So Much for Sunday and Jetlag..

..thank you and good night.

Heading for Home

You may have gathered by now that I like San Francisco. Even though the streets are very sloping, I still loved walking around. I've taken more pictures in the last week than I have in the last six months. And I'm pleased with every one of them. Lovely place. But today we had to leave. Although there was time for a little shopping trip and a few more snaps.

Love the color

Inside the Apple store

Art Expo

Reflections

We did a lot of walking

A saint for every occasion

Can you see Jon Purdy in this picture?

Ending Up

Nice view after we had seen 300

Well, the conference has finished. I just thought I'd put down in words what I've managed to learn from my time in out here, at the various sessions and on the exhibition floor:

• Sony are starting to do some sensible things with the PS/3. I hope it is in time.
• Community is the new buzzword for everything. That and getting your wife to play computer games (I'm looking forward to that one)
• Writing a shader is actually quite easy. (especially if you just fill in the blanks in a Microsoft lab)
• The Nintendo Wii controller is just as hard to program with as I thought it would be. Probably more so.
• XNA Express is even better than I thought. The tutorial on it was a model of clarity and fun.
• The Motion LS800 is a truly wonderful portable computer (I plan to write a whole item about this lovely device)
• Computer games writers take incredible pride in their work, and the games that you take for granted contain huge amounts of technical ability, imagination and passion. You think there is passion in a Ferrari? Take a look at something like Motorstorm, or Gears of War. These people love their work and it shows when you hear them talk about it.
• Computer games should be taken at least as seriously as other media fields such as TV and film.
• The film "300" sucks.
• San Francisco might be my favourite place on earth. Maybe even better than Hull (although the bridge is a bit smaller).

And with those profound thoughts floating out there into the ether, time for the Friday photos.

Dusk.

We didn't bother with steak in the end

..'cos Lori's had pinball

I just love this back screen. The rightmost zero is just stuck in there to make all the scores seem bigger...

From Shaders to Singstar via Mario

We started the day bright and early. At 9:00 we were learning how to use shaders at an XNA lab.

Plenty of nice monitors for the XNA lab..

It has to be said that I'm not actually a great video game programmer. But after today I'm a lot happier writing shader code. Even if it looks a lot like C++. Once we'd got our flashy music player working I bailed out of the lab and headed for the next keynote. I really wanted to see the next man speak.

Building Mr Miyamoto

Shigeru Miyamoto is a true video gaming legend. The man behind Mario and a host of other Nintendo classics last came to GDC 8 years ago, and today he was back to give another presentation. The slant was broadly similar to the Sony pitch yesterday. Community is good. Games which are fun are good. And we now have games which can bring in people who up until now have never played games. Including Mrs. Miyamoto. The presentation ended with some mouth watering footage of Super Mario Galaxy.

Coming to a Wii near you soon

At lunchtime I took a bunch of pictures.

Reflections on a city square

Flowers

Another nice day

Later on there was another community themed talk, this time by the brains behind EyeToy, SingStar and Buzz. It seems to me that games are getting more and more mainstream, and soon they will be part of life for pretty much everyone. Later we went for another wander.

567 Pine

Grant

More nice lumpy streets

Lori's Diner

Great Place to Eat

We've found a great place for tea. Good food, amazing milkshakes (a meal in themselves), good service...

..and an Edsel

500 Sutter St. if you are ever in San Francisco.

The Art of Selling

"Do you want to buy a 1 gigabyte memory card for your camera for 10 dollars?".

The question was appealing. The cards normally cost a good bit more than that. So we wandered into the camera shop at Fisherman's Wharf to complete the transaction. A minion was dispatched to find the relevant component. Whilst I waited, conversation turned to the camera hanging around my neck.

"Do you have a wide angle adapter?". Why, yes I do.

"Can I see it?". A confusing request, he works in a photo shop for heaven's sake, he must have plenty of his own lenses to look at. "No need, I'm quite happy with it".  

"How much did you pay for your camera?". Now, this is sensitive information. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a massive bargain, but I was happy with what it cost.

"I can do you the same model for 250 dollars". This is irritating, that is around half what I paid and frankly an unbelievable price. And besides, I've already got one, and good though it is, I'm not sure why I'd need two. And where's that memory card?

Meanwhile, another salesman is working on Jon. Zoom lenses are being produced and snapped on and off camera bodies. Demonstration pictures are being taken and pored over. And more unbelievable prices are being bandied around. Finally a price is named that is so unbelievable that Jon decides to take the plunge.

"I'll take it". Stuff happens quickly. You don't need the box. You do need a lens filter (and an amazingly expensive one at that). Better yet, why don't you let me sell you an even more powerful lens and a converter. More money, but well worth it. We'll give you an even better price if you pay cash. Not got the cash? We have a machine over there just itching to eat your card and give you money to give us. Jon walked over to the machine. Then something snapped.

Without a word he turned and left the shop, I followed. Much clamour behind us about the bargains we have missed out on.

And I never did get my ten dollar memory card.

Later we shopped a little further down. A friendly and helpful assistant found things in the right sizes, kept them by the till for me and was friendly and polite all the way through. And she got a sale.

The Rob and Jon Show

Today was the day that Jon and I sang for our supper, so to speak. We were the "international" part of an international discussion of computer games and curriculum. I talked about XNA and Jon talked about Skill Set Accreditation. We both only had five minutes to fill, which is both a blessing and a curse. Not much time for bad things to happen, but hard to fit everything in. In the end it all went swimmingly. And there are pictures.

Gathering for the conference

Need a haircut

Had a haircut

A bit of abstract stuff

Flags

Off for a walk

This is what makes the cable cars work....

Nice Church

Wires

Refueling

Bikes

I love this kind of stuff...

Down on the wharf. Ask Jon about the lens he nearly bought...

Work that lens....

I've no idea what the boat is called. But it looks nice

"Love Songs" album cover shot....

Our hotel is about under that flag...

Nice sky

..and just one more...

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...