Periodic report
May. 11th, 2009 09:55 amHello world! Things have been rather mundane this last week or so, therefore there is little to report.
On Thursday on my lunch break I went to the 'Fuzz Guitar Boutique' in town, which is a quaint little shop that sells overpriced guitars alongside trendy jeans and t-shirts. Quite bizarre. Anyway, I asked them if they had the Boss Noise Suppressor pedal in stock, and they quickly determined that they did not. However - they phoned up their 'mother' store in West Bridgford which, lo and behold, did have such a pedal available. Did I want them to bring it over to the city centre shop tomorrow? No, I said, I'll go over myself on Saturday. Thus, on Saturday I went to the West Bridgford store, and asked the assistant for the pedal. It turns out they didn't have one. A quick word with his boss determined that they had sent it to the city centre store yesterday, because someone asked them to do so. Grrrr. I got back to the city centre shop a little later and they had it waiting for me on the counter, so my mission was finally successful. On a tangential point, the guy who appeared to be running the shop in West Bridgford looked to be the same guy who owns Millennium Music and thus the new SoundCheck store in the old SoundControl premises. Can one person really own 4 music shops in Nottingham, or was I mistaken? Hmmm.
Thursday night was band practice time where I ended up using the studio's Line 6 amp head, making everything I play sound like it's being transmitted over AM radio. I'd use my own amp head but it is heavier than six elephants and thus not worth the effort. Apart from equipment issues things are sounding pretty good and we should be able to gig this year, IF we can get enough time with our vocalist, and IF we can sort out the second guitarist situation.
I had Friday off work, but squandered most of that free time. From that point on it was typical weekend goings-on, a few 'quiet' drinks with![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jen_whitewave et al in the Salutation on Friday and Saturday, with the added bonus of a visiting Diane on the latter occasion. On Sunday I went to Flaming Dragon with der_katzchen and wondered why they expect you to pay a service charge when you have to collect all the food from the buffet yourself. Ah well. All weekend, at pub and at restaurant, I have been trying to improve my tolerance for European lagers so that Wacken this year will be a bit more tolerable in the absence of readily-accessible cider. That's if I still go to Wacken at all, which is not guaranteed due to the somewhat poor selection of confirmed bands so far.
Since it seems like a useful skill to have, I started learning how to program ActionScript 3 at the weekend. However I must confess that I never even got as far as writing a line of AS3 code, instead just getting as far as writing the XML to open a blank window, before getting distracted. Oh well, there's always tonight. If I'm not too busy enjoying the poor voice acting in Deus Ex, that is.
Today I am back at work and appear to have lost my USB cable for my mp3 player. Since almost everybody else on the planet has an iPod the chance of being able to borrow a cable is minimal. Walking to and from work without music is a rather different experience.
Tonight is band practice, then I have nothing planned all week until Saturday when I might go to the metal night at J7, although I might not because the music selection was not to my taste either of the two times I've been so far.
On Thursday on my lunch break I went to the 'Fuzz Guitar Boutique' in town, which is a quaint little shop that sells overpriced guitars alongside trendy jeans and t-shirts. Quite bizarre. Anyway, I asked them if they had the Boss Noise Suppressor pedal in stock, and they quickly determined that they did not. However - they phoned up their 'mother' store in West Bridgford which, lo and behold, did have such a pedal available. Did I want them to bring it over to the city centre shop tomorrow? No, I said, I'll go over myself on Saturday. Thus, on Saturday I went to the West Bridgford store, and asked the assistant for the pedal. It turns out they didn't have one. A quick word with his boss determined that they had sent it to the city centre store yesterday, because someone asked them to do so. Grrrr. I got back to the city centre shop a little later and they had it waiting for me on the counter, so my mission was finally successful. On a tangential point, the guy who appeared to be running the shop in West Bridgford looked to be the same guy who owns Millennium Music and thus the new SoundCheck store in the old SoundControl premises. Can one person really own 4 music shops in Nottingham, or was I mistaken? Hmmm.
Thursday night was band practice time where I ended up using the studio's Line 6 amp head, making everything I play sound like it's being transmitted over AM radio. I'd use my own amp head but it is heavier than six elephants and thus not worth the effort. Apart from equipment issues things are sounding pretty good and we should be able to gig this year, IF we can get enough time with our vocalist, and IF we can sort out the second guitarist situation.
I had Friday off work, but squandered most of that free time. From that point on it was typical weekend goings-on, a few 'quiet' drinks with
jen_whitewave et al in the Salutation on Friday and Saturday, with the added bonus of a visiting Diane on the latter occasion. On Sunday I went to Flaming Dragon with der_katzchen and wondered why they expect you to pay a service charge when you have to collect all the food from the buffet yourself. Ah well. All weekend, at pub and at restaurant, I have been trying to improve my tolerance for European lagers so that Wacken this year will be a bit more tolerable in the absence of readily-accessible cider. That's if I still go to Wacken at all, which is not guaranteed due to the somewhat poor selection of confirmed bands so far.Since it seems like a useful skill to have, I started learning how to program ActionScript 3 at the weekend. However I must confess that I never even got as far as writing a line of AS3 code, instead just getting as far as writing the XML to open a blank window, before getting distracted. Oh well, there's always tonight. If I'm not too busy enjoying the poor voice acting in Deus Ex, that is.
Today I am back at work and appear to have lost my USB cable for my mp3 player. Since almost everybody else on the planet has an iPod the chance of being able to borrow a cable is minimal. Walking to and from work without music is a rather different experience.
Tonight is band practice, then I have nothing planned all week until Saturday when I might go to the metal night at J7, although I might not because the music selection was not to my taste either of the two times I've been so far.
I am using Jerry Seinfeld's 'don't break the chain' system to try and keep my productivity levels above zero by ensuring that I do something every single day without fail. Thus, I have written some music on each of the last four days - just short bits and pieces, but enough to stop me thinking that I can't do it any more, which was a worry recently.
I've also been trying to get back to working on my computer game, which so far has just involved rearranging some of the formulae I want to use because the old system didn't make sense, but now I have to alter some of the figures to try and get the main formula to form a nice convex curve with the global maximum somewhere in the single figures, rather than the concave curve I have with the maximum at N=1. To this end I've downloaded and attempted to familiarise myself with SciLab, some cheap and nasty MatLab clone, to work out how the hell to get this curve to do what I want. Hard work for someone like me who isn't too good with advanced mathematics.
Thursday was Valentines Day, which was endured without note or comment. It doesn't really mean anything to me either way. But then, very little does! This weekend was socially almost non-existent - indoors on Friday and Saturday, but had the semi-regular pub dinner with Ben, Chris, Ben, Chris (yes, I know), and the other usual suspects. I did go shopping on Saturday and bought Sonar 7 Studio, the most expensive software I own at £220. Ouch. Hopefully it'll justify the expense. On the way to buy it, I got accosted by some beggar who first asked, "Are you English? You're not Polish are you?" He then proceeded to ask me for 30p 'to get back to Manchester', while stinking of alcohol. I'd be quite happy to trade people like him for a few more Poles. Even if they do go round saying 'Dzień dobry' to each other in front of me all the time.
That's about it really - nothing to see here, move along.
I've also been trying to get back to working on my computer game, which so far has just involved rearranging some of the formulae I want to use because the old system didn't make sense, but now I have to alter some of the figures to try and get the main formula to form a nice convex curve with the global maximum somewhere in the single figures, rather than the concave curve I have with the maximum at N=1. To this end I've downloaded and attempted to familiarise myself with SciLab, some cheap and nasty MatLab clone, to work out how the hell to get this curve to do what I want. Hard work for someone like me who isn't too good with advanced mathematics.
Thursday was Valentines Day, which was endured without note or comment. It doesn't really mean anything to me either way. But then, very little does! This weekend was socially almost non-existent - indoors on Friday and Saturday, but had the semi-regular pub dinner with Ben, Chris, Ben, Chris (yes, I know), and the other usual suspects. I did go shopping on Saturday and bought Sonar 7 Studio, the most expensive software I own at £220. Ouch. Hopefully it'll justify the expense. On the way to buy it, I got accosted by some beggar who first asked, "Are you English? You're not Polish are you?" He then proceeded to ask me for 30p 'to get back to Manchester', while stinking of alcohol. I'd be quite happy to trade people like him for a few more Poles. Even if they do go round saying 'Dzień dobry' to each other in front of me all the time.
That's about it really - nothing to see here, move along.
nothing much
Nov. 8th, 2007 07:46 pmWork is frustrating at the moment. I'll be glad when it's the weekend, where I have absolutely nothing planned, but at least I won't be beating my head against the desk trying to work out how to use someone else's crap code.
Computer programming is great when it's going well, like a perfect blend of art and science, craft and engineering. You get to be the architect and the brick layer. You dream up stuff and make it happen. Unfortunately when you end up having to work through and around a load of someone else's poor and undocumented code it's more like trying to rebuild a half-demolished house with a toy hammer and some electrical tape, against a deadline. Despite what some people seem to think, it doesn't have to be this bad, and there are better practices you can use to make it work. Unfortunately they don't fit into tight schedules, because you can achieve the same functionality in abour 60% of the time. It's only at the end, where you are finding that meeting feature requests twice as hard as you should, that there's an appreciation that things should have been done properly in the first place. It's a lot of stress for no good reason.
In completely unrelated news, the new Novembre album is very good, and is possibly a bit of a nod back towards the older stuff. I'm also quite keen on this Lacrimas Profundere album I got, "Burning: A Wish", which sounds a bit like Anathema's 'The Silent Enigma' album in places. The lyrics are a bit dodgy, but that's foreign bands for you. (Oh, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
synphony, I found a Tristania album with the word 'strenght' in it.) However, I've not bought any new funeral doom in days, so I should rectify that.
My home recording stuff isn't going too well, but if nothing else I know what all the options on my Pod XT do now. And, I've become acutely aware of the audible differences between overdrive and distortion, a distinction I've always wondered about but only now learned properly. Now I instantly spot overdrive in lead guitar tones, and know why so many bands have old-looking green pedals with them on stage. It's always good to learn new things.
To finish off, here's the Spam of the Day: "Now you can fill her vagina with meat like you fill her heart with love." Who said romance was dead?
Computer programming is great when it's going well, like a perfect blend of art and science, craft and engineering. You get to be the architect and the brick layer. You dream up stuff and make it happen. Unfortunately when you end up having to work through and around a load of someone else's poor and undocumented code it's more like trying to rebuild a half-demolished house with a toy hammer and some electrical tape, against a deadline. Despite what some people seem to think, it doesn't have to be this bad, and there are better practices you can use to make it work. Unfortunately they don't fit into tight schedules, because you can achieve the same functionality in abour 60% of the time. It's only at the end, where you are finding that meeting feature requests twice as hard as you should, that there's an appreciation that things should have been done properly in the first place. It's a lot of stress for no good reason.
In completely unrelated news, the new Novembre album is very good, and is possibly a bit of a nod back towards the older stuff. I'm also quite keen on this Lacrimas Profundere album I got, "Burning: A Wish", which sounds a bit like Anathema's 'The Silent Enigma' album in places. The lyrics are a bit dodgy, but that's foreign bands for you. (Oh, and
synphony, I found a Tristania album with the word 'strenght' in it.) However, I've not bought any new funeral doom in days, so I should rectify that.My home recording stuff isn't going too well, but if nothing else I know what all the options on my Pod XT do now. And, I've become acutely aware of the audible differences between overdrive and distortion, a distinction I've always wondered about but only now learned properly. Now I instantly spot overdrive in lead guitar tones, and know why so many bands have old-looking green pedals with them on stage. It's always good to learn new things.
To finish off, here's the Spam of the Day: "Now you can fill her vagina with meat like you fill her heart with love." Who said romance was dead?
(no subject)
Jul. 18th, 2007 03:59 pmI may stop posting deep and meaningful entries since 90% of you miss the point when I do so. :P
Today at work I've been wrestling with the horror that is the GUI code for our game. It's all XML driven, so that form can be altered independently of function, but there's about 50 levels of indirection between them which makes it very hard to tell why something won't work, or in this case, why removing an XML tag makes the code crash.
At home, I've nearly finished arranging another song, have started reading "Game Architecture And Design", am about 2/3rds of the way through the main storyline in Oblivion, and have escaped the citadel of the amphibian-men in Thief 3.
That's about it.
Today at work I've been wrestling with the horror that is the GUI code for our game. It's all XML driven, so that form can be altered independently of function, but there's about 50 levels of indirection between them which makes it very hard to tell why something won't work, or in this case, why removing an XML tag makes the code crash.
At home, I've nearly finished arranging another song, have started reading "Game Architecture And Design", am about 2/3rds of the way through the main storyline in Oblivion, and have escaped the citadel of the amphibian-men in Thief 3.
That's about it.
