So just back from a two day conference. All I can say was that it was in London, with work colleagues. We ate lots and got very pissed. Most of it was quite dull and it was difficult to stay awake, some bits were indeed useful though. Managed to get some nice walking in though, walked to the station and then from Paddington to venue which covered a fair bit of London, then walked back tonight, in the rain. Had a nice bath. Tomorrow will no doubt be very frustrating as I’ve had two days away from work, so there will be some mass panic about something.

So got going this morning without any problems, which was odd as it was a Monday. Ended up spending all morning fixing some animation tool. Took Sasha out on yet another nice but cold day. Did lots of other bits in the afternoon. Walked to Combat. Came back and transferred the new white, that’ll have to sit for about ten days now. Talking of alcohol that’s it, challenge finished, one month of complete sobriety complete. Quite pleased with that. Time to put the wind fridge back on.

Oh, I phoned mother yesterday and said I’d booked the helicopter for the day before her birthday, depending on the weather of course. I explained the route, the response I got was typical, “Oh I can’t fly over my house then?”. There are rules and regulations and one of them is a ‘land clear’ rule, so hanging around over a built-up area in a single engine aircraft is not allowed. Obviously crossing the Severn and flying past the suspension bridge and Concorde is a bit of a let down if you can’t view your shitty bungalow with a knackered fence from 1200 feet. I can’t wait to give her the list of CAA rules, which include absolutely no loose items in the cockpit and that includes handbags.

This morning actually started quite early which was surprising after the length of last nights film. ‘Interstellar’ was good, if somewhat very long and did descend into a bit of an ‘Abyss’ moment for the last forty-five minutes. Walked Sasha early for a couple of hours, had a quick lunch and then drove up to Staverton. Ben and I were flying down to Weston to the helicopter museum. Hotel-tango was still damaged so we had an old crate with lots of bits failing on it, but it did fly fine. Flew down the Wales side of the channel and then across the old Severn Bridge, which was a hell of a way to avoid a bridge toll. Then followed the M5 down to the museum. Easy place to land. We had a good look around for an hour and then headed back via the suspension bridge and Cribbs Causeway, also took in the old Filton airfield. A good 1.9 hours, so makes me much more current again. Got some really good video footage, so will edit that together over the coming week or so.

Annoyingly I had no paper to read this morning, so had to settle with watching the ‘Song for Europe’ thing for the Eurovision Song Contest. At least the winners were quite cute. Walked Sasha and then went out for an hour in the freezing cold and picked up a couple of Geocaches. Came back and then drove into town. Popped into Bristol museum and looked at the ‘Death’ exhibition, fairly interesting, but no real dead stiffs to look at. Got a few ideas, just a shame that pentobarbital isn’t available on Amazon Prime. Talking of Amazon I sent them a stinking email about Lovefilm by Post overcharging me. It said this billing cycle was four quid, but they ended up charging me £9.99, so said I’d like the £5.99 refunded, they refunded the whole £9.99 three hours later. Can’t fault them for their customer service, even if they are a bit dense at times. Going to watch ‘Interstellar’ now, it’s about three hours long so may not make it.

Work was rather dull, debugging some debug primitives. Then I tried to do a manual resolve for another project and that failed miserably. Another fairly nice but cold day, took Sasha for a long walk. In the post today came another two PAYE coding notices, so that’s ten now. Walked to the gym, did Pump. Laverne’s stalker was there, apparently she was talking to my sister at Zumba yesterday, she’s bloody weird, I think she has the hot’s for Laverne. Did a long session with her anyway. So now my final weekend on alcohol free lager, I may even miss it.

Managed to get a few bits done before disappearing down the road for a meeting with a financial advisor. I was covered in dog hair and looked like I’d just arrived from the skate park. He went through all his stuff and had a brief look at my pensions. He kept on talking about ‘if you ever have to pay higher rate tax’. Eventually he asked the question, I replied that I pay 45% tax, he didn’t dig any further. I think he’ll do a reasonable job for his £250. He’s got a couple of weeks anyway. Another nice day but very cold, walked Sasha. Went out for a run this evening. About to watch a film now I think.

Started vaguely on time. More of a finishing off and cleaning up day today. Managed to clean everything up and finish it off anyway. Got it all checked in. Another beautiful day. Took Sasha on a long walk. Walked to gym and did Pump. So one weekend of sobriety left, its been good fun really and has done wonders for my sleep pattern. I have an expensive white brewing, started it Sunday, it’s gassing up nicely now. Just looked at the end of life for Ubuntu on the server it’s 12.04.5LTS, it’s got until next April. Sooner or later I’m going to have to do the upgrade, no doubt everything will break. Speaking of upgrades, the firewall has been fine since I upgraded that, hasn’t crashed or rebooted once. Also Virgin have sent me a mail saying that now my speed has been increased they are going to send me a new router. I’ll put that next to the one they sent yesterday then. Talking of people who don’t know what one hand is doing against the other, tax office has finally written to me to say I need to file a tax return, at least we are all happy now.

Started early for a change. Lots of work done today, a certain console is now working nicely. Buggered up the PC version though so will need to sort that. Another lovely day weather wise, so we took both dogs out for a nice long walk. New modem thing arrived from Virgin, so installed that and we now have 200mbs, which is way more bandwidth than anyone really needs, I’m sure Jamie will still max it out though. Good to see that the firewall can cope with it without any issues.

Didn’t start work until late, the usual Monday morning problems. Fixed a few crash issues and then it was on to the joys of constant buffers again. Having a bit of a dilemma about using one whacking great constant buffer mapped to 16MB and then using an offset to reference it. You can set an offset but not a size, but the shader can only access 64K anyway. Very dull stuff. Another nice day, so Sasha got a long walk. Walked to gym, did Combat, it was Nick tonight, so he would have just finished the first track by now, his timing is so far out. Did far too much work. So now in the final week of sobriety, but thanks to it being a leap year it kind of cocks things up a bit.

My sister popped round first thing, thankfully I’d already had one coffee so was vaguely coherent. After that we set up the cameras and did a new YouTube video with the ‘Pie face’ game. That was great fun and somewhat messy. I then walked Sasha until it was dark. Came back and edited the video and then did the accounts. Also managed to get a rather pricey wine kit on the go, so that’ll need checking next week. Had a bath, now time for a curry.