Time Study

UPDATE 2 - Well, after a few weeks of testing my next theory, I've confirmed that, at least in my shoes, it works. That is...

After initially going to sleep, we begin a sleep cycle that begins very lightly, and proceeds through four more phases, ending on the heavy, dreaming, REM cycle. Every 90 minutes the human body begins a new sleep cycle, meaning roughly even 90 minutes we come out of REM sleep and enter a light sleep.

Although a solid 8 hours or so of rest a night is key to building up lots of energy, I found that by waking up after a full 90 minute sleep cycle (when I'm sleeping the lightest), I feel my best right out of bed.

So do I prefer groggy, tired, sluggish Brandon, or perky, alert, easy-going Brandon? The answer is obvious, and by sleeping for amounts of time that are divisible by 90 minutes, I can wake up feeling very refreshed, even if I slept only a mere 4.5 hours.

I typicallay aim for 7.5 hours, but if that isn't achievable (like tonight for example), I aim for a cool 6 hours of sleep. Seems to strike a balance between regenerating myself and getting things done at night...

Forever

It's Thursday.

Tammi died yesterday at the age of 30, taken from us by cystic fibrosis.

This summer has officially been labeled as my worst summer ever.

I will miss her eternally.

Inspiration

I'm a hollow, boring, dead man when I lack inspiration.

Growing up, roughly between the ages of ten and sixteen, I lived a world all my own, where my own inspiration came from deep inside my imagination. Daily happenings, movies, pictures, and nature were all source of inspiration for me. I would go to bed every night, reflecting on the day and my nightly dreams would bend and twist my world into colorful alterations.

What happened when I turned 16? Girls happened, mostly... I never really defined this moment, as I've always liked girls, but 16 was when I met one girl who I fell in love with pretty fast. Yes, her...

And all is good. Despite all the hard times we have been, are going, and will go through, I do truly love Lacey with all my heart. I should not let petty emotions get in our way. "Anger is just a temporary emotion," after all.

But back to my original point: since the age of sixteen, my inspiration has been on a steady decline, and I'm afraid that my latest "rut" of laziness may be more persistent than I'm used to. Oh, and I have no will to be creative. It's just not me, dammit. I'm Brandon Bruno... I've always been a creative person, from my Mario Paint Cartoons, to my 6th grade artwork, to my photography, to my Photoshopping, webpage design, programming, game modding -- I will die if I lose my creativity, and without inspiration, I can't be creative. HELP ME!!!

Part of why this is so bad... I can start a project (Meltdown, anyone?), but not finish it, mainly due to a lack of creativity, inspiration, dedication, and time. I can make time, I can focus to dedicate, and I can seek inspiration... but I can't be promised it'll come to me everytime, and lately, it hasn't.

It's easy to blame girls for all this... I spend most of my day thinking about/obsessing over the same girls over and over, and the last six years of my life have been about one girl. Now that I feel like I'm being forced to fill my mind with things other than Lacey (she's at a point in life where she needs to diversify to make sure she knows what she wants), I can't focus on being me, and by being me, I mean creative.

I'm considering taking a mini-vacation away from my house and Northwest Ohio in general this coming August -- perhaps driving out west for a few days to get away, see some of America, and free my mind from what I love and capture that which I miss -- the genuine creative mind that I once called my best friend.

The Fruits of Life

In the quiet, lonely hour of one, almost two in the morning, I sit and ponder my life from a slightly-drunken stooper. I'm not quite at the point of no return, and I don't yet even see that tunnel.

Yet somehow, I think that the ones I love the most are distancing themselves from me the most.

Not again...

Welcoming Party

Not only is this my first major post in nearly two weeks, but it's also my 200th post. I recall hitting the 100 mark back in the winter of this year. Here comes 300, eh?

Where to start?

Girls? Work? Games? How about... school.

My online class is killing me. Two essays, two discussion boards, and a group discussion are due every week, which doesn't sound like much until you add in my 8 to 4:30 shifts at Meijer four days a week that take me away from the class a lot. Just look at how many posts are in this blog in the past three weeks.... I rest my case.

Next up: work: Meijer sucks.

Third: Games: Hurray!!! I've rediscovered the fine art of gaming. Not necessarily the beauty of games or the stories some provide... but the art of five-hour Oblivion sessions, blowing through Half-Life 1, and kicking ass on Day of Defeat (and Sourse). I can get lost in the perfect fantasy world of Oblivion, tear-up at the longing memories from Black Mesa, and still scream like a little girl when I make that perfect headshot in Day of Defeat.

Next up? I'll be returning to ZSNES (Super Mario RPG, anyone?) one last time before I consider putting it to rest until the Wii hits this year... we all know the big games from the SNES days will be on the Virtual Console...

And that leaves girls...

I wish I could say something about girls. Right now there is so much on my mind... too much, in fact. I can't even organize it into logical thoughts. I like Lacey (duh!), I'm tired of her thinking men suck (double duh), and I want to be happy without faking it... it's not easy...

I think I'm taking some time off soon...

Finding Time

I promise I'll find the time to update soon... it's been a crazy with, with Meijer keeping me by the neck, my online class going so-so, and my own mind going in all directions with school, life, and girls...

The good news is, I have lots to say...

Now if I only had the time to say it all...

Yay!

Next week is Aryn's 21st birthday... YAY!!!!

Tests Complete

For those in the tech-know, here are the recent 3DMark 2001 SE benchmarks I ran. See the previous post for why I have these benchmarks up.

1024 x 768 (all default settings)
17505 marks

1024 x 768 (4xAA)
13135 marks

1600 x 1200 (all default settings, otherwise)
12024 marks

1600 x 1200 (4xAA)
7471 marks

Fun, ain't it?

Crazy Bitch...

I must not be as computer-smart as I thought I was.

Since my gaming PC is hooked up to my sister's super-ancient Gateway monitor, I've decided to try out some of my prettiest games on it. You see, I purchased a 19" Envision flatscreen monitor for my PC. It is, in short, a piece of shit. Fuzzy center graphics, a faked flat screen, and distorted geometry at all corners make it a 45-pound paperweight to me. The Gateway monitor, from 1997, mind you, is a super-nice 17" near-flatscreen monitor that is capable of putting out 1600 x 1200 resolution at 75 Hz.

I wanted to load up Half-Life 2: Episode One and try seeing how sharp I could get things running. On my AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 1.8 GHz machine, I typically run the game at 1024 x 768, 32-bit color, with most settings, minus textures, at HIGH. Textures are always set to MEDIUM quality. I knew, absolutely without a doubt, that setting this game to 1600 x 1200 would bring framerates to the single digits, as my Radeon X700, 256MB (128-bit) video card just isn't the fastest out there.

What the hell is going on here? My computer is tearing through Half-Life 2 at those settings with a cool 70 FPS average. Thing is, this is the same framerate I'm achieving at 1024 x 768. I even bumped textures up to HIGH quality at the max resolution of 1600 x 1200. Again, 70 FPS average.

What does this say about my rig? I guess a gig of DDR-400 memory helps things, but I'm beginning to think I'm under-rating my GPU, and greatly over-rating my CPU, which is currently overclocked to a steady 2.2 GHz.

How high can I go? I'll be taking official benchmarks with 3DMark 2001 and re-evaluating the overall power of my rig soon enough.

Time Study

UPDATE 1 -- Last night was a bit of an experiment for me. I'm typically one to get a good night's rest: seven or eight hours minimum, in one big chunk of time. Last night I split my time up: I napped from 7:30pm to 9:00pm, then scooted off to the bars by 10:30pm. I arrived home around 2:00am, and was asleep for the night by 2:15am (my rough guess).

How did getting less than five hours of sleep in one chunk affect me today?

I was a lot more tired for the first half of my day, which is, quite frankly, a miserable feeling... saggy eyes, weak muscles, and constant hunger.

What did this do for my perception of time? Did my day yesterday seem longer? Was the fatigued feeling I had today worth the extra hours out?

The short answers: in perception, my day didn't seem much longer, especially since I lost the time I was napping between seven and nine. And as for the crappy, yucky feeling in my body all morning long... well, tonight I'm getting nine hours of sleep to make up for it.

Next up for study? Video games and perceived time.