Winter.

Damn, winter hit properly all of a sudden this week. Went to the pub on Monday night and spent most of the way riding home shivering a lot, and what was with some new winter gloves and a good riding jacket. Even resorted to wearing long thermal underwear to try to stop my feet freezing during the day, but with only limited success. It's not even really that cold in absolute terms - about 10C, but I seem to be feeling it more of late.

I got a fair chunk of retaining wall done a few weeks ago with the last of the sunshine, but have been very sedentary lately - the weather, the short days, eating oddly, sleeping irregularly, it all adds up. Always seem to feel extra flat around this time of year too and I seem to be even more extra-flat for various reasons. And overly anxious for no good reason.

I started looking at OpenCL this week for work at last. The basics look pretty simple and straightforward, and i've got some little prototype code working already, although it looks somewhat more involved to get the most out of it. The work synchronisation stuff looks pretty rich and relatively flexible and will hopefully be able match the problem I'm working on. I'm just using the ATI CPU implementation so far but will hopefully get some real hardware soon. I don't think i'm quite as excited about it as I thought I might be, but I guess there are other factors at play.

Been making a lot of noodles and flat breads lately. I've just about got a decent naan-ish bread worked out. Need to use a hotplate or frying pan to cook them - my oven just isn't hot enough (there's a thought, perhaps I could try the grill). Also tried making crumpets which sort of worked - only having wholemeal flour at the time I think that was a bit of a handicap. I think my attempt at making sourdough has spontaneously aborted itself though so I might have to reset on that - it's been too cold to keep it active amongst other errors. I'm not sure all this bread and noodles is really all that great though - well apart from being somewhat fattening while i'm otherwise being such a lazy arse, it seems to aggravate the sleep apnoea. Although that's so fickle it's hard to tell - particularly when you haven't had enough sleep.

I watched a bit of the oil spill cameras there for a while. Interesting certainly, and in many cases didn't really inspire confidence in the equipment they're using or the procedures they were attempting. One day I saw a sub spend an hour picking up a block and tackle from a snag-riddled box only to put it back where it got it from after finally untangling itself from all the snags. And cutting off the final bit of the riser (which I saw live) just created a torrent of hot oil which barely seems to have been throttled by the mounting of the LMRP - the later camera shots were from closer in which made the over-flow appear more controlled. I'm glad my sister is getting out of Florida - although she'd decided to leave before this anyway because she's sick of being paid 'minimum wage' $4.20 an hour plus tips in the only work she can find there. Although I'm not sure what she expects to find back here in oz, it seems to be headed toward the stupid-right as well.

On an unrelated note, I never really understood the service that facebook provides, and didn't particularly like it and do not use it much. But I think i've finally worked out why I dislike it. To cut a long babble short it pretty much just makes me feel lonelier, more alienated from society, and more of a boorish, boring loser than I might otherwise feel. What rubs it in even more is these are people I was at least once friends with; although most were some time ago. But even with those people I have very little in the way of shared interests or anything much even to talk about.

Hmm, this could be a long winter.