1 History

1.1 The origins

Although this blog seems to only date back to late October of 2004, the history dates back a lot further. From the best of my knowledge, it dates back to late 2003 or early 2004. At first, it was in the my history page, but then I lost interest and motive in adding to that. Not much later, the blog was found on the main index and it officially began. This, however, posed some disadvantages. The main one was that the blog was cluttering up the index page as sometimes news entries got very long. I had to delete old entries to prevent this from happening.

1.2 The modern form

1.2.1 The original version

I also had it so that there were ten entries per page as with most of my other paginated documents, but seeing how this would work in the long run proved that this is a bad idea. In normal blogs, the most recent entries were on the top. I had to go in the reverse order as, if I added another entry, it would mean lots of opening up files, copying, and pasting and far in the future this would not only cause me to do a lot of extra work (about an hour's worth for about 80 pages or so), it would drastically cause me to lose my motive to doing the blog. Plus, pagination in the old way was also unclear on how the dates were managed. Far in the future, if someone clicked on page 27, for example, they would have no idea what dates page 27 covered.

1.2.2 The second version

I then had the idea of having the dates displayed and having the navigation done by the month and year instead of the page count. This helped significantly. First, when the month changed, all I had to do was just save the current file under another name and edit away. I have no need for excessive copying and pasting among the pages when adding a new entry and this means I could add entries in the traditional way a blog is done in. I didn't think about this for quite a long time.

1.2.3 The third version

Then, I had the concept of color-coding entries. The color-coding was to indicate how "major" an event or day was. The day-by-day entries were split from the main entries to be based on the month as is (that is, entries from March may appear in April as it was based on the updates on my website). As of Oct 5, 2005, this is the current version.

2 The layout

At the top part of each blog entry, you'll see the headlines. At the bottom, you'll see the day-by-day events. A typical format would look like this:

(Section number) date

Date: Significant events in a summarized form are here.
#1 First headline: Content of first headline (a major event).
#2 Second headline: Content of second headline (an unsignificant event, but considerable; and so on).

Daily events:

Mon 1: First day of the month general details (a dull day).
Mon 2: Second day of the month general details (an average day, neither boring nor fun; and so on).

Date navigation (links between months and years)

2.1 The headlines

2.1.1 The format

Headlines are the more significant events (or events with a lot of details) that have occurred between updates. The more significant the event, the more toward the red end of the spectrum it gets (and rarely white for extremely major events). The headlines have a simple format:

#1 Headline title/summary: Headline content and details follow.

2.1.2 Format description

The title/summary is the important part. The color coding tells how significant the event is and what the event was about. You'll rarely see any blues or uncolored text in here as these would be rather minor to really be a headline. The "#1" at the beginning indicates the headline number. This is sometimes referenced to so it comes in handy.

The headline content is, well, the content of the headline. Sometimes these passages can get rather long as they're usually loaded with details. If lots of details are needed or mentioned, a footnote is placed at the end of the news entry (end of the section).

2.2 The day-by-day events

2.2.1 The format

The day-by-day events, also referenced as "daily events" is what has been going on on each day. These entries are usually a lot shorter than a headline and give general details about the day by day events. The more significant of events that have happened on the day, the more toward the red end of the spectrum it gets (and rarely white). The format isn't much different from a headline:

Date: What happened on this day follow.

2.2.2 Format description

The date relates to the month and day of the year in focus. It is normally in the format where the first three letters of the month's name is given followed by the day number. A short description follows. If a particular day has a lot involved, it'll likely end up as a headline with a pointer to the headline index like "See headline #4 on Feb 17 for details" which tells you to read headline number 4 in the February 17 update.

2.3 Navigation and footnotes

Unlike my other pages, the footnotes are found within the news entries themselves and don't point to references such as the Status System, mind game, dreams, etc.. They only pertain to special notes in a particular blog entry.

At the very bottom of a page, you'll find date navigation links. Click on them to change dates to read past entries. Clicking on the "-1 year", "+2 years", etc. are time jumps where you go back one year or go forward two years from the current month and year the page is on. That is, if you were on March 2005 and clicked on the "+2 years" link, you'll jump to March 2007.

The footnotes area at the bottom is only used for the day-by-day events area and very rarely anything else.

3 Blog FAQ

This FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) relates to only the blog. The main FAQ page applies to the whole website in general.

3.1 The great detail

Q. Most blogs don't seem to have much detail in them, but your blog has ten times as much. Why?
A. Memory. I have such a hard time remembering things and I'd like to keep a log on what's been going on lately. Within just 1 day even, virtually 95% of the day's events have been forgotten. If I want to know what has happened on a particular day or to find out just how my sleep-wake cycle is, how often I take showers or go out of the house, I'll know just by using my blog.

3.2 Remembering details

Q. If you have such great details and only update once every ten days, this doesn't add up.
A. Paper and pencil are my friends. Every day when I go to bed, I write down the day's details to the best of my ability. Then, when it comes to updating my website, I usually have 4 or 5 pages (front and back, 7 to 10 sides) of writing to copy. I almost copy the details exactly as they were in my notes. In my notes, however, I use a slightly different format, mainly to shorten it up a bit. Instead of periods at the end of sentences, I use semicolons, ;, which are more readily noticed. Of these pages, about half to one third of it is from details on my recalled dreams so I can later add them (copying from my notes). I had to end up buying a pack of pencils just so I could do this. This started, from the best of my ability, sometime around late February or during March.

3.3 Skipping days

Q. Why do you sometimes seem to skip a day like going from Mar 7 to Mar 9 without Mar 8 included?
A. This pertains to my ever-shifting sleep-wake cycle (section 2 covers details about it). If you were to read through the day-by-day events section, you can tell when I go to bed. It shifts by roughly 25 hours every time. 25 hours is more than a full day. I get almost the same amount of sleep (from 9 to 11 hours with rare exceptions being noted) every day. The about me category (category 4) explains more on this. When I mention a day, it's based on when I wake up and go to bed. If I'm awake from, for example, 4:30 PM (on March 7) to 7:00 AM (on March 8), then wake up at 5:20 PM (on March 8) and go to bed at 8:30 AM, I'll have this jump. Since I was awake for most of the day on March 7 when I wake up that day, the log goes for March 7. Since I'm awake more on March 9 than on March 8 after waking up, the log will go for March 9 instead. If I went just one day at a time, it may be the start of 2006 but the dates will only show that it's only the start of December of 2005. This just compensates for this.

3.4 Updated on day X, but no daily entry

Q. You state that the website was updated on November 18, but there is no entry in the daily section for that day and sometimes the day before. Why?
A. Until the day is complete, it will not be available to be added on. When my website is updated, the day is not fully completed yet (haven't gone to bed yet where I write down what happened for that day). The time of the update is based on the very moment I finish updating my website and begin uploading everything through my FTP program. If I'm into the night shift, where my expected bedtime is like 3:00 AM, it could very well be updated on November 18, but have no entry for it or November 17. This also has part to do with the question in section 3.3 directly above. Take note of the time of the updates and the last entry in the daily section and you'll see this relationship. There may be, however, odd exceptions to this, although they are very rare.

3.5 "Cleaning out the forums"

Q. You often state "clean out the forums". What do you mean by this?
A. Almost every day I visit the forums. See here for details. When I "clean out the forums", that simply means that I go through my most frequented sections of the forum and read any new threads replying to them as neccessary. When I go through all frequented sections and there's nothing new (if there is, I "reclean" them), then the forums are "cleaned out". This applies to the two main forums I frequent most. Rarely visited forums don't count. A forum is "cleaned out" when there's nothing new for your favorite sections. Once this state has been reached, I then do other computer-related things such as checking my E-mail.

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Footnotes:
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