Started the morning how I like to start most mornings, in bed. Was supposed to be away this weekend but got out of doing it at the last minute. So had breakfast and read the paper. Then redid Jamie’s Sonic intro thing again, did a better job of it this time round. Walked the dogs. Had lunch (finished off the evil cheese). Walked down Gloucester Road and through Stokes Croft into town. Picked up some stationary for my studies, including a selection of coloured pens and highlighters. It’s bloody expensive. Anyway, that’s for Tuesday. Came back and got petrol. Then made a new video about this ‘Clean 9’ thing. That’s uploading now. About to have a bath. Lots to do on the DIY front tomorrow, may be drilling through floors, which is always kind of enjoyable.

Got up late with a bit of a head after a couple of bottles of wine last night. No idea what time I got to bed. Can’t even remember what I was working on now, oh that was it, a crash in audio due to false sharing on an atomic. Now atomics are weird, you have to be very careful swapping known values and assert on them being swapped, as the atomic can still actually fail, due to cache line sharing. For an atomic to work on x86 you need to do a thing called cache line reservation. Anyway, dull stuff. Walked Sasha for an hour. As I said before, trying to get a bit more activity in during the day. Went to Pump. That’ll be the last one for two weeks as Laverne is off and Trudie needs to stop doing about fifty Pump classes a week.

Now, I’ve still got six exams to pass and just reading the books before I fall asleep isn’t really working. So I need to dedicate one evening a week to some intense study, which will include actually doing some bloody notes and then for some light relief I’m going to dedicate another evening to working on music / Ableton, as that’s a lot of fun. Tuesday and Thursday seem good days, as there’s no gym class. So I can go out with the dog during the day for exercise and then do this in the evening. Does mean starting work vaguely on time though, otherwise I’ll finish and it’ll be time to go to bed again.

Started work a bit late, wasn’t really too much in the mood. Anyway, got stuck into a bug which took several hours. I guess it was fun. Took Sasha out for a mammoth walk lunchtime. My Cleans 9 stuff turned up. So will probably vlog that next week. Sat down and tried to work out Jamie’s tune for the Sonic Show. Got most of it worked out. Finally got round to buying SynthMaster, it comes with some amazing sounds, really pleased with it. Consider I managed to get the full version for about forty quid.

So woke up at 6:20 to the alarm, which makes a change as I’m usually already awake. So must have slept well. Clean run to daycare, back in bed by 7. Started kind of late. Had to piss around a lot with ‘god rays’, which pretty much sucked up most of the day. Walked Sasha, bit longer than normal, as I’m trying to walk a bit more in general. Picked up Dillon. Went to Pump, first time in over a week, so cut down a little on weights, plus it was packed. Came back and did another couple of hours. Ate salad. Bowels are doing weird things again.

Got up and tried to do stuff. Mostly failed. Okay, well got a few bits sorted. Got to about 2PM and Jamie was still in bed even after repeated attempts to ask him to get up so we could take the dogs out. He didn’t. So I went out by myself for and hour and a half. He’d finally got up by the time I got home, ready to go out and eat with Callum. Did a few more bits and finished about half seven. So practiced the new tune and a few other bits. Need to work on an original composition I feel, one to think on. Ate salad. Watched telly. Time for bed. Dillon at daycare tomorrow. Ordered the Clean 9 stuff. So will attempt that next week.

Started this morning, that’s as far as I’m going to comment on that. It’s been very cold. Spent the bulk of the day tracing a missing texture on a loading screen. Did get one unusual email though, from Sony. Asking if I would be interested in doing a technical post-mortem of our latest game. Standing in front of people talking balls for half and hour…yeah I can do that, it’s like my YouTube audience, except maybe this time someone may pay some attention. Talked to a good friend at work, he apparently has some ‘gear’ he wants to get shot of, so that may solve my various audio i/o problems with Ableton. Went to the gym and did Combat. Sarah didn’t go as she’s now suffering from ‘McFlurry arse’, as it will now be known.

So woke up actually with a bit of a headache. Actually just to clarify, a courier arrived at about 8:30, I told Jamie to get his arse out of bed, but he apparently had a ‘headache’. So I answered the door. I’m sure it was the Jeager Bombs. Anyway, had breakfast and coffee and then had another one, I was raring to go by 1PM. I had a door to paint, well a second coat, probably did’t take longer than an hour, but it’s all finished now. The weather today was appalling, I mean to such an extent that I let the dogs out, they had a crap and normally Sasha would come back in and jump up are her lead, this time she came back in and ran upstairs, curled up into a ball and went back to sleep. So I decided to spend the day twatting about with some music. Jamie had some video to shoot, so I set it all up for him and vanished upstairs. I learnt some new tunes, including another Gary Numan track. It was actually great fun just playing around with the mini USB keyboard on the iMac playing around with some notes. Managed to come up with a few tunes just by ear. Anyway, uploaded the ‘Are friends electric’ video to YouTube and I thought it was the ultimate compliment when it did a ‘rights match’ and said that if I wanted to monitise the video, I would have to share the royalties with the author ‘Gary Numan’. It was a nice day, sometimes life is just about enjoying it, and today was one of those days.

So eventually I got up after breakfast. My stomach is still all over the place, and to be honest I seem to be shitting out McFlurry’s. Add a bit of ice and it would be sorted. Spent the bulk of the rest of the day trying to film me playing ‘Are friends electric’, in on take, without fucking up. Two hours and batteries later I finally managed it. Then there was lots of pissing about trying to get it all saved out etc. Anyway, walked the dogs, then we disappeared to buy some model paint. I did a home check for two Jack Russel’s. Then I got shit showered and shaved as we were going to my nephews eighteenth birthday party. We caught the bus, and considering it’s contents probably caught a few other things as well. Found the place eventually. Got inside. All the adults were at the bar and all the kids were at one table. It looked like a meeting of the chess club. The adults were getting blatted. The kids kept going outside to smoke questionable substances. My guts were still rumbling like hell. I stuck to gassy lager, which probably wasn’t a great idea. They did all liven up at about eleven o’clock. One thing though, none of them were particularly cute. You’d expect a nice blond twink stunner, but no, just a bunch of normal kids who all shared the same haircut. There was one I’d share the time of day with, but very ginger, don’t think I could get past that. You look back at your youth though and think ‘Oh I had such a great time, it was fab and we got really wasted every night’. Then you see the reality, you were just like them, felt slightly out of place in a room full of old farts, with insecurities and spots. We just didn’t have smart phones. Saying that it was the adults tonight who were taking all the selfies. Then the clock struck midnight, my mother turned back into a pumpkin. The kids all went out, were they heading into town to a club to get wasted? No, they were heading to McDonalds. We tidied up. I’d done four pints and a Jeager bomb. I’m ready for bed and a bit of telly. My late night adventures to McDonalds are over, I’ll leave that to the youth.

Stomach returning back to normal. Head now fine. Took a couple of immodium as I was getting bored almost shitting myself all the time. Work was exceedingly dull. We both took dogs out and called in the vets for flea stuff. Did more work. Didn’t go to gym as the last thing I wanted to do was work on a stomach that had a bit of a mind of its own. So finally sat down with the laptop and set it up properly on the mixer with Ableton. I’m somewhat disappointed that I just cannot get a sound I like the sound of yet for the lead part. Now after about three sample packs and lots of plug-ins I’m almost there. So, did a couple of takes on that, it’s coming along nicely. Will probably attempt to film it tomorrow and do an upload. Now going to have a shower then attempt to eat pizza.

Oh yes, while sat on the bed with Jamie, we were doing high-fives with Dillon, when he suddenly decided he wanted to twat me full on in the head. Cheers dog, you do have a pretty good punch.

So today my head is certainly better even if my stomach isn’t. My ass is still all over the place. Managed to do almost a full day of work, in between squirting out god knows what out of my ass. Got board about eight PM and had a shower, then went to bed and watched a bit of telly. Gave up on that and finished editing my backing track on Ableton. Managed two cheese sandwiches for tea, the first solid thing I’ve had really in a couple of days. I’ve lost a load of weight, I think it liquidised and vanished out of my ass. I really fancy a can of larger, that’ll do something to my insides, kill or cure.