Good writer’s way happy happy (morning).

So I had a dream that my young cousin was a doctor. She took a phone call from a patient when she was visiting our house. She momentarily set the phone down and pretended to have a conversation with a colleague.

When I dream about my house, it’s never the house I live in now. It’s always the house I grew up in. Strange.

Then in the same dream, I looked out the front window and in the driveway was an RV. My RV that I live out of! It was my actual real world dream, manifesting in a sleeping dream. It had a bed, a kitchenette, and was nice and dry inside even though it was pouring rain in the dream.

I’m still half asleep. I’m probably not making much sense.

Foo roo doe alpha hat ninja tortoise ballzack.

I went to sleep at 8 or 9PM last night. So this morning I was tossing and turning a bit. Rested, yet not wanting to get up because my circadian rhythm says it’s not time to get up yet.

I programmed my heater for once. Lately I’ve just kept it on the defaults. The clock didn’t match up to the actual time at all. It would be cold sometimes and I’d just manually adjust the temperature.

So yesterday I actually set the clock on my thermostat. And I programmed some sensible temperatures into the device.

7:10AM the heat comes on and gets the temperature up to 72 deg F. I noticed it was pretty cold this morning, but I was getting out of bed when the heater was really cranking out some heat. This made getting out of bed very nice and comfy.

I have an app on my phone called Suntimes. It lists the sunrise and sunset times of every day. It also has a feature to create an alarm synchronzied to the sunrise. Very cool. I’m trying it out, and seeing if my body will appreciate waking up with the sunrise every day.

Being in synch with the sun seems like a nice way to live. It’s probably not so good for if I had a job that required being at work at a certain time every day. But who wants that type of job? If I can engineer my own life, I’d like to live job free. Sure, I have to make money somehow, but I’d like to do that using a method that doesn’t feel like work.

I have a good routine in mind. It’s the routine I’ve been struggling to implement, but a routine I’ve been following regardless of time.

It goes like this. Wake up, write 2000 words. This can be writing a novel, or writing a diary. Or writing a howto article. It doesn’t even matter. Just write and express myself.

Next comes Japanese study. I’ve been using Duolingo lately, but any study method is acceptable. About 15 minutes is my goal right now. In the future I can always adjust this.

Next is exercise. I like to exercise on an empty stomach. My regimen as of late is to simply walk for 1 hour. I usually augment this with an extra workout of some kind. I wrote about this a few posts back so I’ll abstain from repeating myself here.

Next comes hygeine. Shower, shave, brush teeth. In the past I have often skipped shaving every day. My new routine demands that I do not skip shaving. It just keeps me more busy, more focused, and more ready to go out if I decide to do so.

Next comes work. This is where I put exercise my passion of web development. Right now I’m working on personal projects. I’d like to expand my workload to include projects which earn me money. I’m not sure how to accomplish this. Ideally, I’d simply work on my personal projects which are deployed to production, and solicit paying subscribers.

I have a fear of launching an app to production, and having people subscribe. I don’t want people to be dependent on me. I don’t want to commit to the maintenance of the app. This is something I need to overcome.

Additionally, I’d like to think that I can market my skills and offer them to people who are willing to pay for my expertise. I don’t want to get into this if I can avoid it, as I would like to be my own boss and choose my own projects. We’ll see. If I get an opportunity to work for someone, that I think is a perfect job for me and will be mutually beneficial, I’ll jump on the opportunity.

After several hours of work, I eventually get hungry. I’m a fan of cyclic fasting, which means eating the entire day’s food rationing during one part of the day. I like to wait until the afternoon to eat, then I’ll eat once or twice more during the evening.

It’s important that I don’t eat too late in the evening. If I do that, my stomach is too full and I won’t sleep.

Anyway, cheap food is the best. I’m a rice and beans kind of guy. My favorite thing to make is curry. I should make pizza again. I have been craving a good pizza!

I have read that people who are the top in their class when it comes to their field of expertise, often don’t work many hours in a day. On average, they have two separate work sessions per day, and the rest of the day is dedicated to keeping themselves well. I think I should buy the book that explains this phenomenon in detail, and incorporate some of those things into my life.

Just reading the synopsis of that book (or was it just an article??) was enough to get me thinking that way. It makes sense. People who are very good at what they do must have a good way of maintaining their skills, their body, and their mind.

Capitalism has changed the demands for workers. Workers must work longer hours for their companies to be at the top. Profits are what matter the most in big business.

This way of life is not good for people. I have experienced it at various full time jobs. It’s draining. I become exhausted in a single week.

So my idea is to do similar to the book or article explains. My mornings are dedicated to nurturing my health. Writing in my journal for my mental health. Studying Japanese for my future goals. Exercising for my physical health. Hygiene for a mixture of mental and physical health.

Then comes a 3 hour work period, which I am refreshed and energized for. I break to prepare and eat lunch. After eating, I jump back into work for another 3 hours or so. After working on code for this long, my mind usually slows down, and I stop being as efficient. It is at this point where it’s good to call it quits for the day.

After these two work periods, it’s best to chill out. Any continued work after the point of diminishing returns just stresses me out. As I have learned in recent weeks, stress has an physically intoxicating effect, and it comes with a hangover-like feeling. It’s best to stop work early and do something fun for the remainder of the day.

It’s good to eat after work, and then switch to YouTube or Project Diva. Social activities would be good during this time as well.

Speaking of Project Diva, I cleared the Project Diva X campaign on easy! Very nice feeling. Too easy though, that’s for sure. I have to say, the medleys in each cloud were my favorite part of the game. They are so rich sounding, they contain verses of the best songs, and they are so well charted!

Now I’m onto the hard campaign. From the start, Project Diva X campaign felt a little too easy. I don’t know if I’ve just become a lot better or the game, or if all skill levels on PDX was made to be slightly easier. Anyway, I would have played hard difficulty right off the bat if I could have, but hard must first become unlocked after playing through the campaign on easy.

So I’ve unlocked hard difficulty now. And let me tell you, hard is where the game begins! I played the cute medley on hard, and I was getting chills doing so. It’s that good! It was an incredible rush keeping up with the pace of the songs, and having the entire repertoire of buttons and button combos at my disposal. That’s the thing about easy. It only gives the player two different buttons to press during any given song. Cross and Circle, or Circle and Triangle.

The game devs limited the difficulty on normal by giving the player fewer buttons to worry about per song. That’s why HARD is so much better. There are all four buttons to press, including all their combos.

Oh, you don’t know the button combos? Allow me to explain!

I think I’m too lazy to explain. Or at least too lazy to explain with pictures.

Nah, I’ll explain with pics because it gives me an excuse to play PD in the morning!

It’s not worth playing in the morning! LOL I am too slow and sluggish right now. I tried Holy Lance Explosion Boy on hard and I could keep up with the song, but I wasn’t fast enough to take screenshots of certain things I wanted to capture. This is why I want a PlayStation TV! I can just record it live and later extract relevant frames, without having to worry about taking individual screenshots.

Also, what is up with Vita screenshots? Individual screenshots get shoved in a two letter folder by themselves. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why. Why not just put all the screenshots in the same folder, without the awkward two letter sub folders containing one screenshot each?

I don’t get it, but at least I’m grateful that the Vita can take screenshots.

Ok I’ll start of with regular targets. In the above image, you can see two crosses. On Playstation consoles, there is no, “X” as it’s often mistaken as. It’s a cross, not an x!

So we can see two cross targets. There is a little arrow on each target which spins in clockwise direction along with the beat. The corresponding cross button must be pressed when the arrow reaches the 12 o’clock position. That’s the ideal anyway. If you press it a little early, that’s okay, but you will get the most points if you hit the cross button when the arrow is at 12 o’clock.

There are also melody icons in the game, one per target. These are fun to look at, but they are somewhat of a distraction.

Dialing in my Project Diva terminology now! In the example above, there are two greyscale triangle targets. Flying in from the bottom is one green triangle melody icon. That melody icon will continue flying in until it matches up with it’s corresponding triangle target. It does this in synchronization with the target’s arrow. When the target arrow is at 12 o’clock, the melody icon will be in the same position as the target.

Newbies might focus on the incoming melody icon, and press the triangle button when it is directly atop the target. As I’ve played the game more, I’ve realized that a better thing to focus on is the arrow on the target itself. This helps me focus on which button I need to press. If I focus on melody icons, I often find myself pressing incorrect buttons because I’m distracted by a melody icon belonging to a future target.

Anyway, that’s my tip for being better at Project Diva. Focus on targets, not Melody Icons!

Next type of target is a hold. The below screenshot illustrates a cross hold target.

Hold targets have a colored outline to them, to differentiate them from regular targets. Below is an example of a triangle hold target, followed by three regular targets.

As you may have guessed, a hold target means the player must hold down the button for the duration of the trail. You can see on the target itself that there are two arrows instead of one. The first arrow indicates that the button should be pressed when it reaches 12 o’clock. The second arrow indicates that the button should be released when it reaches 12 o’clock.

These targets in the shape of arrows are called double targets. I think they can also be called arrow targets, but the game refers to them as doubles. There is a challenge item called, “double killer” which removes these targets, as they are often more difficult than regular targets to hit correctly.

They are called double targets because to correctly hit these targets, two buttons must be pressed simultaneously. For example, a blue double target requires pressing the down button on the d-pad, as well as the cross button. A pink double target requires pressing left and square at the same time.

The above screenshot is a bit cluttered, but if you focus on the targets, not the melody icons (with a W.) I don’t know why there are W’s on the melody icons, I’ll have to research this.

Anyway, if you focus on the targets, you can see from the arrows that the green double target is next, followed by pink, followed by blue. I can tell this because the arrows rotate clockwise.

The next type of target I wanted to talk about is a RUSH target. Unfortunately, I missed the note when I was rushing to screenshot it! A RUSH target is a target which acts like a regular target at first. The player must tap the corresponding button when the arrow reaches the 12 o’clock position. After hitting the note correctly, the target stays in place. RUSH targets have the word, “RUSH” below them, which tells the player that they must press that same button repeatedly as fast as they can! The more times the player is able to press that button, the more points they get!

Ok final target type is the star target. The star target has slightly different behavior in every Project Diva game, but in Project Diva X, nailing the star target means the singer on stage will transform into a new module! A very big and special event indeed.

And that’s it for now. Thanks for watching. Remember to like, comment and subscribe. And don’t forget to hit that notification bell so your phone can distract you at all hours of the day!

To finish off this post, I will list two more things I’m grateful for.

I’m grateful for the VOCALOID Discord channel. While I wrote this post, i asked what the W’s meant. I think I got a troll answer, “W for Wumbo.” LOL, they like to joke around sometimes.

I’m grateful for my computer speakers. They aren’t connected to my laptop at the moment because my laptop has some pretty good speakers built in, but I had the idea to play Project Diva connected to them last night, Boy, these speakers sound even better than my noise cancelling Sony MDR-ZX110NC headphones that I bought from a Best Buy vending machine at SLC Airport!

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. These headphones were only $50. I should only expect stellar audio from $300 headphones!

Anyway, I’m grateful for good sound while I play my favorite game.

Tata for now!