Rob Miles' Journal

Blogging the Imagine Cup with Flickr

Rob — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:12:33 +0000

I’m trying a new approach to blogging the Imagine Cup this time. I’ll be putting bits and bobs up on these hallowed pages (of course) but I’ll be also putting up shed loads (if you can load a shed onto a server) of pictures on Flickr, with the usual insightful comments.

From what I’ve seen of Cairo this is going to be great, follow the magic at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertmiles/

Welcome to Heathrow Terminal 3

Rob — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:14:38 +0000

You can't beat a low ceiling for adding atmosphere....

everything breaks

Rob — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:24:28 +0000

I was pretty much set for the trip to Cairo for the Imagine Cup. I'd squeezed all the required bits into the case and finished agonizing about taking the big camera (decided not to in the end) and all was well. I opened the laptop for my final email check. It was dead. Very dead. Take the battery out and it still won't work dead. Not good. In fact very bad. It had all the things on it I needed, plus a bunch of stuff I was going to work on. Wah!

The only good news was that if it had done this a day later I would have been totally stuck. And I had taken a backup the day before (perhaps that is what caused the problem).

Anyhoo, I'm presently sitting in Terminal 3 at Heathrow with my trusty NetBook in my bag. It has most of what I need on it, thanks to some feverish installing last night. I'm always nervous about going away, but fine once I get on the road. I've never been to Egypt before. This should be fun.

Learn All About HTTPS

Rob — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:31:00 +0000

If you want a really, and I mean really, in depth description of just what happens when you visit a secure website you should take a look here:

http://www.moserware.com/2009/06/first-few-milliseconds-of-https.html

Fantastic.

Little Weighton Steam Fair

Rob — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:13:51 +0000

Went to a steam fair today. I love the smell of steam engines, and there were a lot there, along with assorted classic cars, tractors, models and all sorts.

The weather was kind to us and a good time was had by all.

Klaus at Pixel Creations

Rob — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:08:00 +0000

Many years ago I used to work with Klaus. This was when robots were wildly fashionable. You wouldn’t think that things like engineering research have fashions, but they do. Klaus was doing things like making robots weigh chocolate bars, figure out where they were and all sorts. Great fun.

That was a while back, and I met him today when he was buying a flash gun. As was I. I’ve not done any flash photography for a long time. The first flash gun I ever bought was a Sunpak DC3. This was solid state, made a fantastic whistling noise like the scary bit at the end of the Silence of the Lambs, and was very optimistically rated by the manufacturer. So much so that the first roll of, very expensive, colour slide film that I used it with just showed lots of pictures of eyes and teeth glinting in the darkness. I’ve not been that keen on flash photography ever since. But I’m told that the new flashguns can do very fangled things by talking to the camera and you can use them for fill in effects and all sorts. So I thought I’d get one.

Klaus was buying one for his business. He now works as a professional photographer and is really enjoying his work. You can find him at http://www.pixelcreations.co.uk/.

Who’s Captain Kirk?

Rob — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:59:00 +0000

For Father’s Day I received a box set of the original Star Trek season one. It looks fantastic because even though it was filmed years ago they used proper 35MM film. I started watching the first ever broadcast episode (The “Man Trap”) last night. When I saw this the first time it gave me nightmares for ages. It is not quite as scary now, but still darned good fun.

If you’ve not seen it before (although I find this hard to believe) you are in for a treat. If you have, it is still worth a look because of the way that they have redone the shots of the Enterprise. It now looks really good.

My New Book is in the shops

Rob — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:15:00 +0000

A man from UPS dropped of a big box today. In it were 10 copies of my latest book. One of the many nice things about writing for Microsoft Press is that they give you 10 free ones.

I’ve been through the text and not found any mistakes so far, which is rather nice.

Oh, and for the student who won the Super Geek Word search at the Summer Bash, your prize has now arrived……

Paul Moves On

Rob — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:49:00 +0000

Paul Chapman left us today. He did is degree at Hull a while back, went off and did a lot of Seabed Visualisation (that is what is PhD is about), came back to Hull, taught a bunch of courses, did a lot of work on the Venus project and even found time to play some music. And jump out of planes. And build the world’s first paragliding simulator. And then buy his own motorised paraglider and fly it over the university taking pictures.

Paul is taking up a position at Glasgow. They are very lucky to have him, and we are very sorry to lose him.

Neil Young

Rob — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:59:00 +0000

I’ve not been to a rock concert for ages. I’ve never been to one where the headline act is 64 years old. But today I found myself in Nottingham Arena, surrounded by lots of people of a certain age, waiting for Neil Young to come and play his guitar at us.

By gum he was good though. I’ve not been a huge fan of his in the past, but I can see I’ve been missing out. I knew quite a few of the songs because they are standards, and they were all delivered with a gusto and energy that belied both the age of the performer and the fact that he must have played them many times before. It must be particularly strange for him to sing songs he wrote ages ago about being 24, but he did it all very well.

I took a camera and was a bit worried about taking pictures, but I knew I was OK when the security folk started ducking so that they would not be in my line of sight.

The support act were very good too. I’m afraid I didn’t catch their name though.

Great night out. I enjoyed it so much I even bought a T shirt…