apatkinson

I think just about now, my moustache us starting to look like more than a schoolboy fluff spot. I might say it almost looks slightly ‘badass’. Maybe like a headteacher or a police officer.

Ok, so I skipped the clean shaven day, it pretty much looks like this anyway. I look like a schoolboy with no shaver, sigh…
But if you find it funny, be glad its not on your face and give to charity

http://apatkinson.com/music/2011-10-20_19h25m36.mp3 -right click ‘save as’

So finally I did some more the the html5 canvas racing game I blogged about a long time ago.

Going through my previous versions anyway you can see how I progressed.
Version 0.1 – literally one of the first things I did. which I’m not sure what it does anymore, it basically goes crazy.

Version 0.2 – This is getting there, looking more like a moving dot (or javascript racing car). you can hold ‘w’ and move the mouse inside the box. the car will move towards the mouse.

Version 0.3 – Ok so I seemed to go backwards here, but forwards too. you can single press the ‘w’ key to go forward in the direction of the line and then single press the ‘a’ and ‘d’ keys to turn the line to a new heading for the car to go in

Version 0.39 – This is the last post I did, I have added a speedo at the top of the screen with a max speed of 10. the car speeds up and slows down.

Version 0.4 – The most up to date version with a track to race around

I see there being one more addition until it is complete, which would be a timer for the car to keep setting as it got around the lovely complex track I could also foresee changing the track.

Even though this is a lovely compliant way for anyone to race a little javascript car around a track, there is one majour drawback in having a ‘real time’ game powered with javascript and that is the computers performance determines how fast the car goes. For instance you could play this on a super old pc and the car would drive slower, making it easier to not crash. if there was a timer added then it too would slow down making the whole thing unfair.

So I shall ponder the need for me to continue this project

[update]
ok, so it seems you are able to make my simple loop slightly more complicated and it would be fair for all people. Just putting this out there to save any mass commenting

Weather forced short train hop has caused us to be slightly early and we have the cider to celebrate just waiting for Adrian to get home from work. I don’t know how many miles we have done, ill count one day, but for now I’m resting. And drinking 

Check out the Route anyway

We have made it to the lovely town of Blackpool, and it has started raining. Talking to Adrian making me excited for the end. Nice little drive to tesco for a nice dinner in lovely hospitality

Picture of our stop at a blackpool pub.

Slightly cloudy in morcambe today with a chance of rain in the north. There is not a huge rush today as we head to Adrian’s, because he is only back from work at 6.30.

View the route!

Day 4 started off super windy at skiddaw house up in the mountains. We still managed to eat some of the food I had bought and lugged up to the top. We had a great long off road trail down to the village. I wanted to fly down however was slightly worried the pannier bags would tear off. We got to the bottom and realised that both phones were short on battery, as they had to last two days with no charge point at skiddaw. Route tracking for today is very sketchy. We had decided to stop and eat somewhere while we charged our stuff behind the bar. So we did stop for about 1.5hours which did set us back a fair amount. This was enough charge time though for all the devices. We then proceeded not to stop as we had done hardly any miles, we powered on past windemere and onto morcambe, for a nice ride along the promenade.

We left Langholm at 11:45 and made it to the English border in no time.
Before reaching Carlisle the Lake District was already in full and menacing view. Andy bought an entire feast and picked a fight with a car of chavs.
From Carlisle we relied on my hand-drawn map, which worked amazingly well given how complicated the route was. It started with a long steep uphill, the road becoming more remote and scenic the further we rode.
Even as the steep downhills came to greet us, the sight of lakes, mountains and inquisitive lambs battled for our attention.
The downhills continued to reward the uphills until we eventually came to the turn-off for Skiddaw House.
The youth hostel is remote, disconnected from the National Grid, and self-catering. We rode past to find a shop to buy food, on an Easter Sunday at 6pm. It came in the form of a holiday camp. We realised beside food we also needed to pay cash since the hostel clearly wouldn’t take card if it didn’t have electricity. Basically, getting the cash was a huge caffuffle and unnecessary. It turned out we had already paid in advance.
The ride up to the house was hard to say the least. The track was a 3-mile incredibly steep, crumbling stone path. With the weight of our luggage on such a steep slope, the bike was trying to do a wheelie the whole way. By leaning forward to counter this, the rear wheel had no traction on the rough surface – so rough that the vibrations shook my panier rack off the bike. Trying to balance the bike with SPDs also didn’t help, especially as the weight distribution means my bike naturally preffers to be upside down.
We arrived to a surprisingly full house, given its remoteness. Two families of cyclists plus groups of walkers. The whole venue was very communal, as you can imagine with so many people in a room with no TV.

View the route – 54 miles in 5 hrs 10.