Normal Service

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For the last couple of weeks the car has been displaying "Service Required" and showing me a little green picture of a spanner. I figured it was trying to tell me something. I checked in the handbook and apparently it needs servicing. So today I took it to my favourite garage and turned them loose on it. I've got it back and the car seems just the same, although the message has gone and I am a couple of hundred pounds poorer.

Questions abound. What would happen if I'd ignored the message?Would the spanner turn red?  If I kept ignoring it, would the text change to "Service Me Now or Die" and the airbag go off? Would the engine management system eventually start making the car run badly and force my hand? Would the GPS, if I had one, tell me that all roads lead to the garage? Did the service just involve turning the message off?

Am I Spam?

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I've sent some email of late which I don't think has been read at the destination. In fact, I think that my deathless prose has just ended up in the spam folder of the recipient. I wasn't offering any little blue pills, I was just getting in touch. But perhaps because the correspondence was from a new address and the content included a web link the filter may have decided that this was fishy..

What I really need is some form of "From Rob and therefore highly important" tag that will get the attention of people the world over.

Then again, if it fell into the wrong hands.......

Pirates Ahoy

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Went to see number one daughter play tonight. Actually,didn't see her play at all, since she was in the orchestra pit at the York University Gilbert and Sullivan Society production of Pirates of Penzance.

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The PR machine

Now, as you all probably know, I'm not really one for culture. I remarked, as we were listening to what I now know to be the overture, "Aren't there supposed to be singers in this..."

Anyhoo, the production was excellent. It is surprising how many of the songs have found their way into my head over the years. It was great to see the performers enjoying themselves as much as the audience. Actually there is not much of a story to the show, it is more a collection of sketches and songs and a bit of shameless pandering to Queen Victoria at the end. But that didn't get in the way of the fun. I took the tiny camera and grabbed a few snaps.

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Pirates!

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Ladies!

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The model of a modern Major General....

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The Police

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The happy ending....

Idiot

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I'm an idiot. No, really. Hard to believe, but it's true. Here's the proof.

I've been using my Motion LS800 tablet PC for a while and I really like it. It is tiny, works well and is on the way to becoming my traveling companion of choice. But it could really use more memory if I want to run Vista comfortably on it. And I do.

It is supposed to be a bit hard to take to pieces and upgrade, but to someone who had a lot of Meccano as a kid this sounded like a challenge. So I ordered a memory stick from Ebuyer and yesterday it arrived.

Getting the back off the device was OK, there were some nasty plastic catches but nothing I can't handle. A tip though, if you are thinking of upgrading a Motion Tablet, grow your thumbnails a little bit so you can slide them under the edge of the back and then use them to pop back the little tabs without scratching the case. I'm kind of due for a manicure at the moment, and that helped a lot. Anyhoo, I got the back off and pulled out the old memory chip. Then I get the new chip out of the package and I hit a snag. These memory devices have a little slot which aligns with a tag in the memory socket. Except on the new chip the slot didn't. It was around half a millimeter in the wrong direction.

And this is where the idiot bit comes in. A smart person would have just gone "Oh dear, have to send it back and get a replacement". But an idiot goes "I'll just grab a nailfile and open up the slot a bit so that it fits". So I did. And after a tiny bit of adjustment I had it fitting perfectly. But of course it didn't work. So now I have an expensive damaged component (which I probably damaged) that doesn't work. A situation broadly similar to taking a bundle of fivers and flushing them down the toilet.  In my defence, it had been a long day at work and I wasn't mentally at my best at the time I did all this. But I still think I'm an idiot.

I'm not sure if the slot was in the wrong place because it is a different type of memory (even though I took special care to make sure that it was the right type) or because the thing was badly made. I've sent the whole thing back to Ebuyer (with a note inside explaining what an idiot I've been and throwing myself on their good nature).

And to cap it all, after I'd put original memory back in and put the Motion back together I find I've lost one of the screws that holds the back on.

Idiot.

Chapter Seven is Nearly Done

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Got too much time on your hands? Enjoying things a bit more than you think you should? Want to torpedo your social life and turn yourself into a zombie?

Try writing a book.

I'm writing about a subject I find interesting, with a wonderful bunch of folks, on a comfy chair with a nice big screen and I'm using a bendy keyboard. Snag is, I've been doing it for 9 hours today and I'm starting to notice there are things I really should be doing as well. Like have a life.

The good news is that Chapter 7 is nearly done now. And we did go out for lunch today (WokSoEver in Cottingham, all you can eat including sushi for a really good price), so there is some kind of work/life balance here - although I could do to have it shift a little the other way.....

I am Number Six

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Well, I've done it. I said I wouldn't, but I've done it anyway. This morning advanced orders for the Playstation 3 opened up and so I wandered into Game and slapped down my fifty quid deposit. (coincidentally, last night I found I was going to be paid for some of my work on "the book" and that is what made it possible - funny eh?).

The PS/3 might end up being owned by the department, depending on how much bother they have getting hold of one for launch day. Actually, things were a lot quieter than they might have been. I didn't get up extra early to go and put my name down, and I still ended up number six in the list. I'm not sure if this launch is going to be the complete sell out that some people are hyping it up to be.....

Anyhoo, it looks as if the Sony magnet has sucked me in again. And now I'm kind of looking forward to March 23rd. If only to see what happens on ebay.....

I'm Bored with the Cold

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Enough. I'm tired of being cold. We haven't had any snow yet. Just cold. It's all part of my economy drive, where I turn off all the heating until just before we get back from work. The result is that the house is freezing for the first few hours of the evening. Then the heating goes off for the night and we get cold again. Fortunately British Gas (or "evil profiteers" as they should more properly known) have decided that their prices (raised around 50% last year) are indefensible and will be shaving some small numbers off the cost of heating for me, so I can have around an extra 15 minutes of warmth a night.

I've turned on all the computers in the room to try and heat things up a bit. It is coming to something when you are reduced to warming your hands on a Tablet PC. I've given all the machines something hard to do, to try and get the heat output up....

21st Century Displacement Activities

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In the old days, when I had a bunch of marking to do I would go off to the union shop and spend ages choosing a suitable red pen. I'd try each of those on sale at least once and then carefully weigh up the heft of the pen, the quality of the ink colour, the feel of the writing action and so on. I could usually pass quite a while doing these activities, not actually doing anything towards getting the marking done, but feeling good about the fact I was in fact making progress. When of course I wasn't.

Spool forward a few years and I can't do this any more. Some of the stuff doesn't use a pen at all, everything happens on the computer. But I still need my displacement activities. Fortunately the computer, if it is nothing else, is a wonderful source of potential displacement.

I've been marking stuff submitted via Class Server. This has the option for the marker to create six pre-formed text items which can be inserted into the student comments. Thing is, six is nothing. I've got loads more than that. Loads. It really hurts to type the same kind of thing over and over, but I need more than six. More like sixty. So, I built PasteMaster to do this for me. It took me around an hour to build, which is probably longer than I spent choosing pens, but I think it is worth it.

PasteScreen

You can type the comments into the text fields and then when you press the button they are inserted into the block at the bottom. You can edit the text at the bottom and add new bits, and everything you add is also placed in the paste buffer, so you can drop the whole report into any windows app. It remembers the comments from last time you ran it, and there are 6 pages of 12 comments that are colour coded and you can flip between.  I managed to set up a page of comments about each of the deliverables I was asking for, so that I could pull out pre-formed bits where appropriate and save myself quite a bit of typing.

(I was going to add a "randomise" button which would pull a comment out of a textbox on each frame and make a random response, but I thought this might be dangerous....)

Anyhoo, it works a treat and saved me a fair bit of typing. Of course, I could have used Notepad, but I think it would have been a bit harder to do and I would not have had the fun of making Pastemaster work.

If you fill out forms with pre-formed responses, or you do the kind of marking that I do, you might like a copy. If so, let me know.... 

Safety on the Internet

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Every now and then I get asked to comment on something technical by the local radio stations. They say I have the perfect face for radio.

Anyhoo, today a chap came to talk to me about safety on the Internet, Tomorrow is European Internet Safety Day (what, you didn't know?) and they wanted some quotes about the dangers lurking out there on the wire.

My opinion on this is quite simple. Just about everything in life can be used for good and bad things. Even fluffy cushions can be used to bad purpose (as they are in just about every other "Midsummer Murders" episode). The Internet, mobile phones and social web sites are just the same in this respect. The key is to be aware of what they can be used for, then you can get involved and help.

The oldest trick in the book (and particularly if you have kids) is to put the family computer downstairs in the living room rather than hidden in one of the bedrooms. Then you can see what is going on, and maybe have a go yourself. In these days of WIFI and multiple systems in houses this may be more tricky, but there is now technology you can use to limit the use of the computer and the places that kids can visit. Windows Vista (to name one system at random) has technology for both controlling access to web sites and limiting login times.

With regard to social networking, why not have a go yourself. Apparently there is presently a huge growth in middle aged use of things like MySpace and there is nothing to stop you having a go apart from fear itself. And as for mobile phones, be aware that they can be used for bullying and sending nasty messages.

Apparently when postcards were invented they created a whole new way in which people could get in touch with each other. Rather than having to visit the house to correspond, a lady could scribble a message on a card and then drop it into the nearest postbox. This brought about a revolution in courting behaviour. This took a lot of control (and awareness of what was going on) away from the parents, and was probably the cause of much debate and concern at the time.

Something similar is happening/has happened with mobile communications. I'm sure that when postcards came out there were people sending nasty ones, and you had to learn to deal with this. I guess the same is true with the Internet and mobile phones etc.

Repeat Offenders

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We had another open day today. Some of the candidates that turned up had been at our earlier one in November. I fretted a bit about using the same appalling jokes as on their earlier visit, so I took special care to add some new and untried material to my bit. Oh well. Although the ET joke seemed to go down OK. Thank you for coming folks, and I hope you all enjoyed the day.

I also went up town first thing, and took the little camera. The light was very good.

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Right in the middle of Queen Victoria Square. What are the chances eh?

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View from the car park

The Busiest Man in the World?

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Been mucho busio today(o?). All our new modules start this week, and I've not yet finished marking exams and coursework from last semester. So it was give a bunch of lectures, mark a load of exam scripts and then stagger home to write some more on the Micro Framework book.

Sometimes I wish there were more than one of me, so that I could share the work out amongst us (there have been movies about this kind of idea). I'd be the best  looking and smartest version of course.

I thought that everyone had musical socks

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Some discussion around the place about musical socks. Apparently not everyone knows what they are. How surprising. Perhaps the rest of the world has not reached the heights of culture and refinement that we take for granted at Chateaux Miles.

Musical socks have a small piezo sounder and a little circuit that allows them to play a reedy, square wave, rendition of some out of copyright ditty or other. My socks play the one that goes "Dee dah dah dah, dah dah dah...". When you squeeze one part of the little plastic envelope they are sealed into this wonderful music issues forth. Mine tend to go off when I cross my legs for some reason.

And this is why you should not wear them in bed, no matter how cold your feet get. Being woken up at 2 am by a muffled, eery tune wafting out of the bottom of the duvet is not an experience you'll want. Take it from me.

Graduation Daze

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Did a couple of graduation ceremonies today. I'm the chap who stands up at the start and gives a 10 minute spiel on how to behave, when to stand up, sit down, wear your hat etc etc. Great fun. Had two very well behaved audiences who did everything right. Thanks folks. We also had a couple of really good honorary graduates; Jane Tomlinson and Michael Apted.

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Free food and drink for our graduands

I think I'm going to have to retire my opening joke that I use at the graduation ceremonies. It never gets a laugh and I think it might be turning audiences against me. I'm not going to reproduce it here, ask a Hull graduate if you want to find out what it is.....

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After the show is over