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If you have an iPhone (or other device with web access) you might like to take a look at Schmap guides. There are guides for lots of cities around the world and they provide useful information behind a nicely designed interface.

And I'm not just saying this because they've used one of my pictures. Oh no.

Well, I've gone from no power to two power, thanks to the combined magic of Applecare support and ebay. When my notebook PSU failed on Monday it occurred to me that I didn't want to be in this position again (number one son might not be around to save my bacon next time) and so after I rang in the fault I went onto the ebay and chased down a spare. And it arrived today. Along with the one from Apple.

Of course the next thing to break will be the Macbook itself.....

Some bits of my job I love. One of them is helping with degree congregations. I do the warm up talk at the start and then get the graduands down from the hall for their moments of glory. Today it was my turn to help run the science and medical ceremonies. I took the big camera.

The flowers on the stage were looking good.

These were the science graduands. Sorry if it is a bit blurred, the lighting was not good. But you might be able to find yourself in there....

These were the medics. Again, hard to take pictures but I did my best.

After the ceremony they took a special picture of all the graduates from the Hull-York Medical School, which has just graduated its first cohort of doctors. This was a truly momentous moment for the university, which we are all very proud of. Hearing them all state their oaths during the ceremony was just fantastic.

It was a great day, but boy was it hot in all my suit and robes.

In the midst of hardware despair it is always nice to reflect on the good things in life. Like what Mike Smith has been doing down at the Prospect School in Reading. He has got some of his Year 10 writing XNA. That's 14 year old students writing and running C# games. Wonderful.  By all accounts he has been having great fun, and even made the papers. You can find out even more from Paolo here. The students are even blogging about their experiences here and here.

When we were in Paris we saw some high school students who had entered the embedded challenge and made it to the world finals. I think those folks were 16 or so, which means that you've got a couple of years start......

I'm all cheered up now. I think I'll go to bed.