Journals

Lei Shi1 year ago2023-02-20 09:20:58 UTC 6 comments
我的英语能力无法支持和各位进行自由的交流,所以我的对话和评论的外语部分均来自翻译软件的翻译结果。我会把原话和翻译后的版本同时发布,通过这种方式尽可能的降低各位通过可能不准确的翻译结果产生的误会。请各位理解,谢谢。
My English skills do not allow me to communicate freely with you, so the foreign language portion of my conversations and comments comes from translation software. I will publish the original words and the translated version at the same time, in this way as far as possible to reduce the misunderstanding caused by inaccurate translation results. Please understand.
Dr. Orange1 year ago2023-02-18 12:24:28 UTC 4 comments
Roses are red,
violets are blue.
Today is the day
I become
Meerjel011 year ago2023-02-10 10:01:36 UTC 4 comments
Science Team
Le prison is a parkour level, that have's monsters in them (progressively),
Yeah, you have to do some platforming and also kill monsters, very original idea isn't it?
But yeah, this is going to be my first map that isn't a test map.
Or should I say, isn't only one map, yeah it is a multiple map project.
So, it's going to take me a long ass time.

No sneak peek today.

See you on my next journal!!
aqua30001 year ago2023-02-05 15:56:11 UTC 2 comments
I am getting the hang of map making, also i am making another map (one that doesn't only have a door, a crowbar, and a vent to break), it is a parkour map.

The map will have 10 levels!! (5 with the long jump)

Here's a little sneak peek of the map:
User posted image
See you on the next journal
Admer4561 year ago2023-01-26 21:34:18 UTC 10 comments
2 years ago, I proposed this silly little idea. TL;DR imagine if you could have a GoldSRC-like workflow but in a modern engine. After all, wouldn't it be a dream for some, to be able to make full-on games in a modern engine, without any of GoldSRC's limitations?

Note: This is aimed at gamedevs who 1) want to make games the way they make HL mods 2) want their games to be moddable out of the box

So, about 2 and a half years later, here I am, coming back to this idea.
I've sailed the seven seas, climbed all hills and mountains, grown, learned, made friends, contacts, partners, all kinds of things in the meantime. I've worked with various idTech engines and their respected forks, Unigine, CryEngine, Unreal Engine, Unity (almost got a job in this, well, almost), NeoAxis, Flax Engine, Source 2 even... none of it was really a good fit for my idea.

Unigine came the closest, honestly. Nonetheless, I, one day, decided to start writing an engine from scratch. Virtual filesystem, input system, windowing, console system with CVars and commands, plugin system, all kinds of systems. Worked on it for 13 months, and it got somewhere for sure.
User posted image
But then, something odd happened.

History repeats itself

Godot 4 alpha something came out with the claim that they merged .NET 6 to replace Mono. I like .NET more than Mono (it's what they use for C# scripting). I just had to check it out. After a couple nights recompiling stuff and messing with NuGet packages, I was able to get a working build with all tools. And it was LOVELY. I compiled it to try out modern C#, stayed for the UI system and all the flashy new toys they added, and most of all: volumetric fog.

I got absolutely mesmerised by it. I love fog. I love smoke. I love volumetrics in games. I fell in love with the thing. That + a few other things motivated me to consider rebuilding my engine on top of Godot, if that makes any sense. I then remembered the article I wrote over 2 years ago, and it is true what they say - history repeats itself.

And you know what? This time I actually have the skill, time and patience to actually do it! But FIRST, I needed to make sure it can actually even work.

Payback time

Do you know what's the purpose of a proof of concept?

The PoC, internally 'BodotPoc'The PoC, internally 'BodotPoc'
It proves a concept. It proves that the core idea can certainly work, and is worth prototyping. And that's exactly what you're looking at. This was a pile of code in a single Godot project, that could read Valve220 .map files, and let you move around. In the 2 weeks I programmed this thing, I learned a lot more about Godot than I did in the last 2 years.

After that, it was time to start working on the real thing.

This diagram here below, this architecture, is what gives me a great deal of convenience. I can work on the launcher, engine and games/plugins separately, without the need to re-export a Godot project if I just want to modify the "engine".

Plugin architecture overviewPlugin architecture overview
Now, before someone says "Ayo, what the HELL are you doing?", let me tell you this first: Godot is not just a game engine. It's a game engine, engine. Alright?

An engine engine. With Godot, you build your own workflow, you combine some things that you like and you use that unique combination of those things to make your game. My case is just a very special one.

In fact, here's a quote from one of their recent articles:
Godot, at its core, is and will always be (by design) a very general purpose game engine. This mean that the tools provided, while certainly capable, are still game neutral. The goal for Godot is to provide a great set of building blocks that can be used and combined to create more specialized game functions and tools.
(taken from Godot for AA/AAA game development - What's missing?)

I don't know about you, but I definitely see Godot this way. Maybe I'm more radical about it. Either way, I cannot think about making games, until I have a workflow that I truly love and am comfortable with. Godot gives me a foundation for that.

The dream

In the end, I just hope to have my dream come true: making games the way I make Half-Life mods.
And by that, I mean: making commercial games with modern technology, the way I make Half-Life mods, with modern tools and mostly without any of the bad parts of the workflow that make it incongruous.
  • I don't like the SMD+QC workflow, I just want to import a GLTF and be done with it. It is a reality we can have in HL modding even, and I'd like to write such a tool one day. It'd help beginners tremendously, I am certain in that.
  • I love the mapping workflow, but I'm not a fan of the BSP limitations. We're all very ambitious, and limitation breeds creativity... but not when that limitation is a few centimetres above your head. Can't even jump, let alone fly. Just look at AllocBlock or clipnodes. You don't want that in a modern engine, do you? An octree-based solution - as opposed to BSP - would fit this engine of mine, and even play with Godot 4's occlusion culling system pretty well.
There's several other things I could talk about, but these are the main two. Every modern engine I've worked with (except Source 2) basically had those 2 arguments up there flipped. The modelling workflow was great, mapping was not. Can I have the best of both worlds? Somehow, I convinced myself I indeed can.

At the moment

So, right now, we have:
  • a plugin system
  • a virtual filesystem with Source-style game mounting and folder structure
  • a console system
  • a placeholder game template that loads TB maps
Where we're at nowWhere we're at now

Folder structureFolder structure
What's missing is frankly a lot of stuff. Animated models, audio, networking, a main menu system, AI, mostly the need to build a proper game SDK, and flesh out parts of the engine. I have lots of ideas I want to experiment with, including entity components.

Here's a monthly breakdown:
March:
  • map compiler
  • interactive console from BTX
  • asset loading
April:
  • networking
  • more accurate Half-Life-style player movement
  • standard map entities
May:
  • material system
  • basic main menu
  • a bit of documentation
  • the first developer preview
And yeah, my engine project now has a name: Elegy.

Either way, I hope to get a little game demo out by June or July. I'll be reimagining my very first game project, so that will be fun.

Right now I gotta test Elegy on Linux, deal with college and all that other stuff. See ya until then. I may eventually create a website for this project so I don't have to post about it here all the time, though it is kinda nice.
This is continue of frustration and burnt out because of corrupted OS and windows update so.... here's the story

__18 October 2022_ ( I have to skipped 4 Days Because I Forgot What Situation I've been Encountered In Those Days. I Don't know)
I've been Quit HL Modding and Started to Re-Visited STALKER Anomaly because I realizing new update patch that came out few months ago so I decided to go checking out. I've become a boring gamer again

_20 October 2022_
Well When I playing STALKER Anomaly in 16:34 AM I Encountered some New Issue within the game after I quicksave. it turns into blackscreen for a moment and I got Panicked Then I Pressing the Power Button from my keyboard and hope this would not happen. then windows update "We could complete the updates.Undoing changes" come out of screen and it got me mad honestly.( I have no words to typed about this situation anymore because i forgot about this)

_22 October 2022_
Well s*** went happen again when I playing STALKER Anomaly, My screen turns black after quicksave and then blinking 2 times that i already on desktop I thought it can be happen forever luckily it only temporally and i also saw some error log That says out_of_memory but i'm still gonna play it but my mouse was laggy in main menu so i'm still going to play it and weird error log happen it has some LUA Error so I have to go Discord anomaly Tech-Support but after i sending it i got muted without any explanation, And I Realize how Toxic And Irresponsible STALKER Anomaly Community Are it Disgust me...oh well i'm still staying on the community

_26 October 2022_
I Encountered another issue again that came from amount of anomaly addons that i use through the game. the game just crashing without error log pops-up and then my desktop screen filled with the game when the game is already crashing then I Restarted the laptop to make this screen disappear. so i asked another tech support named Rascal He's actually friendly in the community. So I Asked

N-spy: Oh god. Using 1.5.2 DLTX mod just broke my background desktop after my game crashed
N-spy: Nah. It's something with your OS
Me: I Know my system already corrupted
Rascal: Sorry to hear that, if it is not hardware - re-install from scratch usually fixes stuff like that
Rascal: But you have to bring back files and settings, spend tome
Rascal: if it is hardware - time for repair / replacement
N-spy: Okay Thanks for the Tips
Now I Understand what I Suppose to do with my OS now i have to repaired it

_27 October 2022_
Now I'm gonna tell my father to repair the system so now my father take care my laptop to repair these issues including the stupid "we couldn't complete the updates" and things didn't really well because my father struggled to find password in recovery so helped him to access the settings but it didn't work, I actually tried many times to typed my password that came on my microsoft account it still doesn't work and my father blaming me for not updating windows 11 and I getting pissed. I have to decided create new account without Password and Email in order to bypass the Password Recovery Settings but still..it appeared now me and my father tried to figured out it turns out it's uses admin password. my father just give up so I decided to fix it again but in different method is to install Windows 11...Tomorrow

_28 October 2022_
It's time upgrade to windows 11 to avoid "We couldn't complete the updates. Undoing changes" and other corrupted System and oh god it took so long to upgrade windows 11 because it goes up very slow, it made me to cancel the upgrade because it's getting night on my place. I'm basically tired of this

_29 October 2022_
I'm checking laptop again to Upgrade. Well it's still fairly slow but this time i have to paused if evening is coming. Nothing bad happen to my laptop

_31 October 2022_
Now The Upgrade Still Works Fine When it comes to Update now I'm getting less paranoid about the Issue that stuck onto my head in few days, man it really made me mental breakdown back 11-26 October now the upgrade almost Completed in 21:00 AM and I Unpaused the Update in 8:36 AM. damn it took 9 half hours when it's completed it's the quite the opposite that my laptop are incredibly slow and also some Apps are Incompatible with windows 11 but i don't know which one of them everything it's really slow

_1 November 2022_
Now I have to cleaned up some of the cache file and corrupted files from the past and it's getting fast but not too quite. Luckily it runs perfectly fine except File Explorer double-click some file are slow

_Okay This is Probably The End of this Issue. But it Still some bug like Unresponsive Taskbar probably the bug that i only found in windows 11 and thank god it really get rid of that stupid undoing changes Until_

_20 January 2023_
moderator: removed due to rule: No piracy
Welp. I Guess I have to create journal about 9 October 2022 where my laptop went to s*** because the update and Incompatible Graphics Drivers Even though it already installed correctly with AMD Chipset auto-detect installation.

So the story started after I finished Animate Blender, J.A.C.K, Crack-life: Anniversary And No Life 4 X Mods, And things goes normal until i looked at my laptop gaming performance is getting slow even the boot-time startup it took 1 half minutes to finished and also many applications such as Google Chrome, Steam, and Discord Opening are very slow like Chrome Just keeps on Buffering Tab everytime I Opened it Or a Steam sometimes "Not Responding" if I Opened New Window Or Even Discord Clicking over stuff has some kind of delay and the pop-ups chats are Incredibly slow. So I Checked Youtube searching "how to make windows 10 faster" and also "how to fix slow startup" but everything doesn't affected my performance even the Startup except i have to update the windows 10 in order to make it faster. Though updating windows have many different occasions of Made Windows 10 Slow, Unsaved Data, Corrupted Files, Blue Screen, And Issues Goes On. About the Startup well..I need to Update the Graphics Drivers again and Installed AMD Adrenaline Application To Improve Performance So I download it.

_20:00 AM_
Well after doing these tech methods that i've found on youtube and also watching modding stuff I Decided Restart My Laptop for completed windows update...

After a Minutes I Checked My laptop to see the Update and it says "We Couldn't Complete The Updates. Undoing Changes" My reaction is normal at first Until Realizing It Took 2 Hours Then I started to Panic but well...It's too late I Just gonna Shut down the laptop and do something in next days

_10 October 2022_
Well Things Just goes normal and I've encountered what of stupid bugs that came on windows 10 that i already encountered like No sleep Power Button, Blank Shortcut, And also what's made me the annoying the most This Image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_Gd5C3IjXx3iUox4GauNfuvfGaiafNCa/view?usp=sharing
it Pisses me off I've Already doing it correctly by installing the auto-detect or the application using my graphics driver
But the one thing I've never encountered before Is the Windows Update Icon Taskbar it has Yellow Triangle Exclamation Mark that known to say "Your device is missing important updates" so I just clicked it then update again, it took 3 hours to completed because some of stuck on 20% and another one already complete then windows forced me to restart again then i Restarted And...I Still got the same "We Couldn't complete The Updates. Undoing Changes" Again and again so I went to Youtube First, For searching "windows 10 we couldn't complete the updates" to fix the issue methods by methods such as Disable Update in Services.msc, delete SoftwareDistribution, but one thing That I've Encountered another problem after trying get into safe mode on System Configuration such as This: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19utqv1gS7eoOxy9aCA0myrBysFwiEG1B/view?usp=share_link
and it gave me Headache how this issue is a thing and uncommon but I Still got some alternate way to get into safe Mode is to Shift+Restart (Recovery) and it worked then I Started to do exact same methods again according to youtube video that i checked is to disable updates and delete SoftwareDistribution again in safe mode but things didn't go well when I Opened System Configuration Was That I Cannot go back to Main Operating System and I Started began to Panicked because of this but Thanks to MDTech all I have to do is disable all the services in System Configuration Not in Services.msc and the Methods that MDTech It's all The glitches from Windows 10 so it means these glitches only happens temporally which it made me afraid to do these stuff So decided stay away over Safe Mode. Then I Started going to Internet for help fix these issue but some of are contain non-sense of Fixing Different Methods like it's serious issue Or another one That told me to Install MediaCreationTool.exe or even Reinstall Windows 10 in Scratch and Things goes Unwell. so I was Disappointed And Sick about these Tech Support so i went to Discord posting memes related Windows Issue and etc. Also Thanks to mluminoth aka =M= for mentioned Ghost Spectre OS Machine but I'm So Sorry I'm Not gonna using because Half of my OS corrupting

_11 October 2022_
This Is Where's Things Messed up Like Corrupted System, Incompatible Drivers, Corrupted Updates, And Etc Which i'm stopped modding because i'm take care all of this issue. I'm trying to find Tech Services Shop around the town but mostly i found are unprofessionals so my father would afraid what they did to my laptop so I'm not gonna find it anyway. The Update service has been disabled everything looks normal even though s**** got corrupted and so on...Well I think i'm getting worried and afraid about thisss....situation

_12 October 2022_
Well. everytime I boot up my laptop I always disabled the updates through services.msc in order to avoid windows forced updates and everything looks normal. Nothing happens...? I Went to Discord, Watching Blender Tutorials, Reading C++ Guides (Kinda) And Looks Normal but Not for my Feelings

13 October 2022__
Well. Still Normal I guess nothing happen with my laptop is actually fine and again i have to disabled windows update service..again

_14 October 2022_
Still Normal again. Yet I noticed some difference with Windows Update Taskbar Icon It has Red dot on it And I Don't know what is that mean anyway i'm still Inexperienced with Tech support stuff but i'm still Interested on learning that's why I'm Learning Modding Unfortunately These Issues Stuck Into my head So I'm getting Burnt out on Modding So Instead I'm still take care some of these Issues. Also I'm getting bit paranoid about these windows bugs and glitches sometimes happens in past years so i have to be carefully using this laptop now And also Unistalled Pirated Call of Duty 4, Counter-Strike Standalone Mods, and others stuff Including Steam But I Reinstalled it and now the many game shortcuts are gone because Reinstall steam in order to clean Disk C:

Wait for Part 2
Admer4561 year ago2023-01-20 16:58:35 UTC 3 comments
Loss is typically a bad thing. There's various types of it too. You got the loss of a beloved one, blood loss etc., but today I just feel like writing about the good kind, at least for me: weight loss.

It'll be rather brief, as I'm short on time these days.

History

In 2008 or so, when I was 6 years old, I was pretty standard and slim, something I absolutely cannot imagine today. I recall being able to do 10 to 20 push-ups at age 8, and I felt agile in all kinds of ways. I was perfectly alright.

In 2012/2013, I must've been about 160cm tall. But I also clearly remember weighing about 70kg. Every day, I'd eat a couple bags of chips, drink a can of Coke, and certainly a whole lot of fast food. Hot dogs, fries, pizza... I also ate considerably a lot. As a result of all that, I felt like a Pentium 4-630 trying to perform basic tasks in this day and age - very sluggish. It was somewhat difficult to stand up, let alone move.

It didn't get all that much better by 2016, either. I was probably 170cm tall, weighing almost 80kg. I felt a little better though, somehow I got stronger.
2017 and 2018 saw me reach 85kg or so, and I was around 175cm tall. My height hasn't changed much since, I'm 176cm now, so we can stop mentioning height.

Now let me tell you something. In 2017, I started walking A LOT more, because I had to walk from the bus station to high school and back every day. This amounted to about 30 minutes of walking each day, 2.5 hours of walking every week. In 2019, I was extremely relieved to see my weight hit its ceiling, or at least it seemed to. I also ate significantly less than in 2015, so that helped.

Then, 2020 happened, and so did the pandemic, and online classes started. I was no longer walking, in fact I stayed at home way more than I ever did in life. Within a year, my weight skyrocketed to 91, maybe 92kg at some point. I think I felt destroyed when I realised that. It all contributed to me feeling not so good that year.

2021 finally arrived and I soon realised some things after I finished high school that year. I didn't have P.E. class IRL whatsoever, it was all online. Most classes were IRL, but P.E. was online, among two others. Thing is, there was no P.E. at all any more. So that made me think about some things rather critically.

Change

I realised I could change some key things:
  • Lack of exercise -> light exercise, walking outside regularly. Later I realised I primarily wanna focus on cardio stuff and secondarily some strength training - don't have any resources for the latter though. Still, exercising is good.
  • Eating a lot -> eating enough. This one has been the MOST CRUCIAL to me. Just eat less. It's SO simple, it was in front of my nose the entire time, yet I failed to stick to it for so long. Thankfully I now finally have the ability to resist the taste and only eat to satisfy my hunger, no matter how loud my taste buds scream for more.
  • No more chips and snacks like that. Just no. Pure unhealth. So much salt. I'd only eat one of these as a last resort thing.
  • No more Coke - only once every New Year's Eve. The amount of sugar in that thing is absolutely gargantuan.
  • Reduce chocolate by 80%. Sugar. I have enough of it in fruit I eat.
  • Reduce other carbonated drinks by 50%. Sugar again.
  • Drink more water. I noticed I rarely ever drank water, and ever since I started doing it regularly, I've felt less bloated.
  • Eat far less generic white bread, and try healthier kinds of bread (e.g. whole-grain bread). Whole-grain bread doesn't taste as well as white bread to me, and it isn't so soft to chew, and honestly? That's a good thing, means I won't be able to eat too much of it! Hell yeah.
It wasn't too easy. I clearly remember the first couple weeks I was just CRAVING for chips, chocolate, some juices etc., but I managed to resist the urge. I haven't eaten chips in over 6 months now, and I eat chocolate on some occasions. Once you realise that the food industry wants you to be addicted to foods like those, it becomes a bit easier to fight the addiction, at least it was for me.

Anyway, from early 2021 to the start of 2023, without me even noticing it, I went from 90-ish kg down to 84kg. It is absolutely unfathomable to me that, after nearly 20 years of non-stop gaining weight, I somehow started losing it. You have no idea how relieved and happy I felt when I measured that, and I hadn't measured it in a loong time.

In retrospect

While I was growing up, I honestly believed it's all about exercise. Gotta do them push-ups, gotta do them sit-ups, planking, weight lifting and lots of running. But honestly, that's just part of the story, and you don't need to be that devoted to exercising in particular if you just wanna lose some weight. Unless you'd like to build some muscle, of course. But no, what I realised was, all I really needed was to just eat less.

It was that simple. It was in front of my nose the entire time. Just. Eat. Less. It helped a tremendous lot that I had experience fasting during Ramazan/Ramadan, so I was able to really easily not feel hunger at all, let alone ignore it. I guess it's one of the few good things religion gave me.

What made me realise I lost weight is ultimately a couple photos: one from late 2020, and one from a few months ago. I can CLEARLY tell the difference on both my face and the rest of my body. But what really fascinated me is just how much of a difference those 6 or 7 kilos made. It's striking. It's not so much about the numbers, but rather how seemingly very small changes in habits led to such a damn positive long-term effect.

Recently, my cousin suggested me to go to the gym with him. And honestly I think that'll do me some good.

TL;DR? I decided to identify and cut the bad food, eat less overall, and take walks. I lost about 6 or 7 kg in a year as a result, and I'm feeling good about myself for the first time in years.
Disco Clone1 year ago2023-01-17 03:27:20 UTC 4 comments
Just little. No big thoughts here.

I played through and finished Doom and Doom II semi-recently. I've played both of them before but never finished either so I just went for it I guess?
I then also tried out Ultimate Doom Builder which was fun. It is limited in what you can do (especially "vanilla" Doom stuff) but it's pretty simple to get into.

As I was doing it though, I sorta ran into the same thoughts and problems I have with Half-Life level creation.

1. I'm just slow. I can learn the keyboard shortcuts and little tricks that speed up the process but I still feel really slow when making a level. Like simple rooms feel like they take a while? Way longer than they probably should. Which makes it feel like a chore? I really do like doing stuff with Hammer or UDB but sometimes it feels like a slog.

2. I struggle with my "vision". Half-Life and Doom both have their areas and styles I guess? I'm someone who personally likes to make maps that sort of feel in line with the real stuff. So I look at a chapter in Half-Life or some levels in Doom and try and make my own level using similar ideas? But then when I get to actually making the map, I start getting unsure of how to do it. I can go back to an official level to see how they did things but then once I come back to my own, I feel like my mind just blanks and I forget everything I just looked at. I also don't always know how I want my map to be geometry-wise. I've tried doing blockouts but I feel weird doing them? (I don't really know why, they just don't feel right.) I also struggle trying to do sketches or drawings of the layout of my map. This ends up contributing to me being slow or just feeling done with the level and wanting to move on, starting a new map and repeating the same cycle.

Another issue related to it I guess is texturing. I like having things on a nice grid to follow, making sure textures are all 1:1 scale or at least at a scale that looks right. But then I'll have something that goes off the nice 32, 64 grid and for some reason I freak out? If I force it onto the nice grid, everything feels too squarish, if I force myself to go to a lower grid I get unsure of how to texture things that don't fully fit? Especially with Doom where IMO it's a bit more "ok" to have abstract shapes and angles, the textures get goofy and I'm not sure if I try and make them fit or just go with it.

And that's it I think. I'm not sure how to articulate my thoughts very well so...
Just I really like doing this stuff but I feel so incompetent. (Well I am but, y'know)

Journal over. https://youtu.be/kUOoq3aDyrs
Meerjel011 year ago2023-01-16 13:31:36 UTC 3 comments
I have a confession that I have a part of me that I'm not proud of. I also am dearly sorry for what I did to people on the internet, not just here. The pain I caused made me a demon in my mind that might as well come out in the future fully. That's one of my major fears that I wish I could undo. I fear it not because of it today but it's later appearance. As I said, I'm NOT proud of it.

I thought over something whilst listening to a song and it moved me and I want it to be true. I want to be a good Meerjel. I'm extremely unfocused and might try to go over again but I need something to think about to keep away. Or receive something to stop being sad, cause when I get sad then it will harm more than myself. Hopefully one day I can break free and be what I want to be. And I hope everyone else has something to win that is worth it.

Meerjel01
jamie1 year ago2022-12-28 20:31:12 UTC 14 comments
Mine are:
1. Get friends
2. Start to get out more
3. Fix my life

Tell me yours!

Or dont, do whatever you want.
Meerjel011 year ago2022-12-26 16:30:15 UTC 6 comments
I did it
Work in progress.
Meerjel011 year ago2022-11-23 16:55:41 UTC 8 comments
I've made a cute animation
Växjö, late afternoonVäxjö, late afternoon
Winter hasn't even started and I am already sick and tired of it. There are so many things I want to do and people I want to talk to, and smile to, but I can't find the energy. The day ends before you even realize it has started! IS SOME SUNSHINE EVERY NOW AND THEN TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR??!! At least it's not as bad as a couple of years ago when my city had a total of two hours of sunshine in all of November because of clouds. I envy the bears - they are geniuses to sleep through it all.

I have always wanted to escape our Winter but haven't had the opportunity. I'll have to suffer Winter this year, too, but at least a milder version down in Croatia in December and Malta in January and February. They see more sun in the darkest month than I do in March or September, and I really look forward to seeing new places, though I think Christmas will feel lonely. Perhaps I should set my sight on NZ and Australia next year? What a dream to have summer twice a year!