Note: image not yet created
What do you do behind the scenes when you update your website?
Last updated: Sep 27, 2006
1 The system and preparation
1.1 Short history of the system
My dream journal has been running for several years and since around mid or late 2004 has it really taken off. There have been several category splits (originally just two categories) and new features added. Through the time, I've developed techniques to increase my chances of recalling a dream and recalling more details. One dream, featuring the Amazon, a strange ship, and a weird water area, has the greatest known detail of recalling the scenery. Before I started using these techniques, such high level accuracy was almost unheard of. I may have only gotten 20 to 40% of a whole page in details. It's now more common to have 2/3 of a page of detail than 1/3 of a page from earlier due to my refined techniques.
1.2 Getting the details
1.2.1 Getting the major details
When I go to bed at night, I always have some nightlight turned on. In bed, I write down the days' events and leave the paper and several pencils nearby. When I wake up and have a dream recalled, I first note the time I wake up, usually about 20 to 30 minutes after I actually wake up, then start writing the date the dream occurred and begin by writing the major details down. This is how I may start the details on paper for a moderately well-recalled dream:
"Three parts - school with a muddy basement, a trip to Colorado without seeing any mountains, gliding through town with river fun at end; // [details start here]"
By having this I can tell that the dream actually had three parts. When I later forget one of the major parts, I can read through this which will spark my memory again. What this means is that the first part, usually the beginning of the dream (unless I don't recall the order), was where I was in a school that had a muddy basement. Mud and basements seem to be together quite commonly in my dreams (You can see this in the mud dreams category on my dream journal.). The second part was that I was on a trip to Colorado without having seen any mountains when you normally would. The third part, usually the end of the dream if it's the last one (unless I don't recall the order), was where I was using my glide ability as commonly depicted in my mind game (and my 2D game) and getting around town using it. I later have fun in a river at the end. The part of having fun in the river since it's still part of the third part, is seemlessly integrated. This is already enough details for the dream to be 15% in tact.
1.2.2 Writing the full details
I then start writing down the details of the dream after the "//" in a story-like way. Unlike what you see on my website, there are some differences in the written version than posted on my website. The written version is much more messy with things scratched out, details left out that I insert, markings for adding many more details, and a few other things. The version on my website is otherwise a cleaned up version and much more organized. There are some other differences, but only minor things. The most common is that, rather than a period at the end of a sentence, because the dot is otherwise so hard to see, I use a semicolon. When I make a mistake, I scratch it out (I almost never use pencil erasers), then correct it using the open space above the line. I use wide-ruled paper which allows for this. Occasionally, I leave out a detail or some details. I put a little, "^" at the bottom, a proofreading mark indicating to add something, then add the new details as needed. When I leave out several details that I know I can't fit on one line, I use my website's footnote system and jot the details at the very top of the page where there aren't any lines. It would look something like this:
"At the start of the dream, I recall being in a school; Although I don't recall the layout of the classroom, there were about 20 desks; The classroom had little in the way of walls; Students were telling me (and others?) about a secret in the basement of the school; I don't recall how I got to the basement nor what things were along the way, but when I got there, I saw a ^flat, brown surface; When I got there I stepped in it and found that it was mud; ^It was dark; I liked the feel of it and I went in deeper; I went in waist deep ^at the maximum where I continued walking around; There were 3 4 rooms in the basement, seemingly in a diamond shape*; When I entered one of the rooms, I saw some textbooks, including answer keys that appeared seemed a bit old; [and so on]"
1.2.3 The writing format style
These details are written on the right side of the left red line. I continue on to the edge of the page and when I doubt a word can fit on the rest of the row, I move it onto the next line. I don't use any paragraphs and I try to prevent wasting paper as much as possible (although I do recycle it). Rarely, I include simple drawings. These drawings are always on the far left edge and most commonly as maps. Sometimes, they can be somewhat well-detailed, but at other times, they lack detail. I mark the letters A, B, C,... to indicate the various key areas and place the legend on the bottom of the map. I generally have 2 legend entries per line meaning I could have 53 entries per line at the maximum rather than the usual 26. I isolate it by drawing borders around it. On the left side of the left red line, I note that this was a dream (to distinguish from the daily entries) and the day the dream occurred. I may write the day as Mar 24 on my daily entries, but the dream could be noted as Mar 23. The daily entries bases it on the times I'm awake and where most of that time lies. If I wake up at 9:00 PM on Mar 23 and go to bed at 11:40 AM on Mar 24, the day for the daily entries will be Mar 24, but if I recall a dream when I woke up, the dream would be noted as occurring on Mar 24. Although rare, I may wake up at 12:10 AM on, say, Jul 18, but still have the dream noted for Jul 17.
1.2.4 At the end
After I write the details down, I figure out what category it would go in. I note this below the date of occurrance. This helps bring up my motive, slightly, for editting the dream journal as it helps speed it up. That way, I don't have to read through the dream again to find out what file I need to open. I put the most likely one on top with less likely ones below it. If "other" is on the list, likely in the case of this dream fitting several categories, I state the reason why I think it goes in the "other" category. After this, I continue on with my day. It can take even two hours to write down all the details for a well-recalled dream. Sometimes, my mind drifts off involuntarily (without me trying to do it) and when this ends, I may forget what I was doing and it takes about a half second or so to resume. Sometimes even five or ten minutes may have passed when it seemed like no time has. This causes other problems for me as well in other activities. This dream depicted above hasn't actually occurred - it's just an example to explain how I do it. A few days later, it'd be time to update my website and I'd then be adding these details to my dream journal.
1.2.5 When two dreams are recalled in one night
I have about a 1 in 15 chance or so of having a night with at least one recalled dream where I recall two dreams in one night. So far, I have not yet had a case where I've had three dreams recalled in one night. I have had a case (or two) where I've had two consecutive days with two dreams recalled in one night, the closest, by probablistic odds, to having three in one night. The system for having three dreams recalled in one night should be the same as that for two, only with a few differences. When I have two dreams recalled in one night, the first thing I do is take note of the major details, writing the date of occurrance for one dream (as the other(s) would very likely be the same). The first dream gets the details first within the main page with the second dream following behind with the details put in the large white space at the top of a page. When the major details are done, I begin writing the details of the first dream in the same fashion. When that dream is done, I write the details for the second dream starting the same way. If I ever do get three dreams recalled at night, I'd start the third one after the second one.
1.3 Preparing the dream journal
Preparing the dream journal is quite easy. When adding a dream, I first look at the category it belongs to and open the file with the highest page number for that category. If it was a water dream and I had four files, "water01.shtml", "water02.shtml, "water03.shtml", and "water04.shtml", I'd open the "water04.shtml" file. This indicates page four of the water category, or dreams 31 through 40. If the last dream on that file ends in a zero (such as 3-40 or 3-130 (when I get that far)), before doing anything, I go to file > save as to save the file under a new name, "water05.shtml" in this case. If I did save under a new name, I delete the other 9 dreams below it leaving just that one. If otherwise, I go to the bottom and add the dream accordingly.
When I add a dream, I first have a setup in the way you see in the screenshot above. In my case here, it was a dream in the exploration category. Since the last dream added didn't end in a zero (11-59 does not end in a zero), I started with the usual header details. For the statistics bar, to keep consistancy, I copy it from another dream and delete all the numbers. I insert the date since that is very straight forward. I don't include the stats as I don't know what they are at the moment. Before I start adding the details for the dream, this is what I see. This screenshot was taken two days after the screenshots in the previous page due to some delay (see the blog around Aug 16, 2006 for the reason).
2 Adding a dream
2.1 Adding the details
From the rather messy, written version, I type up the details of the dream. During this time, I may recall additional details not written down, the most common of which are the scenery. I place in the notes, add-ins, form paragraphs, even insert some images. From my numerical notes in my mind when looking at my hand-drawn maps or diagrams, I can quite precisely replicate it. By turning artwork into a series of numbers, I can more accurately replicate it. I still don't have the stats filled in yet, but now having the dream fresh in my mind again, I can give the stats.
2.2 Supplying the stats
Originally, I had no stats for the dreams. I then added some stats and later went even deeper in depth. These stats help give a "feel" for the dream to add more to it. The less recalled a dream is, the less precise they'll be first with question marks and when so well-forgotten, even X's. X's are most common on the story as it's sometimes entirely forgotten and thus no rating is even possible. The system uses the old 0 to 1000 compatibility system rather than the "times better than neutral" system which is easier to understand and seemingly even more precise.
Because the fun rating for this dream was 8 or higher, I add exclamation points to it. 8 means 25 times better than neutral rather high. 9, being 100 times better than neutral is 4 times better and would have 2 exclamation points. 9.5 is 400 times better than neutral has 3. See the dream journal's start page for a more in depth look at the question marks and exclamation marks and under what circumstances they're used.
2.3 Moving to a better category
Occasionally, after having read the dream again, I may move it to another category after typing it. In this case, the cause was because the fun rating was very high. Because of this, it should actually belong in the fun dreams category. Dreams with a fun rating of 8 or higher belong here. Those with 7.5 may also go here only if another category doesn't fit too well (such as fitting multiple categories very well, a common reason). I change the dream number to suit this. I move it by copying the whole dream details from the source (the exploration dreams category) and pasting it to the target (the fun dreams category). I don't delete it from the original source until the copy is successfully completed and saved. I do this for safety reasons as, if it doesn't copy properly, then I'd have to type everything all over again.
2.4 Updating the dream count stats
To you, you see the root page of the dream journal with all the total dream counts as large and colored text. To me, I don't see this color stuff nor formatting, rather, I look at the formatting code. Where does the color array system come from? There is a formula used to cycle through the hues. 360° makes a full circle. From the start, there are ten other steps. The hue jumps by 36° each step and by applying my formulas for this, I get this color array. White is all colors in one (when you split white light through a prism, you can get all colors) and since the total dream count is all the dreams from all categories, I used white. In the screenshot above, you can see just how I update the dream counts. I first highlight the character of the total dream count to increase the count by one. I do this right after adding a dream. I then increase the count for the dream of the category I added it to, the fun dreams in this case. Lastly, at the bottom of the recent additions list, I add the dream's number for quick reference.
2.5 Creating new pages
When I need to add a dream where there are already ten on that page (the one's digit is a zero), I save the file under a new name adding one to the page count. The above screenshot shows you what I mean by this. The next dream I'm trying to add belongs in the video game dreams category but the last available page already has a full ten dreams. Note the page number at the end. The old file, "videogame06.shtml" is now being saved under "videogame07.shtml". Upon this, I delete all but the top one leaving only the statistics bar and the dream title header. I then enter the details for the dream as usual which gives me this:
2.6 Very detailed dreams
When a dream is so well-recalled, usually 80% in tact and above, they are placed in the stories category. Before even doing so, I type all the details in the actual place where the dream is noted in my dream journal. This dream is so well-recalled, I can't fit the whole thing on my huge 1600x1200 display and would take two screens at a 1280x1024 resolution, the next lower common resolution (3 for 1024x768, the next lower one). This is about typical for a dream 98% in tact. Much above 80% in tact is quite rare. By having the dream typed up in full with a pointer to it set as needed, I make the summary for it. Here, now that the dream is described as best as I can, I'm beginning to add the summary to it. Do you see anything missing though? If you don't, look at the statistics bar toward the right. Where's the exclamation marks at?
Like when it comes to adding another page to the dream journal when ten dreams are present in the current highest page for a category, I save an existing story under another file name. Unlike with adding another page for the dream journal, there are more changes I need to do besides just pasting the story in here (and removing the old story). One of which is changing the title of the page, something I sometimes forget to do (and thus, if you see two unidentical or unrelated pages with the same title, let me know and I'll look into it). Another change is the introduction.
2.7 Updating the link index
On the webpage, you see a bunch of links at the bottom to get you between the various dreams. On that same file, I don't see these links anywhere. If you haven't noticed that, where they appear to be on the page is where an include is. The include is used to help with the redundancy. That way, rather than having to edit every single page to add a new link or page, which could take a half an hour with 50 pages to edit, or, I could just edit one file and have it included on all pages that use it. Here, in the screenshot above, I've opened the included file, copied something and I'm ready to change the copied content to fit the change from the addition of a new page to the dream journal. You can see that there are two links that point to "videogame06.shtml". By changing the 6 in the second one to a 7 then making the neccessary adjustments to the ranges of the previous page and the new one (6 would become 51-60 for the range and 7 would become 61-latest).
Up next, we'll learn how I create images for various things.
Introduction
Editting the headlines of the blog
Editting the dream journal
Creating images
Adding the daily blog entries
Final touchups before uploading
Uploading and testing
Footnotes:
None
