Holiday
No longer stranded
I’m back in Germany now. I managed to get a flight back here on Thursday after the airspace reopened Wednesday. That means I was back at work on Friday. 1 day weeks are awesome. We should have them more often.
The flight was quite uneventful and we couldn’t see any ash they kept talking about. At least the engines didn’t cut out and we didn’t fall out of the sky. That’s always a plus.
Stranded
I’ve been at home in England for the last couple of weeks. I was supposed to be flying back tonight but given the volcanic ash cloud that has covered Europe; my flight has been cancelled. I suppose I’ll have to take a couple of extra days of work next week but with no signs of the volcano stopping it could be far longer.
I guess I’ll just have to wait and see. There isn’t a lot you can do about a volcano erupting.
Snow
So we’ve had a little bit of snow here in Britain over the last week. It seems that it has caused the entire country to grind to a halt. We aren’t fortunate enough to live on a road that the council deems important enough to grit. I can’t blame them for it though since there are probably less than 200 people living past the point in the village that they do grit too.
Living at the bottom of a hill doesn’t help, it can sometimes be a challenge to get up it and since the bottom is dead-end then it doesn’t help matters for getting out. Still, we seem to have managed it. I’m going back to Munich on Saturday to start work again on Monday and I don’t see there being any problems over there with the snow even though they have undoubtedly had more, but they are used to it.
Below are a few photos from around the house. The snow is about 2” deep. We keep having snow showers occasionally but nothing major. We seem to be in a bit of a black spot here for weather and miss out on all of it, whatever it is. It is never as cold, warm, wet or windy as the surrounding area. Go 10 miles in any direction and there is a foot or more of snow.
I hope that the airport is open on Saturday, I don’t really fancy being stuck in the airport for a few hours waiting for my flight because the runway has been closed. It is quite late in the afternoon so it may be the following morning before we go if it is delayed.
Despite all this, the weather in Munich looks to be much worse. It is colder and has more snow than here.
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas everyone. This is the closest that I can remember to having a white Christmas but I don’t think that it should count. The snow that is on the ground fell over a week ago and just hasn’t melted yet. We haven’t had any new snow since then. It is just ice now really.
The ponds are frozen for the first few inches at least. The dog was walking around on it yesterday and didn’t fall through but I wouldn’t like to take my chances and try myself.
This is a photo of the garden this morning. It may look nice and snowy but in reality it is just a sheet of ice.
Home tomorrow
It’s been quite a while since I last posted on here, but then I haven’t really had anything to write about. Following up from my last post on Windows 7 I am still using it and haven’t had any problems with it so far. I have installed Power Pack 3 on my Windows Home Server now and this had improved Windows 7 support, I can now add shared folders to my libraries without having to make them available offline. It has also fixed a few issues with running backups.
Today is my last day of work before Christmas. Tomorrow I will be flying back to England and leaving the cold and snow behind me until after the new year. It has been snowing this afternoon and is forecast to continue long all weekend. I have been quite busy for a while now at work, we recently made a beta release of my program and so I have been fixing bugs and getting it ready for the final release. There are so many different configurations and environments that it runs in there was no way that I could test them all prior to a release. Just this week I have fixed over a dozen bugs and added a couple of new features.
While at home I may start to look at my FYP properly and start to do some research. I have considering getting myself an e-reader for Christmas as this will help with all the reading I plan to do. I am currently torn between writing it in C# or C++. I have already done a lot of the simple reusable code in C++ for previous assignments so I would be tempted to use that and build on it rather than rewriting it all in C#. It would make it easier to use OpenGL as well rather than having to rely on a third party library. I have plenty of time to decide anyway.
I have downloaded Windows Live Writer, I heard about it yesterday and thought that I would try it out. I’m writing this with it now. It seems to be quite good. It recognises that this is a WordPress blog and downloaded my theme so that I can edit it in a window that looks like it will when it is on the site. It isn’t perfect but close enough.
Sightseeing in and around Munich
This weekend we went for a walk around Munich and also went on a tour to the castles of Ludwig II, Linderhof and Neuschwanstein. The photos are below. The walk around Munich wasn’t in the best weather but we saw quite a lot and finished it off with a trip up the Olympic Tower in Olympiapark.
The tour out to the castles was fantastic, we went on the tour inside as well, although they wouldn’t let us take photographs. Linderhof was very over-decorated. Nearly every room was covered in gold. Neuschwanstein was very gothic, it also wasn’t finished. The tour took us to the rooms that were finished. It is a huge castle half way up a mountain. It took us about 25 minutes to get up to it on foot but once there, the view was magnificent.
Walk around Munich
View from the top of the Olympic Tower
Linderhof and Neuschwanstein Visit
Oktoberfest
We went to Oktoberfest last night. We didn’t end up staying long though, we took a few photos, there are also a couple of around Munich since we went walking after leaving the festival.
2nd Year Done
My second year of university is now finished. AI was my last exam and after that there is nothing left. Since I am going on placement next year then it will be September 2010 before I am back in lectures for my final year. I am anxious to get some results from this semester now but it will be at least 6 weeks before I get anything. I’m not worried about what I will get I just want to know.
I don’t really have anything planned for the next 2 months before I start my placement at Eurocopter so I don’t really know what I will get up to. While I am glad that the year is over, it is strange that the last 18 months of my life has been about university and it is nearly another 18 months before I will be going back there, I don’t know what to do as since I started at uni there has always been something that I had to do. Part of me wants to keep learning. That is why I am at uni in the first place, I enjoy learning new things but another part of me wants a break from it.
There has been no new games out recently that can keep me busy. Another game that I can really get into like Fallout 3 would be good. That filled this space after the first semester exams were over as I played it solidly for nearly 2 weeks. The only problem with that was that I played it to completion. I did everything that the game has to offer in a single play-through. I only missed being an evil or neutral person and one achievement for speech successes. I didn’t really have a very high skill in that. I would be tempted to play it again although I don’t think that I would enjoy it as much, maybe doing everything in one play-through wasn’t the best idea.
I have just been looking at the top sellers list on play.com and the only games on there that would interest me are ones I already have.
I am considering making a fully fledged game engine over the next couple of years. I may start some work on the designs or plans for that. I would like to make an engine from scratch that could handle graphics, physics, networking, possibly AI and have a complete tool set for as well. I am think that it may be a little too ambitious for me to do on my own so I may need to scale back a little.
There may be a few changes to this blog over the coming months once I start my placement, this is of course, if I get round to changing it. I was thinking of adding a photo gallery for picture I take in, this will also mean that I’ll have to get a camera.
Still home for easter
I’m still at home and still planing on going back on Friday. I spent 4 days over the bank holiday weekend working in the garden. We were preparing for tomorrow when we are going to be getting some big machines and a massive pile of soil. We have also been trying to control the weed problem. It has gotten a little out of hand over the last couple of years so we need to make up for it.
The fruit cage has been hacked back so next year we might be able to get in there to get the fruit. We may still pull out some of the gooseberry bushes as there is just too many. We have also been tackling the Japanese garden as that has become overgrown. There is a lot of work to be done but we are getting through it slowly.
I’m not sure on my feelings about tomorrow. While it will be good to get it done, and it shouldn’t be too much hard work as the machines are the ones that are working. I’m just a driver. It is still about 150 tonnes of soil and we have to do it all in one day.
As for my assignment, it is nearly done now. I think that the programming is basically finished. Maybe just a couple of hours work to tidy it up which I was going to try and get done this afternoon. Then there is just the report to go. I’m not worried about getting it finished on time, I just have lost all motivation to work on it as I have done all interesting bits and now it is just the boring bits left. Once it is handed in then there is just the exams to go. It seems stupid that we start the 3rd term next Monday but we have finished for the year 3 weeks tomorrow after our final exam.
I think I will probably have to come home again after that because they will want my help with something else but we will have to wait and see.
Home for easter
I’ve just come home today for Easter. I was planning on going back to Stafford next Tuesday but it seems like it might be Friday now. I was roped into helping with some landscaping in the garden on what I thought was going to be this Friday, although now it seems that it isn’t going to be until next Thursday.
I have an assignment still to do so I will probably have to get much of that work done while I am here as it is due on the 20th. This will mean development on my laptop, I’m not really a fan of that but I suppose I will have to. It is quite slow, even now as I am typing the letters appearing is struggling to keep up with me. The hard drive is quite slow which means that Visual Studio is quite slow. I have thought about getting a new laptop but I don’t really use this one enough to justify it. I might next year while I am working.