MuckyGuy

07:43 pm: I've moved...
...to here : www.guysimmons.net :)

12:00 am: Chapter 38, in which our hero emits some misery
I'm down, really down.

Those who know why, know why. Those who don't, don't, but without going into detail the past year has been a stinker, a right old diarrhea smothered pig of a time. In fact, come to think of it, the preceding couple of years haven't been too great either. The blue funk has been sloshing around in my head for too long now, and I've been utterly unable to shift it, it's like a kind of sticky misery mucus that clings & clings & eventually dries on hard, & no amount of cilit bang is going to shift that sucka!

I hate moaning LJ posts, I really do, but here I am posting my very own. I'm not looking for sympathy, or hugs, words of wisdom, or anything like that, I guess I'm just trying to offload some feelings in the vague hope it will relax or ease this emotional pressure cooker that's been going on inside me for so long now. It's funny, but when people see me, or talk to me, they tend to think I'm this "nice chilled" bloke who wouldn't say boo to a moose, but you know I'm actually not? Inside I'm like a boiling, frothing mass of anxiety & confusion, with occasional waves of anger tipped with crests of hate. There are depths here that no one knows about. I used to think I was a good person at heart, but I've come to realise lately that I'm not, I only thought I was. It's a hard thing to bear if I'm truly honest, but I'm feeling so sorry for myself at the moment that I'd rather just wallow in self pity & self loathing than actually do anything about it, which just makes it all so self fulfilling.

Enthusiasm is such a fleeting thing at the moment, emotionally, creatively, productively(?), physically, all just in a permanent rut. I start the day & can't wait for it to be over. I spend all week looking forward to the weekends, & all weekend looking forward to the week. Day after day, this is me. Same old, same old, It's like a knackered old rusty bike wheel, that's turning round & round, laying by the side of the road after it's owner has just been run over & crushed under the wheels of sunshine variety bus.

I realise I'm the architect of my own misery, & I'm not blaming anyone, but I just don't understand why I can't be satisfied, or content. Why I can't find any joy or pleasure in what I have. Each day for me is an act, I pretend to be happy, I pretend to be having a good time, I pretend to be content with my lot. While the reality is that there is no joy in my life, & nothing that seems to give me joy.

*sigh* Can anyone spare a blue pill?

12:06 pm: Tame Butterfly
There's a tame butterly in my garden. On sunny days I go to the middle of my lawn, hold up my hand, & it appears from nowhere. It flutters down, lands on my hand & proceeds to vibrate. How cool is that?

Now, how do I post pics here? :D

Edit:
Piccy1
Piccy2
Thanks Rik :)

03:32 pm: Chinese Mythology...
...is ace! :-)

Now I need to spend a few hours with a martial arts expert discussing "stuff". Hmmm, Rik know where can I find a martial arts expert? ;-)

01:50 pm: Top Birthday :-)
Spent yesterday afternoon at Legoland with Dom, Kal & Poppy. Kal was so excited he didn't know where to look, he was running round gibbering like an idiot "Dal want dis one daddy. Dal want dis one daddy" etc. We went down the remarkably tame water slide, both of us giggling like school girls & nearly managing to tip the thing over at one point (I had to stick both arms out & hold onto the sides of the slide to stabilise us). Managed to get him out of the place without a tantrum too, so all in all a great time was had & I have to say my little boy is growing into an ace little chap :-)

In the evening Dom & I went down to our local gastropub, I scoffed some oriental salad & a really good fillet steak topped with port & stilton, & washed down with a good few pints of stella. Then back home to drift off into a contented sleep sprawled out in front of the telly.

Nice :-)

02:54 pm: Coding with a 3 week old balanced on my chest.
I need my camera, it's like there isn't a care in the world. What a little cutey she is :-D


Guy

06:47 am: Poppy Mia Storm Simmons
Welcome to the world :-D

She looks a bit like a shaved version of Gimli at the moment, but it'll pass.

Yay for Dom, Kal & Poppy :-D

01:17 pm: glDrawPixels
Anyone know owt about this? It works perfectly well in SPOOGE for what I need it for (drawing non power of 2 background images) right up until I try to introduce an alpha blend using glPixelTransferf( GL_ALPHA_SCALE, opacity ); at that point I'm lucky if it can render 1 frame every 2-3 seconds (it's fine when opacity is 1.0f). Now before anyone starts telling me to use the non power of 2 texture extension (Kor :-p ), I just wondered if there's anything obvious I might be doing wrong with glDrawPixels?

10:17 pm: Ear today...
Still haven't been to the docs about my ear as there's no pain anymore, but the effects are getting notably weirder. It's as if there's some pitch bending going on in my right ear, & the higher the pitch the more pronounced the effect. Music suddenly sounds horrible because basically the higher the note the more out of tune it sounds.

As an example I was just listening to Uncertain Smile by The The, which has this really cool piano solo by Jools Holland in there, however it now sounds like Les Dawson recorded it.

If I listen to music just through my left ear it sounds fine, but if I listen to it through my right it sounds truly terrible. What I get is a constant mix of in tune & out of tune, creating a permanent doppler effect, which explains why when someone with a high voice talks to me they sound like the martians from those old "For mash, get Smash" adverts.

11:11 am: Kinda like tunnel vision...
...except in my ear.

I have a comedy ear infection, hurts like fuck, but on the upside it makes everyone sound like the Cylons from the original Battlestar Galactica :-D

01:33 am: Bunny Robots
Just 'cos

08:29 am: spgMaths
must...cut...chaff

12:21 am: Oh Mr Sandman...
Hell's bloody ding dong! I woke up literally minutes ago, from some mostly unremembered nightmare, to find myself screaming like a baby. I think I frightened the life out of Dom, who I guess must have been fast asleep, but as I came to I could hear her telling me everything was "okay". Dunno what I was dreaming, but I think I was in a dark place & something grabbed me.

I'm feeling really shaken now, & I think sleep is long way off for this boy tonight :-(

11:56 am: Babylon
I love the rain. Really I do. On days like today I wish I could just sit by the local canal, under a tree, & watch the raindrops make chaos out of the usually still water, & listen to the sound the rain makes as it spatters onto the newly formed spring leaves.

04:44 am: Bats in my belfry, rain on my roof, even my teddy bear seems quite aloof.
It's been a long night, but finally Mac StarTopia is back to where it was before the miserable CVS check in last week. Okay so it's not particularly far, but game logic is being processed & that's a satisfying place to leave it for the time being. Next phase is trying to get it to actually draw something on screen, but I reckon that's a way away yet. What I've got to do right now though is to pluck up the courage to commit to CVS again.

09:31 am: Fuckity fuck fuck!
So there I am, late last night, thinking about my list of stuff that I want to do, & how I don't have the time, when I think "right, must sort SPOOGE out for k", so off I go. Half way through that I start to wonder about the status of StarTopia-Mac & I load it up to take a look. "Not as far advanced as I'd remembered" thinks I, "but not to worry, SPOOGE's shell is good enough to bolt in there & get me to a point where I can actually start drawing stuff". So I start coding, & I keep coding, & by the time I have a proper StarTopia shell running on the Mac, that's actually running through the original game loop (albeit rather stubtastically), I look up & discover it's 4:35am. "Okay, no problem, so I'll be tired at work today, what's new? The great thing is though that I've made a nice tasty dent in one of my things to do". Feeling all chuffed with myself I try to commit by work to CVS:

[GuyMac17Incher:~/Development/StarTopia] guy% cvs commit -m "" , types I
"Blah blah sticky tag problem, fix before proceeding blah blah" sez CVS
"Odd" thinks I, "Maybe an update will sort it?"
[GuyMac17Incher:~/Development/StarTopia] guy% cvs update -d -P
"Blah blah sorted" sez CVS
"Excellent, now to commit" thinks I
[GuyMac17Incher:~/Development/StarTopia] guy% cvs commit -m ""
"Blah blah sorted"
"Lovely", thinks I & promptly switches back into XCode to run it one final time before heading off to bed. Except, when I look at my work, it's gone........every...last...fucking...piece...of...code...I've...typed...over...the...past...six...hours...has...completely...vanished...from...existence!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cunting cunty cunt cunts!

10:11 pm: Wrecked 'em
I just had a tinker around inside my new PC box, swapping a few things round, realizing the mobo already has a network port etc. When I switched it back on there was a fzzt sound, a puff of smoke, a little glowing ball of shrapnel & a strange burning smell.....apart from that it's running fine.

11:06 am: Bananas & Marmite
LiveJournal, first post, & typing it on the new box I was up building 'til the wee hours of this morning (think it might need a few extra fans though as it's smelling a bit hot).

Bowie's "Let's Dance" arrived in the post this morning, bit 80s I know, but I was desperate to hear the album mix of China Girl. I've been craving an extended version of the closing guitar solo, which always felt a bit stunted on the single, & I hoped the album version would scream & grind it's way over that lovely driving bassline & howl on into infinity.......Oh well, looks like I'll be wearing my disappointed pants to work today.