Been a bit slack on posting over Christmas/New Year, due to having moved to a new apartment, had the most crappy case of gastric flu ever and gotten my wallet stolen and locked out twice (I really wasn’t feeling too clever, and my shortlived attempt to drink my way through it – was, err, counterproductive).

Fun times breaking a window to find the one behind was nailed shut, heading to the other side of the City to find the real estate had gone on leave for a week. This meant swinging twenty feet off the ground trying to get through the a 2 foot window. Especially when someone apparently mistook me for a cat burglar and called the cops (to be fair I’ve only recently moved in, had ripped jeans and no shoes on and was covered in my own blood due to the window – so I can now see it from their perspective a bit). Meaning I had to sleep rough until the next morning when I could get hold of my mate Dave and use his phone+Internet to transfer money for a locksmith – he being the only person not on holiday, moved out or otherwise uncontactable.

That’s a significantly abridged version. Bloody “security keys” and single living don’t really mix. Grr!!!

So productivity slacked off a bit, and now I’m heading back to work.

A tonne of stuff in the pipeline though. It’s just that the pipeline hasn’t got much shorter lately ;). It’s not helping that I’m having VMware issues (yes – I still use Visual Studio for most dev stuff and then compile on all my different targets. Force of habit, since version 1.5 …). Need to spring for an upgrade to 12. It does get a bit wearing when the module compilation breaks on every release. I’ve been using it since v5, but I’m seriously thinking of checking out  the alternatives, e.g. VirtualBox, or Parallels (if they still make that – haven’t heard for a while ..). Enough rambling – I think I’m definitely sure I’m not dead now.

UPDATE : Damn – it looks like Parallels has indeed been discontinued, so maybe it’s VirtualBox, though their OpenGL/D3D guest support looks a bit antiquated too. Interestingly it looks like it uses a dynarec for 16 bit code. Or maybe I’ll just have wait until payday for Workstation 12, unless there’s a still a free version of Player – think this is “VMware Player Pro” now though….

BTW – lest anybody wonders – previously myself and the ex had a security key each, so the “getting locked out” never came up, except in the early days when we only had one and she used to take it home early and fall asleep. I think I’m going to have to demand a spare from the real estate. I dread to think of the effects on my sanity should this happen again …