Hull Windows 10 Three Thing Game - Still Time to Register

The event is filling up nicely, but we still have room for a few more folks if you want to come along. The labs are being imaged, the things are being polished and it all starts next Thursday.

If you've registered we'll have "Things on the Day" for you to base your game on, or you can have your things next Monday. Keep an eye on your mailbox for details of the all important "Thing Picking" process.

If you are in Hull next Thursday-Friday (11th and 12th of June) then you really should come along. We've got Microsoft, MonoGame and Marmalade coming along. And Unity, which doesn't begin with M, but we are giving it a free pass this time. And it is Middleware, so I guess that counts.

Anyhoo, you can find out the precise programme and sign up here:

http://www.threethinggame.com/

Remember, this is a special event in that you don't have to be a Hull student to come along (although you'll be most welcome if you do). Any local developer, or out-of-town folks who want to come along and play with Windows 10 game making can come along. And we'll have free pizza. As in PIZZA THAT IS FREE.

Talking Teaching at the Institute of Physics

One of my slides....

One of my slides....

I went to Sheffield today. It's a nice enough train ride, straight from Cottingham. Even nicer when you have company (thanks to David and Emily for being in the right place at the right time).

The reason for the trip was a meeting entitled "Developments in Teaching Physics Students Computer Programming Skills", which had been organised by the Institute of Physics Higher Education Group. They'd asked me along to talk about my experiences teaching programming. Turns out I can do that.....

It was a really interesting day. Physics is a fantastic subject. And work in the field is greatly aided by a bit of programming expertise. There was considerable discussion about whether the expertise should be given in a programming language (for example Python) or using one of the popular lab packages such as LabView. Or perhaps a tool such as MatLab or Mathematica? Or you could just do things in Excel. Much to think about here...

I gave a little talk about the importance of the practical side of things, with emphasis on professional elements. I also mentioned a little framework I'm working on to help things along (of which much more real soon).

Everyone was really concerned to make sure that the skills taught were appropriate and useful, and given in a proper physics context. I think that in this company I'm more of a "means" person, with a focus on the process of producing a quality solution, where as the Physics folks are much more "ends" types, who see computing as a small component in a much larger picture.

Ether way it was a very useful and thought provoking meeting of minds.

 

Reading "Forbidden" Web Pages with C#

In my session at Techdays last week I was showing how to make an asynchronous method that reads a web page. I was bemoaning the way that my method worked for www.bbc.co.uk but not for the wonderful site that is www.robmiles.com. When I try to read "my" page the request fails with a "403 Forbidden error".

Well, many thanks to Erik van Telgen, René Vermijs and @HenroOnline who all came back with the answer. Turns out that, unlike the liberal BBC, my blog host insists that that any read requests come from browsers, not programs. Fortunately it is easy to modify the web request to appear to be from a browser, and so get the Html back.

public async Task<string> GetPageAsStringAsync(string url)
{
    HttpClient x = new HttpClient();
    x.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("user-agent", 
        "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; Trident/6.0)");
    HttpResponseMessage response = await x.GetAsync(url);
    string content = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
    return content;
}

This version of "GetPageAsStringAsync" returns the contents of a page and impersonates a browser when it does it.

string site = await GetPageAsString(@"http://www.robmiles.com");

It's very easy to use, as you can see above. And this works perfectly. Many thanks for your help folks.

I really hope that I get invited back to Techdays next year, I'm sure by then I'll have another bunch of technical problems I can get help with...

Eye Test

Coming soon to a face near me...

Coming soon to a face near me...

So, I went for an eye test yesterday. Cue all the eye test jokes.

"Tell me sir, have your eyes ever been checked?"
"No, they've always been blue."

"Can you see that eye-test on the wall?"
"What wall?"

etc etc

Anyhoo, I was pleased to find out that my eyes haven't changed that much since last time. I've had my present specs for quite a few years. A year and a half ago a bit fell off and I made a "temporary" repair using heat shrink tubing that has been a bit less temporary than I intended.

This time I've just gone for a single pair of glasses. No messing around with "two for one" deals. Experiments have shown that I can't wear two pairs of glasses at the same time, and that I'll probably lose the second pair anyway. They should arrive in a couple of weeks. Rather excited.

Plane Rainbow

As we were in the shuttle bus out to the plane to fly back last night there was the most amazing rainbow over the airport. When we got off to head into the plane I threw all my bags down on the concrete, grabbed the camera and took a few shots.  I'm quite pleased with the composition, although it really had nothing at all to do with me, and everything to do with dumb luck.

TechDays Sessions Fun

First Great Audience for the Universal Application Session

First Great Audience for the Universal Application Session

I don't know what it is about audiences from the Netherlands. But they are around the best in the world. Up for anything, attentive and just generally fantastic.

Await and Async audience

Await and Async audience

Both sessions seemed to go really well (at least most of the jokes got appropriate laughs or groans). I've passed the slides and demo programs over to the conference folks and they should be available soon. I'll post them here on the blog (with a bit of extra howto stuff) next week as well.

Thanks to the Techdays crew for inviting me. I was in the Hague for just about 24 hours, but they were lovely...

Flying to TechDays

Flew out to Techdays today. The weather was nice and now I'm allowed to use my phone all the way through the flight I did just that. This was the view from the plane as we flew over the UK coastline.

My sessions are tomorrow, but tonight we had a dinner in the Speaker's Lounge which was great. I was able to catch up with lots of folks I've not seen for a while. Good to see you all again.

The bags the are giving the delegates this year are really nice, and the speakers get one each too. And the speakers lounge has some very groovy furniture.

Mad Max: Fury Road

Over last weekend we went to see Mad Max: Fury Road.  Wow.

It is as if the director had watched every Michael Bay Transformers movie and then decided that he could go to around 11 or 12 on that scale. Or more. The action is relentless, violent and in some parts a bit queasy making (at least for wimpy old me).

Tom Hardy does a great job as Max. Not that he has to say much. I think they gave him his script written on the back of a cigarette packet. Charlize Theron is great in the film as well. She has lines and everything. All the souls in the movie are tortured, torturing or both.

If you like your action fast moving and with lots of spectacle then you'll love it. If you prefer films where the most action packed thing that happens is that Lady Faversham comes to visit and they can't find the best tablecloth, then you might want to give it a miss.

The over eager dog that is Lightroom

Some software drives me nuts. The kind I'm thinking about is the stuff that is useful enough to be indispensable, but actually really annoying to use sometimes.

Such as Adobe Lightroom. Lightroom is a fantastically useful program for managing your photos. If you are a serious photographer, you use Lightroom. It's that simple. I only started using it a few years ago, but it has transformed the way that I work with images. And just about all for the better.

Unfortunately though, it has a few problems. Sometimes it is a like a big, helpful, over-eager dog that is always trying to do the best for you. And most of the time it succeeds. But sometimes it does insane things.

Take, for example, importing pictures.  This should be easy. Find the folder where the pictures are, and then copy in all the ones that aren't in the catalogue.

Except that whenever you click on (or perhaps even wave the mouse near) a folder at the start of an import Lightroom insists on running off and seeking out all the images in that location. In the entire directory hierarchy. Even though there is absolutely no need to do this.

And it always thinks I want to import from the SD card that I keep plugged into the Surface. So when I start importing it proudly displays a whole bunch of clipart I'm never going to want to look at.

What I'd love is for someone to come back to me and tell me that there are magical options that can be used to turn off this rather daft behaviour. Any ideas folks?

No more SatNav

We drove down to Bristol today. We've now got a policy of not using the SatNav on journeys like this. 

Experience has shown that all it does is make you unhappy by warning you of traffic disruptions that you can't do anything about. I'd much rather sail along in blissful ignorance of the enormous tailback waiting just around the corner. And the alternative route is quite often a lot less pleasant than sitting in a stationary car for a while.

Flickr Magic View is quite, er, magical

I've been hosting my pictures on Flickr for a long time. When if first came out Flickr was genuinely revolutionary, with unlimited online storage for subscriber's pictures.

Unlimited storage is pretty much the norm these days, and Flickr has been a bit left behind by other, fancier sites. But of late they've done some rather nice things. If you've got a Flickr account (paid or free) you might want to take a look at the new Magic View option in the Camera Roll part of your site. It does a rather good job of working out the subject of your shots and then itemising them.

I'd no idea I'd taken so many pictures of birds.....

Spooks: The Greater Good

Spooks: The Greater Good is a happy tale of fairies and unicorns, living together in "Happy Paradise Land". Everyone is nice to everyone else and there are always lots of cakes for tea.

On the other hand, this might be a lie. Why should you trust me? Why should you trust anyone? After seeing this film I won't be doing much trusting. Everybody is pretty horrible one way or another, but then again the TV show this is based on wasn't big on Rainbows and Cupcakes either.

If you like twisty stories with a bit of action thrown in, or you enjoyed the TV show, then it is well worth a trip to the cinema.

The Ladykillers at Hull Truck

At the weekend we went to see The Ladykillers at Hull Truck. It's a play based on a film. Which was based on a film. Or something. The script is written by Graham Linehan of Father Ted fame.

Is that enough links for you?

Anyhoo, the play was great. We seem to be re-discovering live theatre at the moment, we've been twice in almost as many weeks. The Hull Truck is a great venue and we've discovered that if you sit right at the back, on the high seats, you get loads of legroom of the straight down variety and a commanding view of the stage. The theatre space is very intimate and nobody is very far from the performers. We're scanning the programme for the next thing to go and see.

The Ladykillers, a tale of dishonour amongst thieves and a most unlikely heroine, is a hoot with great performances from all. It's in Hull for the next week or so. Go see it. You'll have fun.

Free T Shirts at Windows 10 Three Thing Game

We've just about finalised the itinerary for the Windows 10 Game Jam/Three Thing Game we are holding next month. If you're a developer in the Humberside region you really should come along. We've got sessions about MonoGame, Unity and Marmalade, a room full of Windows 10 machines for you to play with. And Free T Shirts:

Back.jpg

Find out the schedule, and sign up, here.

 

Break into Code with TouchDevelop and the Imagine Cup

One other neat thing that I saw at the summit last week was Minecraft running under the control of a TouchDevelop program. TouchDevelop is a great way to get playing with writing code.

And there's a neat little competition running as part of the Imagine Cup that you might like to have a go at if you are a bit younger than me. Essentially you get to re-invent/re-imagine the classic Breakout game. And there are big money prizes. Find out more here:

https://www.imaginecup.com/breakintocode

Bryan Ferry and Judith Owen Live at Bridlington

Judith Owen

Judith Owen

Tonight we headed off to Bridlington Spa to see Bryan Ferry and his support artist. Who turned out to be Judith Owen.  I'd not heard of her before. Great voice, great piano playing and an amazing band. of musicians providing support.

An Amazing Backing band

An Amazing Backing band

If you are as old as me (and good luck with that) you'll remember such people as Waddy Wachtel ,Leland Sklar and Russ Kunkel. Pick a hit album from the seventies, eighties, nineties, noughties or now and it's odds-on that at least one of them played on it. To pick just one random example, Waddy Wachtel played on "Lonely Boy" by Andrew Gold, one of the best records ever. Ever.

Just as they finished their set I looked up Judith Owen on Xbox Music and found out another interesting fact. She is married to Harry Shearer, the voice of Mr. Burns in the Simpsons. During the interval I wandered off to find them selling and autographing CDs. I got the whole band and did the whole star struck bit, shaking hands twice and whatnot.

Then I noticed a chap who was helping to take pictures of folks posing with the band. Who looked a lot like Mr. Shearer. And was. I asked him to sign the CD too, although he protested that he had nothing to do with the music. I reassured him that I've been taking credit for things I haven't done for years, and that persuaded him to put pen to paper. I then shook hands with "Mr Burns", complemented him on his wife's singing and her choice in backing musicians, and headed back to my seat. I thought the evening had already peaked.....

But I was wrong. Bryan Ferry came on and did an absolutely storming set. Backed by a fantastic team of musicians he ripped through a choice selection of his back catalogue, including a few Roxy Music numbers and tracks from his new album before bringing the crowd to its feet for the last few songs. Including a blazing version of "Do the Strand".

Bryan Ferry Band.jpg

General consensus at the end of the evening was that "Bryan has still got it going on.".  HIs tour is continuing round the country. If you get the chance to go, just go. Thank me later.