles). In addition to that, for Sonic 1, fixing Green Hill's background. When you go up, the backgrounds in every other game moves down. Not green hill - it moves up instead and it's distracting and irritating. When at the top of the level, you should be seeing very little of that lake. At the bottom of the level, you should be seeing a lot of it, and few of the clouds.

So then, what do I need to get these? A good start would be a way to find memory addresses. With the PS1, there's a device called "SharkLink". You hook it up to the back of the PS1 console and connect it to the serial port on the back of your computer. Let's say you're playing a game where your character's maximum HP was 538. You input this into your query as an integer. The software searches the console's RAM for integers with the value at 538 and it returns a set number of results. You may either repeat this search to reduce it or get that 538 value to change (such as leveling up giving 563 where you'd search for "563" and search within the results). With one result left, you get the memory address. Now, let's say you wanted to get 60,000 HP, beyond the maximum the display would show (which is 9999). You use the memory address you got, but instead of having the vallue as 538 (or 563), you input 60,000 instead and walla, you got it. All I need for the above is a way to get memory addresses.

#12 Super Monkey Ball Adventure - new game I got (needs improvement): While I was in the Mall of America during my vacation a few months ago, I recall stopping at a game store here and there to see if they had Super Monkey Ball Adventure. No one had it available. A few days after I returned home (or a few weeks), I got it from a local store. When I played it, I was a bit disappointed in some ways.

This game is riddled with bugs, especially audio bugs, the most audio bugs I've ever seen in a game. There's also a class 7 bug, with "OS error" appearing and a bunch of what appears to be memory addresses. Upon leaving, I had the Gamecube in the back of the car, which got to almost 100°F, which I thought might've been the culprit. When I played other games, this didn't happen, so I know its exclusive to SMBA, from what I've seen, hinting to a class 7 bug, a severe freeze. It seems to happen after playing the game for quite a while, at least an hour, but once, it didn't happen for 8 straight hours, due to being addicted to Cannon. There are other problems with it:

Speed is limited to just 70 mph. SMB1 and SMB2 had a numerical speed indicator, the latter maxes its displayed value at 999 (though you can go much faster than that). SMBA caps out at just 70 which is so quick and easy to get. One stage, called slalom, I slice through the goal at over 500 mph, 7 times that. It's very related to SMB2's gravity slider in terms of what is done - a big, long fall constantly going forward. The fun thing about SMB2 is getting as fast as I can get. This game lacks that as there's no dependable way to gauge speed beyond that 70 mph cap. Each light on the speed indicator, the right half of that section with the radar, indicates 5 mph. I would think 10 or even 20 mph is more reasonable since players rarely get past 200 mph. Only in SMB2's gravity slider and this game's slalom go beyond this by normal means. Normal - like you would normally do, not the stunts such as using the boards in bead screen to get tossed up at up to 4500 mph. The height part, being relative (based on the highest and lowest points reached, rather than based on the level's range), is nearly useless. By using 10 and the full outside area, you could get 280 mph cap, which is much, much more reasonable than a measely 70 which is extremely easy to get.
Poor, boring, repetive style of game play. SMB2 and even the less-complete SMB1 have much more variety. SMBA has a lot of balloon-moving/balloon-delivering, collecting, and searching, and it's boring. It's basically mission-style gameplay, which is the most boring type.
Extremely long load times. SMB2 loads its stages, party games, etc. quickly, within 2 seconds usually, and I can still see plenty of room for improvement here. SMBA takes ten times longer to load, hinting to a bad, inefficient design.
Can fall forever without fallout. While hard to do, there are two ways to get it so that you can fall forever without getting fallout. In SMB2, you would get fallout by simply falling below a certain point, no matter how far out of bounds you were. Not so with SMBA. Just one look at the video where I fly continuously out of bounds says it all. If you get hit by those fans in Moonhaven just right, it can happen that way as well, but it requires a lot of horizontal speed.
Lots of audio bugs. If you watched the flying out of bounds video, you already know of this one. Notice the engine sound and how loud it is relative to the rest of the audio? This game is just riddled with audio bugs. When playing "last man standing" in the cannon game, after the first round, the music stops all together.
Where's SMB2's music at? SMBA uses a lot of sound tracks from SMB1, but nothing at all from SMB2, when SMB2 has the better music, especially worlds 5 and 7, target, the expert course of boat. Why can't any of those used in SMB2 be included? The music's randomization is also a bit annoying during the puzzle stages, especially if some (gravity wells especially, the hardest in the game (ironically, it's in the advanced course, not the expert course)).
BG scenery doesn't move. Ah, the world from high above - so small that details can't be made out. That makes SMB2 a lot of fun. No matter how high you are in SMBA, the background scenery is exactly the same, unchanged. With the 500 mph speed I get while doing the "slalom" stage, there should be a very obvious difference, but there's no detectable difference at all.
If a COM is out, it can still play/act, but not me. This is very odd and it doesn't happen in SMB1 or SMB2. If a COM is eliminated in the "cannon" game, that COM can still play and take action and effect. If I get eliminated, the round ends immediately, regardless of how the other COMs are, and I can't continue to take action like the COMs can.
If a continue is used in challenge mode or game over occurs before hand, high scores are not saved. This also doesn't happen in SMB1 or SMB2 and it's a big loss. If you use a continue before finishing, your high score is not saved. For example, if I play through the difficult advanced course (which is harder, overall, than expert thanks to "freewheeler", whatever stage 19 is, and most especially "gravity wells"), the high score I got from before is never saved. If you, say, get a 4th place high score in either SMB1 or SMB2, then get a 2nd place high score after it, your high score from both cases are saved, even if you get a game over. Get a game over in SMBA and even if you had a really good run, it's all lost when you struggle with one stage (gravity wells being the biggest). During story mode, I took over 50 tries to get gravity wells and I still regularly require 30 tries, let alone just 15 or 3.

SMBA is a major let down over the other two SMB games. Since Banana Blitz and other later games are toward the newest consoles, I can't see how these are, and unless they are not toward only the Wii, there's essentially no chance I'll ever play them.... Even if they do, it'd likely still be a few years before I bother getting them as they're so expensive.

#13 Nightmare came true - yikes!: Dream 6-74, from the previous update (and 6-49 from before along with an occasional other) is a good starting point. The dream wasn't scary enough to qualify as a nightmare. On November 15, 2008, I had a case very close to that 6-74 dream. I went to dad's work place, for half the day (it was a Saturday, since I had to go grocery shopping, an unusually long 3 weeks since I last did). When I came back, I found a sizeable chunk of my room having been cleaned... by mom. I spent 2 hours that day sifting through the bags to search for and retrieve things she stashed in there, including a souvenir from my vacation a few months ago (yes, the Tropicana Light Lemonade box I consider as a souvenir since this item is no longer seen in my area). She also threw away an envelope I needed so I get something, about the day I was going to get it too. I did a few counter measures of this, by blocking the door and being mean to her verbally, but that was about it. For several days after it, I didn't even look at her. However, she made a promise. She was to never do this again, except if we work together. If she breaks the promise, I'm doing the same thing to her room twice over as a counter measure.

#14 FF8 found, memory cards troublesome: While looking for something in the basement for dad, I happened to found FF8 lying around. At the time, I was highly involved with my story, and I had a problem - no available space on my 2 memory cards. Sure I had 6 more available, these cards are defective. I had to buy more to offset this, finding one that looked exactly like one of the two I currently have.

I got the previous memory cards when I was involved with FF6. I could use them without problems for 2 to 4 days, but, suddenly, out of nowhere, games failed to load on them. Oddly enough, if I simply copy the game save over to another memory card of these, I could resume again... for 3 days where the same thing happens. Once I transferred my FF6 game saves to my 2 old memory cards, I no longer had problems. This happened with all 6 of them. While I would expect one defective card in a bunch and wouldn't mind it - defective items do happen. For 2 defective cards in a group of 6, it's a bit ridiculous as it's highly unlikely. However, for all 6 of them, this hints to a deeper problem and is suspicious. The memory cards have "Hip Gear" on them, supposedly their brand. From searching Google, I'm seeing that I'm not the only one having problems with this brand, hinting that the brand itself is one of those rip-offs. This time, I got memory cards that match one of my originals that have been working for years (over a decade even) without any problems. Until I both finish this website update, and lose interest in my current song (I don't want to break my great streak at a month long.), I will not play FF8.

Last time I played FF8, I found it boring. While I vaguely recall the details, I recall having to endlessly draw from enemies or something. You couldn't get any gil outside selling garbage left behind by enemies, and there were gardens. I recall doing the fire cavern, but beyond that, I lost interest and didn't get any further. I left the game to collect dust (there's plenty of that around) and soon gave it to my sister, who was in the basement at the time. When she left, she left the game there and I never knew of its existance.

I was also looking for FF9, to see if I can get further in the story, but I couldn't find it. If I knew where the SNES was, of which I haven't seen since 2002 or so, I'd post a video of a bug I know of in Super Mario World on YouTube, along with trying out the original FF6 (known as FF3) and see how it compares to the PS1 version that I'm familiar with (the one with frame rate problems).

#15 Firefox download problems - frequently stops midstream: This is an on-going, annoying, lingering problem that I'm getting with Firefox. I can't watch a whole YouTube video without having to skip around (dragging the slider to a point that hasn't downloaded to force it). I often have to refresh pages because they suddenly stop loading in order to get them to load and strangely, not all web pages are affected. The forums at HWW that I visit daily (often around 5 times a day) is one such place, but the Firefox forums and viewing comments on YouTube is completely unaffected. When I tried to download a 100-some MB PNG image from Visible Earth, I often wouldn't pass 30 MB into the downloaded before it suddenly stopped making progress. It may occasionally start back up again, but sometimes, even after 10 minutes, there's no progress whatsoever. The only way to get further is to try again, and again, and again, and it's very frustrating and annoying. It took 17 tries, if I recall, to finally get it to download. Now think about YouTube videos. Ever wonder why I don't watch others' videos? First, I don't like to be spoiled, but this doesn't have anywhere near as much of an effect as this downloading problem has. I've asked this in my places and no one seems to know the answer. YouTube downloads just fine, but not the videos. My website loads just fine. HWW doesn't. Google is fine. Hotmail isn't. The Firefox forums are fine. Something is very weird here. I can rule out the internet connection as the culprit - I was able to download that same 100 MB image without a single problem, all the way through, when I took out the dreaded Internet Explorer. I could watch a whole YouTube video without a hitch as well. Until this issue is resolved, watching others' videos on YouTube is very unlikely.

#16 3 dreams in one night, again, and 29 new dreams: Yep, I got plenty of new dreams, not many compared to what I was originally getting, but at least I got a few very good ones such as one involving walking around Panama and a very fun ocean/river gliding one (the most fun for at least a year, almost even 2 years). A few were forgotten before I could write the details though. There's now even the third known case of recalling 3 dreams in one night, occurring on December 1, 2008. I'm beginning to wonder when I'll be recalling 4 dreams in one night and when that would come. Hey, it might happen tonight, but it may not be clear until the 2020's or even later. Back in 2006 or so, I was wondering if and when I was going to get a case of recalling 3 dreams in one night. This has happened 3 times now. That, in a sense, does mean 9 dreams in 3 days' worth, but they're not consecutive. Currently, I have 29 new dreams, now with 768 total dreams.

#17 Question to "Ask Astro" considred, unknown if published: I asked a question toward "Ask Astro" (in Astronomy magazine) around October, shortly after the previous update. What was the question? It's about why particle accelerators have to get larger in order to probe higher energies and why can't the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) go beyond 7 TeV (teraelectron-volts) and what would happen if they attempted 30 TeV. I got a response stating that they would look into it. I'm expecting a delay of several months before I see the answer, if they did answer it. The Feb 2009 issue is rather late to arrive (normally, the date on the magazine is about 40 days ahead of the day I receive it).

#18 Parents forcing me into Devry?: I remarked on this earlier. There's two primary details that make any college practically useless. The first is the biggest - me getting a job is like flipping a coin 20 times in a row and expecting to get heads all 20 times. It's so rare and unlikely (due to both my sleep-wake cycle and especially lack of transportation) that it seems like more of a waste of money than being of anything useful. It's like the lottery almost. You lose more money in pretty much any lottery than you get back, even without taxes. For college, you spend about $5000 or so (I have no idea what it is, but it's well into the thousands). A related job may net you about $200,000 a year or so (I have no idea what it is.). With my chances so weak, I'm essentially only going to get two dimes back out of that per year, essentially nothing (after 200,000/1,048,576). The up side is that it'll very likely improve the quality of the games I make which can, in turn, result in more sales, but that's about it. I still have to make a full game and release it before that takes any effect though. Ignoring the money part, the high number of credits, over 120 if I recall, means over 20 years at it, way too long.

Now, as it seems, my parents are getting more despirate into getting me to get into Devry, almost to the point where they're forcing me to....

#19 The Hamburger Helper and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese combination experiment: An experiment on food? That seems a bit weird, but it's actually a cooking experiment. What is the experiment? Well, first, let's get the basics. Hamburger Helper, done my way (without meat, since I'm a vegetarian), has a very strong flavor to it. In a way, it's like using a single box of Macaroni & Cheese, but using 2 whole bags of cheese sauce instead of 1. That's the other part - Macaroni & Cheese has very little in the way of taste - it's rather weak. I used to use fried hot dogs (fried in butter, not oil) to help offset this, but I've completely lost interest in all meat (ever wonder what a vegetarian is?). This, in turn, caused a loss of interest in Macaroni since the flavoring is so weak. Wait, there's still more yet. Hamburger Helper is not a filling meal - it takes 2 to make it filling enough. Macaroni & Cheese is the same way.

Now to the main part. What would happen if I mixed in, say, a half of a box of Macaroni into a batch of Hamburger Helper using Hamburger Helper's sauce mix? Hamburger Helper's sauce is strong which makes me enjoy it a lot, lot more than regular Macaroni & Cheese. By adding extra noodles, I lose some of the flavor (though not much), and the meal is more filling. That's stage 1. For stage 2, I'd then use the other half of the box, plus a whole box of another and mix the sauce from both boxes into the 1 1/2-size box. The outcome? Macaroni couldn't be much better! I get the best of everything this way - it's much more filling, the taste for both is about average, and it renewed my interest in Macaroni. I could still combine the "toasty dogs" as I called them, but since I'm a vegetarian, I'm not into this at all.

#20 Tips and tricks star rating images updated - much better: They were made in 2002, when I didn't know how to get exact angles because I didn't know anything about sines and cosines. They were also rather bad-looking and not really star-like outside the fact they have 5 points. Today, things are much, much different. I understand sines, cosines, tangents, and arctangents very well (arcsines and arccosines are a toss-up - I ever-so-rarely use them; I primarily use these other two to undo a sine or cosine)). I have the formula for lighting (based on vertex positions for 3 vertices). This opens up a huge realm of possibilities. Being so outdated, I redone the stars giving them a wonderful 3D effect. They look nearly 100 times better than old ones. Just compare the two and you'll see what I mean, really fast:

5 stars (9) old

^ old stars, all visible | old stars, some left out v

5 stars

^ new stars, all visible | new stars, some dimmed v

You can tell a huge difference here. 6 years of advancement in mathematics for artwork really has a strong effect. The one on the left has all stars visible for both cases, while the one on the right has some of them "lost". With the old stars, it was a bit difficult to tell where they stopped or how many there are supposed to be. In addition, 1 to 9 is rather weird. 1 to 5 is very common (and I mean very common), so I adapted it and instead of whole stars being taken away, halves were involved, and instead of disappearing, they simply just "fade away". It provides a much better effect than pretty much anything else I've seen.

#21 Dangerous wind chills and finally a white Christmas: From December 15 through to about December 19, especially the 15th, the wind chills were dangerously low, bottoming out at -60°F or so. Even in broad daylight, during this time, it only good as decent as -40°F, which is still dangerous.

I recall from 2005 and 2006 that we had a "brown Christmas" - there was no snow on the ground (or so little, that you can easily make out the brown color). Year 2007 was half and half. This year is a white Christmas, thanks to blizzards and major snow storms. The ground is covered with snow, and more snow than I've seen in years.

Daily Events

Nov 1: Editing the story, again. Round 1 is done, plus some formatting. The appendix still remains to be written, the images need to be made, and a few others. I've now redone scene 19 to my plans. Some of the others ahead were better than I thought though scene 23 could practically use a rewrite for the first 2/3 of it. Scene 24 could use a few adjustments. I'm still at Lava Powerhouse (from Sonic Spinball), going on longer than I thought. Parts 2, 4, and 8 are not worthy. Parts 3, 5 (second half), and 6 (bass only) are the best. Parts 1 and 7 are more neutral. Woke up at 1:38 AM and went to bed at 5:39 PM.
Nov 2: Daylight savvings ended.... Story, again.... This time, it was writing the appendix. This is essentially done. I also conform to the interior specifications. The half-inch margins part I don't like that much (compared to my previous 1/4-inch margins). The exception is the copyright page - I don't have it yet. I also don't know what is needed. I also spotted a huge problem that means a big redo for the part involving it - Knuckles' level. Images still remain, most should be fast maps. 106% true speed for Lava Powerhouse is superior in quality! Woke up at 1:52 AM and went to bed at 5:25 PM.
Nov 3: Figuring out Knuckles' stats was the main thing. Without this, calculating damage accurately and reliably, for consistency, is tough. I'm now ready to make the two images that use this. I started but needed the font. I only have the low-grade version so I went at making the high-grade version. I ran into a math problem, one that bugged me for years. Woke up at 3:47 AM and went to bed at 7:15 PM.
Nov 4: Daily check, work on font some, left for dad's workplace for a task I had - what section a part was in, plus a few others. I came home and ate. I returned and finished the task. I attempted to vote, but dad wasn't feeling good and his route isn't in town, taking my only chance out with it. Now I need to wait until 2012, a problem considering those numerous prophecies. I finished most of the font - angles and the ampersand are left. Woke up at 5:06 AM and went to bed at 10:47 PM.
Nov 5: 2 dreams in one night... is that a reward from yesterday's actions? The font is done and so is 2/3 of the status window for Knuckles. The font is grade C-.... I took another approach to the stats window. I now have a full set of status effects, plus, I thought of the eighth challenge in my 2D game now making 56 official. SMB2 World 5 started at the end of the day; the streak with Lava Powerhouse is probably the longest yet. I'm working on the images for my story, setting up the stats window. The first blizzard for the winter started (it's still only mid autumn). Woke up at 9:59 AM and went to bed at 1:51 AM.
Nov 6: Slept 6 hours.... New enhancements were made to the status display. Only 2 things remain - 11 more status effect icons and numbers remain, plus finalization. I especially like those for "stone" and "doomed". With that done, other stat windows are fast and easy. They could be 2/3 done in one day versus 18% done for just one. All this is typical of "high" activity (based on the checklist of my 2D game, only for my story instead). Woke up at 9:06 AM and went to bed at 11:55 PM.
Nov 7: All status effect icons done, Knuckles' stats are done (after making a fix for an unnoticed mistake). The stats for that in scene 2 are almost done (In what, an hour? Compare that to 4 days!). Woke up at 10:52 AM and went to bed at 1:40 AM.
Nov 8: I woke up around 10:40 but couldn't get back to sleep - I had a good dream though. It took an hour to write the page of details for it. The second stats page is done along with the diagram for gliding and half that for spell-casting. I switched to OWTLI again (so soon too!). Woke up at 11:46 AM and went to bed at 2:53 AM.
Nov 9: The spell-casting part is done and I reached scene 3 in terms of changes. I also saw "The Death Star" for the 19th time (!). I also had a dream using 1/3 of a page in details. Woke up at 1:39 PM and went to bed at 5:00 AM.
Nov 10: All of act 1 was edited for reducing length. I do this by rewording paragraphs and sentences so they use fewer words, but keep the same level of detail. I only have the last bits of scene 3 left, and 2 images. I saved 4 pages so far. Scene 2 was excessive in descriptions. I average about a 15% savings (12% with images added), but the details are heavy in the beginning so this will drop quite fast. I almost got to see that DVD using a trick I thought of, until I realized I needed video mode, of which my TV doesn't support. It's between those pesky RCA cables (when my TV has no support for them), and other technical problems like getting the signal. Woke up at 3:08 PM and went to bed at 6:30 AM.
Nov 12: Those 2 images, all of act 2, and scene 7 are done. One paragraph in scene 7 went from 19 lines to just 6 and still stating the same thing. It's my most extreme case yet, a 68.4% savings. Not much else is needed in the way of images outside fast-to-make maps and the program to convert color to grayscale precisely - I have the algorithm though, just not the program. I'm trying to add hours so I can go grocery shoping. I'm oddly behind. TV helped. Woke up at 5:29 PM and went to bed at 12:15 PM.
Nov 13: I stay up then can't sleep a lot - 7 1/2 hours. I reached scene 9, at the start, and got to the point where the map was needed (and made). After finishing, I went to bed. 10+ hours a day on average for what, 2 weeks? I wished I could do that with my 2D game. When I get to adding the 56 challenges, it seems quite likely. Woke up at 8:55 PM and went to bed at 8:59 AM.
Nov 14: I reached scene 13, but had a problem - I needed the world map images. I got the 2400x1200 one to go okay, but that's a bit too small. I wanted 10,800x5400 but wasn't available. The huge 21,600x10,800 was the next best but had a lot of trouble downloading it due to a long-lingering problem - 14 tries. After scaling it and stuff, it took long to convert it to the right projection, too long. The 7200 went fine. Sonic + fox helped. I needed to pass the time somehow. I'm set up for a repeat of the 10,800 size, recalling a flaw with script-up - it clutters up the undo history and very quickly. Set 0 minimum undo levels and have GIMP use 1 GB of memory instead of 3/4 GB. Woke up at 7:52 PM and went to bed at 3:08 PM.
Nov 15: I processed the map image, got the grid almost done, taking many tries due to mistakes, and got the scale started. I left for dad's work place then went grocery shopping. To my surprise, it was 3 weeks since I last did. I got a DVD adapter as well - I can now watch DVDs! When I came home, I saw that mom cleaned a section of my room, and past nightmares quickly came into my mind. I spent 2 hours digging through the trash bags looking for things she threw away, some important. Now it's time for some major counteraction - making mom's room a mess and scattering her stuff around, avoiding some things I do for her, and some others. I watched that DVD I got from Astronomy - I already saw it a while ago on DirecTV ("The Universe" on "The History Channel") and was disappointed - all that trouble for something I saw 5 to 7 times before. At least, this version doesn't have the ads or the logo.... Woke up at 12:01 AM and went to bed at 5:11 PM.
Nov 16: I've reached the second half of scene 15. The map is now done. I spotted a problem with the distance meter and fixed it - I converted wrong (miles per pixel, not pixels per mile). Final touches were made then I resumed the story and kept going until the second half of scene 15, a favorite. Woke up at 1:43 AM and went to bed at 5:00 PM.
Nov 17: Scene 17 was reached - TV and lots of images slew things down. Scene 17 is far too long - I could almost chop 4 pages out. Yet, scene 18 is a continuation of 17. It also needs some improvement for length. Woke up at 3:47 AM and went to bed at 6:06 PM.
Nov 18: Experiments started, I'm 2/3 done with scene 17, but took 2 1/4 or so pages off. I've got an event that could take out a whole page, and some in act 7's scene 20. TV and a map slew me down a lot. Woke up at 4:01 AM and went to bed at 9:00 PM.
Nov 19: Scene 21 was reached, another one of my favorites. I took out 10 pages from act 6, almost all from scenes 17 and 18. Scene 21 is likely to get some, but 22 could lose 3 pages. 23 needs a rewrite and I don't recall 24 or 25 that well. 280 pages from 300 is quite a reduction! That saves 40¢ too, allowing me to get more in profits and save you some as well. There's still a few images left, the program, proofreading, sending to copyright, finalizing, and releasing. The copyright page and cover remain. 32 1/3 hours (32 hours, 19 to 20 minutes) is what I got. It's still above the advertised limit of 30 by a fair margin (almost 8%). I also switched to Mountains So Far Away about halfway through the day. Woke up at 5:59 AM and went to bed at 10:00 PM.
Nov 20: Act 8 was reached. TV, mom, and sleepiness slew me down. I also had to make 2 maps, figure out another character's stats, and Knuckles' physical attacks in terms of damage. Woke up at 8:28 AM and went to bed at 10:21 PM.
Nov 21: Another map was made. I'm halfway done with scene 22, at the point where a rewrite is needed. Grocery shopping took 4 1/2 hours out of this (longer due to unexpected stops). I also watched "Scooby Doo and the Alien Invasion" while eating.... I hate those boring romance scenes. I was almost tempted to watching something else because of it.... Woke up at 9:37 AM and went to bed at 1:00 AM.
Nov 22: Daily check, eat, housework, shopping for remodelling stuff, then working on my story with occasional TV made up the day. I reached scene 24. Scene 23 got a rewrite but seems a bit too long and one part needs to be rechecked. The second half of scene 22 is much better - more "intense". I've got the final stretch then the appendix. Round 4 of editing starts afterwards. My preface needs a near-complete rewrite, unlike scene 23 - 8 pages is a lot too long. Woke up at 10:10 AM and went to bed at 2:05 AM.
Nov 23: I slept for 5 hours then got repeatedly woke up from construction right outside my room. I've finished the third round of editing. The fourth round starts next. The preface needs a near-full rewrite. I've expanded the appendix to include 2 sections I left out. 273 pages at the moment. That's down from 296 or so and that also includes adding images which uses up some of that. In round 4, I'm focused on consistency checks and overall flow. 3 was for images, correcting the level and damage value stuff, and shortening things down. Woke up at 10:59 AM and went to bed at 11:54 PM.
Nov 24: Slept 11 hours.... I made big progress on the title image. The text, sky, water, and stats are done. The vertices for the platform, 3 seats, and the elemental master are done. Textures, lighting, the characters, and other decals remain. I found FF8 while looking for dad's XP disk. FF9 remains elusive. Doing stuff for mom's workplace followed. I originally was going to bed at 3:10 AM, but the battery was too low, mysteriously. Woke up at 11:23 AM and went to bed at 4:19 AM.
Nov 25: Great! Just wonderful! Use a formula that causes curves and all trouble starts.... I was doing the bricks part until I noticed that the vertices were forming curves instead of a straight line. I have to redo all of that, now using the one I know works, the one without the "atan" in it. On top of that, I used the wrong image size. 1462x2700 was what I had (1462x2400 intended earlier), but it needed to be 1838x2775 instead (for 300 dpi). This only resulted in a minor redo. It's the cover image, not the title. The upside is that I can get up closer to the action. These were only found until late in the day. Working on the image and some TV dominated the day. Woke up at 2:56 PM and went to bed at 7:33 AM.
Nov 26: The main scene is done - brick texture remains, but is 1/3 done. I encountered another problem that meant another redo of the text. The problem with the bricks is the huge number of vertices needed, 1800, ignoring the seats. I've got 2 shortcuts used, one in my spreadsheet, the other, halving the time, is in the image. The perspective effects are better than I thought. I may have a 5-month release delay - submit to copyright and wait for the certificate. Woke up at 4:08 PM and went to bed at 6:04 AM.
Nov 28: Construction stuff woke me up twice. Eat Hamburger Helper (no turkey - meat - yuck). A game of Yahtzee was played followed by UNO, the latter being my favorite. I returned to the bricks and finished 5 hours later, plus another hour for the wire frame. I especially like the 5 closest bricks, the closest the best. I started the shadows - 3 seats are done. The shadow for Knuckles remains and this is the toughest one. Not only does it cover the floor, it also covers the side of left seat. It is also much more complex in shape as well, thanks to curves and numerous vertices. Lighting and the final output still remain, both easy. Woke up at 4:41 PM and went to bed at 8:18 AM.
Nov 29: 2 dreams in one night, is that a Thanksgiving bonus? I've finished everything but the lighting. I hit a snag. I need a formula for getting the slope and heading from areas on a sphere/ellipsoid. I still made progress in another area - the stats windows. A small design change, 2 fixes (one needed on all - a grammar error (Are proper nouns capitalized? Last I checked, they are.)), a new feature, and an enhancement on an existing feature. Woke up at 5:40 PM and went to bed at 8:53 AM.
Nov 30: Spheres, check. Ellipsoids, no check. I struggled a bit until I did some simulations in my mind. With a top-down view, things were screwy. With a side view, it was easy. Side also has an added bonus - finer resolution with no change in effort (except that more time is needed). The elemental master uses zones of just 3° so there's 1800 visible blocks. The top ones are slow - they're crammed very close together with skips. Toward the bottom, it's fast due to only ambient light being used. Without what I need for ellipsoids, lighting on Knuckles' head is not possible. Woke up at 7:39 PM and went to bed at 10:08 AM.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Year 2010: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December

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

Year 2012: Yet to arrive....

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

	Extremely major event / Very good day
	Extremely major event / Very good day
	Major event / Good day


	Somewhat major event / Somewhat good day


	Normal event / Average day


	Somewhat minor event / Somewhat bad day


	Minor event / Bad day


	Extremely minor event / Very bad day
	Extremely minor event / Very bad day

Footnotes:
None