Teaching Fun and Games

Did some proper work today. We saw some very good presentations about the way in which games are made, and what games makers do. There was also some good stuff on gameplay.

I'll put up a more lengthy discourse on this later, for now you'll have to do with some pictures:

A great place for lunch

This is the Cheesecake Factory atop Macy's

It has a great bar. The temptation to start at one end and work our way along was hard to resist...

..but this is the view from the balcony. And the main reason I went.

Star and Stars and Stripes

Jon waits patiently. Enjoying his coffee......

Back to ground level

Flowers

Night streets

Managed to stay up to 8:00 pm today. Maybe even later tomorrow....

SF Shopping

The good news (I guess) is that after today the conference will start, which will mean an end to sight seeing and a great reduction in the picture count. However, until then....

Having got this wide angle lens thingy I though I'd have a play with it. So we set off downtown in search of shiny things to buy and photo opportunities.

What happens when you don't use the fisheye correctly

What happens when you do...

Yummy

We found this shop which sells amazing tellies for amazing prices. If I could get one to work in the UK I'd bring one home on Saturday. There were flat screens built into all kinds of really detailed models. Curse you NTSC...

Stylish TVs are us

Love the colours

If we ain't got it, it means you don't need it..

I've bought mine, comrade..

I love these models, I really wanted a Jane Austen action figure for number one wife, but they don't seem to do that one

More wideangle misuse

..and again

Some captions write themselves

Whenever we go back to the hotel, it is always uphill.....

SF Sightseeing

Authors Note: this is another graphics heavy post. Sorry about that.  But there are some nice pictures (and I've put even more on Flickr)

Some things you just have to do. If you go to San Francisco you have to go see the bridge. So we did. Boarded a boat trip at 10:00 in the morning (which was very quiet, we had the run of the top deck) and away we went.

Tour Boats

Setting Sail

Bridge and Boat

Flying without flapping

Bridge and Bigger Boat

Where's Purdy?

Not as big as ours, but quite impressive non the less

Contre Jour

Heading Back

I bought a sensible hat. Or did I?

Look at those two gulls taking aim.....

Gulls and Bridge and Flag

Sailing

"The Rock"

Jon "I'd have cracked out of there in week" Purdy

So there...

Jolly boating weather

Pier 39

Fancy a pedal? We got the boat in the end

Tulips

Boats

Basking case

Yep. It's a real one

Lumpy lanscape

At this point the memory card in the camera was full, and so you are all spared the bucket of frogs that Jon wanted me to take a picture of. However, there is always tomorrow....

Chinese New Year in San Francisco

So we were walking down the street, and wondering if it was normal in San Francisco for people to stand at the side of the road and watch the traffic go past. I mean, they've had cars in America for quite a while, right? And the novelty must have worn off by now you would have thought. We asked someone what was going on and they told us that New Year Parade was just about to go past. I'm pretty sure it wasn't laid on just for us, but it felt like it.

Waiting for the parade

Here they come...

All together now: "Y M C A".....

Horse Power

"Did you vote for me? Did you?"

Cool Outfits

Coolest Car

Flying the flag

Insert "tender behind" joke here

Of course, we were all really waiting for some dragons

We were not disappointed

Does he have a dentist?

I hope these say nice things.

And so into the sunset

Colourfull news

Back to the hotel

A nice shot to end on

Travel in Hope and Pain

I've managed to wangle a trip to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco California. Not quite sure how I did it, but very pleased to be going. Anyhoo, we made trip today. We started in Humberside airport at 5:00 am and thence (posh prose) we moved  on to Amsterdam.

Starting from Schipol

"The Dammed" assemble

The plane was full. And I mean full.  And since it was the "nerd express" to the conference everybody had used their internet skills to bag all the best seats by booking online. This meant that there was not a tall seat for Rob. The cabin staff were very sorry. I was even sorrier.

Legoom, KLM style

There should be a rule requiring airlines to hold the legroom seats for tall blokes like me who really need it. Perhaps I should start an e-petition... Mind you, winging about slightly uncomfortable seats on a free trip to California sounds a bit rich to me, so perhaps I'll keep quiet.

The girl in the window seat took a picture for me

Anyhoo, we got there OK and on time, and had a smooth taxi ride to the hotel.

First view of SF

We are going to freshen up (whatever that means) and then go for a wander round town. For the first time ever, I'm staying in a city with a proper middle (as opposed to a bunch of malls) and so it should be fun.

Pastey Faced

Someone actually asked me for a copy of Pastemaster. It is a text boilerplating tool that I wrote rather than mark exams.  I've written an installer,  improved it a bit and added it to my Lively Learning pages.

Burn In

I've just abut got my magic message system to working on the big plasma.  It displays the time on the screen in a nicely muted shade of grey. I'd heard that plasma screens have problems with burn in, and I thought I had been careful to avoid that. So when we turned the display off to plug in our new PS/3 I was mortified to see the time etched on the screen......

Fortunately, when our shiny new PlayStation 3 was fired up, nobody could see the damage, which cheered me up a bit. We were playing Ridge Racer, which looked OK but no better than versions on other platforms (even the PSP version compared well...)

Underwhelmed

Now, we were using the composite output to drive the display. And Ridge Racer is not one of the better launch titles. But I have to say that the experience did very little for me and the rest of the bunch around the machine.

When we had the Wii running we would usually find a bunch of laughing people waiting to have a go. With the PS/3 nobody seemed that impressed, even when they found out what was running the show. I'm told that it can do great things, and I'm looking forward to seeing it run on a decent connection with a better game.

Actually the best part of it was when I turned the PS/3 off. And found that my burned in time display had been replaced by the Ridge Racer speedo...... 

Service with a Smile

Went to Doncaster today for an external exam board meeting. Meant I missed some meetings at Hull, which was nice. The way I see it, they should schedule every meeting I have to go to at exactly the same time, so that I can pick the one I want to attend, and then have a good excuse to avoid all the rest.

Anyhoo, I shot off down the motorway, looked at some student work, had some very constructive discussions (which is par for the course at Doncaster) and then it was time to eat. We usually have a working lunch of sandwiches just before the exam board. But not today. Today we ate in the training restaurant. Which was wonderful. We were surrounded by attentive, polite, friendly (if a little nervous) faces who did the whole "posh nosh" thing around us.

As they were still being trained they had not picked up any of the habits of waiters that I have had to deal with in the past. In other words they didn't hide, bring the wrong thing, look down their nose at me when I ask for the house white (or even worse, a glass of water) and treat me like an idiot.  The food was great, the service was great, and I didn't have to pay. That to me is perfection...

The Humming Bag of Danger

My bag has started humming to itself. Scared me half to death when I first heard it at 3:00am. Scared me even more when I found out what it was.

Under Vista, if I ask my machine to Sleep it doesn't quite behave the same as it used to. Sometimes it wakes up. In my bag. Being wrapped in plastic doesn't do much for airflow, so the thing just sits there humming and getting hot. I'm sure it would shut down before it set fire to the house, but it is rather worrying.

Number one son has had the same thing happen with his Mac Portable, so this thing might be becoming common.  The way I see it, if you are putting your machine in your bag, you really should hibernate the device. This copies the entire memory to disk and then shuts down completely. The effect is similar to sleep, except that it takes a bit longer to wake up because the file has to be loaded off the disk when the power comes back on. With sleep the memory content is retained and so the machine can come back instantly. But it seems like computers are becoming lighter sleepers.....

Maxing out Vista

I managed something today which I didn't think was possible. I managed to get my machine to use up nearly all its memory. I was testing a SideShow gadget application which starts running automatically when the SideShow device is connected. But because I haven't completed the code yet, the program didn't finish properly. So Vista started it again. And again. So I ended up with several hundred copies of the program in memory before I realised what was happening.

86% and counting...

By the time I worked out what was happening I had 86% of my memory filled up. The nice thing is that Vista never really slowed down or seemed to suffer. I just saved my files, shut the machine down and rebooted. Which is quite impressive when you think about it.

Kitchen Orchids

The Orchids in the kitchen are doing well

Almost Lucky

This is the complicated tale of boy meets tablet, boy tries to run Vista on tablet, boy finds that more memory would help run it faster, boy buys memory that won't fit and then, after he has made the memory fit boy finds that it won't work. And he is the thick end of 60 quid light on the deal. Now read on...

I sent the memory back to Ebuyer who admitted it was faulty. At the same time I managed to acquire the memory from somewhere else. So I called Ebuyer and say that, since the memory was faulty and I'm sorted, I'd really just like a refund. They say yes. Happy ending.

Then the memory arrived this morning in the post anyway.....

Open Wide....

Went to the dentist today. I had to fill in a new form. Apparently my dental practice has spent up all the money that the Health Service gave them last year, and is now running on empty until April. This means that yours truly has now had his teeth privatised. I had to sign up to say that I would pay for my treatment.

There were three prices on the piece of paper, fifteen quid, forty three quid and one hundred and ninety quid. "Don't worry about those" said the nurse airily. "We'll decide which one to use later". 

There is only one thing that scares me more than someone poking around in my mouth with bent metal and drills, and that is having to pay around half the price of a PS/3 for the privilege.

Anyhoo, apparently my teeth are OK at the moment so it was the lowest price for me today. My teeth are a pretty horrible colour but apparently quite hard wearing. And I'm going to brush them very carefully from now on...

Normal Service

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?

It begins..

I've started a Playstation 3 sinking fund (wonder why it is called a sinking fund?). Anyhoo, item one is here. Next up is my tasteless clock (a timepiece since you asked - nothing to do with my face).

Playtime Postponed

I can't get my hardware to work. Lights flash but nothing happens. I've got some lovely toys to play with and I can't get anything to go. It's like "Christmas morning and no batteries" all over again.

Except with RS232 cables.

Am I Spam?

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

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.

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.

Pirates!

Ladies!

The model of a modern Major General....

The Police

The happy ending....

Valentine's Day

Found a screw that fits the Motion. So now I'm kind of happy.  And I got some nice things for Valentines day from number one wife.

I bought her, amongst other things, some chocolates, an exercise ball and a book called How to Kill your Husband.

Idiot

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.