Heading for Hols

We're heading off on our hols for a week. Number one wife has been assembling bags full of food, clothes and other essentials.

I've packed the Lego.

Space Invaders

You've probably seen this space invaders implementation before. But it made me smile.

Oblivion with Cars

One of the wonderful things about the XBOX 360 is the way that you can download demos of games. Actually, this is probably not wonderful, more like expensive. I've already bought a couple of games on the back of this "feature". Darn it.

In the old days I had to wait until a magazine with a coverdisk came out. Nowadays I just leave the machine chugging for a couple of hours whilst the next potential wallet buster comes down the wires.

And so, I downloaded the demo of Test Drive Unlimited. This is a driving game. Actually, game is probably a bit of an understatement. It is more like a better version of life. You start off with a massive house in Hawii and a few cars in the garage. You look a lot cooler than you really do (at least in my case), and you seem to have a lot more spare time.

So you go for a drive. You can drive anywhere on the island. Happen you'll meet up with another driver, who may or may not be a real person. Happen you'll have a race. Happen you'll go the wrong way round the track, get hopelessly lost and embarras yourself. Or you might be more lucky than me. Anyway, if you win, money changes hands and you can save up for a new, even shinier car.

And so it goes on. The weather changes, the time of day changes. The road goes on, seemingly for ever. There are no loading screens. There is no slowdown. You can use your GPS to find things of interest and you can also meet up with your chums for races. When you sit in the car, you sit in the car. You can even make the windows go up and down.  

The car handling is realistic enough to be annoying. You can crash into things and do damage to them, but not apparently to yourself. If you are sufficiently naughty the police might want to take you to task. If you are feeling brave you can get on a motorbike instead.

When I first played Oblivion, the massive XBOX 360 roleplaying game, I was impressed by the way that the world was totally believable, and massive. Test Drive Unlimited is like that, but with cars and no loading delays at all. Folks, this is proper next generation gaming. Not a flashier version of an existing game, but a whole new immersive experience. If you have an XBOX 360 you should at least get hold of the demo of this game. Then, like me, you can start saving for the real thing...

Roman Holiday

Last week I bought a new camera. I really shouldn't have. But this was a real bargain and so I liquidated all my ebay assets and sallied forth to Currys to make the purchase. I wanted the camera because it has a very long zoom lens.

So today we went off to Sewerby Park, where they were doing some Roman re-enactments. And out came the camera...

Sewerby House looking good

A local parrot

They do have some superb gardens here.

Bridlington Bay

And looking the other way..

Apparently it is rather hard to shoot an arrow from horseback.

Testing the troops

Running Shoes

Note: This post is vaguely disgusting. Sorry, but it is.

When we signed up for the India trip I mentioned to Margot that I would need to take anti-malaria pills.

"They'll make you ill" she said

How right she was.  I've just stopped taking them and by jove I feel better.  In the list of side effects for the particular tablets I was using was a complaint which might give rise to a need for the items mentioned in the title of this post (not to put too fine a point on it). I got that all right. Fortunately, amongst the armoury of medications I had taken with me was a preparation which was intended to resolve this issue.

Imodium Plus. What a wonderful marketing name. Im from Immobilise, od from commode, and ium to make it sound vaguely scientific. Then add a plus to emphasise the power of the stuff.  Didn't do anything for me though (or perhaps it did - and the consequences of not taking it would have been much worse). One thing I found mildly amusing was an entry on the list of side-effects for Imodium. Apparently it can cause constipation. If only.

The rehydration stuff was wonderful though.  If you are going abroad you must take some. Only problem was that I got the "multi-flavour" pack, which included banana flavoured salty water. This is an experience you want to be only once in a lifetime.

The good news is that my affliction didn't actually stop me from doing anything,  and now that I've stopped taking the tablets I can feel things returning to normal.  The other good news is that all the time I was abroad I didn't get bitten by a single mosquito. Mind you, I was wearing the ultra strong repellent which also managed to dissolve my watch strap. I found this rather encouraging. If it can do that to plastic, it must do even more horrible things to insects.

Actually, thinking about it, I reckon I got off rather lightly. Even with all the fun and games with chemicals, it was still well worth it. And I would go again (but I might try a different malaria pill).

Quick Dry

I'm not sure if there is a Guiness Book of World Records category for tumble drier purchase, but if there is I want to submit an entry.

Our tumble drier broke last night. We've had it 21 years and it goes and fails on us.  Actually the drier itself is fine, but the bit which makes it stop was broken. We found this out after it had tumbled a bunch of clothes for three hours. Ooops.

Anyhoo, having been told in a couple of shops that they didn't have what we wanted (I reckon the bigger the store the less chance of it actually having the thing you went in for) we found a place that did. So we swooped. Into the shop, pick it up, take it to the till, pay for it, less than five minutes.

And it works. And it stops. Wonderful.

Pinball

We were driving back up to Hull today and I was listening to BBC Radio 2 (not a thing I do lightly - unless Terry Wogan is on). They have this feature where people get to pick their favourite tracks. This week it has been Harry Shearer, who is one of the voices of The Simpsons (he does Mr. Burns, Smithers and a whole bunch of others).

And one of the tracks that he picked was Pinball by Brian Protheroe. One of my all time favourites.  Got the single in the loft. What are the chances?

Of course as soon as I got home and on line it was time to try and track down the track. Google and Ebay have provided me with links to his new home page and a cheap copy of his greatest hits. And Napster now have one of his albums on there as well. Amazing.

(Oh, and you really must hear his track "Never Join the Fire Brigade" as well - wonderful stuff)

Goodbye Mark

A few weeks ago Mark Johnston of Microsoft told us he was moving on from the Academic beat and going into to something to do with development. Very sad. Microsoft people do move around within the company rather a lot, it is just the way they do things.

We have worked with Mark for quite a while, definitely one of the good guys, and it will be quite a wrench to see him move on. Anyhoo, best wishes for the future Mark.

As a mark of respect I have sent him a set of "24 Top Trumps" cards.  There is no higher honour.

Miles Roberts?

Today is the day we go home. We started early, very early, having heard terrible stories of delays at the airport. Our flight was delayed a bit, but fortunately not by much. The bad news for me was that lots of my precious toys had been placed in my unreliable suitcase, the one that likes to travel the world by itself. I was pretty much convinced that it would decide to visit some more interesting parts of the world and take all my stuff with it.

Anyhoo, you do what the safety instructions tell you. Or perhaps you don't. Having been given dire warnings of the consequences of taking any kind of hand baggage onto the plane, with just my passport, wallet and a paperback in my possession,  I was more than miffed to see people boarding the plane with rucksacks, laptop bags, you name it. 

So we settled down in our seats and waited as the plane pulled back from its stand and made ready for takeoff. And then it stopped for a minute. Then five minutes. Then the captain came on the intercom.

"I'm afraid we have to return to the stand and open up the hold. There is a problem with some of the luggage"

Drat. Triple drat. What kind of an idiot is causing delays? What kind of fool is holding everyone up? If I find out who it is I'll..... The intercom crackled again.

"Is there a Miles Roberts on the plane? Would Miles Roberts please make himself known to the cabin staff?"

Blarst. Could they mean me? I raised my hand. Turned out that the system had spotted three bags in the hold belonging to "Miles Roberts". Somewhere along the line my name and initials had got scrambled to make another person, who was not on the plane but who had his baggage in the hold.  I gave the purser my passport with the luggage numbers on it, which sorted that out and we were able to get airborne. Curse that suitcase.

The rest of the journey was uneventful, if you except the one hour wait at Heathrow for a place to disembark, and I was able to catch the tube to Kings Cross and then walk straight onto a wonderful Hull Trains locomotive for a very pleasant three hour ride up to Hull and home.

Hiatus Status

I'm just about to dash out of the door and catch a taxi on the first leg of the trip to India. So blog posts might bet a bit interrupted. On the other hand, the ones which make it through might have nice pictures.

Sent Packing

Been packing for the trip to India for the Imagine Cup finals.

Time to pack gadgets and vital equipment : 2 hours

Time to pack clothes : 90 seconds.

I may not be very satorially elegant. But I will have all my power supplies with me....

The Walls Have Ears

We were in the tearoom having one of our high level discussions (as I remember the question was "Why were the 'Yellow Bus Company' busses never actually yellow, but usually grey" - the prevailing opinion was that the yellow paint had been scraped off them and used for no-parking marks on the road).

Anyhoo, at the height of the discourse one of the large posters in the room suddenly peeled itself off the wall and seemed to be making for the door.  I hope it wasn't a statement on the quality of the conversation.

No More Shorts

I'm getting some made....

That does it. I'm starting a new campaign. I've seen things at work over the last couple of weeks which would have driven a lesser man to madness and worse. This has got to stop. Fortunately the weather has been kind to us for the last day or so, with a fall in temperature ridding the coffee room with some of the more horrid apparitions. But I'm not taking any more chances. It stops now, and it stops here.

I'm talking about the practice of wearing shorts to work. If your job is a footballer, or some other sporting profession then shorts are fine. But once you come off the playing field the shorts should replaced by proper slacks.  There is probably a Geneva Convention or something about things like this. And if there isn't, there should be. Sign up now. Banish those knees.

The Letter K

Maureen Lipman (great actress, wonderful writer and born in Hull) wrote in her column in the paper today that Neil Simon (famous playwright) reckons only words with a K in them are funny. Apparently chicken is funny, whilst tomato is not. I told number one wife about this.

"But cheese is funny" she said.

I could not have put it better myself. Case closed.

Bin Boggled

The kitchen bin has broken. (actually it broke a long time ago, it is just that the first time it broke it was brand new, and we didn't have the heart to replace it). However, now it is properly, as in more than one piece, broken. This poses two problems.

1. We now have to obtain a new bin. Particularly difficult as properly working bins seem very hard to get hold of these days. The ones in ASDA were pre-broken, and I've yet to find a design which I think is solid enough for my lot.
2. How do you throw away the old dusbin?

Profound Questions in York

I wanted a go in a red boat. But nobody else did. Wah.

We went to York today. There were rumours (nay, legends) that a branch of "The Only Place In The Country Where Rob Can Buy Things That Fit 'Cos He Is Tall (tm)" had reopened in the city. And was having a sale. Wowee.

We turned up at ten past ten to a shop full of "Sale signs" which was locked with an iron gate. The notice on the side said "Open 10:00 on Saturdays". Such is life. After drink at Starbucks and a Rocky Road (which with hindsight was probably a bit risky, given my state of excitement I probably should not have sugar rich cakes) we went back and found that the shop was now open.  Nothing much for sale unfortunately, but I did get a couple of shirts. (it has just occurred to me that there is no reason for me to assume that you have any interest in the fact that I bought two shirts today - but remember that you are hear for the kwality of the riting. Oh yes).

Anyhoo, then we went walkabout around York. Profound questions abounded. The York Psychic museum had a number on the door you could call to arrange a meeting.  Why? Surely they would be expecting you whatever time you turned up. And next to the roadsweeper was one of those things that helps you pick stuff up from the floor. A sort of remote hand thing. But it was lying on the floor. I do hope he has another one he can use to pick it up.

Maybe it's the heat.

Read all about it

Sometimes you come accross something which is so interesting that you just have to tell everyone else about it as soon as you can.  For example PressDisplay. This site has a wonderful interface that lets you read just about any newspaper from around the world. If you sign up for a demo you can get the papers free onto your PC for a week, after that it is around ten dollars a month for up to 31 issues, which is pretty good value if you are after reading the news from around the world. An interesting take on the way that electronic media is going.

Thunder and Lightning

We had something of a storm last night. A few days after I get my shiny new TV aerial on top of the house we have one of the biggest thunderstorms for ages. Most impressive. All the lights and all the sound effects. I couldn't do the old "count the time between the flash and the boom to find out how far away it is" because there were so many flashes and booms that I couldn't pair them up.

I didn't know whether to hide under the bed or go out and take photographs.  In the end I did nothing, which strikes me as a wise choice.

Adobe Updater needs your attention

I got another new toy today. Seems to be the season for deliveries and new toys. It is a Motion tablet PC and it is a tiny wonder. I'm going to use it in the labs for marking assessed work with handwritten comments and then uploading them back to Class Server. This is on the back of a Teaching Fellowship which I was awarded last year. (I'm going to set up a blog section all about it when I get round to it).

Anyhoo, the manuals are all on the machine itself, so I fire it up to read them. Of course they are in PDF format. I hate PDFs. Not because the format is a bad one, but because you have to use the Adobe reader to read the documents. This has one of the most malignant update managers I have ever seen. If it fancies doing an update one of its favourite tricks used to be to hide a dialogue box behind all the other programs asking about this, and then cause Internet Explorer to freeze until you realised what had happened and searched the thing out, or reset the machine out of sheer frustration.

Now it has a new trick. Because my machine is shiny new, the reader has two updates to perform. So it installs the first update, calls for a reset of the machine. And then installs the second update. Which also resets the machine.  People, this is a document reader. Not a security manager, missile launch code keeper, or deadly virus which if given free reign would destroy civilisation. Even windows update is nowadays quite reticent about rebooting your machine. And I'm kind of OK about windows doing reboots. It is an operating system. That's its job. But not a dratted document reader.

The good news is that eventually the updates completed and I was able to actually use the machine to read how the machine works.

Good Service and Fate

Sometimes one can be forgiven for assuming that the universe is actually out to get you. Then, every now and then, just sufficiently often to scotch the "out to get you" theory, things happen as they should do.

The only bad thing that happened on  Sunday was that the Oven Door exploded.  Fortunately it was my birthday, and pretty much nothing upsets me on my birthday, but it still left us with a pile of broken glass where it used to be, and no way of cooking anything much.

So yesterday I rang Cannon and asked about getting a replacement sent through.  This morning a big parcel arrived. Addressed to "Mr Yales", but we'll gloss over that. The good news is that it was exactly what I wanted,  and after a bit of wrangling with my trusty (and a bit rusty) philips screwdriver, we are back in the cooking busines.

And earlier today I needed to send my Jasjar back to Microsoft for some fettling (they are going to give me some new software to play with - which is nice). At ten past ten I rang DHL to arrange the pickup. At ten thirty the man was in the office waiting for the parcel. Apparently he was on campus in the post room and so just ambled over to pick up the box - before I'd even finished putting the label on. Amazing stuff.

There are two possible ways to explain this:

1. The universe actually is out to get me, but is lulling me into a false sense of security for now.
2. The universe is not really out to get me at all, but just doesn't care. I just put whatever interpretation I like on what happens, depending on how things are going at the moment.

I was just putting the finishing touches to this missive, when I found I'd just spilled a whole glass of water all over my desk. Read into that whatever you like. I'm off to get a cloth.