So got up later than I was initially planning, but worked out fine as I got to the garage just as it was opening. Dropped off my car and picked up a fucking ugly brown Agila with no petrol in it. Sorted that out and started working early. Today was all about data formats and trying to pack normals in interesting ways. Well I managed to get them in a number of ways. None yet I’m truly happy with. Walked the dogs, came back and got a phone call from the garage. Some rubber boot thing needed replacing. Sixteen quid for the boot and sixty to fit it, fairly typical. Anyway, picked it up and didn’t hit too much traffic. Did a home check for a couple of kittens. Went for a run. Actually quite looking forward to work tomorrow, will be quite interesting to sort this lot out.

No news from mother. Hopefully she’s died.

The cleaners were coming today. So the first thing I did was clean the kitchen. It was in a hell of a state. Mind you the state I left it in was hardly brilliant. Work was all about converting some phase one shader outputs. Monotonous, but kind of fun. Got an email from mother last night, moaning that her freeview box on her bedroom telly has gone bang. Then asked how I was. Got an email today from one of her credit cards saying that’s she’s only paying the minimum payment. Then later I get a copy of a QVC password reset request. And then a fucking QVC order for £31.97 for some foundation. Surely she can get something from Tesco’s for two quid that she can lay on her crinkly near death face? Or failing that, B&Q do a really big bucket of fine wall filler for about a fiver. That will last her until death, mind you if I had my way a small sachet would do that. Sorry but you can’t go from almost threatening emails to me last week begging for £7, to splashing out on some expensive makeup product this week. Just isn’t on. She can fuck off.

Walked the dogs. Walked to the gym. Walked to my sisters and fed her dogs and let them out. Walked home. That’s almost four hours of exercise today.

Car in for a service tomorrow.

So today it was up early and drove to the station. Ran to the ticket office, got ticket, got on train. Which was fairly full, but got a seat. Journey was uneventful. Tube journey took too long to be honest. Office meeting was fine. We had pizza for lunch. I picked up a fancy Logitech G910 from the office. It’s one of these gaming keyboards with lots of stupid LED’s, but it’s an American layout, so I’m sure it will annoy the shit out of me over the next couple of days. I think I’m going to evaluate it for a while, if I get used to the actual key action, which to be honest I like the tactile feedback, then I may buy the Corsair K70, which is similar, but has the UK layout.

Anyway, as it was a nice evening and the return ticket price was a hundred quid, I decided to skip jumping on the tube and instead decided to walk back to the station. It was pretty good actually. Walked from London Bridge, down the South bank, until Westminster, the crossed over, past Buckingham palace and then through Hyde Park to Paddington. A couple of hours with a couple of stops for a few photos. Picked up a ticket and got straight on the train. Okay journey back. Jamie had left me some food, chicken wasn’t bad, rest was a bit, blah. This was another of these ‘Hello fresh’ meals. This keyboard is beginning to grow on me. I think really I have to do a bit of coding to really get used to it.

So today started oddly with a hand job and a parcel arriving. Then it was on to some very dull research papers. I won’t go into what they were on, mainly as after studying them for hours I am mostly truly un the wiser. Walked the dogs. Horrible weather today. Went to Combat, disappointed that Laverne wasn’t back, says she’ll be back Friday. Did more reading. Long day of travelling and meetings tomorrow.

So this morning started early. For one reason which will become clear next week, but I’m not saying anything in the meantime. Anyway, got back from that and had breakfast. Then spent about an hour outside adding a security light and a proximity alarm. This is because some fucker decided it would be a great idea to try and steal my bumper. I kid you not, it was all unbolted, thankfully they must have got disturbed. So anyway, security light added, and a big fuck off proximity sensor connected to a siren. Walked the dogs in the rain. Had lunch. Then headed up to Cribb’s to look at some keyboards. They had all the ordinary ones out, but the gaming ones were all in boxes so couldn’t try them out which is quite annoying. I think I’m settled on a Corsair K70 though. Drove into Pilning and picked up all the Geocaches around that area. In between doing shit I’ve been recovering the backup PC as well. That’s all going to plan. Busy week next week. Meetings, car service, etc. Then the week after I really must book to see my dentist. That will make helicopter lessons seems like the bargain of the century.

So started with coffee and cereal, then it was a quick dog walk before heading up to Staverton. Got chatting to a chap called Jayson who’s a fully qualified commercial pilot, weighs about eight stone and looks about fifteen. Nice guy, can’t get a job as he doesn’t have ‘experience’. So he just has to fly around lots at his own expense to build up hours, a very expensive situation to be in, a great shame when he’s done everything right. I planned todays nav rather badly and added the wind offset vector to the wind direction. If I’d headed that way I would have hit Brazil by about now if the fuel tank was big enough. So had to do the outward journey by guessing and looking at the map. The return journey however was pretty much spot on, got all the landmarks and roads and found the bridge twenty miles later, so I was quite pleased with that. The plan next time is to do another nav and then have lunch and do a solo nav afterwards. So that’ll be fun. I’m now over the fact that I think it’s going to kill me permanently. Drove back, had lunch and then headed into town. Wanted to look at keyboards as I’m not happy with the new PC one but the only shop there that would do them has closed down. So will try and pop over Cribb’s tomorrow and some point and take a look.

So today I actually started quite early. Well it was before coffee time anyway. Mainly lots of paper reading today. All about lighting and light baking. Interesting, but also kind of dull. At 11AM I vanished off to Staverton. Had to finally do the practical for the Robinson Safety course. I flew with Candia, who’s actually very nice when she relaxes a bit. Which helps when you are 2,000ft up and six inches apart. We covered maintaining RPM in turns during auto-rotations, low g push overs and out of ground hover recovery. Then flew back to aerodrome and landed it without the governor which was fun. Then did a load more exercises without governor and then some more engine off stuff. All good fun. Got my certificate. Drove home and carried on reading about light baking. Walked to gym. Did Pump. Walked home. Walked the dogs. A lot of walking today. Will now put the washing away and eat pizza. Another free flight from James tomorrow.

Today I wasn’t awoken by a text message from my mother. So she may be dead. Could be a good day. My sister is going away though, so that does mean I’m slightly higher in the queue of people she will try and annoy. I can’t work out how to get my call blocker to block her text messages. Today it rained, which made a nice change. Tried to take the dogs out lunchtime, failed. So ended up working a long time. Last day of stripping out shit. Did get new project to run on console. Now having to think about what I’m going to do with the renderer, I need to think about it fast as I have a meeting to announce what I’m going to do with it on Tuesday. Haven’t a scooby at the moment. I have a few ideas, but nothing concrete. I need to roll them over in my mind. Probably with a few bottles of wine. It’s lighting, it’s a pain in the ass. Blinn, Phong, I hate you all. Per pixel, deferred, forward, forward plus, lots of options, none are perfect. Some are interesting, some are not. One of my teeth is playing up, I may need to spend a grand at the bloody dentist. Booked the car in for a service next Thursday. Got this safety flight thing tomorrow. Waiting to hear from James about the weekend. Want to get the bikes serviced as well, get them back on the road, to give me another exercise option. Eventually walked the dogs. Went for a run. Ate salad, oddly the first time this week.

So I was rudely awoken this morning by a text message. It was from my mother. Wanting money. Along the lines of ‘I’m really worried. Please can you transfer seven pounds into my account urgently today. Life insurance premium. Will ring with bank details.’. Followed half hour later with, ‘It goes from bank tomorrow. Can you give me cash then I will pay in today’. Ten minutes later, ‘They may cancel my policy’. I took Sasha to the vet as planned and got her kennel cough injection thing. Completely ignored mother. Sorry. But I actually found those text messages quite offensive and threatening. It was almost blackmail. Sorry love you know fuck all about me, you have zero bargaining power. Maybe if you paid a bit more attention when I was a kid you’d have plenty to play with. I ignored her completely. She texted again an hour later to say she’s sorted it. Which probably means that she’s sold half a house she doesn’t own to her neighbour or pawned her rings. Mind you if she did sell some of the shit she’s sat on then I’d have to pay less to get sort of it when she’s dead. The problem is we’ve attempted to settle all her finances in the past and she has refused. She may be my mother but I’m afraid the next time I want to see her, it will be isolated by some very cheap chipboard. I need to cook food.