Having left the airport for the second time, I stopped off on the way back for a 2nd breakfast of the day in Liverpool street. Earlier, on the way in, I had a 10-minute window to get a 4-year-old some food(which she didn’t eat), a tired mom a cup of coffee and myself a bowl of porridge and an apple before the 06:40 to Stanstead departed.
Having worked away from the area for about a year, I was intrigued to find some new shops which at the time were still under construction, but now are open. I bought the hurried breakfast there.
Stanstead is really in the middle of nowhere honestly.
It takes me a good 2 hours to get there and then there is the journey back which is equally laborious. I did, however, nod-off on the way back which was fairly pleasant. I brought my kindle with me and read a chapter about input device programming. Ironically, Heathrow Airport is just around the corner from where I live. Fate, however, felt that flights should arrive and depart from Stanstead. Still, I mustn’t complain.
I’m still reading about game programming and it's quite interesting. My C++ brain is on and I’ll have to re-adjust when I start work tomorrow in C#. I prefer C# but its slow.
I’ve been also reading up on resource caches and loading assets from resource files. These are like WAD files in Doom. It's quite fascinating really how much thought and skill is put into this sort of stuff. I’ve got the accompanying source code for the game engine I’m studying and have had it for some time but been unable to get it to compile and run. It's using Direct X11 with some now deprecated utility classes which for some reason conflicted with the Windows 10 SDK I had and a whole bunch of other reasons.
Now I’ve got it running OK in VS2017 and the game looks pretty complete(The one I’m studying). So following the source code with a working prototype is a luxury. Still, the book is very much theoretical and more of a commentary to what appears in the source code. You don't usually have this. Its akin to say a poem with the author having written down the meaning and reasons behind it in a companion booklet. You just don't usually get that.
So off I went down to Spittle-fields market. First thing I noticed hitting street-level is how smelly Bishopsgate street is, especially the end towards Devonshire Square and the Gerkin.
I usually find myself quite partial to a small little green market stall, wedged in between other food stalls which serves traditional Ethiopian cuisine. I‘ve started eating here since I started working in the City. We had a canteen back a Citrix and the food was cheap! It's a lot more expensive here.
Its marketed as a Vegan, gluten-free friendly place. I don’t know much about that but I go for what is called an Injira traditional Ethiopian boxset most days. Usually, I get this most days around 11:30 and today it was decidedly earlier.
Having woken up at 4 am this morning and travelled what seemed like across two countries to get to Stanstead, booked bags and luggage in, I found myself sitting down in a very quite spittle fields market at 09:30.
I didn’t have to go to the gym today because I knew I’d have to assist with operations to the airport so I scheduled my usual Monday routine for the previous Saturday. I have two new blow-up mattresses now propped up against the wall in my living room and really no need for them anymore. Maybe I’ll use them again but at the moment, they seem disposable and extra.
The former I like, the latter not so much.