Last night was a bit strange, I got woken up at 2:30AM by Jamie saying, ‘You look well nice in those pants’, what followed can only be described as predatory rape. Then two minutes later he jizzed on my face, how rude. Had breakfast and coffee, then it was on to painting. Applied first coat of the base layer, then left it to dry for a bit. So made a new video, that will be released Christmas day, it’s a rant one, it’s about a certain type of food. Did the second coat, then walked the dogs. Then it was on to the third coat. I then had to take a short trip up to Gloucester to take a mans organ, but that’s all to do with next years challenge, so more on that later. Came back and it was finally time to start some present wrapping. Which is all a bit crap really as apart from the wine for my mother everything is Jamie’s. Had bath, now time for a curry and the final of ‘The Apprentice’. Busy day tomorrow, and last gym session as well.

Had a haircut booked at 11 so needed to sort things quickly. Had breakfast and the life saving coffee. Then primed the bathroom ceiling. That was pretty straightforward, went on like water. The problem with that was it then ran down my arm and down my back. Didn’t really worry at the time. Took about half time, needed a bit of sanding as well. Then decided to jump in the shower as I had dust in my hair. Bloody hell, the primer had done it’s job on me. It was like peeling off fucking glue. And for the rest of the day it was going everywhere. Still, if it works as well on the ceiling as it did on me it will be great. Had my hair cut. Went in the pet shop. Came back and had a light lunch, walked the dogs. Popped in the vet and bought a pheromone defuser which cost a fortune and I’m sure will do fuck all. Went into town via the reptile place and picked up some substrate. Got a voucher for the nephew. Picked up some new tracky bottoms (okay, a bit chav, but in the evenings they are warm and comfortable). It was very busy in town. Came back and did the accounts. Busy day with painting tomorrow.

I’ll keep this short as the pizza is in and I need to hang up the washing. Started early, worked all the way through until almost six. Went to gym and did Pump. Then worked on my arms with Laverne. Came back and finished off a twelve hour shift. Did washing and other things. Busy day tomorrow. Got my eye on a new toy on eBay. Oh yes, work, spent the bulk of the day looking at bloody grass again. Still only three more work days to go of this year.

So started bang on 9AM. Working on bugs, varied, nothing too exciting, just lots of tracing required. Had a short break to walk Sasha, it was far too miserable to get Dillon out. Started Sasha on her tablets, she’s still hyper. Apparently they start working in eight hours, they didn’t. So was due to finish at five forty, so finished at about quarter to seven. Changed and then got on with the sanding. I think I’m almost there now, probably one more pass before I put the primer on. If I can get it primed Saturday and ready to paint Sunday that would be great. That just leaves some tidying up of the door paint work and reinforcing the unit, which I now have about a month to do.

Okay so this year I’ve learnt to fly a helicopter solo, next year need a bit of a new challenge, I have something good in mind, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper, but may be just as difficult.

One thing I have noticed is that ever since I’ve got this MacBook Air, I don’t use a PC for pleasure at all, everything is on a Mac. Final Cut Pro, Traktor, Garage Band, iDraw, probably Cubase soon. If only I could get fruit loops for Mac I wouldn’t need a PC again other than for work. I’ve got two laptops and a netbook, I don’t think i’ve turned them on in a year.

So got up at 6:20, took Dillon to daycare. Went back to bed for a bit. Started bang on 9AM. Did five and a half hours straight through. Fixed some issues with grass. Picked up Dillon. Then worked on god rays. Finished bang on 5:35. Went to the gym and did Pump. Worked on my arms. Came back and did a tiny bit more sanding and prep work. Almost there now, hopefully finish off the sanding tomorrow. It will probably need one more pass then I can prime it. Almost everyone is off next week, so hopefully will get some work done. As far as shopping goes, well I don’t really have much to get, as I don’t buy anyone anything. I always find that makes things considerably easier. Jamie wants some bits, Amazon Prime will still be there Monday.

Got up on time and started work on time. Spent probably the next five and a half hours on this weird luminance bug. It was only by luck staring at it in the GPU debugger that I found the actual problem. The downsampling of the luminance values was fine. However I’d cocked up the convergence, instead of converging two one by one textures it was converging the last step of the down sample, so it was doing a three by three, so basically it was only probably taking the luminance of the top left ninth of the screen. Oh well, fun fun. Went out for a run. Came back and had lunch. Then worked on a couple of grass issues. Finished bang on time, then spent the evening with Emily on the ceiling. It’s getting there, it’s all about the preparation though, so it will take as long as it takes. Sat down, ate, watched TV. Now time for bed. Dillon at daycare tomorrow.

I received an invitation to apply to Glyndebourne as they had heard of my musical talents. I duly arrived and found myself in a gymnasium. We were all in teams of two, I spent most of the time staring at a student in front of me, wearing what can only be described as a wrestling singlet with his balls trying to escape from it. We did some running around between cones, which seemed somewhat odd for an opera house. Anyway, then from above us descended some giant square tunnel like structures. Jake, the guy who I was with went first. He was told to follow what the student with the large balls was doing. So in he got, the tunnel the raised to the ceiling again. There were two treadmills inside it, one at the front with bursting balls and then Jake some meters behind. The treadmills started up and they got going, then shortly the whole tunnel rotated ninety degrees, they were now running sideways. Then it rotated again and now they were running upside down. Eventually it rotated the right way up again and the tunnel came back to my level. It was now my turn. I thought, ‘bugger that’ and left. It was now time for the main interview. I was sat at a table with three pretentious people who all looked down their noses at me. I was asked three questions, I can only remember one of them, ‘How do you end a symphony?’. I thought and just said ‘Well, you just stop it.’ She gave a cackle and then explained that a symphony should consist of at least three parts and you couldn’t ‘just end it.’ I left. I guess my opera singing days are over.

Spent all day comparing the output between one system and another, it was very long winded, very dull. Walked the dogs. Went to Combat, no Sarah as she has ebola. This meant with the five people there I had the whole of the mirror to myself to admire my arms in. Came back and was due to do a maximum of half an hour. Hour and a half later I’d finished. I did want to do something this evening but just ended up watching the tele by the time I’d finished. Off to bed, then the same again tomorrow I expect.

So yesterday started with coffee and cereal. Read the papers, Jamie went off to work, I drove up to Staverton. Captain James was already out with someone else, I was feeling somewhat nervous for some reason, actually I know the reason, I was actually genuinely scared that I was going to kill myself just before Christmas. James announced that the conditions were perfect and I was going to do almost an hour by myself in my final supervised solo. I prepared the aircraft, fixed up the camera and went through the checklist. I’m now allowed to start up the aircraft by myself after completing my first solo, so I did. I was then joined by James. We taxied straight over to heli-north and the first circuit was over and done with in a matter of a few minutes. The only odd thing I had to contend with was a jet ranger sprayed in red which was pretending to be Santa’s sleigh. I then fired out about five circuits, they were all generally okay, some a bit quick, some a bit steep. My take-ups and landings were ‘variable’ to say the least, I probably wasn’t in the best frame of mind for these. It’s a bit odd though. There you are floating in the air at about 700 feet, it’s almost silent when the radio isn’t on (I’m wearing 800 quids worth of Bose noise cancelling headphones, which I think is absolutely essential). The R22 is the smallest aircraft you can get unless you are into microlights or jetpacks. It’s tiny. It’s very nimble. It’s primary purpose is to kill you. Now here’s the fun thing, I read all these accident reports on R22’s and it has an horrendous record on safety, put it this way, you have more chance of dying in an R22 which has it’s engine off parked on the tarmac than you have doing blindfolded frogger on the M4. But, here’s what I’ve found. Treat it with respect, and it will look after you. It’s quarter of a million pounds worth of high precision engineering. It may look like it’s made out of cheese and Lego, but really a hell of a lot of thought has gone into the design. It’s actually very forgiving. Some of my pickups and landings have been on the verge of very piss poor. I’ve hit the ground hard, I’ve lifted off at some very bizarre angles and rotations, yet it’s just ‘got on with it’ and hasn’t killed me yet. As captain James keeps telling me, it’s good that you are paranoid about certain things, this means you are thinking about them, the more you think about them, the less likely you are to have a problem. He keeps telling me that I’m actually quite a competent pilot, that my circuits are at about 90% level, which is fine. By the end of the course they will be at 97%. To get that last three percent will take about another 10,000 hours. So there you are at 700 feet, moving in three dimensions, which is a really bizarre concept in itself. You are as it’s said, ‘free as a bird’. It is a unique feeling, you are free. The R22 is fucking uncomfortable, when solo the centre of gravity is shifted, it really does your wrist in, the seat is bolt upright, this ain’t no Rolls Royce. So why am I doing it? Well it keeps my mind of work. When you are doing a precision approach to a disc which is no more than one meter across from half a mile away you are not thinking about grass or rendering. I’m looking forward to taking people up to experience the whole thing, my mother will be first. What will be her reaction? Well, she’ll not be too bothered by the whole flying thing, she’s a hundred and forty years old, the next major floating event she’ll be taking part in is to see God. No, she’ll be immensely proud, that something she fired out her vagina, even though she’s never been too bothered by it and always thought it was a bit of an inconvenience is a helicopter pilot. Now here’s by beef. It’s bullshit. I’m a firm believer that anyone with an ounce of sense and twenty grand to throw away could be a helicopter pilot. Why? Well it requires no artistic talent. If I wanted to I could be a brick layer, of God forbid and English teacher, but I don’t think either one requires anything more than training. I could never be a hair dresser, or a painter, that requires artistic talent, that I do not possess. Saying that I’be had great fun recently in doing music remixes, I have a little bit of a flare for that. After an hour of pissing about, I do come out grinning. Anyway, at the end of the less, I did a pickup, then slammed down the collective and we hit the deck like a sack of shit. James asked if everything was alright, after he had a minor interview with God about entering the gates of heaven. I said I thought I could feel a rotation. He said, no, there was nothing there. And looking back at the video footage there wasn’t. There was a bit of yawing to the left, but that’s perfectly harmless. You could make a helicopter light on the skids then jam the left peddle on fully, to will drill itself into the ground, but it won’t kill you. He warned me of ‘chasing ghosts’ and inventing situations that could get me into trouble that don’t actually exist. We have a bit of a break for a month now. I think that will be good, I can refocus and get back on it. I have no doubt that I probably need to close to another twenty circuits before they are completely nailed. But when you are flying by yourself, there really is nothing quite like it.

Drove back and walked the dogs. Loaded the fuel cans, drove to Toolstation and picked up some bits, then to B&Q and finally got fuel. Came back and started tidying up. Picked up Lisa and Andy. What happened next was the usual drunken debauchery, which involved Andy drinking his own bodyweight in white (although his own bodyweight isn’t actually that much) and Lisa downing a bottle of red. I stuck to the lager. I made a curry. Now I only make one dish really well, and that’s it. I could have put the bowls and dishes back in the cupboard afterwards as there wasn’t a trace of anything left on them. My food was seriously appreciated, which was nice. Anyway, the subject came round to new years eve. The most depressing night of the year for me. Lisa invited us over to her place, as she had her kids. I said I didn’t want to travel. So now what we’ve ended up with is Lisa, Andy, multiple children and now some of our Cuban friends descending on us for new years eve. This isn’t a problem, but I’ve only got two weeks notice. I did organise an entire wedding in three months so it should be possible. How is Sasha going to deal with children? Will I have to use the cage? Is it cruel to put someone else’s children in it? I’m sure it will be fine and a lot of fun. There will be Cuban food, this will be good. There will be Karaoke, this may not be so good. There will no doubt, be some serious sock dancing.

Anyway, today. Coffee, followed by more skimming and filling. I didn’t get as much done as planned as the skim and filler hasn’t completely hardened, so had to abandon it for the time being. It’s all pretty good though, so a session during the week I think will finish it off.

So today was all about, yes you’ve guessed it, grass. But thankfully at about 3PM I’d finished it. So stopped work and went for a run for an hour. Came back and walked the dogs. Then did a bit more work, was only supposed to do an hour, but ended up doing another four. Now basically very very tired. Going to have a shower, do Alan Sugar and then go to bed. Flying tomorrow, last one of the year. Then friends round in the evening.

Grass. I bloody hate the stuff. Four bloody days I’ve been on it now, with no doubt tomorrow as well. Still, it’s been chilly. Haven’t left the house today actually as it’s been pissing down. I was determined to finish work on time, so finished an hour and a half late. Decided to get Emily out. Spent about an hour sanding the bathroom ceiling. It’s pretty good now. Probably needs about another hour and a bit of touching up around the edges. Still have about a meter to skim though. Hopefully get that all sorted over the weekend. Jumped in the shower. Then finally put the serial number into Traktor Pro, which I bought over week ago. Had about half hour playing about remixing ‘Hereos’ which was actually good fun. Enjoyed playing round with a load of the effects, managed to do a few mixes of it fairly easily. It was good fun. Finally sat down. Then got up again and sorted out all wine. I have almost two hundred bottles. That should at least last me until new year. Torture porn night, actually got a horror tonight. I’m currently joined by both dogs, they must smell cheese.