Your Personal Micro Blog(s)

I'm so glad I didn't follow my mother into real estate. Clients be like

 

I made a variety of irresponsible financial decisions today.
Spent 20 dollars on a bunch of stickers.
Spent another 20 dollars on a shirt that says "You're Opawesome!" just because.
Spent $380 on a white steel truck toolbox, only to secure it with the hopes and dreams of two $3 sheet metal screws.
Spent 16$ on some Car Guys Super Cleaner that I buy every year.
Spent $26 at the local thrift shop buying a bunch of junk I didn't need:

Spoiler: stuffs

$5 - Our Universe. Really cool, but dated, old science book.

$2 - Carpenter Hatchet. Was probably an old murder weapon or something, but I'll polish it and add it to my tools.

$2 - Snap-On Key Board. Was probably $40 bucks new lol. Has part numbers written all over it.

$17 - Dress Shoes. I know nothing about shoes but these looked pretty nice and comfy.

 

I am now on Easter Holiday
However I have a dissertation to write, and coursework to do amongst other things.

Decided to do some long overdue cleanup work on the R60. Fixing some of the broken stuff and generally tidying up things that I should have done ages ago. There are no visual changes to the car, but some of the specifications have changed. For example the electric models now have tweaked motors and different gearing, they also have a further increased mass.

Here is a first take of a canyon run. While the suspension is certainly not how I would like it to be, this is a track spec car with slicks, widened geometry, cage and body kit etc. So it's not intended to be "sent" over jumps quite as hard as I did in this video.


I did almost buy an HTC Vive today, but the local store didn't have any in stock, plus I do have uni work etc to be doing. So I think I might actually keep the money in the bank to go towards a car, since I am getting towards the end of uni and with a bit of luck, might have a job in the future to help pay for insurance.

 

Welp, we just had a traphouse takedown in my neighborhood tonight. Almost 10 miles from the nearest town, 50 by road from the nearest real city, and that still happened. What is even going on with this valley...

 

My Holidays are starting today, but I got a little sick.
Now, i‘m go to play a little Beamng i think.
Earlier this morning i watched the new Friz Eris video and i was stunned, it couldn‘t be made better by anyone.
Have a nice Weekend!

 

Today I did... Nothing!

Other than score a pretty cool drift (I have also improved the broken suspension and geometry that this particular vehicle config had)

I do wonder what amazing new stuff actual drifters could do with an electric powertrain, where they can switch between forward and reverse "gears" instantly. Could result in some pretty slick looking tricks.

Most of today was spent watching YouTube and Twitch, I needed a rest from some code I have been struggling to debug for the past two days. I feel like I have mostly wasted the day, but I guess I needed it. Hopefully tomorrow will bring things a little more back on track in terms of productivity.

 

As if the Gran Turismo 6 server nuke wasn't sad enough, it's even given me a reason to hate this push towards cloud storage and online mobile everything. With the servers gone, you can't access any of the custom tracks you had stored - not even the sample tracks that had been included to demonstrate what could be done with the path editor - which leads me to believe that they were never stored locally, only on some cloud server somewhere. Needless to say I think this was a dumb idea, but it does go to show you why you should hate and resist this mysterious, relentless push away from local storage of media.

Also, the time-compressed endurance races and inability to have tire wear or fuel depletion in arcade mode (seriously?) means I may be going back to GT3, 4, and 5 for some things now.

Speaking of server nukes, if anyone has ever saved a replay of a Seasonal Event race, of any Seasonal Event that used a path editor course, or of any single-player event that used one of the aforementioned sample path-editor courses, I would greatly appreciate it if that could be sent to me. I'll still be trying to build a database of all the "official" path-creator courses, and of all the scripted AI opponents including vehicle type/color and driving habits, though admittedly anything worthwhile that might be used for probably falls under the category of "Powerball dreams" (hint: it involves BeamNG mods).

 

GT6 Tuning Log 3/31/18 Project: Cube EX


PP: 312 (target: 430)
Displacement: 1386cc
Power: 96 HP @ 5500 RPM
Torque: 101 lb-ft @ 3000 RPM
Weight: 1070kg (59% front)
Layout: Front-engine, front-wheel-drive
Gearbox: 4-speed
Tires: Comfort Medium

Test courses: High Speed Ring, Autumn Ring - Mini, Brands Hatch Indy, Autumn Ring, Brands Hatch Grand Prix

Course times:
(Each course is run 5 consecutive laps; best lap from each course is used)

High Speed Ring: 1:45.920
Autumn Ring - Mini: 0:51.163
Brands Hatch Indy: 1:06.826
Autumn Ring: 1:49.809
Brands Hatch Grand Prix: 2:08.173
Total: 7:41.891

(Yes, I know combining times "rally style" may not be the most useful for comparing cars, but I might as well I guess)

Great time to start really trying to work with GT6, right? Guess you don't know what you have 'till it's gone. In any case it's hard to find the weak point in a car made entirely out of weak points: the engine's got no power, the gears are wrong, the tires have no grip and it loves to understeer, though you can get some useful rotation under braking in some circumstances. The suspension really does need help and I could probably knock seconds off all those times with a tire upgrade, but the slow engine is just so irritating that it might be my first upgrade. It seriously seems slower than my Escort in real life despite more power, less weight, and being in theoretically perfect condition. Also, Brands Hatch is a really frustrating circuit, especially when you're dog tired, you don't know it very well, your car loves to understeer, and you're trying to be smooth on the G27 because someone is trying to sleep in the other room.

Let's see if I have the nolifeitude to stick with this.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone reading that if you played GT5 or 6, and you ever saved a replay of:

-A seasonal event race
-A seasonal event, including time & drift trials, that used a track editor/path editor course
-Any single-player race that used one of the default "sample" path editor courses Never mind, apparently you can still get to these through the gallery, though sadly you can't run wheel-to-wheel races on them anymore

I'd love it if you sent it to me.

 

Over the course of the past week I polished a pair of very tierd and unloved turds. Before and after, three hours of sanding per speaker, two hours each of oiling and another hour of waxing.



Not the best work but hey, they look loved once again. And I get a kick out of polishing wood...

 

Some battle dialog lines I wrote a while back for Chef D. Sastre, head chef of Le Crusty Mustard, an elegant restaurant with a dark secret, and a side villain of RPG I'm Never Making:

"What's for dinner today? $MainCharacter au jus, served with a side of mashed $SecondPartyMember!"
"You will soon know the taste of defeat. Might I recommend you pair it with a pinot noir?"
"Have you ever heard the story of Soylent Green? It is a true masterpiece, in my opinion."

 

There was an art installation at the university, so decided to have a look around, it was pretty good.


Otherwise I have been working on assignments.
I think my OpenCL weather processing program is now working (each output is per season)

Now I need to add in histogram support and write a function to output the data with nicer formatting. Hopefully I can get this finished today and move onto the minigolf game that I need to hand in on the same date.

 

Finished up today with a working program, my brain however has decided to call it a day.

The UI now looks presentable enough (for something written in C++), the histogram numbers even form a visual representation of magnitude

It can open and process ~1.9 million weather records in about 4 seconds (on Intel HD5500, presumably faster with a real GPU). I am ok with this.

 

So me, being the cheapskate I am, decided to buy a used pair of AKG K702's used to save about £50. While these heaphones sound glorious and delicately seduce my ears, the smell is down right offensive, stale nicotine and cheap deoderant, even after throughly cleaning with Isopropyl alchol, they still have a slight hint, hopefully it will fade in a few days or weeks. Ear pads cleaned up nicely in some hot water with some antibacterial detergent though.

 

Went to the National Air and space museum today.
They had 35 year old pretzels and Orville Wrights mandolin.

They also had the Gemini Capsules and the Wright brothers flyer, but who cares about those?

 

removed

 

Nvidia PhysX Minigolf game is now functioning.

Might try and get some more "nice stuff" added to it. But I still need to do the writeup (only around 500-600 words) which includes profiling.

All this for 30% of one module that makes up 12.5% of the third year. But honestly after getting over the initial frustrations of understanding the code structure given as a basis (which is kinda janky in places), it's actually be reasonably fun to work on.

 

So this blew up much bigger than I thought it would

https://redd.it/8bj7ls

Yes, yes, you can have my autograph.

 

I had such a hilarious moment today.
So me and my friends were walking and blasting cheeki breeki hardbass from a portable speaker, some old lady was hugging a tree in the park and we went past her with cheeki breeki playing at max volume.
Imagine hugging a big old tree with your eyes closed, letting the energy of Mother Nature flow through you...and then suddenly, you hear the sounds of cheeki breeki.

 

With this much compression, can this even be considered music?



Also new headphones.

 

As much as I love a bit of dynamic range in a track, I generally don't mind ones with lots of compression and limiting. It's a stylistic choice on behalf of the music creator and mastering engineers. There are tracks that could potentially use more dynamic range, but on others it works out fine.


Got my assignments handed in today, then spent 2 hours in a skate park on my bike. First time I have ever ridden skate park, got to say, it's quite a lot of fun. Going to have to try and find the confidence to do the drop in's someday. As long as it's done at an angle the chain ring should be fine, but I don't have the confidence in my skill or my tyres for that yet, even if the tyres did surprise me with how much grip they provided (and how the grip reduced as humid fog rolled in).