Author Archives: Admin

Okay, so I mislade sixty grand

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So this morning started off without a hangover, which wasn’t bad considering the amount of tequila I managed to get out of ‘Tim’ last night. We had breakfast, Jamie had the full English, I had the full bran flakes.

Reception desk was rather pleasing. We had been changed from bed and breakfast to this meal special thing. I think they wait for you to actually have a qualifying meal first. We did all right out of it really. We were only allowed £50 total but the meal came to over £60. I paid my £51 bar bill. Journey home was uneventful, but the sun was out which was nice.

Came back and had a coffee. Then just got stuck into the decorating again. Put yet more paint stripper on the patio door and did some cable burying around the door frame. Finished an hour later than I planned.

Went through the post and did the accounts. I found two pension statements for a company pension that I had completely forgotten about. Total was over £60K. That was a fairly pleasant surprise. So they are worth about £3K a year. So on that basis I need to save around another million and I’ll be sorted.

Played around a bit with my new PABX. More on than later no doubt. The Pinot is ready for clearing, I’ll get on with that at some point next week. Right, quick bath and then the Chinese grand prix.

Harry Potter and the philosiphising golf bores

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Started by doing the shopping far too early. Jamie walked the dog. I then poured large amounts of petrol into the car from the garage. Picked up Megan from the station as she was dog sitting.

We set off for joyous Watford. Journey was uneventful, accept for the constant drizzling.We arrived at Shendish Manor, which turns out to be a fairly poncy hotel in the middle of the countryside. Well, the middle of Watford anyway. Unfortunately it’s also a golfing hotel. When we arrived there were huge amounts of suited wedding people, apparently an Egyption wedding. Anyway, we checked in. I’d paid for an inclusive half board rate, but we are only down as bed and breakfast, but will need to sort that out at reception shortly no doubt.

Had a quick cup of tea then we departed for the ‘Harry Potter’ making of exerience a few miles down the road. It continued to rain. The tour is housed in two of the existing sound stages at the studios. All eight films were made here and it’s all the original props and sets. We had the audio guide as well. It was all very interesting and well worth a visit. The scale model of the complete Hogwarts is very very impressive, it’s huge. We exited via the gift shop and bought a fridge magnet.

Came back via a reverse odd route due to the sat-nav pissing me off. We had about an hour before dinner, so as it was our anniversary it was time for sex and a shower (not combined). Jamie had asked me first thing ‘to go as my ass like a whack-a-mole’, but I had to do the shopping at Tesco’s. Now he wasn’t so much in the mood, but it didn’t take much effort. It ended in a standing ovation with the glitter cannon going off. We went down to dinner.

So I ordered a pint and a Smirnoff ice for bum boy. They’d run out of all draft lager. So ended up with a couple of bottles of Peroni. I had the quail egg scotch eggs for starter, Jamie had the squid. Very poncy. I had the grilled plaice for main, Jamie had what looked like raw lamb, but apparently it was very good. Washed down with a nice bottle of New Zealand. We had a break while it all went down. This consisted of updating facebook with pictures of salt and pepper pots and listening to four golf bores in the corner. “Mine on the fith was fantastic, it just missed that tree.”, “No you sliced it”. Sorry guys but if you were any fucking good you’d be on the tour not sat here drinking a cheap red while comparing Pringle jumpers. I had the cheeseboard, Jamie had the chocolate brownies. Suitable stuffed Jamie headed back to the room, I headed out to find a bar.

Lady in restaurant pointed me towards a private function and said use the bar down there. I arrived to be greated by a rather full on chappie called “Tim”, he kept thinking I was Austrailian and admired my haircut. I admired his ability to pay for every round. It was a 90th birthday party for his nan. I got introduced to the lady of honour, she was in very good nick. Two pints and a few Tequila shots later I went back to the room. I didn’t have any issue sleeping.

A box arrived marked ‘Keep out of direct sun light’, it’s either chocolate or Robert Pattinson

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Woken up rudely twice, first by a courier delivering a mysterious box labeled ‘keep out of sunlight’, then five minutes later by the postman. Anyway, back to working on interpolation again today. After lots of messing about I’ve finally got it working pretty well. Needs a lot more work, but it’s good progress.

Managed to finish off the whole of unit six on my Japanese course. So four units to go. I do want to finish off before we set off, as I just know otherwise I will never come back to it and it cost quite a few quid.

Walked the dog. Went to pump. Did a home check for a dog.

Finished off work. Now busy day tomorrow, off to somewhere London ‘ish to go to the Warner Brother Studios ‘Harry Potter’ tour. Also staying in a posh hotel (any opportunity for a TripAdvisor review). Oh, why? Because it’s our anniversary.

Interpolation: The art of predicting things in the wrong place

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So I spent the morning buggering around with springs and trying to balance them under various forces. Complex but interesting.

Went for a run. Not so interesting, it rained.

Then came back and worked on an interesting problem. If you have a process that needs to run quickly or at a high frequency and another process that requires that data result at a lower frequency then you have a bit of an issue. You have to bridge the data between the two processes. It’s all down to time stamps. So your high frequency process you store two lots of data results, the current time stamp and whatever was stored previous. You then just flip between updating these two lots of data. Basically you end up with two lots of data both with different time stamps. Then on your low frequency process you take the current time step. Now the fun bit. You take the biggest time stored and subtract the smallest time. This gives you the time interval between the two lots of data. You then subtract the smallest time stamp from the time stamp you want. You then divide the wanted time interval by the stored time interval. This then gives you the linear interpolation value. The art being to subtract the later data from the earlier data then multiply by the interpolation value then add the earlier data again. So what you are trying to do is generate a value of the data exactly between those two stored values. This usually works fine if the time stamp you want is between them. If it’s before or after then you need a crystal ball. You are taking the difference between data and then trying to predict the future. It’s an interesting task, but if you keep the update frequency high enough the results are pretty accurate. Incidentally, linear interpolation is usually fine. Rotation on the other hand is somewhat more tricky, you have two matrices, ignore the translation part that’s just linear. You need to convert the matrix to a quaternion. Once you have a pair of quaternions you can perform a thing called a ‘slerp’, which is a bit like a rotational ‘lerp’. Again, it can produce good results. Tomorrow I will try and predict the weekends lottery numbers using linear interpolation.

Did some more Japanese. Almost at the end of unit 6 now.

Ate salad.

It’s torture porn night, second part of Twilight Eclipse to get through.

One has now eaten salad

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So took the dog to daycare. For once the alarm woke me up, I normally pre-empt it somewhat. The day was mainly spent doing two things. One I can’t talk about much, but it’s to do with suspension, anti-roll bars and application of force. The physics are correct, may be a bit too correct, it may need to become a bit un-correct for the sake of playability.

The other thing I worked on involved reading a lot.

Went for a long run. Picked up the dog. Then did some more Japanese. I’m going through the review unit at the moment. I’m supposed to be writing out all the dialogue in Japanese, considering I can’t even spell in English I’m writing it out in English. But it does mean I’m getting through it a bit quicker.

Had a shower. Ate salad. Wine free evening. Still puzzling about that anti-roll bar.

“You’ll eat anything with wings”, really, panty liners have wings and I ain’t reaching for the soy sauce

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So spent the morning transferring the PC game over to iOS. Apple have mad the provisioning profile system a bit more user friendly, so it only took one hour rather than three.

The rest of the day was mainly spent tweaking the mobile version so it’s a bit easier to play. Overall I’m pretty happy with it so far, although it still requires a huge amount of work.

Went out for a run which was very knackering. Jamie won some voucher for take-away food, so everything that was lost by running has now been made up for in a Chinese.

Had a bath, food arived and we watched ‘Brave’ by Pixar which was very good. Lots of coding in the hair department.

The “Iron Lady” is dead, rust in peace

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Started this morning working on a couple of odds and ends. Ended up getting the current project up and running on iOS. Except there’s a few issues it seems to be rendering in black. Still apart from that it worked fine, so added the control system and a few other frills. It’s almost done now except for the anti-roll bar which I’m still not happy with, need to work through the numbers on that.

Walked the dog. Went to combat.

Mid morning I heard the news that Baroness Thatcher had passed away. She died of a stroke at the age of 87. Now, I’m very much a child of the 80’s. I remember the Falklands war being broadcast every evening on “John Craven’s news round”. I remember her very strong leadership, her speeches and her love of Ronald Reagan. I remember the tax cuts, the prosperity and the relentless attack on trade unions. I also remember the hunger strikes, the Brighton bombing and the poll tax. And let’s not forget Section 28.

Did I admire her? Yes. Did I agree with her? Sometimes. She was a remarkable woman. All politicians are admired and loathed by everybody, usually at the same time, she was no different. Where she stood out for me though was the way she just took no shit. I always admired her straight talking. In one memorable interview she said, “I don’t mind how long my ministers spend talking, as long as they do what I tell them”. It was very much that attitude which got things done, when the country was in dire straights, she was the catalyst that gave it a firm kick up the ass. She modernised British politics, she mondernised British attitudes and to some degree she modernised British people.

She outstayed her welcome. Eventually all the power began to go to her head. She thought she was invincible. She wasn’t. The time came when she had one too many mad ideas and she was given the heave-ho. John Major took the lead, but as I always said, “She was twice the man he will ever be.”

Denis was always in the background. A genius businessman in his own right. He cleverly knew actually where he stood, and more importantly where he should stand. He certainly was no interference, but she could not have done it without him.

Maggie, you were an inspiration. And ironically you died on my birthday.

Rest in peace.

“On it’s own, number 367”

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So started up by getting up too late which kind of buggered the day up some what. Took the dog on a nice walk, including visiting the vet, she’s continuing to lose weight, unlike the rest of us. Saying that being ill for a month didn’t really help, only last Thursday was the first time I’ve been properly running again.

So I had a number of things to do during the afternoon including a cat home re-check thing. Plus I needed to visit Toolstation. Getting there was fine, but getting back I got stuck in loads of football traffic.

Got back, did the accounts. Then it was a quick shower before being picked up by mother. It was our annual bingo trip. This evenings caller was a very laid back Jamaican chap who seemed in no particular hurry which was quite useful as we were hardly on the ball anyway. We failed to win anything. The lager had more water in it than the Thames. Afterwards we went to the Indian, which was pretty empty. Had a nice meal, gave them a good tip and told them to spend it on a new carpet.

…

So today was going to be a busy one. Started off moving the network cabinet out and disconnecting the phone line and drilling a hole through the wall. Then it was outside and running two new phone cables (yes I could have done it in one, but BT won’t be thrilled about sharing a twisted pair with Virgin media). So for the BT on I used actual BT cable and the Virgin one I just ran using some UV protected dual twisted pair. Finished running all the cables, managed to finally get them through the walls and then had lunch. Mother arrived and delivered cards. She put quite a lot of effort into them, keeps her off QVC I suppose. Put the bird table together, impressed with that. It’s quite tall but very good quality. I then put the socket side of the cables together and put a new master socket on for the Virgin line and screwed it next to the BT one. I then finished off the connection ends. No problems, all works, I now have both phone lines terminated behind the network cabinet in the office. Ready for the PABX installation. Job for another day that one. Tidied up and then did the third job of the day which was to knock a whole in the wall to surface mount a network and TV wall plate. Thankfully that all went without any issues and is now ready for the face plate. So it’s back on the dinning room next time that all the cables are out of the way. Need to continue stripping the patio door, then I think it’s time to bury the alarm cables and neutralise the walls.

Anyway, worked hard today, time for a bath. Must attempt to drink less wine and eat less cheese next week. But that’s next week, time for a bath and wine now for sure.

And then the Yen goes mad

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Started this morning with the news that the Japanese government has pumped billions into their economy. Lovely, the yen has now shot up about 8%. Which is typical as mine is currently sat in a drawer. Tempted to get some more but not sure how much i’ll actually get through.

Working on the excitement that was collision meshes today. Did find a load of problems though, mainly to due with duplicate vertices and degenerate triangles. Finished off with producing a binary file for it all. Works nicely now.

Walked the dog. Moaned at people. Still haven’t heard anything from the cleaners.

Went to pump.

So I’m about done for the day, apart from the dishes and hanging the washing up. Must be bath time.

May be if I don’t pay for your piss poor cleaning job you’ll get the message

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Well at least I slept last night, may have been partially wine induced. I felt somewhat itchy, which means either the dog has fleas or my balls need shaving again.

This mornings work started with one of the chaps commenting on my wing implementation, saying it could be replaced with a normal surface. Which in theory is probably correct, I can see how it would work. If you have an angled plane and then blast air at it, it would produce some sort of down force and some sort of drag. The problem is it isn’t any where near correct. Now, there was a fault in my equation and also an issue with it not working backwards. So, here goes the explanation. Let’s start with energy equals half mass multiplied by velocity squared. Note the velocity squared here, that’s important. So what’s mass? Well that will be the area of the object multiplied by a length multiplied by a density. So we end up with energy equals half area multiplied by length multiplied by density. If we assume length is actually a distance then that energy equation can then be rearranged (energy equals force times distance) to force equals half area multiplied by density multiplied by velocity squared. So area is straight forward, you then also multiply by the attack angle in radians and a coefficient as you don’t want all the possible down force applied. The drag equation is the same except you use a drag coefficient. Also remember the squared thing? Well a negative multiplied by a negative will give a positive, so you have to reverse the sign of the velocity squared if you go backwards so you still get a drag, but you will get an up force rather than a down force. So in the end, I was right.

Now the cleaners. Okay they came yesterday, stayed for just over an hour. Missed out half the house and did a fairly piss poor job. They also broke part of the dish washer by jamming a giant baking tray in it and chucked all the rubbish bags into the wrong bin. So I sent him an email yesterday to which I haven’t had a reply. So may be if I don’t pay them any money they may get the message, or they can just fuck off.

I ordered a drill bit from Amazon, three quid. It arrived by courier in a box big enough to hide half a dozen Albanians. Must do wonders for the packaging industry.

At work in October I ordered a new fibre line. Now this isn’t ADSL or any of your Virgin Media crap, this is many thousands of pounds worth of direct fibre connection to a huge back bone. Now we already have one fibre in the office, this works fine. This new one is supplied by the same company, well actually it’s the same managing company the line itself is being provided by another company. So OpenReach come in and actually do their job properly. They install the fibre and a device known as an NTE, which is basically a termination unit. Weeks later a Cisco router turns up at the office. It’s the size of a small car. I get it sent back and replaced with a 1U version. This I get installed into the network cabinet. Problem, the NTE terminates in a twin fibre connection. The router doesn’t have any fibre inputs. After many emails they say just connect the NTE network port to port one of the router. We do this. Nothing happens. Many more emails later. They finally send an engineer and a large box of bits. Engineer arrives and goes away again, he decides he needs more bits. More bits arrive. Engineer returns and inserts bits. Router now apparently works. I get an email saying that I need to connect my network to port one of the Cisco which is a 100Mbps port. Now, we are paying for a 200Mbps connection. I’d be impressed to see how I can get 200Mbps from a 100Mbps port. I’ve tried to communicate this to them, I’m thinking of putting them in touch with my (soon to be ex.) cleaners.

It’s torture porn night. May be some Twilight. Then see who can piss me off tomorrow.