Sleep wasn’t bad. Wasn’t great. Got up at 6:30, took Sasha to daycare. Went back to bed, cleaners arrived just after eleven. Jamie was at work for once. Spent the morning tracing a rather odd issue with fat render target formats. Beats shader debugging anyway. In the end went for a thinner format as it caused less problems. Walked Dillon in the nature reserve, he’s actually a pleasure to walk on his own as he’s not aggressive at all. Spent the afternoon shorting out some other stuff. Picked up Sasha. Went to the gym and did Pump. It was so damn hot I almost passed out. Came back and then worked far too late again, I’ve got just so much to do.

Confirmed that the car is actually booked in Friday, so up at the crack of dawn then and get it in so hopefully get it back in good time.

So this morning started with more shader debugging, more of that excitement later. The car was booked into Halfords Autocentre at 12:30. I got there at 12:30. Then waited at the desk. Then waited longer while the guy behind the desk moaned about having ‘all these orders coming in’. Yes, well I ordered these Friday, it’s now Tuesday, so now I have to wait while you sort through all your fucking emails. Then you don’t find it, then you ask what size tyre it was, don’t ask my name or registration, no go for the fucking complex question. Then you say that you have to see if they have arrived yet, sorry, I ordered fucking Friday still. If they were available on Amazon prime they would have been on the car Saturday. So he procrastinates longer, then finds the order, then after another ten minutes manages to print it out. Then asks which tyres I want replacing, I was a little pissed off by this point so responded with, ‘The ones on the car’. We settled on the rear, I asked for them to then be rotated to the front (so new tyres on rear, then swap front and rear so new on front). He then had to produce a job card, which took another twenty minutes. By this time half an hour had passed before the fitter even got the job card. Now, no issues at all with the fitter, he was built like a bus and covered in tattoos. Did a great job, exactly what I asked for, even didn’t lose the valve caps. Took him about an hour, fair enough no problem there. During this time a lady came in for a battery for her key fob. This was ordered over a week ago, it hadn’t arrived, from the parts store, across the car park. It took over forty-five minutes to get a battery from a 100 yards away and stick it in a key fob. Meanwhile other blokie at reception was asking when my service and MOT was due, I said tomorrow and it wasn’t being done here. Several other customers arrived, he was obsessed with trying to sell them fuel additives. It’s interesting as he was explaining to one customer how it improved the performance of his diesel. Then the next customer he oddly now changed to a petrol. These two were like the old codgers from the muppets. Everyone was told to wait and there was no sense of urgency. My keys and job card arrived back. This was passed from Burt to Earnie to produce an invoice. This took ten minutes. I didn’t want to have a discussion about how I had a timing belt and not a chain, I also wasn’t going to go into what a stage two upgrade was. All I wanted after almost two hours were my bloody keys back. Did he have them there? Oh no, had to vanish off out to the back room and get them out the safe, what the fuck were they doing in there in the first place. Now the fun bit, he hands me a bundle of bile with the invoice in and says theres a card on front to fill in a survey and I could win a hundred quid. He then said, ‘Remember to give us ten out of ten for customer service’. I enjoyed filling out the survey, they got ten, but without the initial one.

Anyway, shaders. Had some serious issues with barycentrics. I’m still having serious issues with barycentrics. This has gone back to developer support, they are now having issues with barycentrics. Had enough by about seven, so headed out, was going for a long one but the GPS was playing up, so ended up doing one I wasn’t planning on then came back and did a bit more work to make up for lost time.

So car in for a service Thursday, or maybe Friday…but that’s a different story.

Today was all about shaders again. Trying to debug them is a frighteningly complicated task when you are doing at at an assembler level. Also it processes 64 threads in parallel, so you just have to think 64 processes at a time, which gets quite fun. Think I’ve found a flaw in the whole thing as well, which means I may have wasted quite a bit of time.

Booked the car in for a service, pricey. New tyres tomorrow, pricey. Still, it will save me pumping up the rear left again, four years I’ve been doing that, it’s got a nail in it.

Booked the holiday, couldn’t deal with too much stress so just booked the same one as last year, we won’t get as nice a room though, so may be we will spend less time in it this time.

Went to the gym and did Combat, not one of my best performances. Came back and did more shader debugging, not fun.

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Saturday to be honest nothing much exciting happened. I got up late, walked the dogs and then went off to Easter Compton to do some GeoCaching. Found about four, was then going to head into town but decided I couldn’t be arsed so went home and edited a video instead. We went to the Italian in the evening which was lovely, but empty. Had an early night and read a book.

So Sunday, we stayed in bed too long, I had breakfast. I was just going to go out and do some GeoCaching but decided it would be nice to do something together. Normally, unless we are on holiday (where we try to avoid each other anyway) we don’t really see much of each other. So we went to the Swindon outlet centre and went to the SuperDry store and bought some nice clothes. The discounts offered actually far outweigh the petrol. We also did a GeoCache. Came back, then we took the dogs out, attached to cameras. So that’ll be a fun one to edit.

Still trying to find somewhere for the holiday. Ho hum.

Spent most of the morning fairly gripped to the live feed of the court proceedings of Rolf Harris. He was eventually given five years nine months. He will spend three years in prison. One an end for an 84 year old. I’m still not 100% sure where I stand on this. One part of me says this happened so long ago that we should have some kind of statute of limitations and it wouldn’t be possible to prosecute, the other says ‘throw away the key’. One things for sure though, I’m disappointed. I met him some twenty odd years ago, when he had the parody of ‘Stairway to heaven’ in the charts. He was doing pant at Bath theatre royal with Leslie Joseph and Sylvester McCoy. He was on the phone at the reception saying that he was getting ‘piss all royalty’ for it. Will always remember that, it was the Bath Spa Hotel. Another thing that is quite disappointing is back when Nat was alive, she went to his last gig in Bristol. The charges had just been brought against him. There he read out a letter of support and got a standing ovation. She has now passed, he is now a poedophile, she will be spinning in her grave, if she was alive she also would be very disappointed.

Work wise it was still all about shader debugging and divide by zero errors.

Walked the dogs. Went to gym and did Pump, followed by a session with Laverne. Finished the new helicopter video.

So Sunday I made it to London after the train I was going to get had a delayed connection, so ended up hanging round for ages. Got to London in reasonable time anyway, checked into the hotel and met up with the guys. We had dinner then headed over to the conference registration. Then everyone except me and one work colleague went to bed. We went to the pub.

Up early on the Monday. Now I can’t say anything about the conference itself, it’s the usual mix of stuff you already know, stuff you on’t care about and a few golden gems. Took lots of photos of a colleague eating cake. Had amazing gas all day from the rear end. There was a bit of a party that evening, but it was a bit of a damp squib, after a few points of real ale we all headed back to the hotel. I ate a sandwich and then went to sleep, it was about half ten. Oh, had one fun incident that morning, got in the lift after cleaning my teeth to go to the conference. Started on ground floor. “Doors closing”. Doors closed. Got to floor three. Lift stopped. “Doors opening”. Except they didn’t. “Doors closing”. Okay. Off we went up to floor five. Stopped. “Doors opening”. No they didn’t. Waited and pushed five again. “Doors opening”. Nope. So I grabbed both doors and forced them open, the bottom of the lift was about a foot below the floor level. So I jumped out. The doors snapped closed behind me. I was on floor six. I took the stairs down.

Today was very much the same as yesterday, except with a more disappointing lunch and I almost got eaton by a shark.

Got a peak train back, which I almost missed. It was packed. Jumped in a reserved seat. Thankfully it’s owner never appeared to claim it. It was an express so made it back in reasonable time. Went for a quick run. Had a shower. Ate salad. Back to normal work tomorrow. Lots to do.

Oh, just to mention the Rolf Harris thing. Today he was found guilty on twelve charges of fiddling with little girls. I always liked the guy, there are more people now coming forward. I’m sure there is a lot more to this story than will ever come to light. But it looks like, “Do you know what it is yet?”, will be one of HMS prisons.