2018-06-16
Beautiful but chilly morning, Up early to do the laundry and have breakfast, then
showered and to karate with the kids. Back home via the fish shop, lunch was
seafood chowder with crusty baguette and some sushi on the side. Shopping after
lunch for roast lamb tomorrow, and ingredients for stuffed tomatoes, which Dzung
made for dinner. Delicious. Took the kids for a bike ride down to deep water
point after hanging out the washing and listening to podcasts. Ate some fruit
while watching the river. Saw Jumanji after dinner and demolished a box of Tee
Vee Snacks. Feeling tired and run down, will have an early-ish night.
Refactored the input handler in HackTile. Feels much better now; controllers are
managed properly and can be queried from anywhere. Nice. Will add mouse control
for spawning entities over the next day or two, and will make the camera
movement smoother and more precise.
2018-06-15
Work in the morning, then off to watch Jack’s class assembly. He dressed as a
ninja and spoke confidently in front of the school. Dropped Dzung at the office
and worked through lunch, then into the city for a couple of interviews before
meeting Matthew for a beer at Nowhereman. Then into Leederville for a six-pack
of Guinness and pizza. Jack (my friend, not my son) joined us, and we chatted
for hours. Showed them both HackTile. No work on it today but planning for what
to do next. Home before 11pm, Dzung and the kids had roast lamb with my parents.
2018-06-14
Gorgeous day. Set up the daybed again. Dzung took the kids to school while I
got to work, coffee in hand. Busy setting up some new organizations. Break for a
late morning bike ride around the river in the glorious weather, then lunched on
oxtail soup outside in the sunshine.
Eliza cooked beef cheesburger sliders with sweet potato fries and aoli for
dinner. Was very tasty! She did a good job peeling five sweet potatoes, then
chopping them up with the sharp Japanese knife.
Bit of work on HackTile after dinner. Multiple game controllers working to
control multiple cameras, switch palettes, adjust update rate and so on. This
thing is starting to take shape!
Next thing will be to replace flat colours with animating sprites. That’ll
probably take me a while. Once that’s done some refactoring and optimisation
will be called for (especially for the debug font, which badly impacts the frame
rate, as can be seen in the screenshot).
2018-06-13
Woke up very tired, after staying up late to watch Nintendo at E3. In fact,
Dzung and I both overslept, so it was a mad rush to get the kids to school on
time, and I missed a scheduled work meeting.
Worked throughout the day getting four new customers set up, but hit a roadblock
with some third-party services, so switched to some HackTile work. Finished
implementing the debug menu, and then added a feature to allow the palette to be
swapped, hard-wiring 9 of the best sixteen-colour palettes I could find. Hooked
these up to the input system, adding inputs to allow the update rate of the
engine to be modified too, in addition to a pause mode.
Dzung out at the movies tonight, so I made pizza with the kids, and we watched
some E3 videos on YouTube. Very cold, so have the heat on, and have taken to
wearing Jack’s Harry Potter beanie. Will end the night sipping on a cuppa while
watching The West Wing, waiting for Dzung to come home. Don’t want another late
one.
2018-06-12
Early-morning meeting with Mark. Kids off to school, and I then settled down to
watch Trump meet Kim in Singapore, and the Sony E3 live stream. Started a new
sprint and made good progress. Lunch with Wil; artichoke soup and ham and cheese
toasted sandwich. Picked up the kids and off to Freo for Eva’s birthday dinner
at Grill’d. A bit of HackTile upon returning; working on debug mode. Got fonts
implemented and used this to draw camera information, and work-in-progress on a
larger debug menu. First try getting fonts in was a bit buggy though.
Finished the night watching the Nintendo E3 live stream. Busy day!
2018-06-11
Dzung dropped Eliza in to school, I took Jack in a bit early for school banking.
Got a bit of HackTile work done first thing; laid the foundations for a debug
manager and improved the multiple camera system, converting it from
floating-point to integer arithmetic. Very happy with performance.
My modded UPB-X800 arrived, so I set it up during my lunch break and confirmed
that my US BluRay discs worked (they did). Now all I need is a great TV!
Busy at work. Finished the current sprint, deployed to production and started
planning the next round of work.
Picked up Jack and took him shopping, then got Eliza. Homework and piano
practise, and then Eliza cooked dinner: lupin-crusted salmon fillets on a bed of
miso and mirin sweet potato smash with mustard greens fried in garlic and
ginger. Took over an hour to prepare, and that was with my assistance chopping
and cleaning and so forth, but she had so much fun and was deservedly proud of
the results.
2018-06-10
Rainy day, so Eliza’s tennis lesson was cancelled. I made pancakes and we had a
long, lazy breakfast instead. Then picked up Lilian from tutoring and dropped
her and Jack over at Van and Kiet’s. On the way she told me about her desire to
buy a bass guitar, and her mum’s long list of conditions (including teaching
Joshua violin, doing her homework downstairs, doing her chores, eating Chinese
food without complaining and so on).
Received a food delivery from “You Plate It” which Eliza will be cooking for our
dinner tomorrow, and on Thursday. Included a ridiculous amount of fruit.
Dzung, Eliza and I went to the St. Petersberg Ballet production of Swan Lake,
with principal performers from the Bolshoi Ballet. Amazing show. Afterwards we
stayed in the city for drinks and snacks, then returned to Van’s for dinner.
Amazed to see Lilian with a bass guitar! She’d actually gone and bought it while
we were at the ballet.
Van cooked oxtail soup for the first time with excellent results. Van and Kim
had gone to see the Dockers. Had a chat with Kim; she’s doing really well, and
has just received her registration as a professional architect. Played with
Joshua and had dessert, then home for the bedtime routine. Too tired for any
further work on HackTile this weekend. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.