So spent the day working on tools again. Fairly successfully, I’m sure it will piss a few artists off, but that was probably intended. Walked Dillon, he’s getting better, almost to the point that he may have enjoyed it. Walked Sasha, she was upset that it wasn’t as long as normal, but the lunch hour remains the same, they have to share. Went out this evening, supposedly doing Geocahcing, parked up for the first one and got that. Then ended up walking a lot and getting nowhere. Drove all over the place and managed to get two more. Need to plan better really. Eaton too many sweets, and I really don’t eat sweets. I think Jamie wants sex, he’s shaved his bits and everything. I’m reading a good book at the moment.

Now ‘One Direction’ have said they will meet with the poor girl who had her leg chopped off. Which is very nice. But you can now just see countless teenage brats saying a knee for Neil, a toe for Liam or dare I say it, a leg for Louis. It would have been nice if they met her and kept quiet about it, rather than announce it, seems a bit of a publicity stunt.

So woke up fairly on time and got on with it. Doing tools programming again. I’ve got quite a bit of it to work now, well, it draws stuff and doesn’t crash. It doesn’t draw what it’s supposed to but never mind. Walked Dillon, weather he wanted to or not. Walked Sasha. Went to Combat, it was Nick again, his timing is still out. Ate salad. Lots of salad.

Now the Alton Towers situation. I seem to remember saying it would have quiet ‘re-opening’ and ‘The Smiler’ would be all cordoned off. Well, it opened again today, with the whole of the ‘x sector’ cordoned off. ‘The Smiler’ isn’t covered, but I believe HSE is still examining it. There were five serious injuries reported and one girl has had her leg amputated. Alton Towers has admitted full liability (I’m sure that will please their insurance company) and will pay compensation. My money is still on ‘The Smiler’ never opening again.

So started this morning with walking Dillon. He wasn’t overly keen but soon got the hang of it. Came back and swapped dogs. Was accosted by annoying local kids with, ‘What do you do?’, ‘What does your dad do?’, ‘Someone here works a Tesco’s’. God, when I was their age I was busy setting fire to old people, why don’t they just fuck off. Had lunch. Then drove out over towards Westerleigh, spent ages trying to find somewhere to park, then eventually just dumped it on the side of the road. Went out and spent three hours doing another twelve caches, that takes me up to 402. Going to have to go some to hit 500 this year. We had a Bbq this evening, just the four of us, very nice, if somewhat filling.

So this morning started with a brief coffee and then off to the vets with Dillon. The vet put a muzzle on Dill’s, as she thought he may get bait snappy, didn’t move a muscle. Came back and then took Sasha for her walk. I then went to mothers, on the pre tense to mend her lamp, but really I wanted her garden shredder. Said, shredder was picked up. I also pumped up her tyres and listened to her moan. Had lunch. Was thinking about going out but time was getting on. Shredder conked out as soon as it was powered on, so needed some TLC before I could use it. In the end, worked very well and the garden is now clear of piles of shit. Had shower. Picked Sarah and Shaun up. We’d already drank a shitload before the pizza arrived and then ate a shitload before we sat down for the film. Sarah chose ‘Pulp Fiction’ which is a bit of a classic. I hadn’t watched it in ten years. It’s an odd one. I think it takes several views before you really ‘get it’. It’s also a hell of a long one at just under two and a half hours. It was all very cosy on the couch, but good fun had by all. We’ll do it again some time, but may be with something perhaps a little more light hearted.

So this morning started with a bit of a blur, but it was hot, so a great excuse for three mugs of coffee. Anyway, work wise I’m still a bit underpowered thanks to hardware failures so needed to get on with something. Had a vast discussion about light mapping, it’s a very dull subject. Then fixed a couple of minor things for someone who had only waited two years for them. Then I had to venture into some tools stuff. Not my normal area, but we want to get shot of DX9, so all the tools have to work in DX11. So the fun job of converting them all, or at least starting on it as I can no longer build for console has fallen to me. It was all going fairly fine until I came across an odd concept in DX9 where you can do the present with a window handle override. On DX11 this doesn’t exist, so you have to create a swap chain for each window handle. Oh the joy. You don’t get this shit on consoles, they don’t have any bloody windows.

Walked Sasha, at the only point in the day it rained. Walked to the gym, did Pump, walked home again, did more work. Did the washing. Oh the normality of it all.

Who thought all those years ago (okay, less than 3) I would be bothered to actually write something dull and tedious about my life, almost everyday. Well you’re reading it, so get over yourself.

Had a hell of a mucus problem this morning, I mean both nostrils were absolutely full. After a good blowing session I felt considerably better but now had sinus pain. Still, rather have that than no ability the breath. Good news is the cough has subsided and apart from a bit of pain pretty much everything else is back to normal.

Work is a pain at the moment as I’ve lost most of my main PC down to various hardware failures, so it’s pretty slow going. Thankfully only had one bug to look at so wasn’t too bad. Then had a look at various lighting solutions for another project. My wonderful presentation video is now available on a certain manufacturers web site. Sorry, thanks to very heavy NDA the stuff, that’s very much where it will stay, unless you are a registered developer.

Have ordered (well, I didn’t, I have ‘people’ you know) my new work PC. I7 4Ghz, 512GB PCIe boot drive, 1TB SSD, 2X4TB data drives, 16GB RAM, twin 980GTX. Apparently it’s great for editing text and compiling, which is all I’ll ever use it for.

It’s been very hot today, which to be honest has made a nice bloody change.

Anyway, here’s to another 1,000.

So started with a bug, and a cough, they were not related. The bug wasn’t very interesting, but led on to something more interesting. The good news is the weather has substantially improved, so Sasha got a nice log walk. Went to Pump, came back and did a couple more hours work. All bugs now shot.

So continuing on from yesterdays drivel. Apparently someone has lost a leg, although that’s not confirmed. The names of a couple of people have been released, they had fairly serious injuries. So some additional information, from what I can gather, although it’s still not exactly clear. The empty car was stalled at the bottom of a loop (although in some reports it was held at the top of one, although I really can’t see how), the other car was then released some minutes later and ploughed right into the back of it. The only way I can see that happen is if the system was reset after the empty car was already stuck. The system would then forget that there was any car con track. If the alternative had happened and the empty car was at a holding point then the full one would have ploughed into it full speed and the brake would have held making it a lot worse. I can’t see that happening though as there’s no way the sensors would allow a braked car and a full one on the same track section. I still think it’s a human override doing something they shouldn’t.

So where does it leave the park? Well depends who you ask. Most analysts are saying ‘Seven day wonder’. That no one will care a jot next week, ride will open and it will be forgotten. Park was closed today and is closed again tomorrow. Now here’s my take on it. I’m going to be a bit more pessimistic. I’m going to say it’s not going to open again until Monday, where there will be more of a ‘soft’ opening. By this time, ‘The Smiler’ will be covered in a shroud, the same sort of thing that was around it when it was built. Then it will be several months while Health & Safety Executive, the ride manufacturers and no doubt several private investigation companies paid for by very expensive lawyers carry out their various tests and examinations on the coaster. As well no doubt, countless interviews with operating staff, mechanics and witnesses. Then during the winter closure it will all be taken down and scrapped. Why? Well, the ride cost £18 million. 16 people were injured, in what will probably turn out to be some combination of operator error and bad design. So 12 will get a million each as they may get a bad back in years to come. The four at the front have to be on for several million each. Plus costs, there will be an awful lot of costs. All these will have to be paid out by some insurance company. Then you end up with a bit of a problem, it can’t operate without insurance. Would you then go on to reinsure the same ride that you’ve just had to pay out about £40 million on? I don’t think ‘The Smiler’, will ever sadly be smiling again. Hopefully I’m very wrong, everyone will settle for a season ticket and the lady will grow a new leg.

Okay, so today’s entry is going to be a bit different. It’s purely speculation, based on my own opinion and only formulated from what I know (about electromechanical design) and what I’ve seen and heard in news broadcasts. (Apart from that today was fairly dull, with mainly shit weather and nothing really much happened).

So today there was an accident. And no it wasn’t in a helicopter. It was in a theme park. One which I’ve attended on numerous occasions. Alton Towers. Been running for what now, thirty years, never with a ‘major’ accident. The ride in question was ‘The Smiler’ and £18 million pound state of the art roller coaster, launched in 2013 and has been continually plagued with problems.

First I’ll just say that my thoughts are with the sixteen people involved and with their families, you do not go to a theme park and expect to possibly loose your limbs.

Okay, so now follows my analysis. This is just my opinion, but I’ve got a bit of an interest in how things work and are designed, so know a reasonable amount about electromechanical engineering and have worked in this very industry.

This ride as I said has been plagued with problems. On its press launch it left a bunch of journalists stuck on the lift hill, bits have fallen off it and it’s had numerous closures for ‘technical’ problems. I’ll hazard a guess at what these ‘technical’ problems are and it’s all down to one device, proximity sensors. Now these are ‘hall-effect’ devices and to be honest are a major pain in the ass. In a nice clean industrial setting on a conveyer belt they work fine. But you stick them out in the nice British weather and they become very unreliable. They work on the theory that when a magnet passes the front it operates a switch. The design is very good, the problem then comes with weather proofing and mechanical stability, you have all the cabling and everything else. These coasters are usually designed with triple redundant systems. That is, there are three separate circuits that all have to agree. I’ll explain. You have a car going down the track, before it you have a brake and before the next section you have three hall-effect sensors. The brake is applied (and it’s fail safe pneumatic, so if power or air fails, brake is on), this will stop any car entering this section of the track. All three sensors have to be triggered before the brake is released. Perfect safety system, triple redundancy. Now what happens if one of those sensors is a bit dodgy? That brake isn’t going to release, the ride then breaks down and everyone gets pissed off. £18 million quids worth of scrap. So what are the options? Well, replace or adjust the sensor is of course the correct option. This requires a mechanic, possibly a new sensor. And the most important point for a park like this….time. It’s going to take a mechanic probably an hour to find the dodgy sensor, possibly another one to change it and then this being a critical system would need to be checked by a second mechanic (this is standard procedure on any mission critical system, this is why in this country we have very few planes falling out of the sky because someone failed to put all the bolts in). That’s about three hours down the pan due to a faulty sensor and this ride probably has around two hundred of the things.

So what happens instead? Well operators get complacent. They work out that if the brake jams a car on a section of the track that they can just reset the system and off it will go. They just need to send round an empty car to make sure it gets through all the sensors and all will be okay.

So what happened this time? They got unlucky, well the people on the car got unlucky. From what I can gather, the ride suffered yet another ‘technical failure’. They sent an empty car round. Due to the weight of an empty car it didn’t make it round one of the loops. No one noticed this. Blokie in operations box gets yet another bloody sensor error. Shuts the system down and restarts it. The ride computer now has no idea that it has a car stuck on a section of track. They send a car round now with people on it. All the sensors work correctly, remember it has no idea a car is on track because the system has been reset. The car then ploughs clean into the back of the stalled one and bang. Game over for sixteen people, four of them seriously.

So who’s to blame? Is it the manufacturer for producing a technically advanced ride with lots of safety systems that could cause too many false positives and then cause issues for the operators due to excessive downtime? Is it maintenance for possibly bypassing some safety systems or perhaps not doing routine maintenance properly? Or is it the operators for becoming too complacent and possibly working out ways to bypass these systems?

One things for certain, those sixteen people are certainly not to blame. Alton Towers is closed tomorrow. Health and safety executive are of course involved, there will be a full investigation. That ride will probably be closed for at least the rest of the year and may indeed never operate again. It cost £18 million, but if the ambulance chaser lawyers get involved then that £18 million will be a drop in the ocean to what they will be paying out in compensation. The Merlin group have already dropped 3% on FTSE, I can see them plummeting a lot further in coming days.

I don’t think it will be the end of Alton Towers, but ‘The Smiler’ certainly isn’t smiling anymore.

What the hell has happened to the bloody weather? It’s been pissing down now for the bulk of the day. Even Sasha couldn’t be arsed to go on a long walk. It’s now gone very windy and bloody cold.

Spent the bulk of the day catching up and building data. I’ve done no code builds at all. Apart from walking the dog, not much else got done. Combat this evening was fun, was carried out by a guy called Nick who seems to be a fan of late 90’s rave and Guns n’ Roses. Still, it was pretty high energy.

My throat is better today, but I still have some hangover of lurgie, so I think I’m going to have an early night.