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.

Working on more maths trig stuff. In the end it was a little pointless as most of the stuff I was trying to get it to use was double precision. Anyway, that’s all done now. Then did a couple of CPU bits and now back to GPU. I’m trying to time the amount of time it takes to draw nothing, which at first seems a bit naff but it is useful. You can see how much overhead your draw calls are taking. So things like shader and buffer sets still take time. The object being to optimise this down as much as possible.

Went to Combat, was fun I guess. Came back and did some more work. Think I’ll have an early night, what to try and start early tomorrow so I can get out early evening.

Mail server seems to be getting a lot of spam recently. I’ve updated some of the mail rules, which will probably mean that it will fail completely.

This morning I could have quite happily woken up dead, I just wasn’t really in the mood. Jamie brought me breakfast and buggered off to work. To cut a long story short I parked up at Thornbury leisure centre at 12:45. I then had a great time, almost six full hours walking across fields and being very solitary, except for the point where I came across Shrek and Princess Fiona, who were doing the same circuit but in the opposite direction. I managed thirty-five caches, I needed thirty-seven to make two fifty, but if I don’t do that Tuesday I will need shooting. So to the person who is reading this…I’ve ordered the t-shirt and the patches, it will be going back with Megan Tuesday. Came back and logged everything then had a bath. Watched the world cup final. Germany scored in extra time and to be honest I think they actually deserved it, so well done them.

I’m looking forward to a week where I was rather better off being dead.

Oh, as a side note I received this email from my mother:

Hi Tim,
I will let you know when I make the cake – I bought all the ingredients yesterday.
I have washed your curtains and they look nice but the colour ran into the rubber inside the washing machine door, so it has orange stains on it now. Your dining room floor must be sloping as two of the curtains have a 3” hem, one is 2.25” tapering to 1.5” and the fourth one only has a 1” hem and they were obviously made to measure. I made yours all the same length, so that is why two of them are longer, so I feel happier now that it was not my fault. I will hang yours as they are and then pin them up to just above the rad and cut them off, as I have the same sort of problem, as my rail is not level.
Love,
Mum

….

I’d like to officially point out, that I really just don’t give a fuck.

Woke up fairly early but couldn’t really be arsed to get up. Managed it eventually. Read the paper. Walked Sasha. Went to Tesco’s and stocked up on petrol. Then I drove over to Cotham and walked into town. Visted ‘Pride’ briefly and then walked bad again. Did the accounts. Then it was time to head off to town for my sisters birthday. We went to a place called ‘Smoke & Mirrors’ which was a magic club. I didn’t really have great expectations but we ended up having a really good time. I drove, so was very sober. All our group ended up on stage at one time or another even Jamie. Sarah was up first which was dead amusing. The second ‘magician’ I must admit wasn’t really my taste. But the act after the interval were great, they were called, ‘The wizards of odd’. They did a great forty-five minute set. Drove home via the Chinese.

There’s something going off at work at the moment which I’d like to comment on, but I’m just doing my best to avoid at the moment. I’m just going to see if it blows over.