Started work late as Jamie wouldn’t leave me alone, he had to clean up. Continued on tidying up the pipeline. I basically removed a load of stuff from the pipeline that did colour space conversions. I couldn’t believe how many actually occurred. It now just keeps it linear all the way through, so a texture is read, which if it’s 8 bit is stored in srgb, then that gets converted to linear. Everything then is written and read to either 10 bit targets or compressed floating point ones. Then at the final part of the pipe it gets converted from linear to srgb. This basically stops a load of pissing about in colour space. As it was yet another nice day, Dillon stayed in and Sasha got a nice walked. Walked to the gym, did Pump, need to increase my weights I think on Friday. Did a bit more work.

Started a bit later this morning, was really tired. On the hunt for qnan’s again first thing but didn’t get anywhere. Then spent the rest of the day trying to persuade PC to output 10 bit colour. In the end after a great amount of fiddling, everything worked and everything was in the correct colour space. It actually looks significantly better as well. Took Sasha on a nice long walk, given up taking Dillon, he can get old and fat for the moment. Went out early for a run. Had a shower and then did a bit more work. Tidied the kitchen as the cleaners are coming tomorrow. Must be time for another holiday, actually I have Monday off for Jamie’s birthday. He still hasn’t done any washing.

Today I was hunting numbers. Actually that’s not strictly true, I was hunting ‘not a number’ or qnan’s as they are known. I was getting several creeping in to a render target. All day it took to discover the cause, I only worked it out on the way to the gym. Walked Sasha, we went to see the ducks, Dillion couldn’t be arsed and neither could I. It was a beautiful day, so Sasha and I made the most of it. Walked to the gym, we did the Combat, I’m not overly keen.

So an interesting news article on the BBC web site, ‘In a fire, who would you rescue, your mother or your girlfriend?’ This was a question posed to Chinese students, in which case the correct answer to them was always ‘your mother’ as family always comes before love. Now, I’d have to think about this one very carefully. First, I’d have to become straight. Then I’d have to find a suitable girl. We’d have to date, and then become an item. It’s a very tall order during the duration of a fire, but considering the alternative I’d give it serious consideration.

So the morning started with the usual coffee and breakfast for three. Then it was a leisurely drive up to Staverton for the first of todays flights. I covered slopes, quick stops, run on landings and limited power stuff. During the intermission I did the radiotelephony paper, which I scored 100% on. Then I did the navigation paper which I hadn’t actually studied for (the test book is still in the post), and failed it by one question. I then took it again and only just passed. Got it was an ass. It didn’t help that there were screaming kids running up and down right outside the door. I went through a couple of the questions with the instructors, basically we all sat down with our ‘whizzy wheels’ and pens and worked through a couple of the questions, one of which took us almost twenty minutes. If the question is that hard, it really shouldn’t be there. Anyway, all eight ground examinations now passed. Just need to do the practical radio telephony test now. So two more flights next Saturday, I’ll may be do that test then as well. Apart from that not much happened, came back and went for a run. Then had a bath. Now cooking myself a curry.

So woke with the alarm at 8AM. Breakfast for three. Read the paper. Headed to Staverton for 10AM. James greeted me and complimented my haircut. Then said, “I’ve got meths”. I thought it really was a bit early for that. It was a bit of a long standing joke that when we were doing the nav exercises he never had anything to wipe out the marker pen with, now he opened a cupboard door and there was enough there to smash half the population. We had a good brief about forced landings and then we got airborne. We did about four forced landings, which are all a bit of a rush to be honest. From the word ‘Practice force landing – go’. You have to lower the collective, flare to 65 knots, raise the collection so it doesn’t over speed, turn into wind, which means raising the collective as the rotor speeds up due to the Coriolis effect, then when you roll out to have to lower it again to maintain rotor rpm, remember if it drops below 84% you are dead. Then when you’ve managed that you have to pick a landing site, then do a mayday call, then tell your passenger to brace, then kill the mixture, turn off the mags, turn off the master and turn off the fuel cut off valve. Then re-asses your landing site, get down to about 80ft, flare, level it then down to 8ft, raise the collective and land. The entire process takes about 70 seconds, and you have to be perfect, or you will die. I lived. We also did instrument flying, which is great fun, you wear a pair of ‘woggles’ which are like sunglasses, but you can’t see bugger all in front of you, so just the instruments. You then have to perform a 180 degree turn maintaining airspeed and level, I was oddly quite good at that. All those flight-sims as a kid finally paid off. We had a break and then I had another flight in the afternoon where we did ranged auto’s and confined area landings, which are great fun. Staverton was very busy today, we were told to wait outside the ATZ numerous times, which costs far too much money. Tomorrow I have two more flights to do. Drove home, walked the dogs, went for a run, did the accounts, had a bath. Will watch a bit of telly now and then have a fairly early night I think. Busy day again tomorrow. Not long now before my test.

Started off looking at cubes, colour cubes, I do live a fascinating life. Most of the day was taken up by that and some bug hunting on a certain console. Walked Sasha, she went for a nice long one round the duck pond. Dillon however decided he wasn’t going anywhere, growled and ate his harness. Stuck some fuel in the car for tomorrow. Walked to the gym, did Pump, no PT tonight as I’m still building back up again after the break, but will do it next week. Walked home. Did yet more work. So I’ve knocked up four hours overtime again this week. My tally is over fourteen hours over now. I must stop eating tortilla chip crisp things. I reckon I’ve eaton over twenty kilo’s of the things in the past couple of months. The only way to stop eating them is to just to make sure I don’t buy them, so I haven’t. Pizza time. Lots of flying tomorrow.

So today I didn’t work on fixing anyone else’s bugs, which made a nice change. I was actually implementing a couple of new normal map formats. Getting them to work was painless, getting them in the build pipeline is going to be somewhat more tricky. I surprised Dillon today by taking him for a walk first. However he was waiting under the bed by the time I got to the top of the stairs with his lead. He enjoyed it anyway, in the end. Went for a nine mile run. Came back and did some more work. I’m a little behind on my washing, haven’t done any from the holiday, I’ll start on that tomorrow, but it will have to go in after all this weeks gym kit. Jamie hasn’t washed anything other than a work shirt and trousers for about two months. No one has that many pairs of pants.

Woke up this morning and had the weirdest dream. It involved a very distant relative. Probably the less I think about it the better. This mornings work was tracing some missing GUI stuff, it was found, it wasn’t my fault which makes a change. Walked both dogs, had to drag Dillon out from under the bed again. This afternoon was all about normal maps. The actual thing I wanted to do worked fine. Trying to get the texture converters to produce it though was a total pain in the ass. Walked to the gym, did Pump, walked home, did more work. Doing far too much work this week, lots to be done really.

I must admit that I sent pretty much all days staring at bloody clouds. Looking for a lighting glitch that I couldn’t make happen. I did find another cloud bug though causing them to vanish completely. Sorted that one at least. Walked both dogs, Sasha was fine, Dillon I had to pull out from under the bed, he doesn’t like his Halti collar, if he walked fine on a harness he wouldn’t have to wear it. Oddly when he has it on and the lead attached he enjoys his walk. Went out for a nine mile run, think I have my winter running route worked out now. Did more work. Cleaned the kitchen as Jamie didn’t. Tomorrow I’m not looking at clouds.

So started pretty much bang on 9AM. Did an hour or so before we picked up the dogs. They were very pleased to see us. It’s odd that they pulled like hell when I dropped them off to get to the place and now they pulled like hell trying to get back to the car. Got back on with work, which today was mostly catching up and bug fixing. Walked both dogs. More work. Then walked to gym and did Combat. My legs have been aching all today. Walked home. Was planning on doing about an hours work, ended up doing two. So clocking up overtime again already. I’ve been invited to the Sony 20th anniversary party, but it’s on a Tuesday and I have to sort and pay for it all, it’s the day after Jamie’s birthday, so it’s all a bit of a pain. Who has a bloody party in London on a Tuesday?