Started fairly early this morning, well took Sasha to daycare at 6:30, but started work early. Lots to work on, lots to fix. Did some major changes, may undo them yet. Need to think on them. Captain James phoned and moved my flight time earlier, as the Friday weather is supposed to be bad. Weather looks good tomorrow.

Went to the hygienist and had my teeth scraped and jet washed, that’s it there for another twelve months. Came back and picked Sasha up. Came back home and Dillon had left a little ‘present’.

Finished off work, then went for a run. Came back and did my hours flying, going well. Practised hovering, transitions and changing attitudes. See how well it pays off tomorrow.

So started off fixing alignment on a 64 bit allocator. Then probably spent about the next five errors searching for a GPU hang. Found it in the end using a bit of know how and hand disassembling the render list. That was fun. Many more things like that to come no doubt. Skipped lunch as I wanted to clock up a couple of extra hours.

Went for a run, had a shower, then plugged in my new pedals…I got the Cessna one’s which okay aren’t the same as an R22 but they are as good as I’m going to get. Got them set up on the iMac with XPlane 10. Woohoo, after I stopped the wheelie chair from going backwards they were great. Stops me from cocking up the collective control. I did an hour of hovering and flying, almost beginning to get the hang of it. Read about half the pilot book last night, will do a bit more tonight. Looking forward to the next lesson now, hopefully the simulator time will all pay off.

Work was a bit of a pain as I was waiting around for data to build and then moved on to something else. Mind you the ‘something else’ is pretty good, so no real complaints there.

Walked the dogs, very well behaved. Went to combat, good fun.

Came back, did some more work, then fired up x-plane 10. Still don’t have my peddles yet, but I’m now beginning to hover, and recover from bad situations. I think it’s going to be much easier when I get the peddles as I keep moving the collective at the moment when moving the torque pedals as it’s on the same stick. So the time is slowly paying off, I’ll try and get an hour a day in, split between hovering and normal flight. Got lots of complex books to read as well. May have an early night tonight and do some reading.

This morning started off rather well. Both dogs went out for a pee, we then all had breakfast. I did some research on my model helicopter problems and found that the flybar was set completely wrong. So I adjusted all that and took it outside for another fly. This time, fairly successful. Until I hit the wall and various bits of it flew off. Oh well, big repair bill. But I was getting the hang of it.

Then went and did and hour on the iMac simulator, no I’m still shit. Took the dogs out for a walk. Had lunch, then ventured off to Stapleton to grab a gromit as it’s the last week. Got that one then parked up in Cotham. Walked all the way to Ashton court and got the one there. Decided to hit the one at Arnos Vale. After a bloody long walk I got there, but it was closed. As it was another bloody long walk back to the car I got a bus. Had to sit with common people, mind you it went all the way to Clifton Down for £2.90 so didn’t complain.

Got home. We went out to the local Indian, it was very good. Must do some gardening tomorrow.

Work wise was lost of little things. Various playing with SSE2 intrinsics which was good fun. I’m almost at a stage now where I can start doing what I’m supposed to be doing next week.

Lunchtime I went outside with the model heli. God that’s hard to control. I mean really hard. I don’t thing I got it off the ground for more than a second without it drifting. I’m not sure it’s set up well either as it pulls badly to the left.

Went to pump. Trudie tonight, Laverne must be off somewhere again.

Came back and bought the proper R22 plug-in for x-plane 10. It seems very accurate, if slightly bugged to fuck. Hovering is almost impossible, so very much like the real thing. I think it’s going to be great (but frustrating) for practicing on. So I’ll try and give it a little bit every day. It’s installed on the iMac, so at least it boots in the same hour you power it on.

So work was back on DX11, finally nailed the problem, it wasn’t even anything to do with the renderer. Still, that’s the way it goes sometimes.

Walked the dogs, they pulled, very annoying.

Lots of things turned up today. My helicopter. My study books and DVD and x-plane 10.

I started charging the helicopter batteries, they take fucking ages. I haven’t looked at the books yet, but watched the DVD. Basic stuff, but covers some useful numbers.

I did attempt to get the helicopter to take off, it didn’t. Mind you it was dark and I think I have the pitch set wrong, will try and crash it again tomorrow.

I started installing x-plane 10, it’s 8 DVD’s. I only selected UK and North America scenery and it still took around 3 hours to install. Eventually it finished, then did a whacking great patch over the top. I’ve installed it on the iMac as that has a good screen and plenty of drive space. It’s also an i7 so has plenty of grunt. Had a quick pop with the R22, it isn’t very good, I need to get the plug-in for the decent one. It does work with my fancy joystick though, so should all be set when I have that. It does look pretty good.

Today started with debugging the damn DX11 line code. I found all the problems in the end, was something quite silly, just took a long time to track down.

The model helicopter people didn’t answer any of my emails which is rather disappointing.

I had lunch, that was disappointing.

I fired up the fsx simulator again and did a bit of hovering, managed to stall the engine, couldn’t restart it. I found that there is a better R22 model for x-plane, so I’ve ordered x-plane. I’ll then get the plug-in. It apparently simulates it quite well, if the RPM drops below 85% it falls out of the sky and you die, so that sounds about right.

I went for a run, that was almost disappointing.

Tomorrow I hope to have a more productive day, which isn’t disappointing.

So started perhaps a little later than normal, then ended up doing a whole bunch of stuff related to debug triangles. Not very exciting, just a hell of a lot of it. I can’t get the bloody line draw to work on DX11, wasted the bulk of the afternoon on that.

Walked the dogs. Looked at model helicopters, decided to get one to practice hovering with. Apparently they are quite a bitch, so very much like the real thing then. I’m looking at a 6 channel one, so it has the proper collective.

Went for a nice run in the evening.

Just watched the Belgium GP, wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would be. Never mind, back to work tomorrow, same as today then.