Working for the Borg

Just received a note about the Pay Modernisation framework the university is putting into place. One of the headings is "Assimilation Panels". Just what I suspected....

Madness I tell you

If you go to the MSN home page at the moment you can see an advert for satnav for a Buick car. The tagline for Buick would seem to be "Beyond Precision".

What rubbish. How can you be more precise than precise? This sort of advertising really annoys me.  I really dislike it when people mess up with English. How on earth did they get to this?

Scene : Advertising Agency

Drone 1: "They say that this satnav is precise."
Drone 2: "And precise is good, right?"
Drone 1: "..and so more than precise would be even better?"
Drone 2:"I've always liked 'beyond'....."
Drone 1:"So, 'Beyond Precision' it is then. Send them a bill for fifty thousand as usual."

shudder

Useful Hull Web Sites

My mate Geoff has made a couple of very useful web sites for people who live in Hull. One gives you a list of what is on at the local Cineworld and the other the weather forecast. They both go onto web sites to scrape the data and then present a page just right for viewing on a mobile device:

http://www.geoff.org.uk/cinema.php

http://www.geoff.org.uk/weather.php

Worth adding to your mobile favourites.

When someone rings me a penguin dances

One of my students very kindly sent me a Firebox.com voucher after I helped her debug her program (not sure how this figures in the scheme of things bribery + corruption wise, but since the voucher has a cash redemption value of 0.001 pence I don't think I necessarily have to inform the authorities).

Anyhoo, it was off down to the Firebox web site to see what goodies they had in store. I got the latest version of 20Q - which is even more impressive than the original - and a bunch of mopods for me and the ladies in my family (they won't work for number one son 'cos he is on 3G - but you can't have everything). Actually, the voucher only covered a small part of the total price - but since I was saving money I was quite happy about this....

Mopods are fun. They are a little figure in a tiny glass jar and when your phone rings they dance. I got the penguin one which is quite neat. In the unlikely event of someone ringing me up (although it did happen in a lecture today....) he spins on the spot and lights flash. For a fiver they are quite good value.  Actually, I get quite a bit of dance action because he also detects when my phone connects to ActiveSync email and does a little dance then too.

The Big Cheese is Coming

For some time my newspaper of choice (The Guardian)has been giving out wallcharts depicting different varieties of things. It started with things like fossils and animals, but they seem to have been running out of steam recently, having to resort to footling things like apples and salad vegatables to keep going.

Until now.

Tomorrow they are giving away a cheese wallchart. Oh yes. One for the office wall methinks.

Note: I know that cheese is essentially a lump of fat with good PR, but I still like it.

Sunset and Steak Pies

We went out for tea tonight. On the way to the Ferguson Fawcett in Walkington (they do really good food) we went past a rather nice sunset.

Worth going out for

Give Blood In Style

Rather an unusual request first thing in the morning.

"Do you have a spare 'wherewouldyouthink.com' T shirt, as I'm giving blood today?"

Apparently if you wear a long sleeved shirt, as Simon was doing, they can't easily stick the needle in. Fortunately I had one left (we are having another batch printed soon) and so he was able to go and take part with maximum style.

He offered me the shirt back afterwards. Er, thanks, but no thanks....

Which puts me in mind of a joke:

First Cannibal: "Sorry if this tastes a bit dry, but I caught him just as he was leaving the Blood Bank".
Second Cannibal : "It's alright, I've always rather liked Donor Kebabs"

From Hero to Zero

I'm getting cross with my Guitar Hero game now. Although playing the game is great fun it does seem to have the knack of losing all my saved data. For the second time it has forgotten everything and lost all my hard earned progress. I'm pretty sure the game is at fault, in that the save file is there on the memory card (and I can copy it around and stuff) but the game just refuses to recognise it. Most annoying.

I think I'm going to put my PS2 version up for sale and then get the XBOX 360 version when it comes out.

Hull Fair

We went to Hull Fair tonight. We tried to go last year but it was pretty much full. So this time we set out early. We took the camera along, but minimal funds - just to be on the safe side.

The Freak Out ride. Scary, and one of the smaller ones

I just love the classy artwork on this one.

More "Hook a Pooh" than "Hook a Duck"

What you win if you aren't careful

I think this is my favourite fair picture

The one ride I actually went on. Note the attractive price and the fact that it does not seem capable of leaving the ground.

Or not

Look carefully. I'm third from the left. Yeah. Right.

We managed to escape only nine pounds down on the trip. But a cuddly monkey, four donuts, some nougat and some peanut brittle up. And it was a great night.

Shopping Thoughts

Went up town today (big surprise). I find that strange thoughts come to me as I wander round the shops.

We bought some shampoo for the guinea pigs. They have long hair (don't ask) and we have to keep it shiny clean. I was wondering if it had been tested on animals.

Then I went past the Early Learning Centre, where you can now buy a "Castle of Doom" for your tiny tots to play with. Only seventy quid. What kind message does this send to our newest citizens?

Scene : Christmas Morn

(FX : Sound of frantic unwrapping)

Child : "Oh daddy, it is just what I've always wanted. A dank place of total despair where all who enter can suffer torture and and a lingering death."
Father:  "Well, son, I just hope you'll play nicely with it."

Foggy Morning

A bit foggy this morning. But sunny. Fortunately I had the camera with me....

A view across the sports field

A walk through the woods....

The back of our large lecture theatre

Just some trees

The back of our building

I love autumn.

Spell with flickr

You might not have seen this before. Seldom has Rob Miles looked better.

Confused of Hull

I'm confused. This is why. Say we lived in an age where restaurants are new and fangled. People have just discovered the option of eating out and they like it. So I decide to open a new restaurant. Only mine is special. It gives the food away.

Not surprisingly, once word gets out my little restaurant is going great guns. Queues around the block. At this point things get a bit weird. One of the other restaurants in the neighborhood (it doesn't serve food quite like mine, and it is making quite a good profit at the moment) decides to buy me out for a huge sum of money, and then let me keep going giving my food away.

I get given a huuge wad of cash for starting a food business with no obvious means of support. The other restaurant gets something which may never be profitable, but at least somebody else hasn't got their hands on it.

In case you hadn't spotted it, I'm really talking about YouTube and Google. I use both of them. Google quite a bit. YouTube now and then.

I just can't think of a way in which I could ever be persuaded to pay for what YouTube has to offer. Even if they only charged me mini-bucks to watch the videos I'd find something else which was free to do in my lunch hour. In my opinion the only business plan which could possibly have worked for the YouTube folks was to get famous and hope that somebody rich bought them up before their money ran out. Which, fortunately for them, was just what happened.

Google have just spent literally billions getting their hands on YouTube, and I'm baffled as to why they have done this.

(for some reason the Microsoft LiveWriter spell checker suggests Outnumber as a replacement for YouTube - this just confuses me even more)

Code Monkey

Brian put me on to this video. It is very good, although I don't like the name of his boss....

Man Flu

I'm ill. My nose is not running. It is sprinting. I'm surrounded by tissues. My head feels as if someone has inflated a balloon full of porridge inside it. (not sure how I know this, but it does) 

I told number one wife that I was ill. Then I told her again as she brought me a cup of tea. She looked at me appraisingly. Apparently I have what is called "man flu". This is an illness which reduces a man to a useless, moaning wimp but has no effect whatsoever on women, who manage to just shrug off such minor afflictions and carry on regardless.

I was going to disagree. I was going to tell her never mind "Man Flu", that I was only keeping going at this restricted level thanks to my incredible mental strength and resilience. I was going to tell her that if she had what I've got she too would be laid out on the sofa and moaning.

But I didn't feel up to it. I just sipped my tea and asked for a chocolate biscuit.

I'm ill.

(but not too ill to write. I've just posted the latest episode of Trip Hazard. Book now for the movie..)

Busy Busy

Had a fairly quiet Sunday. Managed to mow the lawns (not sure why, every time I cut the grass the darned stuff grows back) and finished off the Moosaic program (I actually got my free samples from Moo last week and they are quite neat - next I'm going to make a 100 picture mosaic and see what it looks like). The program is working OK and I've got an installer too, but I have a rule that I play with my programs on a bunch of different machines before I send them out into the outside world, so it will be a couple of days before you can have a go at making your own Flickr mosaics...

Oh, and I've been dealing with a steady stream of emails from people who came to see us yesterday. Thank you for all the kind words, and if you haven't had a reply from me yet, I will get around to you tomorrow. We will also post out all the C# books then too.

Open Daze

We had an open day at the university today. Before hand we went up town to buy a few bits and bobs (I got two DVD collections - one six pounds and the other four - quality stuff). The light was good and I took the camera.

This is a view of the Hammonds Department Store. Impressive architecture when you notice it...

Then it was up to the university to give an open day talk. Before the talk Jon showed me this which was in a recent Develop magazine.

Quite cheering really, the quote is from a Microsoft XNA person.

Then we had a huuge turnout for people who want to see what we do. So many that they were sharing the glasses in the Hive (Hull Immersive Visual Environment). I took a picture of the audience with their 3D specs on...

Those shades really suit you.....

Thanks for coming folks, hope you enjoyed the presentations. Remember, if you have any questions, feel free to get in touch.

Cars and Horses

A car is a device which will take you from A to B. You turn a wheel and the machinery in it makes the car go in the desired direction. A horse is an animal which will let you sit on its back and might take you where you want to go. If you pull the reigns on a horse, and it agrees with that direction, it will go there. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, a horse will just take off. Or refuse to move.

I used to use a Toshiba M200 Tablet PC. This computer is a car. It does what I ask, when I ask. It just works. Lovely. Emboldened by this I then move on to a Toshiba M400 device. This computer is a horse. When it works, and you have the wind in your hair (metaphorically speaking) it is wonderful.

But every now and then it misbehaves. The screen goes dark and refuses to light up again. It freezes (usually in the middle of a presentation) and needs to be rebooted. Sometimes it slows down for no good reason. Some bits just don't work. At the moment it is just useful enough for me to live with the foibles. But if it locks up in the middle of a Software Engineering lecture again I may have to rethink its place in my life.....

Party Masters

After Thursday's party for the first year, tonight it was the turn of the Masters students to sample our beer tokens. We followed the same pattern as last time, although this time I varied the presentation a bit by having the tablet PC battery go flat just as we were going through the quiz answers. Note to self, don't leave home without the power supply.

These are the quiz winners, note the slightly larger prize this time.

After the quiz, and a lot of dicussion about the answer to the last question (it is on the screen above - can you figure out what the question actually was?) we went on to more Guitar Hero and other silly stuff.

We had a guy turn up who was awesome on this. He played some of the tracks on "expert" mode. What a performance.

Then we tried to find out how far you could get from an XBOX 360 and still play Geometry Wars. (the answer is a very impressive 75 feet - then you lose sight of the screen and crash). Those remote controllers let you get pretty remote..

Hi for Collectormania

And so it was another Sunday of rising at 4:30 am and the zooming off down the motorway to mingle with the stars and buy silly bits of overpriced plastic at the Collectormania in Milton Keynes. We've been going to these for a while, initially to meet up with hobbits and the like, but now more likely to have a drift around the many stands selling all sorts of stuff. Of course I took a camera (or two)

..of course it is cool - I'm there

Maggie Grace signs her name

Amber Benson tries to get us to sign it for her

They have Krispy Kreme donuts at Milton Keynes now. "A heart attack with a hole in it". And free samples. Yay!

It was very tempting, but it wouldn't fit in our toilet and 60 quid is a bit expensive. I've no idea what the thing on the right is.

Then it was back into the car to trundle back to Hull.