Pak in Pak

And another unexciting week begins. Well it could get exciting I guess, wait and see.

So started off tracing a bug in the mobile update. Then played around with a few bits on it. Took dog out for a walk fairly early as I wanted to get a full afternoon in. Had lunch, it’s a chicken salad sandwich, it always is.

So back looking at Android in the afternoon. This was this pak inside a pak problem again. To recap, Android has all it’s data in an archive, I’ve already stopped archive data in the archive being archived. For the stupid amongst you that means nothing is stored compressed inside the main compressed file. Now I had all this working, but by god was it slow. After several hours I traced it to wonderful recursion, for every file it wanted to open inside the child archive it actually loaded the entire archive. So it looks like the solution is to get the file position in the parent archive and then open that as the child archive. The fun now is how to actually get that file position, which will require no doubt diving through a load of structures which will all be endian swapped. Still that’s fun for tomorrow.

Went to gym. Did Body Combat. Only one more before Christmas apparently. Came back, did another change to mobile game update. Sat down, ate salad. Cleaners coming tomorrow, boiler being done Wednesday. The excitement may never start.

I was very un-gay, I went to B&Q and bought cistern parts

So started off in bed. Told Jamie he was unattractive lots. This mad him hate me somewhat. Still need to keep him trim or by the time he’s 30 he’ll look like my mother. Watched X-Factor on the iPad, followed by ‘The McFly Show’, which was a TV special but good fun. Harry has a great bod, but I’d definitely do Dougie. Just before the third ad-break we had sex, it was very good. Finished watching TV. Got up, Jamie said when are you going to fix the toilet, which has been talking to itself now for several months. I took the top off and poked things, came to the conclusion that the syphon and the inlet ball valve were both fucked. So I did the manly thing and went to B&Q and bought a ‘complete easy fit conversion kit’. Hmmm.

Came back, had lunch and read the paper. So assembled all the tools, tried to isolate the cold water from the tank, found a tap for it, turned it off. The water in the bath now stopped running. The water to the cistern however didn’t. So the bloody thing was mains pressure, wrestled with the stop tap, stopped water. Now had to remove the old cistern. This thing had no doubt been in place since the first world war, so the screws holding it on to the wall had rusted away. So took the heads of and undid them with pliers. Undid the pipes and the screws holding it to the pan. Removed cistern. The removed the cistern internals. Then took about an hour cleaning out the cistern with the shower spray, removing congealed toilet duck and something that was trying to evolve. Then inserted the new flip valve thing. Put cistern back on bog, noticed it was rotated wrongly. Removed cistern, rotated it. Reassembled, tried to set the height of the inlet valve, then worked out there was no bloody way that was going to fit. Disassembled, hack-sawed off the end of the overflow. Reassembled. Fitted inlet valve. Reconnected all the pipes. Turned the water on. Enjoyed watching the water pissing out the bottom of the cistern. Turned water off. Tightened everything up. Turned water on. Took out all handle and replace with a push button. Linked that up, watched it fail to work. Played around with it until it did work. Then tried to put the lid back on the cistern, now that didn’t fit. Swore at the inlet value, until it shrank below the level of the cistern top (also required persuasion tool), replaced top. It’s now all working, I think the inlet may be seeping a bit, need to keep an eye on it.

Next job of the day was cleaning out the freezer. Removed everything, got rid of a load of tat that Jamie had just stored in there as he could never be arsed to eat it. Cleaned everything and put it all back. I’m out of peas.

Next job was cleaning out the larder. This is the storage place where Jamie will use an item, not read the back of it which says ‘refrigerate after opening and use within one month’. There were new live forms evolving there. Took everything out, cleaned all the shelves and put it all back again. Then removed all the bio-degrading plastic bags from under the sink. Sorted out the cardboard, had a poo.

Patrick Moore died today, shame, nice guy, a bit odd, but the world would be very dull if it was full of people like Gordon Brown.

Just seen a very odd thing outside my Window, whole group of Indians (as in the country, not the squaw type), walking down the road followed by a fully dressed Santa. Then out of their door came at least another three Santa’s that got into a people carrier and drove off. The people carrier was being driven by another Santa. You would think that with all this eco-warrior type shit Santa would have at least had a Prius. I hadn’t been drinking at all. May be it’s time to start. I’m going to have a bath while admiring my new toilet flush.

Today I bought a new washing up brush

Started the morning with a weird dream, can’t remember it though which is a bit of a shame. Got up at a reasonable hour, well just before midday. Walked the dog, stopped in the vets on the way round and booked her in for her boosters. Did the shopping. Had loads and loads of vouchers for stuff, so stocked up on pickled onions, toothpaste and biscuits. All the stuff I didn’t need.

Came back and had lunch, read the paper. Walked into town, nice German market there at the moment. Bought a new washing up bowl and a brush, as the existing one’s really are looking a bit manky. Called in mothers on the way back. Fixed her curtain rail again (big big screw this time). Got her Christmas tree down from the loft and found her a recipe for Brandy Sauce.

Came back home and did the accounts. Worked how much money I’m owed, it’s a lot, but not as much as I thought. Tonight we are having Chicken Tikka Jelfrezi. Which will be about the fourth Saturday curry in a row, but I am getting really good at them now. So quick bath I think, then on with the cooking.

Tonight I’m typing this on the i-Mac as I’m currently trying to sync my iPad while downloading tunes from Amazon and then syncing them with iTunes. This I’m sure being a Mac, will not actually work first time. People always say oh iMac’s are wonderful, actually they’re not. This one falls over way more often than my Windows7 box which I use far more often. Every time I switch this one on it tells me the mouse batteries are flat, it’s done that ever since I’ve had it. But it is very useful for watching iPlayer on.

On TV last night, Alan Sugar said “I’ve done everything. I’ve seen everything.”, I suddenly thought, “I bet you haven’t done anal.”

So today was spent tweaking all the stuff I did yesterday which they didn’t like. That’s the games industry folks, lots of iterating stuff. Still the reviews keep coming in and all of them are positive. We even have fantastic ratings on the app store.

Walked the dog. Had a salad sandwich. Went to the gym, did pump.

Then started looking into an Android issue which Al is having. His Java VM keeps locking up and producing very weird errors. He’s managed to reproduce it using a command prompt and just running ant.bat debug. Whacking ctrl+c seems to make it go bang and start erroring. I thought it was leaving a JVM running somewhere, but couldn’t find any sign of a process. Looking through the build.xml though there are some interesting comments in there….Al pointed out he’s running JDK1.6, where as I’m running JDK1.7. Now looking in the build.xml file there is a section in there that reads the JDK version number and then forks the JVM if it’s below 1.7. This is what appears to be causing the issue. If I forced it to fork and then hammered ctrl+c, indeed on subsequent runs it gave me loads of Java errors. Opening a new command prompt made no difference. But then I found running ant.bat clean sorted the issue. So it appears to be forking the java app and then interrupting it is causing garbage in the output directories. Couple of solutions….upgrade the JDK or run ant.bat clean (I can probably force all that anyway).

Jamie has been dressing the dog in various scarfs and ties. The dog does not approve and keeps trying to bite them off. I said to Jamie, “Stange isn’t it they never attack their own collar, it must be just like wearing a watch.”. Jamie replies, “yes if they take it off they spend all day wondering where it is.” To which I quip, “and they can no longer tell the time.”. God I’m a comedian.

Must be bath time. Need to ring mother, better open some wine then.

Apparently the UK average annual wine consumption is 37 bottles per person. Jamie doesn’t drink it much, can I have his share?

This morning I didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to take the dog to day care. I did however have to get up and answer the door for a wine delivery. This is just the Tesco cheap stuff, so it’ll be going to my sister’s, while I drink the good stuff.

Today, once again working on the mobile game update. Only a few bits more to do. I did add something really fun to it though….there’s nothing wrong with chopping peoples heads off. Managed to ignore certain people all day and also rant at a few others.

Walked the dog. Jamie had one of his LBF’s (little blue friends) round, where they played Nintendo and probably fapped a lot.

Went to the gym. Ran. Bought some crickets for the lizards. Filled the dishwasher and did some dishes. Cleaned some wine glasses.

Well, that was the excitement of my day, once again, nothing really interesting happened. I have a feeling something will do soon though.

It’s torture porn night, so wine and dodgy DVD with the dog later.

Apparently I do have morals

So got up far too early and took the dog to day care. She was very very excited about going, but was good as gold in the car. Came back and went back to bed.

Had a bad migraine earlier, it did pass but was making me really edgey. Did some work on the mobile game, but my head really wasn’t with it today. Did what I had to do and that was it. I’ll make it up at a later time.

Sarah came round to pick up the carpet cleaner, she’s already had my backup hoover. I think there is a cleaning takeover bid happening here…I’ll pack the dishwasher up ready:)

Went running lunchtime. Picked the dog up. She had a Christmas card and a new ball, which she will eat. That’s just one step away from the painting for the fridge door…..

Did a bit more work then went to the gym.

I was invited to a do in a weeks time, but I’ve decided not to go, although it would have no doubt been quite fun. I just can’t justify it morally. I feel I need to take a bit of a stand otherwise I’d be a hypocrite. Ho hum.

And then my legs stopped working

Spent the day not working on Android. Was actually working on updates for the released mobile game. Couple of little bits to fix and tidy up. Beyond that I cannot say anymore.

We now have a Wii U. Well, we now have a Wii U in a box, it will probably stay there for quite a while.

Walked the dog. She had a good walk. For me though I’m completely knackered, working on this game recently has really taken it out of me physically and mentally. I just can’t face going to the gym this evening, my legs do physically hurt quite badly. I think I’ll have a bath and an early night. I don’t feel ill, just tired. It’s because I’m old.

Tomorrow the dog is off to day care, so very early start.

Oh, Jamie finished off the wedding album, so that’s finally been ordered.

And then nothing interesting happened

This morning I wasn’t rudely awaken by the radiator gurgling, which means yesterdays balancing, although taking ages, was indeed fairly successful. All the radiators now seem to be getting nicely hot, the waters hot and the boiler isn’t coughing it’s guts up.

So work today was mainly Android again, sorting out a couple of issues to do with compressed files inside pack files. It turns out they aren’t compressed anyway. Sorted out a couple of other little issues. If there are no changes of plan tomorrow I have to look at some audio stuff on iMac, which will be a first.

Walked the dog. Went to the gym and did combat. Managed my 700 calorie exercise budget. Working late on a few things. Then will eat salad and watch crap TV. As I said, nothing really interesting happened.

Not sure who has the worse ass, me or the dog

So this morning started rather dull. The X-Factor wasn’t available on demand, which force me to get up and go do the gardening. So I ventured out, picked up all the dog crap. Then proceeded the get the last of tree and branch bits into the green bin. Rather annoyed that the cleaners had managed to place a black into the green bin and it had split open. Anyway managed to get the garden remains all in. That’s the gardening complete now until spring. I worked out how to stop the dog running off with the broom….use two brooms, she then gets confused, walks off with one so you just use the other.

Had lunch. Sunday, eggs day. Then I did the boiler pump overrun cable which took about ten minutes, all working. I’ve now been trying to balance the radiators all afternoon (this is heat balancing, not some kind of weird juggling act). Whilst I was doing that I was trying to do our wedding photo album on PrinterPix, which kindly crashed on the very last page and lost everything. It’s now minus 4 outside and about 43 inside as the boiler is running flat out and all the radiator valves are open. And I haven’t got the hot water on, so no bath yet. Still I guess I’ve had a fairly successful day. Now just bath, wine and dinner to complete. You never know, may be sex later. Unlikely, but hey.

Tomorrow it’s back on to mobile I guess.

Oh yes, the dog had a rather nice Chicken Tikka Bhuna last night, together with Jamie and I. We are now in competition to see who can produce the smelliest farts, so far the dog is in the lead. Not very lady like at all.

Well Jonathan Ross likes it

Woke up. Which on a Saturday morning is always quite a challenge. Found out that Jonathan Ross had ‘tweeted’, that he thought it was one of the best games ever. Reviews are generally all good and people really do seem to like it, which is always nice. I’ve written many many games, but sometimes you do get to work on ones which are more of just ‘a job’, not that you don’t put the same amount of effort into them, but every now and then you do get to work on one which you really do enjoy. And this was one of them. We put a lot of our own ideas into the game an it was very enjoyable to work on. May be we will do add-ons or a sequel, who knows. Oh and apparently we are big in Honduras. In the US we are No.1 game on the charts and No.6 app overall.

So in celebration I walked the dog. Then did the shopping. I bet ‘Take That’ don’t do the shopping when they hit No.1. Had lunch then I thought I’d venture over to Comet where it’s closing down in a couple of days. Complete waste of time, they have nothing there at all. Then I walked into town, bought nothing and walked back. There’s something rattling on the car, it’s either the front grill which is loose or the suspension is about to drop off, so may have to have a dig underneath tomorrow.

Did the accounts. I’m still poor.

Trying to get a few more Christmas presents, then realised I don’t actually buy anything for anyone anyway except Jamie, so that makes things slightly easier. Oh, then just remembered, Lisa & Andy. Right that’s sorted, more money I’ll never see Jamie’s share of.

Busy day tomorrow. Gardening, wiring, radiator balancing. Need to sort a photo album out as well. Must be bath time.