So today was all about rendering to a cube map. Now this sounds fairly straightforward until you try and actually implement it into the existing API. After several attempts at different ways I finally got it all sorted, one more job done. Walked the dogs. Sulked as Jamie only went to work for about ten minutes then spent the rest of the day pissing about. Didn’t speak to him. Went for a run. Came back and told him his household chores ethic was lacking. Oddly he’s now doing the dishes. They’ll need doing again as he’ll make a shit job of it. He still won’t shift the shit off the dining table.

Came back to an email from the plumber, all good, date sorted. So which plumber did I go for? Well not number three, he never even came back with a quote, which is just rude. One of the boiler people did that as well, came, talked the talk, buggered off and never heard of again. It won’t be plumber number two either, Mr Arrogant. He is just too expensive at over a grand more than anyone else. He would do a good job though, it’s the sort of thing archaeologists would dig up in a million years and go ‘Ah, yes, this is a bathroom done by Gregory’. So just like a woman picking a dress, she always goes back to the first one she saw. So I’ve gone for the first one, Mr. tiles on bonding, but the good part about that now is that it requires no bonding as all the walls are prepped. He’s agreed to what I’m supplying and what he’s supplying. So I need to sort the ceiling, seal the windows, reinforce the unit, do the template, get the marble done. Well, I’ve now got a couple of months to do it, so I’m pretty happy with that.

I was expecting Jamie to get up and go to work but apparently he was doing a ‘shift swop’. I’d already got up at 6:30 and taken Dillon to daycare. I went back to bed and got up at 10’ish. Today was all about finishing the SDK upgrade and getting that checked in. Which finally I did. At 3PM Jamie was still in bed. I moaned that he needed to walk Sasha and that Dillon was to be picked up at 3:30. He gave Sasha a three minute walk and off we went. Picked up Dillon, he’d been a good boy this week thankfully. Came back and carried on working. Jamie ate and created a mess. I went to the gym, cam back and did more work. Had to wipe down the walls in the winery as the red had got a bit too excited and jetted out the air-lock. It’s settled down a bit now but still producing more gas than me. Jamie now moaning about internet speeds, due to packet loss. Jamie makes tea, which consists of making an even bigger mess, towel has vanished, no doubt into his lair together with most of the dishes, where they will stay until they go mouldy. I change the bed, as I’ve asked him four times and given up. The kitchen looks like a tip, I really just can’t be arsed to tidy it up tonight. If I don’t do it, it will just sit there. I sorted out the recycling and put that out. I get moaned at about bandwidth again, oh and apparently I wake up with a hard-on thinking about doing the bathroom. Sometimes I think I only exist to provide a never ending stream of cash and a cleaning service. And the weekend weather over Staverton is looking shit.

Hmm. SDK upgrades. They are as exciting as they sound. Got most of it working early on, then I noticed shadows were all over the place. With about fifteen minute turn around times it was a real pain to track down. The fault? Well, nt mine, lets just say it was a certain compiler not written by me. Mind you it was building a piece of bloody awful hlsl code. I just it to something more boring, lost about fifty instructions and it also worked. So just a couple of libs to rebuild and that should be it.

Went for a run. Quite a nice evening, if bloody cold. But had multiple layers including plenty of lycra. Did about six miles. Came back and transferred the white into another bucket as it was just below 1010. Tested the red, that’s still about 1030, so I’ll test that again Thursday.

Plumbers obviously don’t want work, or have more than they can possibly manage. I’m sure there are poor plumbers, just like there are poor farmers. Maybe not.

Sat down to eat and put Children in Need on. S-Club 7 popped up. Now apparently they broke up twelve years ago. Now I can’t sing and 99.9% of people who’ve ever heard me murder Frank Sinatra will attest to that. This makes me a bloody good judge of other people who can’t sing. Now, S-Club, boy did you nail that one. They were flatter than fifty year old coke. Mind you they are ageing well, apart from their incomes obviously. Still, they put on a good show, every one enjoyed it and that’s what its all about. You may be total shit inside, but as long as you put on a good show, then every one is happy.

Today was all about SDK updates, which was all going fine until one of the last stages when all the shader binaries have altered. So that will need a shit load of testing before going any further. The bathroom ceiling is now annoying me, partly as I missed painting a bit of it. It’s tempting just to get the Artex off. I would steam it, but I’ve had enough of bloody steaming, so may just try a solvent. If that doesn’t work then I may just resort to skimming it. All quiet on the plumbers front. Went to gym, did Combat. After spending all weekend working with my arms doing that as well was a bit much, couldn’t really give it everything or I would have died. It’s cold, very cold.

So got up this morning without having sex, which is a shame as I was quite in the mood. Positioned the extractor fan an drilled into the ceiling. Then drilled down the stud wall for the isolation switch. Ended up putting that a bit high so had to chisel out a bit of the wood. Anyway, all fine and got the cables down for it. Then cleaned the ceiling with soapy water. Cleaned up the dog shit, had lunch. Painted the ceiling with two coats. Then fitted and wired in the extractor fan. All working fine. Cleaned and tidied everything, including scraping the windows. The only thing left now is to silicone the windows and then reinforce the unit for the marble top. I’ve made my choice of plumber and they have been informed, just waiting for them to respond now. Looks like probably the end of January due to the lead time on the marble top.

My server is having some serious DDOS issues, it’s getting very annoying as it keeps crashing the mail server side.

This morning started with Jamie having a hangover, as I’d managed to consume only three cans of lager I was fine. Had breakfast, then got on with the extractor fan positioning. By the time Shaun had arrived the pipe was already over the soffit waiting to be drilled. After some jolly fun with a ladder and plenty of cussing the exterior vent is now fitted. I’ve done the brackets for the fan so just need to install that tomorrow. I’m then left with some cleaning and painting, sealing the windows and reinforcing the vanity unit ready for the marble slab.

Then drove over to Cotham where we walked into town, failed to buy anything and then walked back again. Did the accounts. Installed a new plugin which apparently automatically handles SEO traffic and other stuff and uploads it to search engines. I’m sure it’s wonderful. Still haven’t heard from plumber number three, will make my final decision tomorrow evening.

Today work wise was a bit of a mess, trying to do an SDK update. Shopping arrived, then lots of issues. We vanished at lunchtime to the stone masons in Fishponds. Looked at marble, then went into the factory itself, wow, there was an absolute shit load of stone. Hundreds of millions of pounds worth of the stuff. We went to the marble store and looked at loads of the stuff until we found a piece which was exactly what we were looking for. And of course, we got to stroke it. All paid for, jest need to do the MDF template now. Came back and did work, then went to Pump. Laverne still seems to have ebola, so came back.

This evening we went to an anniversary party of a cuban lady Jamie works with. I ran out of larger. Ended up dancing with the host’s socks. It was a good evening. I like Cubans.

No dogs were slaughtered in my sleep. The only thing slaughtered was me, I drank the remains of the bucket of the California White last night and god was I shit faced this morning. Which was a good job as I had to debug network code this morning. It turned out to be multi resource locking issues when writing log files. Two cups of coffee and I had it all sorted. Then it was on to another SDK upgrade, this has highlighted a whole host of fun issues. Walked both dogs, Dillon was being a pain in the ass so I’ve ordered a proper ‘halti’ collar with a double ended lead. He’ll hate it. I was going to go to spin, but got round the corner and the traffic was horrendous and I’d brought the wrong shoes, so turned around and went back home. It was actually dry and quite mild, so did an eight mile run instead. Came back and bottled the Voignier, had a few drops, it’s very good. Then put the yeast in the other white and started the red off. Hopefully the white will be ready to transfer about Tuesday and the red on Thursday, these are quite quick kits.

Still haven’t heard from plumber number three, he’s got until the weekend.

Had a very odd dream where I was shouting at Jamie that ‘dog’s were only for meat’, I then chased Sasha down, grabbed her by the collar, pinned her down to the floor and then chopped her head off with a meat cleaver. Thankfully when the alarm went off, she came bounding along, complete with head. Dillon I’m not so sure about, if he was missing his head he would be just as stupid. Took Sasha to day care. Started work fairly early as I was expecting plumber number three. Turned up vaguely on time, if you only measure days in hours. Nice chap, would have issues with confined spaces. Seemed to be a good balance between buggering something up and going over the top. At least he got the point that there was only about ten minutes of plumbing and the rest was tiling. See what his quote is.

Work was quite dull looking at GUI stuff. Went to the gym and did Pump. I worked on my arms.

Came back and sterilised a load more bottles. Then a barrel and got the Chenin Blanc on the go. Should be able to bottle the other white tomorrow and can then get the red on. Timing wise, I reckon I could probably get in a couple more kits before Christmas.

Carried on from yesterday after a fairly tiring night. Spent most of the day looking at why two shaders were producing different results, it turned out to be a bizarre rounding error. All sorted and checked in now. Didn’t really get on to much else there. Stopped on time, was going for a run but it was pissing down, so decided to go to the gym to run on the treadmill, then remembered we actually have one. So did a 10Km here, in front of the telly. It only goes up to 12Km/h so I can easily outrun it. Transferred the Californian white into the bottling bucket and finally bottled twenty-eight bottles of the stuff. There was a bit left over in the bucket to stuck that in a glass in the wine fridge. Got an email from plumber number two, his quote includes fitting the extractor fan, full tanking and all tile trims, but doesn’t include the vanity top. So quite good materials and probably a good job, but still a grand dearer than plumber number one. Plumber number three coming tomorrow. I still hate plumbers.