Test the Nation.

The BBC are doing one of their programs where you can test your intelligence. It stars Anne Robinson.  I'm not watching it.

I think that counts as a pass.

Always Something Wrong

I remembered to bring my lunch to work today. But I forgot my glasses.

I would worry about these oversights being due to my advanced age if it was not for the fact that I've been doing stupid things like this for the last forty years.

Dental Imagination

Went for a check up at the dentist this afternoon. It was slightly enlivened by the fact that I needed to have a couple of X-Rays. And one of them didn't work. So they had to ask me in to take another. The good news is that the second one turned out fine. The bad news is that I have an overactive imagination:

Dental Nurse: "So there's no doubt at all then?"
Dentist: "I'm afraid not. The second X-Ray was quite conclusive."
Dental Nurse: (shudder)"So, how long before it breaks out of his tooth and eats his brain?"
Dentist:"A month, maybe two if he's lucky."
Dental Nurse: (looking over at me in the waiting room, where I'm trying to look relaxed whilst reading a two year old copy of "Top Gear" magazine) "But he seems so young...."
Dentist:"It's better he doesn't know..."

Wrong Shoes Equals No Lunch

I always put my lunch bag next to my shoes each morning. That way I don't forget it and end up with nothing to eat. Today I decided to wear a different pair of shoes. Which means I'm going on an impromptu diet...

Antique Bondery

We got off the boat at 8:30 this morning. That's the only snag with the mini-cruise, it ends at a most peculiar time. Anyhoo, we got some almond croissants on the way home (breakfast of champions) and had a most restful day.

In the afternoon we went out to Beverley and had a look in the antiques centre there. If you ever go to the town you must take a look. It is a bit like a mini-museum where you can buy stuff. Although it is rather upsetting to find things that you had as a kid being sold of as antiques.

They had a James Bond Goldfinger Aston Martin, in its original box. I had one of those. It came with a henchman that you could shoot out of the roof using the cars ejector seat. Needless to say, my henchman vanished quite soon after I got the toy. The one in the museum was not only as shiny as new, but it also had henchman and everything. Mind you, you've got to feel something for a kid who got a toy like that and then doesn't seem to have played with it. I ended up using mine to see how far I could flick a Malteser with the ejector seat roof. Great stuff.

Promiscuity in Amsterdam

After rising bright and early we set off from Europort to the city. I don't know Amsterdam very well and there were some places I wanted to visit. Fortunately I had a plan.

I was going to use my Nokia 770 (a neat little web-terminal thing that I bought cheap a week or so ago) and its matching sat-nav, which was fully loaded with Netherlands maps and had all my destinations carefully favourited. All I had to do was kick the thing into life when we arrived and never be lost. Well, that was the plan.

On the bus as we approached the city I fired up the 770 and the GPS device. Because of the rather stupid software it seems you have to pair the GPS device and the 770 each time you try to use it. On first attempt the navigation software found a Bluetooth device called "Dave" and then crashed. After a reset, and with the faint inklings of foreboding I tried again. This time I found a veritable plethora of Bluetooth partners who all wanted to talk to me. One was called "Land Rover". I looked out of the bus window and sure enough, there it was in the traffic alongside us. Of course the GPS device was nowhere to be found.

By now we had arrived at our dropping off point. My plan was to add this as a favourite so we could easily find our way back to the bus, but things were not going well. The GPS device finally paired with the 770 and told me I was standing in a canal before losing the signal. Not good.

I tried to find my favourites and set the destination, but of course I couldn't see the screen in daylight and the stylus was a pain to use. By now the patience of number one wife was starting to fray a bit. We started walking in order to try and get a better signal and now the direction indicate pointed back the way we'd come and it started to rain on the screen. So that was game over for Mr. Satnav. As I put the whole thing back in my pocket I heard a muffed "At the next intersection turn left.." We bought a map (price 2.5 euros) and used that very successfully for the rest of the day.

The good news is that the GPS device happily paired with my Smartphone and works a treat with Live Search (but I was not going to pay roaming GPRS prices to find my way around Amsterdam).

I'm going to upgrade the Nokia software first chance I get, with a bit of luck this should improve things.

Of course, I'd taken the cameras.

Early morning ships

Actually, these are made of wood

satnav, pah!

Beer marketing with horses

Canal mural

Multi-storey bike park

Container stacking

Industrial Skyline

Down the decks

There are more pictures on Flickr.

Update on 2007-08-22 08:46 by Rob

I think I may have been a bit harsh on the 770 SatNav. Everything happened in the order I described, but I don't think you have to do the pairing thing every time. I tried it again and it just worked.

Testing with Live Search navigation on the Smartphone has left me thinking that for foot navigation a GPS is not as good as for car. In a car the software knows that you are on a road, and can make deductions using direction of movement about where you are.  The fact that you are moving at speed probably helps remove some of the noise from the location values. On foot things get a lot more tricky, particularly if there are buildings around which block the signal.  Having said all that, if I go anywhere in the UK I will now take the GPS puck along with the Smartphone, and probably the 770 as well.

Seoul Moments - Calculator Haggling

When you have no common language, but you want to agree on a number, a calculator is a very useful device. Having decided on a suitable present for number one wife it was all down to the price. The lady in the shop smiled, bowed, entered a number on a big calculator and handed it to me.

I looked down, clearly I now had to do something to move the situation forward. A smaller number seemed like a plan. I examined the calculator carefully. It had clearly been involved in a lot of haggling. Several of the keys had worn so that they no longer had any markings on. Feeling that I had to do something, I stabbed at some keys, typed in some digits and handed it back. The woman's eyes widened in surprise, apparently I had just offered her the entire gross national product of Korea for a necklace and a bracelet. The calculator was handed back to me.

By now I reckoned I was gaining control of the situation, having worked out how to clear the display by the simple process of pressing all the unmarked buttons until I got a zero. I entered a number only slightly larger than the original one, handed over a wad of notes and made it out onto the street with my purchase.

Radio A Levels

Went up town first thing today to do a paper review for Radio Humberside. We had a chat about the UK A-Level results, which are out today. Apparently everyone has done better than ever, and this is a national scandal. Although if everyone was doing worse, that would be a national scandal too. And if everything stayed exactly the same, that would be regarded as deeply suspicious because someone would obviously be fiddling the results....

I've seen modern A-Levels at first hand. I've know the amount of work that kids have to put in to get through them. All I would say is kudos to anyone who has got good grades, I hope they take you where you want to go.

Early morning Hull. Don't you wish you lived in a place that looked like this?

The BBC building

Raw Power

My biggish camera can take pictures in RAW format. This means that rather than compressing and processing the image data when it takes a picture, the camera simply dumps the output of the photo sensor into a file. It results in rather large files (around 14Mb in my case) for each picture but it does represent the epitome of quality, as you get all the data from the picture. It also means that you can do things like white balance compensation (making sure that things don't look yellow, or blue or whatever) after taking the picture, rather than at the time.

I was taking pictures of Seoul at night, and unsure about the white balance, so I took a few RAW pictures as well. The bad news was that when I got home, I now had to convert them into proper images. Fuji, who made my camera, supply a truly horrid set of programs to do this. They don't work very well on Vista, and I've lost the disks, so I thought I was stuffed. Until I found this.

These folks have written an image decoder for Finepix cameras that does everything I want. It is free and it works. If you want to play with RAW images and get the maximum quality from your camera, you should download the program and have a play.

Raw Seoul

Back from Planet Imagine Cup

In a previous post I mentioned "Planet Imagine Cup". I think that is the best way to regard it. When you go to the finals you enter a strange, parallel universe where everything is posh, the people are all interested in computers and what you are doing with them, living is free and someone makes your bed for you each day.

This means that returning home requires some small amount of adjustment. Fancy having to close your curtains by hand.

Everyone I've spoken to on the planet wants to go back again next year. For us in the UK this is especially interesting, as the world finals are in Paris in 2008. So no nasty jetlag or 25 hour journeys. And if the French know anything, it is how to have a good time....

The theme for the competition next year is "imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment." There are no less than 9 competition strands, including for the first time a game development one. Find out more here.

Profitable Lies

Today was the say that we had to leave "Planet Imagine Cup" and return to real life. Many thanks to Microsoft for setting up and running this amazing competition.

We got to the airport at just the right time. Found the just the right queue for just the right flight. And were told that the plane was just full. Apparently Air France use this novel technique where they sell more tickets than there are seats on the plane, on the rather strange theory that there are people out there who would spend one and a half thousand pounds on a journey and then not turn up to take it.

The charming lady at the desk told us that this would mean that either:

1. We would have to travel on a different plane and arrive later (bad)
2. We would travel on the same plane, but in business class (very good)

At the time of telling, the story sounded like a good deal. All we had to do was not make a fuss and return in forty minutes to find out which of the two options were ours. So we went off in search of breakfast and returned all hopeful to find out if it was smoked salmon and posh seats all the way back.

It was not. It was a different flight and later arrivals. By now of course it was impossible to change things, but we were offered some cash compensation and a chance to use the business lounge while we waited for our later plane.

I had the feeling that we had just been "handled" and that the mythical business class upgrade was exactly that. Never mind though, there was still the comfy chairs and free WIFI at the airport to look forward to, to say nothing of the wodge of euros that would soon be ours. Except they wouldn't let us into the lounge...

After a bit of a fight, we got in, connected to the WIFI, had a free drink and a bun and waited for our flight. We were considerably cheered when one of the VIP judges turned out to be on our flight too. If it's OK for him, it's fine for us.

We ended up using Air Korea, who provided excellent customer service and the best range of on-flight entertainment I've ever seen on a plane (even though I watched "Wild Hoggs", which I now know is a move best avoided). And I had leg room.

We got in precisely ten minutes later than our original flight and two of us managed to get our compensation euros as well (although because of another piece of daftness from "La Premiere Airline Francais" one of our party missed out on the cash).

Then it was a mad dash across town to miss the next train back. I finally got into the house at 11:15 after 25 hours traveling. I think I'll sleep tonight..

Seoul Shopping

I feel rather bad about this. Rather than attend the World Fair part of the Imagine Cup awards I instead snuck out and took a trip round Seoul. I'd checked that I wouldn't be needed for anything, and it is rather unlikely that I will get to this wonderful city again in a long while, so it was into a taxi and off to the shopping district.

Taxis in Seoul are ace. They are very inexpensive and very efficient. Some of their drivers can speak English too, which is nice. And they have air conditioning, which is all important.

So, all we had was two bits of paper. One had the name of the shopping district written on it, and the other had the name of the hotel written on it. Both of them contained the only Korean language that we had on us. But at no point did this seem a problem. The sun was out, the people were friendly, and away we went. Of course I had both cameras, and of course I took loads of pictures. Most of them will be up on Flickr later, for now here are a few choice snaps.

We found this little market square area. This is the layout of the stalls.

Then we found ourselves in a video game arcade. This was tucked away in a side street. Even so there were plenty of machines.

Single player

This guy was seriously good

Draw your picture, take a call. That's multi-skilled...

The old and the new

Side street

After spending a few hours happily wandering around and steadily accumulating bits and bobs we found another taxi, gave the driver the other piece of paper and headed back to the hotel. I've got some pictures of the trip, which will appear later.

By the time we got back it was pretty dark, but the air was clear and so it was time to take some night views.

The view from the 11th floor

...and another.

Seoul is wonderful. If you get the chance to go, just go. And take me along too...

Update on 2007-08-13 07:51 by Rob

I've been thinking about this post. I'm wondering if it makes me seem more brave/stupid than I actually am. We did go off without much backup, but we had made sure that people back at the hotel knew where we were going and when we were due back. We also made sure that all the taxis that we took were proper ones, stayed in sight of each other and never strayed too far off the main streets.  My impression is that Seoul is no more dangerous than any big city, but that is not a reason for taking undue chances.

The Power of W

I'd never heard of W hotels before I came to Korea. I have now. This place is amazing. I could (and probably will) devote an entire post to my room. I've no idea how I managed to merit such lavish accommodation, but since it will probably never happen again, I'm making the most of it.

On the way to breakfast you pass this "wooden video wall". A camera in the middle grabs a video frame which is then used to orient thousands of little wooden blocks to show the picture. It does work, and the blocks make a super trickling noise as people walk past and the picture changes. I want to build one.

This is the view from the hotel restaurant. I suspect it looks even better by night. Say hello to Dennis and Nannette.

These are made of logs which have been sliced and fitted together to make art. Amazing.

Sometimes it feels like you've strayed onto the set of a sixties spy movie.

The lift has these amazing hanging lights. They are red when you are going down....

...and green when you are going up.

I'm sure I could get tired of living here. Maybe in 100 years.

Imagine Cup Top Six Rock the House

Today was the day that the top six contestants in the Imagine Cup Software Development Challenge got to strut their stuff in front of hundreds of students, a bunch of VIP judges and press from all around the world.

And by gum they were good. I was very pleased that a few of the teams that I thought were excellent had made it through to the final. Frankly, I wish they could all get first prize.

Rogerio gets things going

They guy in front of me was certainly on message.....

All the top teams at the end of the auditorium.

Very well done people. Your lives just changed a little bit....

Culture vs Gadgets

After lunch, and an ice cream, we set off on the next stage of our trip, which was a cruise on the Han river.

All aboard

Apartments

The captain, looking cool in white gloves

This bridge has a name, but I've forgotten it
Do I get any marks for composition?

Once we got off the boat we headed for a market street.

The pastel umbrellas are Imagine Cup students. Bless.

At this point I'm ashamed to say that I deviated a little from the enlightened path of culture when someone mentioned leaving the tour and heading for the electronics district. I'm afraid that I weakened and we headed off for the nearest subway station.

Route Planning

Hmm. Or we could just buy at the window...

Thank heavens I didn't pack my heels..

Not our train.

Tube travel

branded handrail

Now this is what I call a subway station

On the way to the mart

Mobile phones anyone?

Pink is the new black

Component heaven

Gadget happy team

People in Seoul are very obliging. I got the camera out and the guy in the booth instantly struck a pose.

Indeed it is

There is a Marks and Spencer coming soon...

Obligatory taxi shot

... and when we arrived

We found this amazing Italian place for tea. With the most wonderful artwork on the walls.

..and the calzone was wonderful too

Finally we got a taxi back to the hotel (taxis are amazing value here) and staggered into bed.

Greetings from the Future

It is now Wednesday morning. Except that it isn't where you are reading this. Probably. Because of the time difference thingy I find that I'm in tomorrow, whereas the readers of this might blog not be. Until you  catch up of course.

Very confusing, and yet somehow appropriate for Korea. I've had time to take a few happy snaps around the place.

Korean ganja fizzy grape juice.....

...with Korean ingredients (I wonder which one is sugar?)

the longest bar in South Korea. So they say.

Future phone, and a more traditional one

What we are here for

We are going out today (or is that tomorrow) for some culture. I hope that too much doesn't rub off on me. I'll post some more pictures from the future later.

Imagine Cup Update

Korea is an amazing place. I know we are getting 90% posh hotel and 10% Korea, but it is still amazing. Tomorrow we take a break from the competition and go for a look around Seoul, so that will be a chance to try and see what the real place is like.

For me, formal involvement in the Imagine Cup 2007 is pretty much over. Today, after a very intense but hugely enjoyable set of judging rounds I've completed my duties. In all I've sat through 22 team presentations, and I've enjoyed every one. I've a whole bunch of comments for each team and I plan to go round and try to have a chat with each at the World Fair at the end of the week.

Sadly,"The Seedlings" are also out of the competition. I've not seen their final presentation but I do know how hard they have worked and how much they put into their entry. Very well done guys for getting this far. It is a perhaps a bit of a cliche to say that "Nobody leaves the competition empty handed" but, in terms of the value of the experience and the way that having taken part in will change their lives, I reckon that for the Imagine Cup it is definitely true.

"The Seedlings" - Master of Complications all

I've got a garden shed full of respect for you guys, and your mentor from Black Marble, Robert Hogg. (You must come round and get it soon - I can't reach the lawn mower).

Here Comes the Judge

First day of judging today. I've watched 9 presentations in the Software Development category of the Imagine Cup. Wonderful stuff. So many keen people with the nerve to stand up in front of an audience and make their pitch.

I think I get involved with these things as a kind of assurance. I want to be able to convince myself that the future is in capable hands. Well, on today's evidence it is. Well done people.

I was a bit nervous, since I've never judged at one of these events before. Fortunately, thanks to detailed briefing, being in pool with a bunch of great judges and the fact that I've had a bit of a practice at this kind of thing in my time at Hull it all went swimmingly.

If you want to pick up some presentation tips you can find some words of wisdom here. 

Jetlagged Software

I'm trying a new trick to deal with jetlag. The name of the game is "get enough sleep to stay sane". This means that if I find myself wide awake at, say 2:00 am in the morning, the trick is to go with the flow, work on something for a little while and then go back to bed.

Snag is, this means that I need something to do in the time. So I've decided to start writing silly software in this situation. I've written a daft little application that I'm now using in Korea on the wonderful Smartphone (which gives me another advantage for the device - if I find something I need to make it do, I can just write a program).

You can find out more here.

Note: I nearly bought "jetlaggedsoftware.com" to go with the product but in the end I backed off. Perhaps I'm (gulp) growing up....

Boggled

Number one daughter got me an uber-Boggle for my birthday. It does 5x5 puzzles. Wonderful.

How many words can you make?