So last thing last night I tried one of these EasyBulb GU10 bulbs, and it didn’t fit in the downlight. I’m not going to piss about with it, they are just going to be sent back, so that was annoying. This morning started nicely, coffee, breakfast, paper. Finally got up and did some studying. Then took Sasha out. Did a bit more studying, then Jamie and I ventured into town. Was a nice day for it. Got some tickets for an upcoming musical. Came back and finished ‘meteorology’. So some revision and then ready to take the test. Flying tomorrow, first in quite a while.

So woke up this morning with rather a large headache that could only be cured by much coffee. Also there was mass panic about some review which was moaning about dropping frame rates. I finally read it as I thought would irritate the crap out of me and to be honest it was a pretty fair review, there were some inaccuracies, but I really don’t know what all the fuss was about. There seemed to be mass fire fighting going on. God, if we have to jump up and down at every bad review the earth will shake. You will never please all of the people all of the time. I like to try and displease all of the people most of the time, it’s a much more achievable goal. No one reads the bloody reviews anyway, and most people take them with a pinch of salt. God, do you think car manufacturers would stop giving cars to Clarkson (okay, moot point now) if they thought every time he said ‘this is a complete pile of wank’ it made one iota of difference. It’s all about exposure, advertising and joe public. No one gives a shit about reviews. I still have ‘the worst football game ever written’, doesn’t get me down, he did have a point though.

So flying booked for Sunday, we’ll see how that goes. Walked Sasha, chatted to Laverne then went out for a couple of hours. Pizza time.

So after last nights sex, which to be honest was more performance art and less eroticism, the two people taking part may have well been in different time zones. Started on time. All about the presentation today really. So started off with a complete run through, then did some edits and did another one. This actually took quite a long time to get right. Did a few more CPU grabs as well. Walked Sasha. Did a bit more and sent it off. Fixed a couple of odd issues with my compute shader. Then went out early evening to do an odd geocache quite some distance away. It was a muti-cache and ended up doing the last bit near enough in the dark. Still got home and did a bit more work. Had a shower. Now it’s torture porn night. Oh, the game I’ve been working on for three years, it’s now been released to manufacture, in other words it’s gone ‘gold’ and will be released May 7th. Time for some wine.

So started this morning at 6:20AM and took Sasha to day care. Actually started work at a reasonable hour as well. Heard from Captain James, we will see about the weekend, may be a bit too windy. Cleaners arrived, I went out. Came back and they went. Had lunch, then picked up Sasha again. I’ve been informed that day care will now be charging VAT. I’ve informed day care that they don’t actually know how to calculate VAT properly so they are now in for a hell of a shock (all to do with flat rate, I used to be VAT registered, it’s one thing I do know quite a lot about).

So spent the day basically working on one last bug. It’s to do with lighting and a certain type of light having an infinite distance, basically no attenuation (which of course doesn’t happen in real life, but you tell an artist that). Now the original pixel shader solution has a finite mesh associated with it, so it cannot draw beyond a certain distance, the pixel shader version however doesn’t have that luxury, so writes all the pixels regardless providing they pass the plane test. Now this is where the fun is, for a cell to fail the plane test, all corners of a cell have to be outside one of the five planes of a pyramid. Problem is if one of those pixels happens to be the far plane, then the oblique of angles will mean that that pixel is on the wrong side of it, it then gets included as ‘passed’ and the lighting calc gets done on it. There is a solution, take the original range into account.

So some eleven hours later and I think I’ve mastered it, so time for some salad.

So started far too late really. Cracked on with the joy of compute shaders and lighting. Was supposed to do another run through of presentation but never got round to it. Walked Sasha, only did half hour as was going out later. Did more. Went out to do an odd Geocache in the middle of nowhere. Came back and did a bit more followed by just over two hours of studying. Had a shower. Finally ate at gone midnight. Now very much time for sleep.

Started this morning with the usual coffee and cereal. I had no real plans today other than work and salad. So started off this morning with a 48 minute presentation to a wall. I need to cut it down to 40. Spent the rest of the day on compute shader type things. Getting places slowly, but a bit too slowly. Walked Sasha. Went to combat, where my sister was surprised to see me. Laverne is back at the gym doing light duties, apparently she has had a bit of a rougher time than expected, will have to catch up with her. Anyway, did Combat, one more to go before Liz leaves. The new Combat is quite tough. Jamie texted me and asked what we were doing for our third anniversary, I was quite happy to ignore it and just eat salad, but apparently this wasn’t acceptable. So we trundled off to the Swan at Almondsbury, it’s a very poncy pub. We ate some very poncy food, presented in a very poncy way. If it was any closer we could spend some serious money there. It’s just far enough away to be used for special occasions. Tonight was special, I have been in a civil partnership with Jamie now for three years. Mentally it feels like seventy. I’m now in bed and he’s in his orifice touching up pictures of fruit. The rampant sex will have to wait for another night.

So started this morning with some very weird dreams, I’m sure it was down to the way Jamie was cuddling me. Anyway, nothing came of that so had breakfast and fed the dogs. Then I decided to do an hours studying. Still on weather fronts. Took Sasha for a walk. Came home and found the house completely unlocked. Nice one Jamie. Weather looked a big iffy so did another hour studying and had lunch. Also planted chilli seeds, that have only been sat there for a year. Set out and drove to Tytherington. Parked up. Pub seems to be closed which is a shame. Anyway, set out in high winds and serious cumulonimbus clouds and started on a cache series. Managed to do 39 in just over three hours. It never did rain. Drove home and did another hour studying. Sorted out the projector screen height and banged in some cable clips.

It’s all about studying now. Lets cuts the crap about being frightened of flying solo and just bloody get on with it.

So started this morning with breakfast and coffee. Read the paper. Then started on the next project, which was to get that whacking great screen on the wall. First propped it up on a couple of chairs and checked out the wiring, all good in that department. So now to mount the brackets. Got the laser level out and marked them. Then started drilling. Got through the plaster board, then hit a bit of a problem. A solid steel beam. There was no way my masonry drill was going to get through that. So had to go with ‘Plan B’. Dug out a shit load of wall. Basically I had to removed 240mm of plaster board and wall. Then insert a wooden batten. Attach this to the brick work and then the brackets to the wood. It was a pain in the ass, but as pain in the asses go, it was fairly straightforward. Put the brackets on and levelled it all up. Mounted the damn thing. Then walked Sasha and walked to Cribbs Causeway. Bought some diet rice and noodles. Walked back. Tidied up and did the wiring.

Now this is pretty cool. The projector does not have a 12 volt trigger output. But it does have a USB input. USB has a 5V output. Thankfully the USB port only goes live when then projector is on and not in ‘stand-by’. So I’ve built a small interface that takes the 5V from the USB, goes via an opto-coupler and then takes an old ‘wall-wart’ PSU which outputs around 9V and then jam that into the screen trigger relay. Net result is when you turn the projector on the screen goes down. When you turn it off it goes back up again. Sorted. Now if only I could work out how to set the drop height.

Tidied up. Then Jamie took me to the Indian. Had a nice meal. Drank lots of lager.

Spent the bulk of the day working on compute shader lighting when really I should have been finishing off my presentation, still I did manage to do a bit of it in the end. Walked Sasha. Did a bit more work then went out for a couple of hours. Managed to get a Geocache that had stumped me for a couple of years, I was trying too hard, it was actually fairly obvious in the end. Came back and built the projector trigger interface. I had enough stuff lying around to do it. Okay, so I used a four channel opto-coupler, but it had probably been sitting there for the best part of ten years. All packaged up in a small plastic box. It works on the bench, I’ll try it for real tomorrow. Pizza time, extra chicken tonight.

So started fairly early. People came to pick up the furniture so that’s all now gone. Blu-ray player arrived back. Indeed the drawer wouldn’t open. Stripped it down and found the motor didn’t seem to be running. Turned out a bit of plastic had jammed, probably due to dodgy courier. After a bit of twiddling it’s all working again. So I now have a spare blu-ray player, that also plays DVD’s, wonder if anyone will pick up on the hint…

Walked Sasha. Finished off over eight hours, after finishing earlier yesterday. Then went out and got another couple of caches. Came back and did a bit more, trying to find a cone / frustum intersection test, no end of googling is turning up anything. I may just use a pyramid. Then started soldering various bits to a d-plug and prodding it in the projector. All I could find was a -12V on the transmit data. And that was there with it in standby, so that wasn’t going anywhere. Plugged a mouse into the USB port, now that seemed to be activated when it was on not standby. So butchered an old USB extension lead and put a meter on it. Sure enough 5V when switched on. So now really I need to opto-couple that to a relay, as I need 12V to trigger the screen. I could try it directly, but I just no there will be an unprotected internal relay and one dodgy lot of feedback through the coil will fry the USB. So may do a trip to Maplin and pick up an optoisolator and a relay, I’ve probably got enough other bits to do the job. Just need a bit of strip board, a wall-wart, diode and a resister. Blah, piece of piss.