Ace audience
Another day, another ACE talk. Another great audience. I've no idea how Danni does it, but she gets in premium students each time. Anyway, today Digby sort of behaved himself, and of course got more applause than anyone else. I'm thinking about giving him his own blog on this site, but I'm not sure he needs the extra exposure..
Blurry Digby
I'm in the process of saying goodbye to an old friend. I've had a mobile phone with Orange since a long time ago, when black and white screens were cool. But now I'm leaving them and shacking up with T-Mobile. I gave Orange a chance, I spoke to their "Customer Retention" team (which sounds really scary) but at the end of the day they can't offer me what I want.
What I want is unlimited use of the internet on my mobile phone for 7.50 a month. I want to be able to use my mobile to browse the internet, check my email and download the odd file without worrying about the cost (which up until now has been horrendous). T-Mobile will let me do this. Orange won't. The nearest I can get with Orange (and this is a tip folks) is that if I use a Pay As You Go connection I can pay a pound for as much internet as I want for a single day. This is great for trips away and the odd demonstration. But I want the mobile internet as part of my life. So it is goodbye to Orange for a while.
I'm pretty sure that eventually Orange will have to come up with something similar, but I don't particularly want to wait. I've got a taste for mobile email and that means using the internet a lot. And I want it now. So it is goodbye to my Orange contract and hello for a year with T-Mobile.
What a great audience looks like.
I did another talk to a bunch of students from local schools today. The place was packed and it was a bit warm, but the whole thing went really well and the audience were great. For the first time I put Digby (my robot dog) on a black cloth. He loved it, he could find the ball and then fail to kick it really well.
I've hidden a stormtrooper in this picture somewhere. Can you use your powers of observation to find him?
On Sunday sensible people stay in bed for a while, potter about, read the paper and generally relax in preparation for the coming week. They do not spend the day rising at 4:30 am, driving 220 miles to London, walking round a film and comic conference and then driving back again. Horay for sensible people. Meant the place was not so busy, and we got a chance to look around. And see a talk from two of the stars of Serenity, a good film that you really should have seen by now. I've put a whole bunch of pictures up on Flickr.
Some of the audience, apologies to those who arrived after I took the picture...
We had an open day today. In spite (or perhaps because of) the football match we still had a good turnout. Those that came along seemed to have a good time, and they went away with wherewouldyouthink T shirts and a smile. Even though I told some of my jokes.....
Did a talk at an Insight event today. I was telling all about mobile development to a bunch of academics. Great bunch of folks who seemed to enjoy the talk. I never got around to telling the orange for a head joke, but you can Google it if you like. If you were at the talk, I promised a bunch of links and downloads. You can find them in the presentations part of the site here. I got to stay in a proper english hotel room for a change.
For your information, hotel owners of the world, this is what we english expect to see in our rooms when we arrive. Not a minibar loaded with expensive items or a coffee filter thing which only makes one cup of luke warm drink. This is how you do it. And don't forget the biscuits.
Drove down to Kidderminster today in a rented car. I like rented cars. They are always shiny and new and somebody else's problem if they go wrong. Today's car was a shiny Saab. It had loads of buttons, including one labeled ESP which I never dared press. It had separate air conditioning settings for the driver and passenger sides . Number one sun set his to minimum and I maxed mine out in an attempt to create a weather front down the middle of the car as we drove in to work. It also had a feature which reminded me of one of my favourite jokes.
Driver : "I pressed this button and the car instantly drove straight into the sea!"
Mechanic : "That was the cruise control sir".
Anhyoo. Nice car.
I think I'm turming into the comedy equivalent of those birdwatching people who spend all day in a field with a pair of binoculors looking for the great crested whatnot. These folks think nothing of spending a whole day standing in the rain wating to get a glimpse of some rare species or other. They must leave home each day with hope burning in their heart that they will actually catch sight of their goal.
This is now the way that I watch comedy programmes. Last night I sat through a whole episode of "My Family". It must have been in the hope that at some point something funny was going to happen. Of course, it didn't. The audience seemed to think that it was hilarious. The same "joke" was repeated numerous times and they laughed obediently each time. I'm not sure how the BBC management do this:
Scene : TV Studio before recording an episode
Stage hand One : "We've recording a comedy show next"
Stage hand Two: "OK, I'll get a fresh cannister of laughing gas and plug it into the air conditioning"
Stage hand One: "Wait, it's 'My Family', better make that two cannisters"
I can imagine the audience on the way home, having hysterics at their bus tickets and the markings on the road.
I keep seeing adverts for things which contain "good bacteria". Which is apparently better for you than "bad bacteria". How did we get to this?
Meeting at Bacteria HQ:
Bacteria King : "We're in trouble. They keep inventing new ways to kill us. That new Domestos could be the end. Any ideas?"
Bacteria Scientist : "But sire, I have a plan"
Bacteria King : "Do tell.."
Bacteria Scientist : "We train up some of our strongest strains for a top secret operation. We teach them the arts of subterfuge, send them undercover and get them to convince the human scum that they are friendly. Once they are safely established in their yoghurts and health drinks..."
Bacteria King : "..we strike them down. "
(all join in evil laughter)
Remember, you read it here first.
I seem to be living in interesting times. Today I bought a wonderful book (actually I got three - I'll tell you all about them tomorrow).
And I'm setting up some Webcasts which you really must listen to. Details to follow.
And you only have around 18 hours to buy my phone....
Whilst out for the day yesterday I had occasion to wash my hands in an unfamiliar bathroom. Having applied plenty of soap from a pump action dispenser thing I found that my hands did not get soapy in the expected manner. Further inspection revealed that I had in fact put fructose hair conditioner on my hands, which were now soft, manageable and tangle free. Wonderful.
On the way back from visiting number one daughter we went past a farm with a sign outside which said "For Sale: Pet food and accessories".
Unfortunately the place was shut, otherwise I would have dropped in and asked for some spoilers for the hamsters and a couple of go faster stripes for the guinea pigs.
I had my innoculations for the trip to India earlier today. Two injections, one in each arm. Just before she stuck the needles in the nurse asked "Now, which arm do you use the least?". Talk about confidence building.
Some things you just get sucked into. Like watching your national football team play not very well against a country you've never heard of. Trinidad and Tobago? Sounds like a circus double act to me. Or a follow up to "Lilo and Stitch". Anyhoo, I only watched the last ten minutes (which in this game was probably the best thing to do). The thing that struck me, after I'd got over the rather lacklustre display of the our sporting heroes, was the poor quality of the video signal.
Now I know the signal is coming all the way from Germany, but I've seen much better quality than this. It looked like it had been seriously compressed. When the players started running their legs turned into a blocky blurr and when the camera panned quickly the screen really looked rough. I'm pretty sure it is not my telly though, 'cos I've seen some lovely looking pictures in the past.
The cynic in me is wondering if "they" are trying to push us all towards High Definition TV by making the standard offering look bad. Surely not....
I had to get some more photos of me taken today. It is for my free trip to India in August, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. Anyhoo, I sat scrunched down in the seat so that my face fitted the oval and was imortalised on film wearing an appropriately grim look.
As I was waiting for the pictures to come out of the slot I got chatting to a little old lady who was sat by the machine, and had watched me go into the booth. "You know", she said, "You can get them done a pound cheaper just over the road". Thanks for that.
I excitedly told Peter about my bug purchase at coffee today. "Whatever you do" he said "Don't put the latest version of the software on it". Guess what I had spent last night doing. I suppose I can always remove it, although it seems to work OK at the moment.
I mentioned that sometimes the signal drops and Peter said "Oh, just tie a bit of wire on the end of the aerial". Now if anybody else had said that I would have told them not to be silly and gone into a long discussion about wavelengths and radio waves and stuff and how this could never work, all based on the Physics that I did before I found out about computers.
But Peter is properly qualified and knows about wires and things and so, this lunchtime, I found a bit of spare cable and tied it on the end. And it works. Who says that qualifications are useless?
If I have my time again I know what I want to be. I want to make car windscreens. I want a job where the consequences of failure are minimal and customers pay for your mistakes. Today I went out to my shiny new car (not quite as shiny as it used to be - really must wash it) and found an enormous crack in the glass. This has appeared from nowhere, without me doing anything. I'm completely at a loss to explain it. The only thing of which I am absolutely certain is that I did not cause the crack, i.e. it is not my fault. I rang the garage and asked if such things were covered by warranty, since it was obviously faulty.
The chap on the other end snorted and said something along the lines of "Well, it is a windscreen. What do you expect?". When I mentioned that I did not expect it to break of its own accord he then asked if there had been any rioting or other activity outside my house which might result in such damage. I said that I was pretty confident that nothing of that nature had happened, I'm sure I would have noticed rampaging street gangs. As far as he was concerned it was not a matter for the manufacturer (i.e. the person who made the car and windows) but the owner (i.e. the person who bought a new car specifically to avoid having to pay for things that drop off it).
So you can make windscreens as duff as you like and if they break it is not your fault. Never. In fact it gets better, since when the screen breaks the poor sucker with the car has to buy a new one. So you can generate new business simply by turning out screens which self destruct like mine has.
The only good news is that it is covered by insurance, but it still means I have to mess around getting it fixed and stump up an excess. No fair.
They had nice flowers
Went out for dinner tonight. Of course I was my usual witty and urbane self. I just hope that they'll invite us back anyway.
I blame Sky One. I had a dream last night that I had been made in charge of a Russian nuclear reactor. They had given me a bright yellow survival suit outfit (like they wear in the movies). I was sitting at home in this thing (trying it out for comfort) and reading through some reports which were all written in Russian on bright yellow paper. They seemed to have the Russian for "Urgent" and "Danger of explosion" written all over them, although I'm not completely sure as I can't read the language.
I was just inspecting a datestamp on one of the more impressive looking warnings, and trying to find out if it was in the future or the past (not sure how Russians order their dates) when number one wife looked over my shoulder at the page.
"You ought to get one of those" she said, pointing at a picture of a complicated thing that looked like a reactor seal or something. "It only costs 25". I looked at the number and was about to explain that 25 could mean feet high, million Roubles (or kopecks or whatever) or years old when I heard an alarm in the distance....
Fortunately, at this point I woke up.
In the TV guide in the paper today describing the Sky One program "10.5 Apocalypse":
Sam has a terrible decision to make when the fault line heads towards the United States' biggest nuclear reactors...
Yeah. Right. Like "Which are my best shoes for running away at great speed?".
And since when have fault lines wandered around the planet?
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
