2018-06-26
Up early. Did some work. Made breakfast and lunch. Took kids to school. Back
home to bacon and eggs and some reading before working some more and going for a
mid-morning ride around the river. Afternoon business call, then picked up the
kids and off to swimming lessons. Then into the city for a pubby dinner at
Butcher’s Arms and a look at the light installation in the city.
“C in a Nutshell” arrived today, and I did some refactoring of code based on the
C11 standard as a result. Expect to refactor some more tomorrow, and continue on
the editing UI. Feel like I’m entering another rut. Sigh.
2018-06-25
Up early. Made breakfast and lunch for the kids. Beautiful morning, so walked
Jack in once Dzung was back from dropping off Eliza. Regular day at work. Took a
break mid-morning to ride two laps around the river and soak in the nice
weather. Reheated some soup for lunch, Dzung and I read our books outside in the
sunshine. Then walked in to school to get Jack, picking up a few groceries on
the way home. He got his report today; Bs in Maths and Japanese, but Cs for
everything else. We’ll need to work on improving those grades!
Picked up Eliza after quiz club. She complained of a headache. Kids good, Jack
did some homework and some reading. He tries hard. Eliza did hers. I managed to
squeeze in some HackTile work; got a PanelManager implemented, with a few
placeholder panels rendering where the editor UI will be. Should be able to
flesh them out over the next few days.
Made grilled pork steaks with roasted sweet potatoes in a lemon butter sauce,
garnished with parsely and red onion for dinner. Eliza helped. Delicious! Put
both kids to bed, reading to them both (I downloaded an illegal PDF of
Magician’s Gambit, since they pulled it from the Kindle store). Dzung cleaned
up, so with nothing left to do I’m having an early night reading in bed. I’m
enjoying this cruisy approach to hobby projects, chipping a little off each day
rather than burning the candle at both ends.
2018-06-24
Busy day. Finished making the lamb and barley soup that I started last night,
and went to the shops to grab salad, cheese and frozen chips. Then prepared
soup, hamburgers, chips and salad for Dzung’s side of the family. Beautiful
sunny day, so we sat outside to eat. Ma had two lamb sliders, and Ba ate several
bowls of soup, and asked for some more to take home for dinner. Success!
Lilian, Lachlan and Joshua played their violins for us afterwards. Then packed
up and went to pick up Mum and Dad to take them to the Civic Centre in Cottesloe
where we watched Eliza and Jack’s piano concert. They played with confidence.
Very proud of our kids. Finished the day at Barchetta, watching the sun set over
the ocean. Ordered pizza and a share plate, and wine and beer.
Did a little bit of work on HackTile but nothing much. Need to find time during
the week, as I’m pretty tired now and will make it an early one.
2018-06-23
Up early to buy brioche burger buns from Garden City before they sell out. Then
back to get the kids breakfast and take them to karate. Dzung took Eliza to buy
a viola while Jack had his lesson. Home via garbo again, this time to pick up
lunch for the kids and to get premium hamburger meat. Kids got dressed and we
went in to Supanova. Finlay had the time of his life!
Dropped Fin at mum and dad’s in the late afternoon. Stayed for a cuppa and a
some rocky road. Then in to Hayashi for a wonderful dinner (superior beef,
vegetable tempura, sous vide salmon, clam miso soup, rice, beer, lotus chips).
Back home to make lamb and barley soup for tomorrow, using leftovers from last
week’s roast. Finished reading Queen of Sorcery to Eliza, and miffed to find
that the series has been pulled from the Kindle Store. Wrote an email to PRH UK
to ask for an explanation.
Did a little bit of HackTile work; added an overlay renderer and used it to add
a transparent background to debug displays. Need to soldier on and get this UI
built out over the next week!
2018-06-22
Morning meeting. Light day at work. Went shopping at lunch time to pick up
groceries and beer, and to get the new Mario tennis game. A bit of HackTile in
the afternoon; refactoring to add two game modes that can be toggled between,
and starting to build out controls for the UI. This work will take a while.
Finlay over for a sleepover. I made tortillas. Everyone watching Hotel
Transylvania 2 while I read End of Watch. Will have an early night.
2018-06-21
Another busy day at work. Lots of HackTile design, but no programming. Plan to
introduce two states; a game state and an editor state, and toggle quickly
between them. The editor will have a fixed layout, with the entity and rules
editors implemented as pop-up dialogues. That gives me something to start with;
refactoring to support multiple states will take a bit of work, and the editor
layout can then be implemented with placeholder content, and I can then start
fleshing out just the entity editor. Should work fine. Still need to stew on it
for another day or two before I roll up my sleeves and start implementation.
Dzung made leftover curry for dinner, I cooked some lamb cutlets to pad it out.
She’s feeling sick, and there’s still a bit of meh-ness around. Forgot to put
the bins out last night; another symptom of our general malaise at the moment.
I’m going to watch an episode of The West Wing and call it a night.
2018-06-20
Bit of a meh kind of day. Eli came over early, as his mum and dad both needed to
be in the office early. He and Jack are obsessed with minerals. They examined
Jack’s rock collection enthusiastically, and were fascinated when I set up the
digital microscope for them to use. After school, Jack made “Brentwood
Geologist” membership cards for himself, Eli and Josh, which I helped him print
and laminate. Great to see them obsessing over something!
Watched the lap-a-thon in the afternoon, which Dzung volunteered at. Made
bolognaise for dinner. Sat on the sofa and watched three episodes of Seinfeld
after dinner. Don’t know why, it was just part of the overall meh-ness of the
day. I think it started when I woke up bright and early for this morning’s team
meeting and nobody showed up. Also the comedown after the intense work setting
up new customers.
Did some HackTile work; got alpha blending working for sprites. Really has a big
performance hit; barely hitting 100fps when maxing things out now. But it’s
necessary, as I want to have multiple layers. Spent some time thinking about the
sprite editor, sketching out some UI designs based on SEUCK. I think I need to
stew on this for a few days before coding anything up. I want to keep the editor
simple, so making it opinionated is key. One way of doing this is to impose
tight constraints on flexibility; limiting the exact number of entities and how
they can be used, for example.