Woken up at 8AM by Mr Virgin Media. He had gastric flu and all the charisma of a table. Changed my four year old box for a new HD one. No HD channels though, that took a phone call to India later in the day. When I spoke to the guy ‘Richard’, he rebooted the box remotely, I said I’d be impressed if he could open the curtains, he replied that he didn’t know what a curtain was. Anyway, I now have Channel Five HD, it’s just a shame it shows nothing but shit.

Today I was working on more physics stuff. Ended up having to think about how to draw a cylinder. Fun fun. Went for a run, did more physics.

Finished off then did some more Japanese. I’m now at the end of unit 2, know 97 words and actually getting the hang of it. So providing you want to know how to say “The Dog’s key is inside Tokyo train station”, I’m your man. It’s not a cheap course mind you, a couple of hundred quid. But it seems to be working and I’m enjoying it.

More paint stripper arrived, that’s my weekend sorted.

Anyway, torture porn night. Haven’t had one of those in a while.

Didn’t sleep very well last night. Not overly sure why, but I was woken up by the dog at about 3AM when she suddenly ran down stairs, visited her box then came back upstairs again. Got up at 6:20, then found out why the dog ran downstairs….the wall had collapsed. Well, not the wall exactly but where the paint stripper was. It had all fallen off and crashed through the dog cage and the back of the wine fridge. Dog was delivered to day care. I went back to bed and was completely shattered. I ended up taking the morning off as I was no use to anyone, especially anything physics related. So I got up after lunch and had breakfast. I then got on with work, which now was actually quite painless. Before I knew it it was time to pick the dog up again. Came back, did a bit more work and then did another Japanese lesson. I think it’s all beginning to sink in. I need to work more on my flash cards and vocabulary, but it is indeed getting there. Added the last lot of finings to the Red and then finished off the Chardonnay. Had a bath. Now relaxing for a bit. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have a bit more energy.

Today I was working on physics type stuff again. Actually I had two issues, the first was how to combine inertia’s, that is, if you have a rotational velocity that’s then geared to another rotational velocity, what’s the total inertia only taking the first velocity into account? I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader. The second was modelling a turbo charger. Now I have a large sample that takes into account the air pressure, temperature, chamber size, density of air and turbine dynamics. Basically it uses full computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to model a turbo charger. This is rather complicated. So what’s a turbo charger after all? Well its a turbine powered by an exhaust which drives a compressor, the output of this forces air back into the engine. So a couple of things to take into account, a turbo is basically a big wheel, this has mass and a radius so has an inertia. Inertia is rather useful as it gives a ‘willingness’ or rather lack of it, to change direction. This means it takes a while for it to spin up and spin down again. So if you drive the wheel from the potential energy of the engine (which is quite handy as when it’s not under load the potential energy is quite low, when under load it’s greater, thanks to inertia again). So if you tap off this energy then make a deduction from it based on the square of the wheel velocity (most things that offer resistance are squared, air resistance for example), use that to drive the wheel. Then use the wheel velocity to add to the torque of the engine. You then have a fairly good turbo model which has lag and boost and acts pretty much how a turbo should. And no fluids are involved.

Apart from that I walked the dog and went to Body Combat. That was fun. My paint stripper appears to have done its job. Unfortunately I still have half the room to do. Did some more Japanese. Watched ‘Celebrity Wedding Planner’ with Harry from TOWIE. He’s cute but I think I’d have to gag him.

So today I was pretty much flat out on physics calcs. Had an interesting one to do with inertia and gearing. If you have an object that’s rotating it has an inertia on an axis, now if that goes through a gear, say 2:1 the output object is now moving twice the speed. If they both have the same mass then they would have the same inertia at the same velocity, so if the second one is twice the velocity then it should be twice the inertia, so the inertia of the whole thing is three times the original (1+2). However that’s wrong. If you work out the energy produced (which is quite handy as the energy calc uses inertia) then I’ve actually managed to prove Einstein wrong and create about twice as much energy as I put in. I think my math may be wrong.

My paint stripper has arrived. Lots and lots of it. But no doubt not enough.

Walked the dog. Did Body Pump, played with inertia. Now late, now time for a bath.

So yesterday started far too early as normal with taking the dog to day care. Mind you I consider it just a bit of sleep distraction as I’m soon back in bed. Still working on physics stuff, again, can’t really say too much but things are coming together now. Cleaners arrived, made a hell of a racket. I picked up the dog and then went out for a run. Came back and did some more Japanese. Then it was the Sony conference which I watched the streaming of. They announced the ‘Playstation 4’, which is basically an 8 core PC with unified memory and a powerful GPU. This will certainly make developers happy with no weird SPU’s to deal with. Streaming processors were an interesting if slightly crap idea. Every man and his dog (well except mine) knows how to code for x86. So there’s definitely a smaller learning curve. Watched shite telly then went to bed.

Today was very much like yesterday, similar sort of work, but almost coming to the end of this section now. Just some tidying up to do and add a couple of features. Went out running, it’s Jamie’s turn to walk the dog. My paint stripper hasn’t arrived, which is slightly annoying as I do want to get on with that on Sunday, so hopefully will turn up tomorrow. Spent the evening doing another Japanese lesson, it is getting a lot harder now and I’m only on unit two of ten. But I have all my flash cards and I’m sticking at it. Practice makes perfect, well at least acceptable anyway.

Right it’s torture porn night, I still have that film to get through that I’ve had for a month now. So shower, salad and porn.

Started the day late. It’s a Monday after all. Really bad gas. I think it’s caused by too many currants. Today I’ve been mainly working on physics again, simulating friction transfers. Now there’s a lovely equation to get your head around on a Monday morning.

Walked the dog very late in the afternoon. Had lunch. Did more friction shit. Went to the gym and did Body Combat, was fun. Came back and stuck to things. Sorted out Jamie’s passport application. Now I’m somewhat tired. Still have to add something to wine vat. Oh and I have a ‘onesie’ to try on.