Didn’t sleep again last night, it’s getting quite annoying now. Got up at 7AM, began the drive to Staverton. By the time I got to the M5 I realised I’d forgotten my wallet. Drove back, picked that up and then had another go. Arrived just after half eight, Captain James was already there and had fuelled up G-OJAN.

After a short briefing about manifold pressures we got in the helicopter. I’d already grabbed a cushion and plugged in my new headset. I was great, it was silent. Went through the start-up check-list and fired her up. James taxied across the runway and took it up to three hundred feet, I then took over. We did quite a bit of upper air work, climbs, descents, climbing and descending turns. I then did a auto-rotation and an approach back to the airfield, brought it right down to 300 feet and then got it into a hover.

Then the fun started. Did lots of hover practice. Then did landing from a hover and taking off again. Spent the next twenty minutes or so taking off, crossing the airfield, bringing it back to a hover and then landing again. Finally flew it back to the hanger and parked it on the grass outside. Great fun. So apart from transitions which I briefly did today that’s everything for flying. So technically I could steal an R22 and fly it about. I would get lost of course as we haven’t covered navigation yet. So I clocked up 1.4 hours today (Don’t ask how much). I’m up to 6.5 hours total, so about 15 from going solo. Really pleased with my progress. Just in the back of my mind I know how much it’s costing, and how pretty much bloody useless a skill it is. Still it’s fun.

Drove home. Started work. Today mainly it was resolving code and building data, so fairly dull. Walked Sasha, Dillon refused to wear his harness. Did more work.

Early evening I did something I haven’t done in years. I went to a spin class. It was with Laverne and was forty-five minutes. That knackered me out, actually really enjoyed it, will be going again. Traffic was awful.

Came back and did a bit more work. Now the in game hud is all in the middle of the screen. Apart from that, all looks pretty good.

Finally sat down and ate. It’s torture porn night, probably go for something light.

So this morning was a bit strange. Alarm went off and Sasha got excited. Got breakfast for both Sasha and Dillon, Dillon thought this was a bit strange. He was even more confused when I tried to get his harness on at 6:30AM. Loaded them both into the car, they were fine. Dropped them off at daycare.

Went back to bed.

Working today on post process effects and an interesting skinning problem. Postman arrived and delivered my Spektrum DX6i, it’s ex. display but perfect condition. This is a fully programmable controller, so I should be able to set the heli’s up properly. I’ll leave that until I have a bit more time to get into it. There are a lot of set-up videos I need to watch, hopefully then the four channel ones will be easier to fly, then I can move on to the six channel ones.

Picked the dogs up. Sasha and Dillon both enjoyed it, they are now very tired which is good.

Went for a run. Did a bit more work. Did some R22 hover practice on the sim.

So tomorrow it’s early doors, drive up to Staverton to fly budgie.

Had a hell of a headache this morning, nothing to do with alcohol, I think it was down to paint fumes. So started work very late after a few pills. Felt fine afterwards.

Working on debugging the main game still. Fixed some crashes to do with damage. Fixed motion blur, now on to depth of field.

Went to the gym and did combat. Not sure what I’ll do tomorrow, either running, circuits or spin, should be interesting.

Came back and did more work, while trying to fly the model simulator. I’m not going to comment on what I’ve bought today.

Sat down and caught up with my Trip-advisor reviews. One for the hotel in Turkey, another for Alton Towers, again for the hotel at Alton Towers and finally for the Italian we went to on Saturday.

Dillon refused to have his head collar on, so he didn’t get a walk. He will learn.

Doesn’t look like I’ll be flying this week due to the piss poor weather which is rather annoying.

Didn’t sleep well again last night, no idea why. Today was GPU debugging, which is an ass. Basically it’s a lot of waiting around for things to crash and then back trace it and try and find out why. This is a very very long iterative process. The good news is there’s quite a lot of hanging about, so I managed to get a lot of practice in on Phoenix r/c simulator. I can now fly it pretty well.

My box of choppers turned up. I now have three Honeybee CP3’s. So plenty to crash. I’m after a V2 though as well as this is easier to fly. I will soon require my own hanger. Those headphones are still going for £400, but they have one bid on them.

Did I find my GPU crash? Well, yes and no. I couldn’t pin exactly what the cause was, but I did spot an error with the vertex attribute setting, after I’d fixed this everything appears to be stable.

Good week. Great progress. Busy weekend with DIY.

Bath and wine time.

Oh, welcome to my new NYC reader:)

So yesterday was mainly taken up by an awful lot of work. Walked dogs and never saw another one on the entire walk. Went to pump, then went to the pub with my sister. I had a rather bland curry. Drank beer, good company, good fun.

Today I was supposed to do a home check for a cat but she never phoned back. Picked up some crickets, walked into town. Picked up some brown paper to send heli back. Visited mother, she’s still alive.

Came back and did the accounts. Looked at the spare part that arrived (this is the second one) and it was actually the correct size. So I repaired the helicopter. The mass confusion all comes about as the CP3 shares a lot of parts with the old model CP2, but none of them with the new model CP2 which is discontinued. And just for amusement they all share the same part numbers. I won two more CP3’s on ebay, which will be useful for spares. I may get a normal V2 as well, as they are a bit easier to fly and have similar parts. I was looking at a dual rotor, but I already have a small one of those.

Jamie is cooking tonight. I’m glad I bought wine.

Finally slept last night, which is good, except it took a bottle of wine to do it.

Cracked on with work, sorted out a rather interesting coloured sky problem. It’s all starting to work properly now, so getting a little easier, although still loads of work to do.

Walked the dogs quite early. Put Dillon on a sort of head collar thing, did wonders for his pulling, if anything Sasha was pulling more.

Went for a run. It’s getting very dark at night.

Talked to the guy who repairs heliguys helicopters, he’s never experienced the ball size problem and reckons it’s an old model. I mailed them again and they have agreed to replace it with a new model. All I need to do now is pack it up.

So started off this morning slightly later than usual. Dropped Sasha off at daycare then continued up the A38 to join the M5. Drove to Staverton and got there just before 8:30. There in the car park was a motor bike and a man who looked very much like Richard Hammond. I thought I must be mistaken as he looked a bit disheveled without his TV war paint on. He also seemed to have a key to the place. Anyway, we swapped ‘good mornings’. James turned up and sauntered over as if he was at a evening soiree. We got our ‘copter out and checked it over. Then went into the planning room where James went through the manifold pressures and attitudes. He then introduced me to Richard. Nice chap, just as scatty in normal life.

We got into out aircraft as Richard was setting off. I was just going through my checklist and he flew back in again. James went and investigated and they disappeared off for a bit, then came back. Apparently he had a warning light on. It’s his own helicopter with his own call-sign on it. An R44, a few quids worth.

Anyway, we took to the skies on what turned out to be a pretty clear morning. I did some more assents and descents, all good. We then went in for some more hover practice. Now today winds were up to 12 Km/hr so it was a real ass to keep it stable. He asked if I wanted exactly an hour and I said I didn’t mind, so we went on until we almost ran out of fuel. Clocked up 1.2 hours in the end. Together with the R22 study guide that rolled in at just shy of £400.

Drove back and got on with work. Fixed environment maps, still have an orange rather than blue sky. But then spent most of the day fixing various shader problems.

Went for a run. Did the shopping list and now about to finish work just shy of midnight.

Oh, the arcade cabinet artwork is finished, it looks fab. I have a quote for the entire machine. It’s very expensive. It will be here in about four weeks. A bit of a luxury item, but you do need to live a little. At the moment I need to live a lot.

Back into debugging renderer pipelines, not the most exciting thing on the planet, but I find it good fun. Had great problems with producing mipmaps in cube maps. Got there in the end using a rather novel approach with six render targets.

Popped over to the sorting office and picked up a parcel.

Walked the dogs, although it was very short as Dillon kept pulling. Went for a run.

Unwrapped said parcel, it was my ‘Phoenix flight sim’. This comes with a USB interface. I installed it all and connected it to my Honey Bee CP3 controller. It actually configured fine which I didn’t expect. It doesn’t have the exact helicopter but it has some very similar models. Boy is it good. I was really surprised. The 3D copters are a real pain to fly, it’s going to be a great training aid. I spent about the first thirty minutes just snapping the rotors off. Finally I was getting the hang of it and getting it into a hover. Will have a play tomorrow. So now I have a simulator for the model, which is a simulator for the real thing. Much fun. Oh, my little copter I bought off Groupon is great as well, it’s an indoor one and is great for scaring the dog.

Wine time.