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02/23/2004:
The month of November

November is my birth month. One of these days, one numeric character in my age will change. Everytime that day arrives it has been my tradition to do or try something that somehow 'ups my level'. Something challenging.

It's also the month I do some reflecting... about life, work, direction and all.

I remember during college days I skipped class twice when that day arrived. During the third year, I created a screensaver/TSR-type program in Clipper 5.2 using some low level routines.

My first encryption algorithm was also created on November when I was still in college. Until now I'm still using it in some of my programs.

And until now I am still unable to decrypt it. The 'exact reverse' of that encryption algorithm would only decrypt 7 out of 8 characters due to a certain method I included... and the only way I am able to compare things in the encrypted data in the database is to re-encrypt the password entered and compare it with the encrypted value.

Function decrypt just won't work.

It was on that birth date too last 1998 when I released my first site online. That site was Coollections... which, holds some of my artworks before I decided to create a separate site for it now known as the Pixelcatalyst.Lair.

The conversion from Pixelworkz (pre-pixelcatalyst) to Pixelcatalyst.Lair was made on November 2000.

It was also November when Pixelcatalyst.Lair version 5.00 was released... that was in 2001. The very same year I transferred that site from our old office Pentium 200MHz Linux powered server to the digital fortress of the Plastiqueweb Networks.

It was then when the number of its visitors increased by a factor of 20.

Shift Dimension was created last 2001 and Quendoline Dreams was created last year.

I have one artwork which I started November of last year too, which up to now, is still a work in progress. The main .psd file for that artwork now reaches 30MB and a sub .psd file is around 19MB.

It was November of 2002 when I had my first 'major' freelance project. I had a number of freelance projects since college but that November 2002 project was different... and it was that client that referred me to eight more clients.

There were some non-database/graphics-related personal 'breakthroughs' too but I won't be sharing them for now.

This year I'm still considering what I'll be doing.

Probably a new artwork or finish up the artwork which was started last year. The SeventhSense 2004... or the reorganization of the Pixelcatalyst.Lair website. I'm also thinking of coding that copyright protection-related mechanism I've been planning for months already.

Or perhaps I'll spend the day just bumming around and thinking and doing nothing... for in this year filled with database projects... just doing nothing (and not thinking of code-related things) can be considered a personal breakthrough.