So back to work today. Lots hanging over from the weekend. Ended up spending most of the morning tracing a rather odd v-sync issue, then spent the rest of the day on grass. Not smoking it, eating it or sitting on it, optimising it CPU wise. I had pretty good success on it. Need to look at the GPU side of it as well really.

Went for a run. Managed eight miles in just over an hour, which is about the fastest yet. Came back, set the camera up and did the ‘Ice bucket challenge’. At least my bucket had a decent amount of ice in it. Jumped straight in the shower. Then spent the next hour adding stupid effects to it.

Talking of videos check out my new one, Jamie and I attempt face painting.

So after being at a BBQ yesterday which slowly descended into a shot drinking contest, I decided to walk home. Jamie ended up waking up at 3AM and devouring a tub of ice cream with a banging headache. I woke up at 9AM felt perfectly fine and started looking at bathrooms. We headed out to a bathroom showroom, found the bath I wanted, but we couldn’t agree on tiles. So I’ll just choose what I want, as I’m paying for it anyway.

Came back. I spent a few hours working on the model helicopters. It was fine, except I couldn’t concentrate. I had a million voices running through my mind, work, all sorts of shit. A tub of Temazepam wouldn’t have calmed me down. I managed to get the T-Rex 450 set up pretty well. The tail rotor was on backwards. But still my mind was all over the place. I walked Sasha. Then had a bath, tried to read a magazine, no good, couldn’t do more than about three lines. It’s odd the only time I can find clarity at the moment is when James says, “Engine off, land it”. Then my mind is 100% clear. It’s strange that I can spend 99.9% of my time thinking about death and fun ways to achieve it, yet that 0.1% you have the entire opposite, the only think you can think about is trying not to die. People say those people who do base jumping off tall buildings and scale great heights without ropes are mad, no they’re not, they are just trying to find clarity, they want to achieve complete peace with themselves and thats the only way they can achieve it. I can really appreciate that. Sometimes I think that delivering post and having a wife with an ass the size of a country may be the solution, but in the end it will all end the same, the grass may be greener, but it’s still grass.

Back to work tomorrow, where my many demons will at least be able to focus on work. I work in a multi-processor environment, so it’s quite useful to able to focus on three hundred things at once.

So I took Jamie to the station first thing, on the way back I stopped off at the tip and got rid of the washing machine packaging. Then I finished off editing the new video and started the upload. Walked Sasha. Had a light lunch. Picked up lots of petrol. Then drove down towards Cheddar. This is a journey I haven’t made for a log time, actually the last time was for Nat’s funeral. No traffic really, considering it was a bank holiday weekend. I stopped off in Shipham and managed to get the car jammed in a farm entrance. Basically I grounded it. Had to jam a load of stones under the weeks and drive out very slowly. Thankfully apart from a few scuffs, no real damage. I then continued on to Karen’s house. Joe was there. I hadn’t seen either of them since the funeral either. Tea was made and we got chatting. I’m not going to discuss what we talked about as it’s a very private matter. Joe buffed the side of my car. He made a really good job of it. I picked up the remaining disco equipment which I hadn’t seen for about ten years, including my smoke machine. I’m sure it will stay in the loft for the next ten years. Also picked up the spray brush picture that Nat and I had done in Orlando. I drop back via Shipham cemetery. I had a few moments to myself. Drove home without any further car incidents.

Went for a run. Did the video annotations. Forgot to remove the audio on one of the outro trailers, never mind. Takes too long to upload. Had a shower, then made myself a Phal curry. Quite impressive hotness. Now sat here waiting for Jamie’s train to arrive watching the new Doctor Who.

Work once again was all about CPU optimisation. Lots of prefetching data. Basically analysing where data cache misses are, then putting in prefetches in good places. Managed to get a few fps increase. I was watching this T-Rex 450 on eBay, it was going for about fifty quid with a few hours to go. These are big heli’s, well almost half a metre as in the name. But they are very stable to fly. They are also over three hundred quid new and this one had a case and a load of spares with it as well. All it was lacking was lipo’s and a receiver, and I don’t have a shortage of them. Won it at just over the ton mark, plus I managed to get a nice stand as well. Plus it was in Bristol.

Washing machine arrived in the correct time slot. Unpacked it. Did more work. Jamie came home, so removed the rest of the packaging and then I installed it. It fitted with about 2mm to spare. It’s stainless steel. Well, it’s stainless steel coloured plastic. It looks nice. I put it on a rinse and spin to clean t out. Walked Sasha. Went for about eight mile run. Had a shower, then drove to the other side of town to pick up this heli. Met the chap there, he was nice, went through it all. Very pleased. I think I’ll do a rebuild on this one first as it’s a bit easier to work on. It has a blown servo, apart from that it all looks complete. Not the sort of thing you can fly in the house though, if it hit you it would take your head off, no problem at all. Just need to pick up a few extra tools.

Got Up at 6:30, took Sasha to daycare. Cleaners arrived just after 10. Working on CPU side optimisations today. The compiler we use is supposed to be very good, yet it sometimes manages to produce some pretty awful code. So spent the bulk of the day rearranging bits and prefetching data. Quickly walked Dillon who pulled so hard that he threw up. Picked up Sasha. Went to Pump, worked on my arms, they are looking mighty fine. Came back and did more work. I’ve built up a bit of extra time now, so will do the next lot of video editing at some point tomorrow. New washing machine also arriving tomorrow.

Rudely awoken by the postman. Special delivery of my new helicopter. Work was dull, debugging some skinning issue.

So the new helicopter to the fleet is an Align T-REX 250. It was second hand off ebay, okay I got it dead cheap. This poor baby needs a hell of a lot of TLC. Oddly most of the parts are there, they just aren’t in the correct places. It certainly looks like it’s had a bit of a hard life and flown by a chimp. I think I’m just going to completely strip this one down and rebuild it. None of the servo’s are correctly aligned or anything. It’s going to be a bit of a labour of love this one. But it should be a lovely aircraft when it’s finished. It has a fully driven tail rotor geared from the main rotor, it’s also capable of autorotation.

Went for a run. That was kind of fun. Oddly got back and my legs didn’t hurt. Finished the rough edit on the new video.

I’m getting highly pissed off with a guy at work who takes three and a half hour lunch breaks, I shouldn’t let it get to me, but it’s beginning to get really on my tits.

After tracing a mystery white four pixels that have apparently been there four years, I pretty much wasted the rest of the day trying to trace an animation/skinning problem which still isn’t solved.

Walked Sasha, I’ve given up on Dillon, he’ll just get old and fat like Jamie. New washing machine being delivered Thursday. Went to gym, did Combat. Came back, did more unsuccessful work. Thought I’d see who was in the new ‘Celebrity Big Brother’, well no celebrities that was for certain. Maybe one old boxer who I’d vaguely heard of, it’s a bit of a joke really.

Hopefully tomorrow will be more productive.

So this morning started in a bit of a hurry. Fed everyone, including me. Then jumped in the car and drove up to Ian’s place in Windsor. Met up with everyone. I was surprised, I was expecting some catering company, but Ian cooked it all himself. After drinks and eats we boarded the coach for the very short journey to Ascot. We were there for the Red Bull air race. This is a bit of a strange thing. Aerobatic planes fly very close to the ground around inflatable columns. Anyway, I fought myself to the front, right by the course barrier and shot some 1,800 photographs. It was all pretty good and two British guys ended up winning it. We then ventured back to Ian’s. More drinks (Coke, I was driving) then drove home. A fun day all in all.

So started off with breakfast for three. Phoned mother and discussed washing machines. Then walked Sasha. Went to Tesco’s and ordered a washing machine. It’s stainless steel and has a dryer. Had a light lunch.

Drove to Thornbury, went to the ‘Model engineering and hobbies’ exhibition. The first thing I noticed on entering was strange, I was probably one of the youngest people there. I walked round the first couple of halls. There were just some fantastic models, all sorts, from Meccano to jet engines. The thing that fascinated me was that these men, in sandals and socks, in their eighties were producing fully working model engines in their little workshops at home, out of solid blocks of metal. These things were fantastic. I chatted to a couple of these chaps and they were absolutely passionate about there models, they’d answer any question and would chat all day to you if they could. The sad thing they both confirmed though, there were no younger people there, they would dearly love to share there knowledge and skills, yet no one was interested. The bulk of their clientele were other retired gentlemen. Give it another ten years and their models will be consigned to a museum and there skills would have vanished forever.

In the last hall I managed to meet up with the ‘Beaufort flying club’, which is the local club in Bristol. They actually fly very local to me. And just to prove that the world is a small place, standing by the small arena was Stan, this was the man I met a couple of weeks ago one evening to find a couple of geocaches with. I chatted to him, after I reminded him who I was I then asked him if he was a member, he said yes, and that he flew the model helicopters. So we had two hobbies in common. We then chatted for about an hour on anything and everything. He’s in his seventies, he thought I was about twenty-eight, I like Stan. Chatted to the helicopter guy there and he gave me lots of tips about setup. I may join the club at the end of the year when they renew their memberships. I learned quite a lot anyway, so hopefully I can put some of that into practice.