The site is up!

Well its up, but its not got all the content in there yet

Take a look at it here its still mostly a holding page and due to my lack of expertise with Dreamweaver, the design package I am using, its pretty generic, but I'll tinker with it and start adding pages and content to it as I go.

I've got to offload a lot of the book code sections to that, to keep the page count down so it will start to grow.

Had a lot of fun yesterday adding the light based shaders to the 3D games, so nice to see them becoming much more realistic. Per vertex lights work great, per pixels too but what a performance drop in them.
I won't be doing per pixel lighting in the actual book demos, it will just cause things to really chug,  so its going to stay on the site as an example of what is possible rather than what you should do.

Back to work progress is really good again and I want to make the biggest dent possible in the todo list this weekend to try to get it to the publisher .

The book has been pushed back to Q1 2018, which is a shame, but I am not going to assume any more time I must finish this in the next couple of days so I can get my life back together and move on with other things that have been stacking up.

Ahthankyew

Slowly readching the end.

Incredible, I mean really incredibly, the progress has been so painfully slow, but I can see the last few bits to do, the only  problem is that for the last 2 -3 weeks every single thing I've tried to do has not worked, 5 minute tasks inexplicably take 5 hours, small errors get magnified, and for no reasons I can see, things that should work fine and do on a PC test case, don't work on the Raspberry.

Im sure much of this is just due to total code exhaustion, there's so much code in this book and the support site and trying to keep it all in a consistant style while allowing it to evolve is a mental task I don't think I've ever had to deal with on an individual project

But in spite of all this incredibly hassle, I'm limping to the finish line..... I just fucking hope that last day or 2's work does not take a month or 2




Ahthankyew

Nose almost worn down

Its been stuck at the grindstone for too long

I  am genuinely exhausted, not getting to bed till 2/3 am and having to get up for work at 8 at least twice a week, (lucky the other days Im not so fixed on my start time)

I know Im making progress but it just never seems to end, small 10 min jobs inexplicably bring some hiccup that takes 10 hours, sucking both time and life out of me.

the todo list is shrinking at an impressive rate, but some of the code still refuses to play nice...

I'm going to try to kill it this weekend....try....assuming nothing else takes 10 hours.

I never in my wildest dreams, after 70+ game projects thought writing a book would be harder.....it is.


Ahthankyew

arghhh

slow progress on the code, fixed a lot of the issues but slooooooowwwww


getting very wound up

Ahthankyew

Horrible times

Less than 2 weeks ago, I was in the UK, staying for a while in Southwark, right next to London Bridge,  and visited and ate in the Borough Market, walked over London Bridge, like so many other tourists.
I went to Manchester, to Victoria Station to change trams to get to Rochdale.

Hearing about the bombs in Manchester happening as I was passing through, and last night the terror attacks in London, on the streets I walked through and sat and ate, it makes you pause...anyone can be a victim of these nutters. Even safe and sound back in NL I'm troubled that no one is ever safe from madmen who want to harm you, its only accidents of timing and location that keep you safe.

Horrible times we live in, I doubt I'll live to see the end of these kinds of acts of violence justified by twisted religious morality.  We need to make the right start for future generations and take away the immoral justifications, starting with religion. Why do we still make excuses for it? It is without question the greatest evil humanity has ever produced.

Its not that I'm against Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, or any of the countless other beliefs and their practitioners, I recognize the supposed need and real comfort they give people, but they are fictions, being used as facts. Its delusion on a unimaginable scale.
If we stopped presenting them as facts to our children and let them question and refuse religion, we'd end so much of the hate that is used to divide us. It might take a couple of generations but getting people to stop brainwashing kids to believe that an invisible  sky fairy is looking after us and only us because we live the right way, is one thing we can do to make a better world.

Teach our children that they are responsible for all the worlds good and evil things and pretty soon they will want to make things better, not transform it into their idea of heaven on earth. Morality isn't religion's gift, its humanity's.

There is no afterlife, there are no rewards or punishments for the life you lead, there are no gods....lets just make the world better for us and our children and enjoy your time.




Ahthankyew

I am home

And so is Harvey.

life is back to semi normal.


Ahthankyew

Record Time

Passport is here, so happy, as much as I love spending time on Danni's couch listening to Harvey2's babbling, I need ot get home...flights changed, heading home tomorrow



Ahthankyew

This is rather nice...might do it again

One of the nice things about my cheap 1st class ticket, cos I booked in advance, is that I get to use the 1st class lounge at Euston.
Its a little busy at the moment, but free coffee, biccies and a small desk space to set up the laptop and charge phone etc...rather pleasent.

I must say I have always refused to use 1st class even if only a few quid more but in future I'm going to grab it with both hands, this is so much less stress than standing in the main hall of Euston smelling Burger King and staring blankly at a screen waiting for an update every 10 mins..

Heading up to Manchester to stay with sprog and await my passport. Left my nice AirBnB room this mornng all tidy, but of course I had to cock up and left my keys and dutch travel card in the desk drawer which  luckily I  noticed when I got to the tube station but before I got on the train...a few calls and a mini cab back to the place where I was able to get the friendly neighbour with the key to let me back in and collect my things.

I had to take the cab because quite frankly the hills up and down from the station to the house almost killed me. 9 years in the Netherlands has totally ruined my once fine athleltic physique...cough

nah its not funny I was totally puggled walking up a hill....it was a steep one but still, puggled is not good....I must do something about my weight and general state of fitness.... I  keep saying this I know, but fuuuck....when walking up a hill is too  much  effort I need to do something.

Book remains in 99% but can't do that last 1% limbo, was working all the time I was in the BnB till the small hours, only popping out to eat, but lack of notes makes it impossible to finish. The new model I was using for the race track demo also turned out to have a few issues. Nothing I couldn't fix but it just drained time and  still isn't quite right. Hoping I have space on the train to get it up and running and move on to the final open envirionment game

Better sign off here and use the hour I have to wait to  update the chapter on the issues with the model and see if the error I had is something obvious that I can fix without a Pi attached.




Ahthankyew

a First class wait

Well the AirBnB is really quite nice, its like being a lodger in someones house, though I've not seen much of them, we chat when I go downstairs for coffee.
I'm madly trying to edit my book, without the benefit of my own library for checking things, especially maths. Making a lot of things much harder.

Lucky for me I brought a raspberry and screen with me, its a bit small, but it at least lets me test out some of my code, not all though which is a concern and I still need too try to deliver on Monday.

I've no chance, a lot of my notes and content are on my main PC at home, ....home :(

I've let the publisher know my prediciment, Im sure he's sympathetic, but really just wants the manuscript, so I've worked as much as I can on my laptop, sat on a deck chair in my bedroom. Getting the spelling and content all ready.. I think that we're there.. If I can't actually do the coding, at least I can do the editing, its 840 pages, 40+ more than they want but they can change the text size if its too much for them.

Tomorrow I head up to Manchester for the week to spend with my daughter and grandson, not sure how much work I'll get done up there, I know she has no wifi but I can use my phone if I am not too reckless with bandwidth.
Since I was able to book in advance I have a 1st class ticket, never done that before, but its more to make sure I have a table and power socket to work on the 2+ hour trip.

As much as I am looking forward to seeing Danni, I really wish I could get home and finish my damn fucking book as well as the Colecovision work I have to nail now that I have invested in some proper equipment.

I've got a plane booked on the 29th, onthe presumption the passport will come on the 26/27th.... I just hope I didn't misspell some twatting thing.


Ahthankyew

London... a new kind of hell

I've lost my passport, no idea how, where, thiough fair idea of when, but lost or stolen I am currently without it...

Thats a pain in ways you can't imagine, since as a UK citizen, currently in the UK, I have no means of getting hold of emergency travel documents...nor can I apply for the 1 day priority passport, I can only apply for a renewal and that will take 7-8 days

oh shit......and I check out of the hotel later today...

I have a plan, I'm tryng to get an Air B&B for a few days, then head up to Danni's for a few more days, where I can have the passport sent, assuming they will send it there since I am actually not registered at any address in the UK...this is going to be such fun..

I need to get a passport applicaiton from the Post office, this morning, train to Tunbridge Wells to get a friend who is a company director to countersign that he knows me, back to London Passport office to make the application then hope that all goes well..

Currently having trouble getting Air B&B to accept my drivers license as ID....oh joy

And all through this I need to finish my book....


fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck and another fuck....


Ahthankyew

Grading over, back to mad work

Nice to get the grading down, it was kinda nice to not be writing as much while I was doing that, but time get back to mad hours and finish this damn book, only 1 thing to finish up and then I ncan hand it over finally

just hope I don't have any last minute bugs to clear up.



Ahthankyew

Super human effort, but missed again

I think I have 3 or 4 days work left to finish the book, but I am utterly dead on my feet, and that means I missed my deadline...maybe my final one, I don't know.

I got it down to 830pages too, so close..but there are 2 projects still needing written up, one has had some issues, that I haven't totally solved but will get a bit of help from my collegues to push past, am sure I'm just making a silly error.

I am hoping, that with so much done and so close to the wire that it won't get canned...I can't see it, there's just so much here...but I need to spend a few days on school work.

I'll send what I have tomorrow and let them decided what to do next, I am sure they've had this before, its not as if I'm skiving off the work, its just that coding and writing coherently about coding is bloody hard work!


Ahthankyew

and moving to new shooters

Again an extension of the scrolling platform game, the skramble game is more or less complete...this is the last of the software rendered sprite games, this is now being converted into a hardware sprite based mega shooter, with particles and so on, should only be another days work on that then I can move fullto to polishing the 3d.

Ironiocally the 3D stuff is far easier to do, and hopefully will only take a few days so I can make my deadline, and have an early night.

Ahthankyew

to sleep perchance to dream

Massive massive amounts of work done this week and last, but this week in particular, huge amount of writing and coding, but still not able to nail the coffin lid down on 2 projects...but the big project, the book, has been given another small extentions, so tonight I don't see the need to work til 4/5am though I probably will

Got a nice long weekend to come up now for Easter, thank you jeebuz.. and hopefully I can finally finish the Coleco game and complete the last 3 projects on the book. they have all been written and work fine, but I need to condense the descriptions into 1 section. I compressed 3 2d examples into one and it saves a load of pages, though it did take a while to code..

Anway....aside from a trip to Amsterdam tomorrow, I don' t need to set any alarms when I finally collapse in bed.



Ahthankyew

abra cadburys

Been working on converting a single screen plaforrm game

into a multi screen scrolling game...these were originally 2 separate projects but space has become critical in the book so I needed to put the two projects together and show how to turn the 1st into the 2nd with the aid of a couple of simple concepts.

Saved quite a few pages and I think it makes the experience a lot more fun.

Ahthankyew

no Brian 4 hours is not a nap

so the cycles of 20 hours work, 6-8 hours sleep and yesterdays 4 hours to come back to nomral time for work purposes, had me crashing to noddy land with a bang.

I did a huge amount of work today, but felt myself running out of steam around dinner time, and realised I was about to fall asleep whether I wanted to or not.

anyway yes I dropped right off, and sleep through the 1 hour timer I se up and 4 hours later I'm up.

so yes, back to work, and probably end up back in bed for 8am, just in time to get to work at 10 ish


silly sleep/work cycle Im faaaar too old for this shit.



Ahthankyew

Just like busses

So after spending over a grand on dental treatment with as it turned out, 250 euros worth of cover, you'd think my troubles would be over.

nope...new toothache on the other side of my mouth....wonderful. I can't really afford to do anything about it as I have shed loads of other things to pay for at the moment, going to have to wait till we get our May bonus to sort it...

I wonder whats next on the horizon to drain my already strained wallet?

Better go buy a months worth of ramen noodles from the local Asian supermarket, that's 5euros I wanted to save!!!

Ahthankyew

Just keep coding, just keep coding

And take the odd break now and again to post nonsense on here while I try to remember if I already explained virtual functions in a previous chapter, oh  I did, ok better move that part.

I'm very tired, trying to work round the clock, only stopping to eat and drink, and then sleep.
its working out at 20hours or so work, 6-8 hours sleep, so I am rotating through nocturnal and diurnal (I looked that up), Progress is good though, but not sure its good enough. Still got a couple of big bits of code to write up, and the page count is not dropping much.

I did get it down as low as 850, but now I'm doing the bigger 3D games which need a lot of chatter to explain its crept back to 900+.. I've chopped things I don't really need to talk about too but so far its all still quite a lot of words..

who's idea was it to write a book!!!

oh shit yeah!



Ahthankyew

Oh fuck me....I thought I was good at this shit.

20 hours, 20 bloody hours hunting for a strange weird bug, 20 hours, no matter what I did I could not find it, I was certain I'd put the right things in the right order, and comparing them with another project doing more or less the same thing.... it should have worked...it didn't

in the end it was a typo, noting major but it stopped all my rendering from working..
see if you can spot it.

    dst_rect.x = 16;
    dst_rect.y = 16;
    dst_rect.width = p_state->width;
    dst_rect.height = p_state->height;

    src_rect.x = 16;
    src_rect.y = 16;
    src_rect.width = p_state->width << 16;
    src_rect.height = p_state->height << !6;      

    dispman_display = vc_dispmanx_display_open(0);
    dispman_update = vc_dispmanx_update_start(0);


yup.....I'm well pissed off.

Ahthankyew

Renouncing my British citizenship, step 1

Well, today's the day, the Letter has arrived and the UK has pushed a self destruct button it can't unpush.

I am too depressed to even comment, I'm going to withdraw from political debate now. I no longer consider myself a Brtish citizen, even though I'm hesitating on pulling the Dutch trigger, I will start the move to regain my European citizenship as soon as I can, I feel its time to leave the UK behind me and let it get on with its self immolation

a sad sad day indeed.

Ahthankyew