Once more for the ducks

I always know exactly what to do when you have a crashing deadline looming. You go on holiday for a couple of days. So we have. We've rumbled down to Bristol to meet up with the inlaws. And, as is our wont, we've gone to look at some ducks.

But first some nice flowers

..swan of those days

Slimbridge Mission Control

If the birds learn to read we are all in trouble

There's a kingfisher in the middle of this. Yes, really.

Lovely plumage

Then it was back to the ranch. I did get around to writing a few pages though...

Good Looking University

The university is looking wonderful at the moment. I took the biggish camera in to work specially to celebrate this.

Nice Flowers

Big Library

I've put some more on my Flickr account.

In search of robot vacuums

The .NET Micro Framework book is coming along OK. And I've managed, by means of some clever wangling, to get myself permission to buy a robot vacuum cleaner as part of the job.

The reasoning is that we need something to control with our Micro Framework device, and the Roomba vacuums from Irobot look fun. And you can control them via a serial port. So I've been digging up references and making plans. Should be fun.

Home Shopping with Sony

After the excitement of the last couple of days it is back to real life with a trip up town. One of my favourite shops (sort of) used to be Dixons, which was one of the few remaining purveyors of gadgety type stuff in the teeming metropolis with is Hull city centre. However, that has now changed to "Currys Digital", which seems to have resulted in a huge influx of white goods. I'm not impressed. If I want to look at washing machines I'll go into our kitchen. And the gadget potential of a fridge freezer is somewhat limited in my opinion. The result of this was that I spent nothing. Number one son actually spent more than me. This might be a record.

Fortunately, those awfully nice Sony people have found a way of relieving me of funds even when I'm sitting in front of the telly. Using my shiny (but irritatingly dust attractive) PS3 I can go to the Sony Store and purchase games and stuff. So, for fifteen quid I got Flow, Tekken and Lemmings. They are all set to download overnight, I'll let you know what they are like tomorrow.

Imagine Cup UK Final

So, after getting up bright and early we headed onto the coach for the trip to Reading and our moment of truth...

"Team Pizza" with their bag. Seems about the right size.....

Ready for the off

Photo Op

The Seedlings shaping up

Is this a secret weapon?

Team Roundtrack

The "Pizza Eaters" doing some product placement

Team "404 File not Found" and their poster

Kevin from Microsoft gets things going

It was great to see James and Tom again. They were in last year's team and I went with them to Delhi for the world final. They now work for Content Master and had been given leave to come and tell us about the experience.

James in full flow

Tom watching....

..is this what Tom is thinking?

Nibbles

The food was good, and they just kept delivering it.

Halfway through the day the top three teams were selected to give their presentations. Sadly my team, "The Irresponsible Pizza Eaters", were not in the top three, but kudos to them for quality and commitment. You rocked.

Team "404 File not found" were selected for special commendation and "The Seedlings", another Hull team, were one of the three finalists. So, at this stage in the competition we had one commended and one in the top three. Not bad.

The Seedlings, preparing for the off

The pitch.

After the presentations and considerable deliberation the judges revealed the winner. None of this drum rolls and long pauses rubbish. Just a simple slide:

Hull Wins!

The Seedlings had prevailed. Huge congratulations to James Alexander, Michelle Goddard, Matthew Steel and Matthew Steeples. And also to their mentor from Black Marble, Rob Hogg. They all get to go to Seoul later this year to take on the world.

Flying the flag

That makes 3 out of the 5 Microsoft Imagine Cup UK Software Design Challenge competitions have been won by teams from Hull. Go us!

There are some more pictures on my Flickr site.

Cheese Cam

David has just sent me this. Yum.

Twitterified

Interesting. On the day that the papers are talking about how people are stopping blogging I find a new thing which takes the art of blogging to a new level.

The new thing is Twitter. This is kind of "blogging on speed". You post on Twitter what you are doing at regular intervals, short sharp messages that keep all your Twitter friends informed of where you are. I've not yet seen a Twitter post that says "going to the toilet" but I'm sure there is one somewhere.

I can see this as being great for students, and those with more than one friend. You could be continually in touch, a kind of message based digital herd. I'm not convinced that it will be much use for me.  Thinking of something pseudo-witty to say once a day is hard enough. Doing it every twelve minutes would probably cause my brain to melt.

Having said that, TwitterVision, a mashup where you can see posts from people appearing on a map of the world, is compulsive viewing. And I will be posting live reports from the Imagine Cup finals tomorrow and Friday on my Twitter account, it should be perfect for that.

Open Day

We had our final big Admissions Open Day today. We had a monster turnout. That is not that a load of monsters turned out, but that a large number of people, who were definitely not monsters, turned out. If you see what I mean.

Wide angle audience arriving....

Thanks for coming folks. Some of you had traveled a very long way to see us, I hope you found the journey worthwhile. As is usual, we had a draw for a Playstation Portable.

The holder of ticket 17 gets his dues from Dr. Rayner

We have some university open days later in the year, and then in September it all starts again....

An Email from Rob

To: care@sendit.com

Subject: Order Number: xxxx (19th Mar 2007) The Lake House (Blu-Ray)

Hi. I've just received a package from you which is supposed to contain
"The Lake House" on Blu Ray. Instead I've got "Rowan Atkinson in Mr.
Bean - 3 of the original classic episodes: DVD 8247380". It has to be
said that I won't be able to tell much difference, but I'm afraid that
my wife might.......

The order reference on the shipping note was xxxx batch xxxxx

I look forward to hearing from you

Rob Miles

PS3 Purchaser

Hull at 8:00 am this morning

I don't think that we needed to get up early and dash up town. But we did anyway. At 8:00 am there were around 10 people outside the Game shop, but in Virgin, where number one son had placed his order, things were very quiet. So number one son got his machine, and then I got mine. Hint: If you are a student you can get 10% of the machine and any games at the moment at Virgin, if you can find one in stock...

Actually, finding a Playstation 3 in stock does not look like too much of a stretch at the moment. Everywhere we went we saw signs advertising the fact that there are plenty to go around. Whether this is gamer apathy, good production by Sony or the high price of the console remains to be seen, but it does look like anyone who wants a Playstation 3 can just go and buy one.

Then again, the "sold out" phenomenon is not how it has always been, I remember buying a PS1 when it came out and that was certainly not an all night queuing job, I seem to recall getting that a week or so after launch. I guess it all started with the PS2, and everyone now expects demand to outstrip supply or the launch is deemed a failure..

Anyhoo, we got the machines home and fired them up. Mine is plumbed into the big telly and the decent sound system and fits very nicely. It was a bit of a pain to have to endure a twenty minute firmware upgrade before I could play with the games, but the results on MotorStorm were worth the wait. I got three game titles (I've been saving up for a while), the other two being Sega Virtua Tennis (so realistic that in my first game Tim Henman lost) and Resistance: Fall of Man (not played it yet but it has Grimsby in it so it must be great).

I must admit that MotorStorm is so good I've not played anything else much yet. It shows the console off for what it is, a very powerful beast. There are lots of different vehicles on the screen at any one time and they all bounce off the scenery and each other in a very realistic way. If I have one criticism it is that it shares with many other race games the "First to Twelfth" behaviour where slightly misjudging the final corner can take you from a winning position to last in the field as they all tear past you. But then again, this might actually be quite realistic.

The console itself is an impressive piece of kit. It runs very quietly, is immaculately presented and has one or two really neat touches. I loaded a bunch of pictures onto it and it has this very groovy viewer where your shots are dropped onto a tabletop as if they were real prints. I'm pretty much going to get my entire record collection onto the thing, and a goodly number of my photos too. I downloaded the demo of Gran Turismo and things look very pretty. Tonight we watched the Blu-Ray version of Casino Royale and it was awesome, with genuinely jaw dropping quality.

This must be around the best time to get a video game console. There are no bad ones out there. Each of the three has something to commend it. Hard core gamers moving into the next generation can go for the XBOX 360, where its maturity and good range of software pay dividends. Those after a quick fix of sociable good-times can go for the Wii. And those who want something to put under the telly which will serve as a media hub, get them into HD video and with the promise of some genuine innovation in the future can dig deep into their pockets and splash out on a PS3.

Game Fest

Yesterday we had our little games fest. The folks from Hull ComSoc set it up and we had XBOXes, a Wii and a PS3 all getting some hammer. Apparently, although I'm not an expert, 8 player Gears of War is a blast. And you can chop people up with chain saws as well. Of course, I'm too mature to do that kind of thing. That, and I'm pretty sure that I'd be the one in pieces on the floor. I took the camera along and grabbed some snaps.

Everyone seems far too relaxed at the moment. Must be loading...

Anonymous Food

So, I'm sitting in my hotel room feeling peckish. Lacking the energy to go downstairs and actually find some food, I turn to the room service menu. It is very decadent, but the prices are reasonable and the menu inviting, so I ring up and order a sandwich and some chips. "Fifteen minutes" says the man. "Fine" I reply.

Fifteen minutes go by. then another fifteen minutes. No food. We english have a problem with complaining. We hardly ever do. Anyhoo, after 45 minutes hunger gets the better of me and I ring back.

The chap on the other end of the phone assures me that the food is on its way even as we speak. At the end of the call, almost as an aside, he asks "What room are you in?".

The penny drops. When I called the first time I assumed the hotel had one of those fangled things where the phone system tells the receptionist who is calling. The first time I experienced this it was really scary. I was jetlagged in a hotel and at 3:00 am I rang up to ask for a network cable so that I could connect to some people who were as awake as I seemed to be. "Good morning Mr. Miles" said the person at the other end. "Have we met?" I blurted out, before I figured out what was going on. This caused much confusion at the other end, as the poor desk porter tried to figure out why someone would ring them up at 3:00 to find out if they had met them. Anyhoo, I digress.

The first time I called for my food it did not occur to me to tell the chap at the other end where I was. Which gave them a problem.  They had a beef sandwich and a plate of chips and no idea of where to send them. All the could do was wait until I rang back and complained, which with me being english, took a while.

The good news is that the food was excellent.

Traveling At Speed

I'm away again tomorrow for a whistle stop trip to Portugal. I've been invited to give a talk at TechDays07 there, but I don't really have time. So tomorrow I get up at 4:15 and fly to Lisbon. Then on Wed. morning I'm going to get up at 4:15 and fly back. I reckon that my average speed over the next day will be around 100 miles an hour....

Widening my Angles

I've been playing with my wide angle lens attachment that I got in the 'states. This is the thing that I can put on the front of the camera which halves the focal length of the lens, making it into a wide angle so that it can see more. I was wondering what would happen if I got ten or so and put them all on together.

Would I be able to see behind me?

Overheard Conversations

I hate it when I overhear the end of a conversation without hearing the start. Today, in Wilkinson's, I heard someone saying (loudly in case you think I was eavesdropping) "...of course, if you turn it upside down so that it drains out all the water and then let it dry out it should work fine.." I'm just baffled as to what they were taking about.

No Rhyme or Reason

Today is Comic Relief day. This is a bi-annual charity event where people do silly things, like sitting in a bath tub full of beans, for money. I'm not convinced that beans would be good for my complexion, and so I usually give a lecture in rhyme instead. These are great fun, earn a bit of cash, and take ages to write. An therein lies the rub this year. I've simply not had time to put on my poets hat and crank out the verse.  So, for the first time for a while, there is no lecture this year. Very sorry people, maybe next time.

Hull Wins Again

What is it with Hull and winning? Only a few days after we got four teams into the UK finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup Software Design Challenge (something not achieved by any other university, ever - and something we did last year as well) I find that a team of ours has aced the British Computer Society (BCS) Computer Challenge, which took place yesterday in Leeds.

This was a fast paced quiz affair, all "fingers on the buzzers" and "your starter for ten" kind of stuff.

And we won. Congratulations to the team, Mat Steeples, Jamie Ashton, Sam Denison and Jon Stirling. This is the tenth time that we've won the competition in the 21 years that it has been running.

Go Hull.

Zuneified

While I was in San Francisco I bought a gadget. Those of you feigning shock horror expressions can stop right now. The thing I bought was a Zune. I've fancied one for a while, and with the dollar/pound rate the way that it is I reckoned that it would be an excellent deal.

The Zune is Microsoft's answer to the Ipod. I'm not sure about the name, perhaps the plan is to get as far away down the alphabet from Apple, but I could be wrong on this.

Anyhoo, as a device the Zune is very like an Ipod. Slightly more chunky, and with a larger screen for watching videos. It lacks the funky scroll wheel thing, making do with a ring of directional buttons, but these work fine.

The software is based on that from the Portable Media Player, an ill fated device that was launched by Microsoft and a bunch of hardware makers a couple of years ago. Of course, I had one of those too. I bought it to make use of the then shiny Microsoft "Plays For Sure" technology that would let me subscribe to Napster's music service. This is kind of ironic because the new Zune completely ditches that copyright protection and uses a new, exclusive one. If I had actually bought any music from Napster I'd be a pretty annoyed bunny at this point, but fortunately all I'd have to do is switch to the Zune music subscription service and fetch all my content again.

As an aside, I've never, ever, actually bought any music protected by Digital Rights. My philosophy has been that if Robert is going to part with money for something, Robert is going to actually get something for the money. I like the fact that I have a shiny CD in a nice box to fall back on if I ever change computer or player at any time. And if I buy from somewhere like Amazon marketplace I can usually undercut the download price anyway.

So, back to the Zune. I love it. Small, light, portable, great sound and an OK battery life (although it could be better). The Zune on-line music store is like the Napster one, only a million times better (and it works through the university firewall - a major plus). While I was in America I signed up for the 14 day free pass which comes with the device. It allows me to download and play any content I like for a fortnight. I put my home address in the USA as the hotel, which was true at the time.... And therein lies the rub for the moment.

I'm pretty sure that if I try to use the paid service (which is a major bargain compared to the price charged by Napster to UK subscribers) the system will take one look at my english credit card and refuse to play ball. This would be a bit of a shame, but I'm not that bothered as I didn't get the device for the subscription service. And hopefully when Zune launches properly in europe I can sign up then.

Microsoft are working very hard to make the Zune "cool". Making things "cool" is hard. Even someone as cool as what I am appreciates that being cool takes considerable effort. However, they are doing as much as they can. The Zune comes loaded with some very cool content. There are some fascinating artistic bits and bobs that you can download onto it and a whole range of sites offering customised backgrounds.

Whether or not Zune can "out cool" the Ipod remains to be seen. There is talk of big plans involving games and phones and all kinds of stuff. The Zune itself has built in wireless networking, so you can share media with your Zune owning friends (if you have any). It also works with the XBOX 360 as a media source. The hard disk could be bigger, 30GB will not hold a lot of video, but I'm quite happy with that for audio.

When it launches in the UK, as it surely must, it will be well worth a look.

Update on 2007-03-15 21:15 by Rob

I've just plugged the Zune into the XBOX 360.

It just works.

You can find and play any of the media on the device, including photos and videos. Watching music through the visualiser is amazing.

Ebay Idiots

Do I look stupid? Well, perhaps a bit. Maybe after a haircut things will improve. Mind you, Einstein had long hair. But Captain Picard was a slaphead. Confusing.

Anyhoo, some people on Ebay must think I was born yesterday. I love Ebay for buying stuff. From wing mirrors to cameras, I've bought lots of items. However, I've also tried to sell things. And it often ends in tears. I put a lot up last week (part of my PS3 sinking fund) and as usual all the bidding action was in the last two minutes. The price was reasonable, not quite what I was hoping for, but a goodly chunk of that shiny black console that I seem to have an irrational desire for.

Then the buyer revealed that he lived in Italy. Would I mind shipping the item there? Yes I would. Very much. A member with zero feedback who has bid on an item which I had said was only for delivery to the UK. So we switch to the next bidder down. Who reveals that his PayPal account has been disabled. Would I mind a cheque or perhaps a bank transfer? Hmm. Let me think about that for a nanosecond. Yes I would. Since the rest of the bids were below the reserve price (which I thought was very low anyway) that was the end of that. Blarst.

I don't think I'll try again for a while.

Imagine That Again

I'm pretty much exhausted. But I have a 9:15 lecture and so I drag myself into work to impart wisdom to the masses (or at least the first year). After that I had a whole bunch of things to do, but I got pretty much none of them done.

I kept being hassled by Imagine Cup finalists. Last year Hull managed the impressive feat of getting four of our Imagine Cup teams into the 10 selected for the UK final. In case you might think that this was a flash in the pan, we managed to do it again this year. We have got some really terrific teams and I've been giving help on their entries for a while now.

With the posters required for the next phase needing to be sorted by the middle of next week there were a lot of people with loads of questions. I think I've managed to sort things out, in that people know the general thrust of what they are going to present and say.

I'm going to take a look at some of the posters on Wednesday. Should be interesting. We are going to get a "battle bus" booked as we did last time, and hopefully take Reading by storm again. Last year all the top three winning teams were from Hull, I don't think that we'll manage to equal that feat, but I'd love to see one team in the top three at the final. And I reckon that we have got a pretty good chance too. Stay tuned for pictures and news as it happens.