Okay, work was rather strange. From the technical side all was good. Working on ‘depth of field’ effect. Well working on optimising it, made very good progress, got about a four times speed up. Okay, had to make a couple of compromises, but the effect still looks good. Got a lot more post-processes still to look at. And then the bizarre incentive came along. I’ve been offered something quite insane, if I manage to get something achieved. It’s all above board. Still rather odd though, gives you kind of a mental kick up the ass.

Worked through lunch. But did head out for a couple of hours this evening. Managed to clear off two fairly local caches. Came back and then worked past midnight. Finally had a shower and sat down and had salad. It’s still like an inferno. I’m going to settle down and watch a film now. Tomorrow I really must get over to the garage and get this part fitted.

I’ve offered to take mother to Weymouth on Saturday if the weather holds. She needs to behave herself.

Got up at 6:30, took Sasha to daycare. Went back to bed. Work was a bit weird, very stressful. Lots of bugs for an upcoming demo. Must admit I got left fairly alone to get on with them so had a pretty good success rate. I’ve got one known left for tomorrow, but that’s more of a tweak than anything else.

Jamie was at work, Megan was here, she looked after Dillon while the cleaners were here. Megan and I then walked Dillon. We talked about Body Pump, depression and the fact Jamie is a completely untidy git that does my head in. The cleaners do their job and he makes a mess within ten minutes. At least she knows how to do lunges without falling over now.

Collected Sasha. Did more work. Dropped Megan at Parkway. Went to the gym and did Pump. Came back, had protein shake, did more work. Finally finished all the bugs, did think it would take a lot longer, I expect a long one tomorrow as well.

So yesterday started off later than I’d planned, I wanted to take the car to the garage but never got round to it. Mark and Alison arrived with Megan. I then shot off and watered Sarah’s plants. We then drove down to Parkway, parked up and had a fairly uneventful journey up to London. We got to the hotel, which considering Jamie picked it, it wasn’t too bad. It had no air-con though. We went out to the ‘Shard’ which was actually pretty quiet. The view was indeed stunning over London. There was quite a low cloud base but it didn’t spoil it too much. We had a nice photo taken, but they wanted over thirty quid for it, sod off. Went back to the hotel. Killed an hour. Then got ready and went to the theatre. We saw ‘Charlie and the chocolate factory’, which was really good. Also in the audience was Russell Brand, we had better seats. It was a musical, it doesn’t really have many memorable songs but does have some fantastic sets. All the kids were great, it was quite a large cast. Afterwards we had some meal deal at a brasserie in Covent Garden. The food was nice but it was pricey as hell. Managed to sleep okay.

This morning we got up and split up, Jamie was going to meet some blue person and I was planning on going to the science museum. I tried to look for some geocaches, but its an awful place, far too many people and the GPS just doesn’t work properly. Ended up walking through the city all the way to the tower of London. I then jumped on a tube and took it back to South Kensington. Spent a couple of hours at the museum, I really like this one. I don’t think it’s as good as the powerhouse museum in Sydney but it does have some good stuff in it. Then I walked across Hyde Park back to Paddington. Again a fairly uneventful journey back.

Managed to let Sasha escape. She ran round all over the place and came across a few cats, oddly all she did was sniff them. We went to Nando’s. I had chicken and rice. It was very average.

Last two days were meant to be holiday, I think I spent more time on the work forum dealing with shit than anything else. I’m now very stressed over it all. Not sure how much of it I will take, I’m seriously thinking of jacking it all in and doing something else.

Yesterday was rotten weather wise. There was a storm overnight and it continued well into the day. I ended up staying in bed and just studying the air law book. Not that I seem to be taking much of it in, my brain just wasn’t really in the correct state for that. Walked Sasha in the rain.

Picked up Jamie from work then went for a run. It was then time for mother to arrive. She arrived and hobbled into the hallway. See brought the dogs a treat each so they buggered off. I talked a lot about flying, theme parks and work. She mentioned that she’d sold a few things in an auction. That was the only real mention of money. She never once mentioned anything that had fallen off on her, her house or her car (other than her sister now uses a walker), or she couldn’t afford to eat. She did milk the whole ‘Are we going to Weymouth’ thing quite a lot, saying that’s the only holiday she has now. She asked me about how I was coping without massive amounts of anti-depressants. She then left. I was quite surprised, may be she’s finally learnt. I may relent on the Weymouth thing, will need to keep an eye on the weather.

I did the accounts and studied some stuff on vortex rings, then cooked food. Had a fairly early night. A big Geocaching session tomorrow.

So mother now keeps emailing me and FB messaging me about when I want my cake. Can I just send a courier? She also emailed me that she sold some more of the family silver at an auction. To pay for some glasses, in the shape of a Kim & Co. pencil skirt. I may have to invite her round the weekend, don’t know when, hopefully when Jamie is here so I can use him as a bit of a distraction.

Work was dull, all about screen clears. We took the dogs out for a nice long walk lunchtime. I finished at half six, it was very hot. Walked to Harry Stoke and did a cache there, and a bonus one on the way back.

James is back. So booked with him for tomorrow afternoon. Was clearing up the wine bottles and at the back of the pile found a case of New Zealand, which made quite a pleasant surprise.

Fast clears. Oh joy. That was about the joys of the day. Actually it started at 6:30, took Dillon to daycare (who is now flat out on the couch next to me). I was actually quite tired, probably because Jamie didn’t come to bed until 2AM. Yes, fast clears. Fun how these work. Okay, for depth buffers it’s actually pretty good. You have some meta data which say represents a 16×16 block of pixels. That metadata stores the min and max z of that block. So to clear depth you just right max depth to min and min depth to max. Then do your render. Job done, that really all there is to it, no need to clear the whole depth buffer. When the rasteriser writes to it it checks the min/max values against the meta data, so it knows if it can skip the whole tile. Colours are a bit more involved. You clear the meta data. Do your render, this marks the tile as ‘touched’ and fills in any untouched pixels with the clear colour. Then after you have finished you have to run through the metadata and clear any untouched tiles. Job done. Anyway, took quite an age to implement, all working now.

Picked up Dillon. Went to Pump. Laverne stood in as Trudie was away. Did more work. Had an odd and slightly worrying experience tonight, I’ll discuss it in a couple of weeks. More GPU fun tomorrow.