Inspiration on the Road

Today we had Ed Dunhill and Ben Coley from Microsoft over to see us as part of the Microsoft Inspiration tour. These guys work hard. A five hour drive to Hull, a three hour presentation, and a five hour drive on to the next gig. Tough stuff.

Ed and Ben in the Large (lecture theatre)

Some of the students limbering up

Keeping your audience watching....

The talks, about SilverLight, XNA, Embedded Development and why everyone should enter the Imagine Cup this year, were excellent, despite some comings and goings from students who had to head for timetabled lectures.

If you are at a college or uni. and you haven't got these two coming round to visit, you are missing out. If you check on the web site, I think they have a few slots free next year.

If you were at the talk and want to find out more about the stuff they showed off the best place to look is in Ed's blog, which you can find here.

How to turn a laptop into a paperweight

Lose the power supply.

I've just spent the thick end of an hour (and I mean the very thick end) looking for a little black box which is not worth a lot on its own, but given the fact that it has the right funny shaped plug and strange voltage output makes my little UMPC laptop worth having. I found it in the last place I looked.

Wish I'd looked there first.

Insomniac Dreams

I keep having this dream where I'm lying awake, trying to get to sleep.

Or at least, I think am.

Second Worst Place To Live in Britain

Some idiot Channel 4 program has just published a survey that makes out that Hull is the second worst place to live in Britain. This morning I thought I'd take a few pictures of the horrible place where I live.

The Spurn Point light ship as was. You can go round it if you like.

Princes Quay shopping centre

Posh boat

Awful place, isn't it.

Kewl bridge

Town Centre

Go Hull.

A Sad Moment

All good things must come to an end, so they say. At the end of the week we turn off our old departmental forums. I set them up many years ago and they have been a roaring success. Many students have signed up for them and some have stuck around for years after they officially left Hull, passing on help to undergraduates. Some of the debates have been truly hilarious, and others very thought provoking.

However, with a move to a more unified and managed set of resources we are finally turning off the old forums and moving on to our new shiny system. I'm sure that they will will soon be hosting the same level of discussion, debate and odd bit of stupidity that made our old forums so much fun.

But I'll still miss the original system....

How to succeed at Lan Parties

1. Turn up late.
2. Bring your own game.
3. Play your game until it looks like you might lose.
4. Leave.

It worked for me. Hull ComSoc had a lan party today. They had Halo 3, Quake, Wii Tennis, Guitar Hero, in fact all kinds of games. I took along my copy of Virtua Tennis for the PS/3 and played a few games, which was nice. I kept carefully away from all the games I was less good at (i.e. everything else) and managed to make sure I didn't lose. Wonderful. And you don't have "friendly fire" in tennis. I did take the camera though, and grabbed some snaps.

Halo 3 multiplayer semi final. Tight stuff.

A tense moment in the final

Mission Control

Magic spread a bit thin

I saw this today up town. "Experience the Magic of Light" eh? All together - "It's just a flashlight".

They don't seem to have sold many.....

Ancient History

Whilst digging around on my hard disk for some files I came across the notes I wrote for my Workstation Technology course in 1995. I thought it might be fun to pdf them and put them on this site. You can find them here. It is interesting to read them and see how much has changed.

And how much hasn't...

And just to prove that I'm still working in the present, I've put up another chapter in the XNA book.

With Friends Like These....

From the TV listings in today's paper:

10:15 BBC 1 Medium Allison is upset to discover that her new friend Debra is to be the serial killer's next victim....

I suppose it completely ruins plans for her next dinner party.

Open For Business

We had our first University Open Day of the new session today. I did my bit, followed by John. We had a great audience, and, as usual, I took a picture...

Thanks for coming, I hope you found it worthwhile

I told my "Favourite Joke In All The World" again. I think I'm starting to wear it out....

End of Week 2

The first couple of weeks of a session are always pretty exhausting. Getting to know a new group of students (who are all a great bunch by the way), bedding in new courses and writing new material does seem to take it out of me a bit. Not to mention trips to Grimsby with a robot dog and trying to finish chapter 7.

This evening I sat in the car wondering what this big round hoop of plastic was doing in front of me. Then I remembered that it was the steering wheel, and it was time to drive home.

STEM Fun

Just had a great time at a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) careers fair in Grimsby. Somewhat exhausting, as I was presenting continuously from around 6:00 to 8:10 this evening, but great fun. Of course, Digby the robot dog stole the show as usual...

The audiences were all great and I took a few pictures of them.

Click on the pictures for a larger versions on Flickr.

Excel Prize Competition

I don't use spreadsheets very much, but every year we have to produce a demonstrators timetable, and Excel is how we do it. I've got a very clever spreadsheet that lets you enter things and automatically highlights cells for the demonstrators, counts their loading and all sorts. I'm quite proud of it.

It uses a named range, called Times, which has all the timeslots in it. This year we have added modules and moved things around, and now the named range does not reflect the part of the spreadsheet that I want it to.

And nothing in Excel 97 would seem to let me change this.

The help, like always, tells me in mind numbing detail how to do things which are either too simple for words or too complex for me to ever want to use. I have that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that there is a very easy way to do this (in fact I even remember doing it once many years ago) but I don't know what it is.

Very frustrating.

So, I turn to you, dear reader. You have already shown that you are highly intelligent just by the kind of blogs you read (i.e. this one). So prove this by letting me know how to do this "simple" thing. First answer that works wins a Mars Bar.

Update on 2007-10-03 18:25 by Rob

I really must be careful posting when I'm cross. I meant Office 2007 rather than 97. And I must thank Andy (and the enigmatic Me) for providing the answer, which turns out to be as simple as I suspected it might be.

Another Day Another Party

today it was the turn of the post grads to have their party. We had another, eerily similar quiz and more games. Great fun.

The winners

Second place

And finally third  place.

We had all  kinds of fun with the toys again, and everyone went away happy.

Book now for next year.....

Sometimes Everything Breaks

I had all kinds of plans for today. I was going to record my lectures using Camtasia and post them on our intranet for an adoring public. Unfortunately fate had other plans.

Even after testing it still turns out that things can break. And then some. Vista shut down the tablet. Three times. Even though I was in the middle of a presentation. Of course, my plugging in the tablet power supply and neglecting to turn it on may have had something to do with this. My remote mouse failed to control Powerpoint, even though it worked with everything else. The presentation recordings were interrupted and out of sync. And to make matters even worse, they had my voice on them. Not good.

I'm going to try again, of course, but I think this serves as a lesson to us all that even if you try to do everything right, it can still all go wrong.

For the love of Mars bars

Today we had our first practical session. As part of the work I thought it might be a larf to ask the class to email me with the answer to a simple debugging question. This is the first ever lab for these folks, and so I thought not many would get in touch. I offered  a prize of a Mars bar for the first correct answer.

Lots of people like Mars bars it seems. Loads of responses. I've just spent around an hour going through and sending "Right but too late" messages.

I'm wondering about getting our labs sponsored by Mars...

First Year Welcome Party

Qn: "What is the combined age of the "Chuckle Brothers"?

Ans: - you'd know if you'd been at our First Year party...

We had a quiz, and Guitar Hero, and a PS3, and Wii Tennis, and 8 player Halo 3, and free drinks and food, and, and, and.....

And it was good.

Many thanks to Warren for bankrolling the operation and Adam, Simon, Dan, Zoe, Sam, Helen, Joan and Amanda for helping make things go with a swing (and apologies if I've missed anyone out). I took a camera (some of our students have got some amazing cameras - we must sort out a Flickr group for pictures) and took some happy snaps.

Full Swing

What half the room does when you shout "smile"

What the other half does..

These folks came first in the Quiz

These came second

And these won the, er, "special" prize

Big riffs. Sam found this amazing disco sound system that we ran Guitar Hero through. And dig those groovy lights on the pillars...

On the left we have Wii Tenis and PS3 Motorstorm, in the middle we have Guitar Hero and on the right, for your pleasure, we have 8 player Halo 3.

It was a great night. Hopefully more (and perhaps less grainy) pictures will surface. I'll put them on Flickr if they do..

Halo 3 Hits Hull

We've been expecting you....

After last night's queuing to get hold of a Legendary Halo 3 pack for number one son (sorted, and what huge box) I set up a 360 on our big plasma screen for a select gathering to have a play. It looks good. Very good. I've not played myself yet, and I had loads of work planned for this evening but......

Never Buy Clothes Un-supervised

As part of my drive towards greater sartorial elegance I was pleased to discover that "The Only Shop Where Rob Can Buy Clothes That Fit"(tm) was having a "three for two" deal on shirts at their new web site.

I was very proud of the way that I actually went Internet clothes shopping with a spring in my digital step, as it were, and ordered up three (including a rather racy one with red stripes).

I told number one wife about my cleverness at teatime.

"I hope they are not all cotton" she said. "If they are, they'll be swines to iron, and I'll make you do it".

Hmm. Oh well. They arrive in a couple of days. Here's hoping for a bit of polyester goodness..

Halo House

In keeping with the much anticipated launch of Halo 3 real soon, tonight I saw a house with "Master Chief" windows.

This is an original, completely unretouched picture. And I've got the RAW file from the camera to prove it. Spooky eh?

Update on 2007-09-25 08:54 by Rob

Oh, and I've just discovered that Microsoft have decided not to release a version of the game where the Master Chief joins the navy. It was going to be called "Halo Sailor".