So spent the day sweating, then at 3AM it just stopped. I stopped producing heat and just sat in a pool of my own sweat. Have been pretty much okay after that, apart from a bit of a sore throat. Had sex, before washing, not the most pleasant thing in the world. Washed. Went and did a bit of shopping. Did the accounts. Now off to London for a conference for a couple of days, so no update tomorrow as it’s a corporate party. So lots of cheap beer and canopies.

So didn’t sleep well last night, thought I’d overdone it at the gym. Stayed in bed until about 4PM, then I had a bath. Felt alright for a bit, took the dogs out, then ended up going back to back where I remained until 10PM. Got up to cook food, decided it wasn’t going to happen, went back to bed. Jamie is now making me a light dinner, I’ve gone to bed with some medicinal Fosters and Metallica at Glastonbury. Need to shake this as I’m off to London tomorrow evening. Have to see how I feel, may cancel.

Spent the work day, well, oddly, working. This was on some culling. We have a reflection map which is very busy, it contains everything in about 300M. This is a lot of stuff. What I ended up doing was adding a heuristic to only put in big objects, but make it logarithmic, so the further away the are the bigger they have to be. This dramatically cut down the CPU/GPU time for it. Will have to tweak the numbers several times I expect to be able to avoid pop-in. Went for a run.

Went to the gym and did Pump, followed by a session with Laverne. Worked on arms, they need a lot of work. Came back and worked on new helicopter video, this is a cut of the Vegas flight. Got the first pass done, second pass tomorrow I expect. Then it will need colour balancing and effects adding.

Not sure whats happening this weekend, probably all a bit weather dependant.

Uploaded a new video ‘Walkies’. We attach a GoPro to Sasha and take her and Dillon for a walk.

Took Sasha to daycare. So started this morning working on what I’ve been doing for the last couple of days. At the end of it I got it working. But the fun thing is after two days work it turned out to be slightly slower. Did something else instead that made it a bit quicker. Walked Dillon, who pulled, a lot. Cleaners came and did cleaning things. Got petrol, picked up Sasha.

Did some more work and then went to Pump. Worked on arms, they are beginning to look nice again. Came back and ended up doing a lot more work. Was planning on mowing the lawn and then editing a video, never got round to it. Still I have lots of performance testing to do tomorrow which requires numerous data rebuilds, so can probably do some of it then.

Started this morning and just wasn’t in the mood. I was working on something that I wasn’t sure was going to work, and after spending the whole day at it, it still doesn’t work. Lunchtime I was planning on going for a run and didn’t get round to it. Even after work it was a lovely evening and had to kick myself out of the house and go and do something. Ended up walking for three hours. Just a completely pointless day, wasn’t into it at all. Hopefully this mood won’t last. Actually got something slightly different to do tomorrow, which stands a chance of working. Sasha off to daycare, cleaners coming.

Started late as I wasn’t overly in the mood, being a Monday. Plus I was way over hours last week so didn’t feel guilty. Working on various GPU stuff, mainly removing duplicate API calls. Got it all done, but it was a little dull. Walked the dogs. Talking of which I tried to contact Mandy regards getting them some training but I have not got a reply yet.

Went to Combat, where I spent lots of time pissing about with the stereo. Came back and did some more work. Then fired up xplane 10, which I haven’t looked at for a long time. I couldn’t get the joystick set up properly, need to give it another blast. Watched TV, just hanging around, waiting to not exist.

This morning started off in bed. No problem there. Nothing happened, I watched the end of the F1 qualifier. It was time to jump in the car and head up to Staverton. It was a beautiful day, no wind. I met with Stuart, nice chap, hadn’t met him before. Very professional instructor, captains shirt, tie, nicely turned out. We had a chat, went though a few things and then we went out. I haven’t really flown properly since my birthday back in April. So I fucked up part of the checklist trying to rush it and ballsed the order of the friction and engine RPM. No one died. All set to go. The radio calls today actually were pretty much on the money, shame nothing else really was. Taxied to hell-north, apparently far too quickly, although it was about half the speed James used to do. So walked across the airport at a very sedate pace. I then belted into a transition and up over the golf course, apparently again far too quickly. The first circuit I almost missed the airport completely, let alone the heli marker. I did about another four circuits in the hour, they did get better, but overall I was going to quickly, I wasn’t doing the correct landing / takeoff checks, I was taught a completely different way to get into the hover than James did, it was all a little overwhelming. I’ll just put it down to the moment to being very rusty. The hour was over and to be honest I’m quite glad it was. Now I don’t have much choice, while James is away I have to stick with this guy. I’m sure he’s very good, it’s just that he’s a bit ‘different’. I don’t think this is a bad thing actually, I’m sure there things James does badly and this guy does badly, but I now have the advantage I can take the experience of two instructors and use that to my advantage.

Now. Here’s the big dilemma. My previous instructor James. I texted him when I came back from North America and said lets go for it in a couple of weeks. He sent me a text back, saying, yes, let me know when. I then had all that phone trouble so tried to phone him a couple of times, finally got through to him. He was in a clinic in California and his wife was ill. Now I had no idea what was going on. I assumed he was on holiday and his wife had a dodgy prawn or something. But today I found out that his wife passed away last week. I have no more details, but I’m assuming he was over there for some kind of treatment that didn’t pan out. So James is now off work for the foreseeable future. At some point he will be back, no doubt. But the thing that runs through my mind, if we are at 3,000ft have an engine failure and I’m making a real pigs ear of the recovery, is he going to save us from death, or say, ‘Ah, fuck it’? My moods go through as many peaks and troughs as a 2Ghz sine wave in a year (If you don’t get my obscure references you will have to Google them). I just don’t know if I could trust the mental state of someone in that position. It’s a tough one.

Anyway, came back. Went to Jamie’s dad’s for a BBQ. It was fine actually. We had quite a good laugh with some photo mixing Jamie was doing on his iPad. Food was a bit lacking, I only had one burger and a sausage. Granddad was great as normal.

So a bit of a mixed day overall. Flying again next Sunday, lets see if I can at least get circuits under control again.

So this morning I stayed in bed probably a bit too long. Jamie had vanished hours before, didn’t even hear him get up which is unusual. Read the paper, had breakfast. Then I took the dogs to the field. They had a great time, tired them both out. Had some lunch. Was feeling very tired still, it’s very hot. But drove over to Cotham and walked into town, popped in a couple of shops and walked back again. Came home and had a nap. Then cut down some the greenery outside. No longer have a green bin, so have to do it in stages. Did all the accounts. Did my expenses. Paid for various software which needed upgrading and now added everything to my nice ‘tax deductibles’ spread sheet.

Tomorrow I have flying, which I will enjoy. Followed by a BBQ at Jamie’s dad’s, which I won’t.

So this morning started far too early at around 6:45AM. The dogs thought they were going to daycare, they were so wrong. I had a coffee, rebooted and then headed to Parkway station. Since they’ve built the new car park, parking is now a breeze. Collected tickets, got on train which was bang on time. Journey was fine, I read a magazine. It was the express, so only had one stop before London. The ticket was almost a hundred quid and there were eight people on the carriage. There is something very wrong with the train system. Got on the tube, made it to the office by 9:30. I can’t go into detail, but lets just say, people turned up, but it took a good hour to get the PC and console all up and running which was a little embarrassing. But I did have plenty of questions to fill the time with. Thankfully it all worked in the end though and we were able to carry out various profiles. There was supposed to be another meeting in the afternoon but that got canceled, so we ended up going out for lunch. Time was rolling on, I pegged it back to London Bridge and then back to Paddington. I missed the bloody 15:45, so grabbed a ticket for the 16:15. Sat on the loo for twenty minutes (I paid my 30p, I wanted to get my monies worth). Then headed straight for the train. Sat in coach ‘B’. It soon packed out, so there was standing room only. It was getting rather hot. The air-con in the carriage had broken down. I then spent the next hour and a half in a sauna. Got to Parkway at 6PM. Pump starts at 6:10. I’d already sent a text to Laverne saying I would be late. So hammered it back home, let the dogs out and then headed to the gym. I got there halfway through the back track, so I’d missed the warm up, squats and cheats. Afterwards we had a private session, I lifted some fucking heavy weights. Good to see the body is getting back in shape after the holiday. I’ll keep doing weekly sessions again now with Laverne, you do feel really good afterwards.

So yes, the entire day basically was taken up with two train journeys and a meeting. How the hell people can commute daily to London from Bristol I will never know. It’s a) Very expensive and b) Very unpleasant.

No idea what I’m doing tomorrow yet. Sunday I’m going flying for the first time in ages. Don’t have my usual instructor, he’s off on his hols.