Didn’t exactly start at the crack of dawn. Did start out doing some more work to do with photo exporting, but managed to pass that off to someone else when it was getting heavily into save / load type code. Then it was on to bugs again. All sorted except one to do with video bandwidth which I’m still looking into. Walked Sasha. Jamie’s knob jockeying friend came round and they vanished off somewhere. I went off to Combat, got a slightly sore foot. Wasn’t overly into it, but got through it all the same. Did a little bit more work. Now building data again.

Jamie wants to run his Sonic statue thing off the mains, it only takes batteries. I rigged up a ‘wall-wart’ power thingy but the output isn’t regulated enough. So I came up with a circuit to do it using an LM317, it only has five parts. I have four of them already. Tried to source the regulator, no problem, I can get it off Farnell for about 40p plus a shit load of postage. Maplin want over a quid for it. Or I can just buy it, on a PCB with the other parts, ready made from Hong-Kong for 99p including postage. I’ll be waiting for the postman then.

So just to catch up, yesterday we spent the afternoon in Cardiff. Jamie wanted to go shopping, so for a change I decided to head to Wales. We had a nice afternoon there, it has a good shopping centre now. Came back from there, showered and then headed over to Lisa’s. Where they spent the next five hours talking about Tesco’s. I drank six cans of lager and two glasses of wine. We were driven home in a Prius. They are fucking weird, starship enterprise and silent with it.

Today we woke up and had a bum. I made Jamie squeal, apparently I almost broke something. Aways proud of that. We went out and walked into town. Came back, showered again and off we went to the pub for a mediocre meal with Jamie’s family. The service there is absolutely appalling.

So thats it really, a busy weekend of socialising and eating. Be glad to get back to work.

So I go running. Then end up calling into a house of people I thought I may know. I then spent all the afternoon chain-smoking while wondering about how it was going to effect my running. I had twenty quid in my pocket but I knew I needed a tenner to send off this government form with. I sat at the table and filled in the form. I’d just finished it when I was presented with a photo of me and a rather ugly baby with a big price sticker on it of £11. I said it was lovely but I couldn’t pay for it now as I needed ten pounds for the form. But it was okay as I was at the bureau de change on the ship. She had plenty of Euro’s but she was just about to close. Then thankfully I woke up.

After not very much time it was time to pick up the shopping. Came back, did a tiny bit more then we walked the dogs for an hour or so. Came back and finally got stuck in. Still all about photo processing and export today. What a mighty pain in the ass that was. Went to the gym and did Pump. Did a session with Laverne afterwards where we mostly rabbited. Came back and did another couple of hours. Finally got it all working. Now about to add annotations to a new video, then it’s pizza time.

Actually had a reasonable nights sleep after I did the multi-bed shuffle and all Jamie’s devices finally stopped buzzing. So got up and got on with it. Had a load more content export stuff to sort out, then a load of content searching, that went all relatively smoothly. Walked Sasha. Went for a run just before six. Came back and then spent the next three hours trying to load a fucking texture. The content searching returns a file name. I then tried to load that file name. The great fun being that the search file name is linux based, so is case sensitive. I then had to jump through a ton of hoops to try and get it to the actual system load call without prefixing it with some shit and without changing the case. After three hours, still didn’t bloody work. Will crack it tomorrow.

Torture porn night. Have to pick up the shopping tomorrow as all the delivery slots were taken up.

So last night I got very hot, very frustrated and coughed a lot. I’d been going down with some lurgy for most of the evening, coughing away. So I’d been jamming large amounts of Vicks first defence up my nose. I’ve used this stuff a hell of a lot in the past, it causes a micro-gel to form in the back of the throat and then flushes out all the crap. It does work, you will cough a bit and your nose will run, but it never really develops into anything. The only problem with it though is when you breath it in it trickles to the back of the throat and that burns like hell. Anyway, didn’t sleep at all. Got up at 6:30 and took Sasha to daycare. Went back to bed and managed to get a couple of hours.

Work was all about jpg’s. Basically loading them as textures. I then had a load of stuff to do on content management which I can’t really go into. It’s not exactly exciting, but stuff that needs to be done. Picked up Sasha again. Went to Pump. Weights back up to a good level again now. Came back, did protein shake and a lot more work.

Time to update the server and WordPress.

Not the greatest nights sleep, a bit dozing. Anyway, got up and got on with it. Today was all about optimising a single shader. It was to do with full screen dirt. It started at 1.2 milliseconds, four hours later it was down to 110 microseconds. Not a bad ratio. A few other bugs a long the way, nothing too stressful. Theres something weird about to come up I just know.

Went for a run. Edited a new helicopter video, that’s uploading at the moment, will be released on Friday I think. Going for an early night again, probably fairly pointless.

So back to Monday again, no idea where the last week went, it’s been a week since we were on holiday. Still, at least today wasn’t too troublesome. Had some thread stuff to finish off then it was a bit of bug hunting. Walked Sasha. Went to BodyCombat, we did the new one, it was quite fun but tiring. Came back and did a bit more work. Finally sat down and ate salad. Think I’ll have a bit of an early night as I want to read some of that ‘Operational procedures’ book.

Okay, so didn’t get up at the crack of dawn. Actually I don’t think I had breakfast until about 11AM. Read for a bit then got up. Got the jet washer out, plus my high pressure drain cleaner. I then spent the best part of three hours jetting the drains. This is kind of a biannual job, that involves shoving a pipe down the drain gully and running it back and forward for hours on end. Plus the fun part of removing all the drain covers, shoving your hands in and scooping out handfuls of basically white solid fat. I’ve got them all running smoothly again, I reckon another twelve months and they no doubt need doing again. Also cropped some of the bush outside and shoved it in the black bin. Put the swimming pool on top of it (don’t ask).

I then fired out and went to Tytherington, which is a village just outside Thornbury, parked up at the pub. Did one Geocache within 50M and then another dozen or so over the next few hours. That’s basically that village done now. There is one puzzle cache there that I’ll probably get next time, then probably move about a mile away for the next group. Over the three hundred mark now. Target is five hundred next year, so all these are a bit of a bonus at the moment.

Came back and had a bath, now it’s time to cook one of my special hot curries.

Woke up this morning and I heard something drop on the floor as I got out of bed. Then my necklace started hanging down my cheats. Finally after about twenty-two years the very fragile clasp had broke at the join. I’ve worn it every day since I had it, it was bought in Jersey when I was there with Mark. I will take it to a jewellers hopefully tomorrow. Needs to be fixed, cost isn’t important, I feel naked without it.

Work went surprisingly well, fairly quiet, I got on with a load of stuff to do with thread management. Game is still demoing in London, and getting good feedback.

Went for a quick run at lunchtime, only about ten minutes. Saw a woman and a girl walking a tiny dog at the end of the road. It was taking a shit on the grass. They just walked off. I stood there and stared, the girl looked round then got, I take it her mother to look round. I glared. She said, “Sorry I don’t have a bag, I would have cleared it up if I had one.” I thought to myself, “Sorry, I will punch you in the face, I wouldn’t if I had more self control”. I glared a stare that Lionel Blair would be proud of. Bitch. Next time I’ll just kill her.

Went to Pump. Put weights near enough back to normal, then did a session with Laverne afterwards. Came back and did a load more work while Jamie was creating a racket on the treadmill.

Flying tomorrow.