Jan 28

14 hours abed yesterday. 11 of them asleep. The other 3.. resting, watching tv.

Feel better for it. Though I was coughing all the time. I was coughing in my sleep - a cough where you are still asleep but.. you are just aware enough you coughed. Eh.

Went for a lovely walk with Athena yesterday. Not many people out on a weekday, so, limited doggo contact, but she met a few. Last one was a big boy, great dane. She wasn't sure about him. Just froze in a comical way. He was young, so, wasn't sure of her either. He galloped off and she chased him.

We get fairly regular comments from people now remarking on her age. Oh. She's old. How old is she ? One lady with a friendly staffy on hearing her age said how well she was doing. Yeah. Very good. 

Still. Despite that. Today we went out for another good walk. Not something I often do with her anymore - back to back big walks. On the way home, for the first time ever, I had to slow down for her. Like I used to with Ares. Had to slow my pace down to a very gentle walk. The old girl was pooped. Sometimes it's easy to forget. But you catch her in the sunlight, and you see how grey she's going. All her lovely red hair turning grey.

I walked past a house on the way home that was sold. I know the people that live there. Not well. But. I know them. They got a dog at the same time I got Athena, and we went to the same puppy introduction. They lost their dog many years ago now. And. The wife.. got ill. Really ill. Not sure if she's still alive. But anyway. Their house is sold.

All in all it made me think about time. How heavy it is. How sad its passing. Those past 12+ years with Athena seem to have gone past in a blur. For what ? What did it achieve ? Fun ? Adventure ? Great things done ? No. None of the above. Survival. Grinding out the same shit. Year after year. A waste. But then. What wouldn't be a waste ? The meaning of life and all that. The great nihilistic wall. I don't know. There just always seems to be a sorrow and a wasting away of shit. Biased viewpoint perhaps. There are always new things. If there weren't, there would be nothing to be sad about losing. Ish. CAse in point Ares and Athena. But. Meh.

It's not something to dwell on. Not that it isn't right. Just. Makes it more difficult to deal with. After a while, the reaction is, just stop. I know. Makes it very hard to be an objective person. The brutality of it is just .. scouring.

The passing of time makes me sad. I am pretty damn sure it will ever be the case. Perhaps I am just not a great fit for the world, for how reality is. A dysfunctional person with a fucked up point of view. Not wrong. Just. Painful. In the truth there is pain, and in the lie there is relief.

Anywho.

Getting a strong urge to isolate myself just lately. Push everyone away. Disappear. Find that hole. Jump in it. Fade into the dirt.

I've been watching (re-watching) American Gods again lately. There's a bit in it where the zombie wife just lays down and gives up. When asked what she's doing, she says something alone the lines of, it feels like it's time for the worms. Just. Lie there. Give up. Return to the earth.

I caught myself thinking the same the other day. Even though I am feeling better, I am tired. And ill. And sad. Sure there are positive things. But. Take a step back. So tired. I looked at the scraps of grass and earth beneath my feet on the bench I was sitting on. The pull just to give up, lay down. Let the cold creep in. Sigh. And go. Ares is never far out of my thoughts at such points. There is always that feeling. Ares is gone anyway. It doesn't matter so much anymore. Just Athena left. You can follow them.

Perhaps I am just in a downer of a mood.

Athena came over to boop me. Whatcha doing. Scratch my butt. Yay. Whatcha doing. Look how I can dance. Scratch my butt again. Dogs are like the brightest of lights that float around in the otherwise darkness, I swear. Far better goddamn design than me, that's for sure. It's going to get horrifically dark without her. Oh well. Cross that bridge when it comes.

Positives.

I'm not working today. Feeling better than I was.

That's all I got.

Writing this today has doubled my level of sad. Twisting knives in the gut. An ache around the neck. Ho hum.

Try.

Well. If I can raise my enthusiasm. I might cook a slow cook beef bourguignon type thing. Either to eat as it is. Or make into a fancy pie. I need to go out and get some stuff for that though. But eh. It's not something I've cooked too often before. Something like half a dozen times at most. It's always nice. But a bit more of a faff than something super easy. Even though, it's not exactly rocket science. Eh. Well. I might see if I can butcher the authentic recipe, and go for something... much longer in cook time. I don't see why it couldnt be reduced to a real slow multi hour cook. If. I can be bothered. And fend off the nihilstic demons.

Oh yeah. Smoke simulation. Did a brief search for it. Found this -

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2390581_Visual_Simulation_of_Smoke

which is, of course, pretty math heavy. I skimmed it. This is quite an old paper, 2001, which, by computing standards is practically an epoch. If I get the gist, they basically cut a 3d area up into small cubes ( voxels ), and then assign things like, density, speed, object in space etc to each cube, and make the cubes interact with each other. Seems reasonable. Although. You are tracking the entire atmosphere as opposed to just the smoke with such an approach ( the smoke is just a property of your atmosphere - set by the density ). It occurs to me you might be better off tracking the smoke instead, and just giving it a voxel set of coordinates. Like a sane person. It would then.. scale.. to any area size you wanted. 

The secret sauce is of course what algorithms you then use for interaction between smoke "voxels". This is where you need to tease apart how nature works, without spending a bazillion cycles working it out. I have a mind just to start with the cube idea and muck around with my own - idiotic - algorithms. I will take a look at some of theirs, but, the math is kinda above my pay grade without serious study, copying it is possible, but eh, I need to more than copy it here. If you could get a fast, sloppy, but good enough algorithm working, then, there's no reason you couldn't bust this out in crappy javascript. Uh huh.