Wiik Ending

We've been preparing for the launch next Friday of the Nintendo Wii. I (of course) have got one on order, and I'm planning on heading up town at midnight on Thursday.

We're going to open up the department to kids from local schools and do some demos of research level motion sensing technology in our Hive Virtual Environment. And some of our stalwart students are bringing in their Wii machines to help show them off.

Today we heard from Nintendo. We've been pestering them to let us have a machine to demonstrate, and they' promised to let us have one of their store demo pods. Today they said "We're terribly sorry, we can't get the pod to you next week. We have to send it tomorrow. Is that a problem?"

Hmmmmm. Somehow I don't think so. With a bit of luck we should have the device running in our open area for most of next wiik.

Marvelous.

Private Agenda

My new-fangled PDA has got Microsoft Voice Command in it. This is a totally wonderful application that lets you use speech to control your life. It is like having a little person inside the device that you can ask to do things like place calls, tell you what is coming next, play you music and so on. It works extremely well, and is pretty unique amongst these things in that it does not require any voice training.

My PDA therefore presently announces all my appointments in a robotic American voice and will also read me the heading of incoming urgent emails, when they arrive.

This is all very useful, but all my appointments are pretty boring. I think I'm going to set a few more interesting ones so that in the middle of an Information Services Committee meeting my device can go "Bing Bong - Secret Weapon Briefing in fifteen minutes" or "Bing Bong - Tony Blair call at four o'clock" or "Bing Bong - Kill them all. Do it now. DO IT NOW!!!"

Update on 2006-12-01 09:23 by Rob

Alas, I chickened out. But I was the only bloke at the meeting not wearing a tie. Go fashion rebel me.

Robs Laws

I was talking in a Software Engineering lecture today about "Rob's Laws" amongst other things. I think it is time these were finally written down.

1. Any given computer is too slow. No matter how fast you think it is when you get it, after a while you will think it is too slow.
2. Any given project will take longer than you think. Even (or especially) if you allow for this. The only exception to this rule is a project you won't get paid for, or one where you have massively misunderstood the requirement and are therfore doomed.
3. A program that is useful will have bugs in it. The only programs that can be proved to be correct are too small to do anything that you might want.
4. A highly successful, fully working, system which contains hardware components will just about always have a massive "kludge" somewhere in the middle of it. This is the bit that has to be there, otherwise it won't work. Nobody will completely understand why it has to be there, or what it does, but they do know that if you take it out the system stops working.
5. A customer will never ring you up and tell you their program is working fine. Never. If the phone rings, it is always bad news. Silence either means they haven't got round to testing it yet, or it is working fine. At the point where you think it has gone quiet for long enough for it to be definitely working the phone will ring and they will tell you they've just got around to testing it and have found something they don't like.
6. As soon as you assume something about what the customer wants you are doomed. For sure.

Update on 2006-12-02 08:50 by Rob

Hmmm. I've been thinking further about this. I reckon that law 4 is probably a bit harsh. I think it applies to projects involving hardware (they do seem to need this level of magic) but not always to straight software ones.

Does this make sense?

Yesterday I bought an extra large aerial for our WIFI router at home. This should help us get good network reception in the living room. I can recommend these, the one I got was from Maplin and cost 15 quid, which means they are probably available for a bit less elsewhere.

Anyhoo, it works well, but I'm a bit confused about one thing. The aerial comes with a magnetic base, so that you can easily stick it to your fridge or whatever. 

Great for a quick and easy way of mounting I guess, but I'm not sure how sensible it is to put a device designed to send and receive radio signals right next to a big lump of metal. Very strange.

My Cultural Life

At Hull New Theatre : Number one wife and other family members attend "A Christmas Carol", performed in ballet form with full orchestral accompaniment.

Chez Miles : Number one daughter and I watched some Family Guy episodes followed by The Dukes of Hazard movie......

My Ambition

As you get older it is best to make sure that you still have a few ambitions left. I've decided that my number one ambition is now to buy Bill Gates a drink. I'd like to be stood next to him at bar at a Preston Foster Appreciation Society meeting (I'm sure that Ian and Pete would let him become a member of the society and as the barmaid pulls his pint of Tetley I could turn to him and say "No, it's OK Bill, I'll get these". And I would.

Put some magic into your life

Now you can have one....

My all new "Magic Message System" is now available for download. If you've ever wanted a message system as good as the one in Computer Science at Hull University then you can have one... For now. I'm going to make it play videos and do 3D next. And I might not give that version away......

Because it uses Windows Presentation Foundation you will need either Vista or XP with .NET Version 3.0 installed.

So, what does it do? Well, it will display a slideshow of your Flickr pictures and at the same time read messages off an RSS feed reader of your choosing. We are going to use it on our plasma screen in the meeting area.

You can find it here.

Infinite Power

In the pub tonight conversation turned to wind power. It is presently fashionable to put a wind turbine on the top of your house (one of our political party leaders here has got one). Apparently, for the outlay of only fifteen hundred pounds you can get a device which, during a hurricane, produces almost enough electricity to power your hairdryer.

I'm not convinced by this, I think the answer has got to be reducing consumption by insulation and other clever tricks. However, now that you no longer need planning permission to put up a windmill on your roof, I suppose they are going to become fashionable.

However, if they ever become de regeur I have a plan. I'm going to make a balsa wood wind turbine and stick on the roof. Inside I'm going to put a tiny electric motor so that the blades always turning. Always.

Whilst my neighbours bemoan the lack of wind and the fact that they have spent all this money on something which is actually useless I'll be able to point up at my roof and talk about the kilowatts of power that I'm presently generating. Not exactly eco-friendly I suppose. But fun. 

Party Time at the Bank

Some time ago I used know someone who knew someone who worked in a bank. For some reason we were chatting one evening and the conversation got around to "What would you do if someone came in and said 'I've got a gun, give me all your money'?"

Apparently the bank had a special code phrase which was to be used in this situation. The drill was to ask the cashier at the next position "What time is Andy's party?". Apparently the appropriate action involving silent alarms, marked notes and giant falling cages (or whatever) could then be taken.

This has bugged me for years. Viewed from the perspective of the robber this would be highly confusing. I'm presenting the person in front of me with the business end of a firearm, demanding money with menaces and the first thing they do is sort out a few social engagements before getting on with doling out  the cash. At very least this would make me inclined to increase their motivation a bit, perhaps by shooting up the place. Bonkers.

I've since figured out that the code phrase has now been changed slightly. Now, they way that they signal miscreants is by not offering them life insurance, a new mortgage or a car loan as they hand the money over....

Early but not bright

Went into Hull at 7:00 am this morning. Not because of some confusion updating the clocks (that was weeks ago) but to review the papers for BBC Radio Humberside. I've been doing this for a while, and I usually take the camera in case any nice photo opportunities arise.

Early Hull looking good

I managed to muddle my way through the reviews OK (note to self, you seem to run a bit slow on Mondays - go for other days of the week in future) and with a bit of luck they'll ask me back so I can get up early all over again.

Cortina Nostalgia

Ours was maroon

When I was very young (and probably even more impressionable than I am now) my dad bought a Mark 1 Cortina. At the time this was the epitome of style and taste. Nowadays it would be regarded as somewhat primitive. I mean, the dashboard (not the fascia) only had four buttons on it. And nearest thing we had to airbags was an empty crisp packet in the "glove compartment". Which curiously never seemed to have any gloves in it. Ever.

I was reminded of this chunk of my personal history yesterday as I was standing in W H Smiths reading magazines for free. There is one called "Classic Ford" or somesuch, which had numerous pictures of the MK1 Cortina Owner's national rally. They even have their own web site. What memories.

Sequence of Stupidity

• October 10th Robert given receipt for hotel booking on Robert's credit card with instructions to "keep it safe so you can use it to claim back the money later".
• Robert tosses the receipt onto desk on top of huge pile of papers.
• Receipt stays safe for a couple of weeks or so, drifting around the office.
• Robert notices the receipt just lying around and decides to address the problem by placing the receipt "somewhere safe".
• Receipt vanishes.

There's probably a moral to all this, but I'm darned if I know what it is...

Update on 2006-11-15 20:19 by Rob

Ha. Found it. The document had got itself folded up with something else and I've now carefully copied the numbers onto an expenses claim form.....

Going for a drive

After all the excitement of foreign travel and dodgy planes today we just settled for a litle drive to Durham and back to visit number one son.

On the way there we saw some amazing rainbows, including one which went all the way over the motorway. I'd love to have taken some pictures, but I was driving at the time, which is a bit sad.

When we got to Durham it rained. A lot. And then some more. Number one son showed his local knowledge by getting us lost down an alley on the way to the indoor market. With the torrents of rain, poor lighting and overflowing rubbish bins the place looked like the opening shot from a CSI episode. But fortunately there were no bodies to be found.

After a splendid time talking about nothing in particular and looking at large tellies (an AV upgrade is in the pipeline) we tootled back to warm Hull.

Danger at 300 feet

Well, I'm back home now. The conference was great fun. You can see a video of me here.

The trip back was slightly enlivened by the landing process, which seemed to involve a bit more going up than I remembered from previous flights. Then the captain came on and said that a warning light had come on concerning the undercarriage as we were making our final approach. However, not to worry because he had done the aeronautical equivalent of bashing the dashboard of the plane and things were fine now...

Although it was a bit disconcerting to find all the fire engines lined up alongside the runway when we finally touched down...

TechEd Update

Yesterday and today have been a bit of a blur. I've been to more sessions. Marvelled at the .NET Micro Framework, revelled in the Robotics stuff and been very impressed with the RSS feed talk this morning. I've found time to take a few more pictures too, which is always nice.

Rather a good sunrise

Even got the moon in this one

The Expo centre

The exhibition floor

MSP's from around the world.

If you have met me you will understand the humour in this picture.

There are some more on Flickr.

Tomorrow I give my session. Wish me luck.

Darned Efficiency

It seems that the time synchronisation betweeen diary and time zones has just about been sorted out. I know this because I set my alarm an hour early on my PDA to allow for the fact that I am in a different time zone, set my PDA to the correct time zone and then got my wake up call an hour early.

Drat.

TechEd 2007 Gets Going

Went to the keynote for TechEd 2007 today.  I've been to a few of these and so I thought I knew what to expect. What I didn't expect to see was the Imagine Cup coming down the tracks as the first headline item.

Bigging up the IC

Interesting in that three and a half years ago I went to the first imagine Cup world final and there were 14 teams who had a bunch of booths off to one side of the main exhibition. Today we have the IC as a keynote item and teams from pretty much every country in the world taking part and a big stand in the middle of the exhibition area. If you are at TechEd go and see Caroline on the stand. Tell her Rob sent you.... This is all such good stuff. Nice to see that Microsoft is still keen on getting students fired up in this business. They also introduced a lass from Pakistan who, at the tender age of 10 managed to get some C# qualifications. Very impressive. I thought back nervously to my 11 year old self, I think I was writing joined up by then.....

Then it was on to the computer stuff. They showed a thing where you can view  business processes via Sharepoint 2007 and actually modify their actions directly using C#. Very clever.  Business process is a big, big, thing. And the ability to do this kind of thing is terribly interesting. I'm pondering about the potential of regarding academic progression as a process like this. Might be a fun student project. 

Then we went on to using Ajax to seriously spice up the user interface, which was very pretty. They had a bit whre you could select swatches for clothing and then view the outfits that would be made from the. this was kind of impressive, but what I really wanted was a tool which would do full cloth modelling (like some of our students are doing for games) and then put them onto representations of real people. I guess it will come with time. And I'm pretty sure the platform would support it.

Finally it was the seriously techie stuff. Using the new Linq extensions you can connect databases directly to your software objects with just about no glue. This is hugely significant. One of the nasty problems at the moment is how you can take your nice shiny objects and connect them to your big fat database. It looks like Linq will  pretty much nail this issue. And it has some lovely RSS tools too.

And now I'm off for lunch....

Barcelona by bus and foot

Done a lot of walking today. And a lot of top deck bus riding. After we had signed in at the conference centre we went on a tour of the city by open top bus. We took in the cathedral, which is the most impressive building site that I've ever seen, and Guadi park, which was very nice. Also a whole bunch of other, highly interesting, places which are all shut on a Monday. I've put a bunch of pictures up on Flickr. No doubt I'll take more.

Cathedral spires

Tomorrow the work starts for real.

Flying Out in Style

Flew out the Barcelona today. Jet 2 gave me the one seat on the plane with uber legroom. Very comfortable. Because I am a speaker at TechEd I was met by a very smart chap in a suit with a shiny Mercedes to take me to my hotel. Which was great. The hotel is posh too. It even has WIFI, although this did seem a bit dodgy, so I only managed to see around twenty seconds of Torchwood. Never mind.

Can you?

Just sent John the answer to this puzzle. I managed to solve it. Can you?