Science Graduation Ceremony

Today I did my final routine for this set of ceremonies. These were some students from our department, who I'd actually taught, which was nice. As a celebration I took the big camera and the fancy lens and tried to get a photograph of everyone at once. The light could have been better, but the results do seem to be recognisable. Although I can't find myself in the pictures anywhere....

Front of house graduands

Stage graduands

Marshal's eye view of the Vice Chancellors speech

After the ceremony

The weather was a bit dull and blustery, but a good time was had by all.

There are a few more pictures on my Flickr Account. Click on any of the above images to go there.

Degrees of Success

I was Graduands Marshal at three degree ceremonies today. Wore the hat, did the intro and got everyone down and into the right place. Great fun, if hard work. All the audiences were terrific and everyone played their part just right, even the nervous graduands who were all splendid. Well done to you all. I'm doing my final intro tomorrow for our Computer Science students, which will be quite an occasion. I might even try out a new joke...

We only had one Honorary Graduate, but he was great. Sir Michael Alan Willcocks, KCB accepted his degree with an excellent and self deprecating speech. Most speakers at degree ceremonies try to pass on some wisdom to the audience, and Sir Michael was no exception. He said something which I think is actually excellent advice. He said that if you have a problem, rather than worrying about it you should try to do something about it. If you can't do anything about it, it is not a problem - it is a fact.

Evil Exam Invigilation

This morning found me performing an unexpected Exam invigilation in the Sports Centre. I was down as reserve invigilator and when someone didn't turn up I had greatness thrust upon me. I wasn't that keen to be honest, until I saw the content of the paper I was invigilating, which had the wonderful title of "Evil". Thinking I might be good at evil, since I practice a lot at home apparently, I had a look at the questions. They were very thought provoking and I quite fancied having a go at them. The last one was "Is evil art?". Profound stuff.

Then tonight it was down to the pub for the first Preston Foster Appreciation Society meeting in a long while. A great time was had which, to be honest, was not very profound. For some reason I found the following very funny.

"I was feeling a little under the weather last week, so I went to the doctor to find out what it might be. He told me it was raining."

Perhaps you had to be there.

News at Ten

ITV have brought back News at Ten, which used to be an institution in our house when I was younger. It was usually the cue for my sister and I to have an argument about whose turn it was to make the supper.

I miss those days.

Anyway, pop quiz question with no prize.

"What links News at Ten with Dr. Who?"

Update on 2008-01-17 19:44 by Rob

Sigh. Nobody knows anything these days (or perhaps they are too shy to post, or admit they know).

The link is that the theme music for both programmes was written by the same person, Ron Grainer,

Rob and Jon in Games TM

One of our students (thanks Tom) sent me an email about an article in the issue 65 of Games TM, a gaming magazine. Some time ago Jon Purdy and I had a phone call from one of their writers and it seems our remarks have now made their way into print. They are on page 24, in the middle of a very good article called "Breaking In", about how to get into the games programming business. I'd completely forgotten about the interview, but it is very nice to see myself quoted like this.

The whole magazine is a good read actually. They have always had a really good retro section and I've always found their game reviews to be pretty much spot on.

Back at Work

Back to work today. It was as if the last couple of weeks had never happened.  I'm now sitting in my office, with a pile of reports to go through and list of things to sort out which is as long as my arm (and I've got quite long arms).

Good thing I like my job.

Eating Tips from Rob

Some folk swear by French cooking. Others prefer Italian. Then there are those who expound the virtues of "Fusion", which is a mix of everything. As for me, my favourite is "Free Cuisine", where somebody else pays.

Dad took us all out for a meal today, and it was very nice and much appreciated. We went here and the food was great.

..just think how much I've saved

Went shopping for clothes today. Went very well, got a couple of jackets and some jeans It might not seem much to you, but I'm only able to buy clothes a couple of times a year and this was one of them. I'm not telling you how much I spent, but I saved loads...

The weather was kind of interesting and wintry. Asked number one son to poke the camera out of the car window during the journey.

So he did.

The first shot he took

True Grit

Not quite an oil painting, but it could be..

As could this...

Swiss Army Explosive

The motorway just down the road from us might have to be closed soon because someone out with a metal detector discovered a large piece of unexploded second world war hardware buried in a field. The local news said that it was a "100 pound general purpose bomb". I'm wondering if this means that you could also use it as a can opener and corkscrew etc.

A Foolish Consistency....

Number one son is very confused about the way that I insist on producing a blog post every day. Even though sometimes there are intervals when nothing appears and the posts are obviously made retrospectively. Well, I don't care about any of this. Obviously.

So, that's Sunday sorted...

Party and Fan Man

Went to a party today. We had our "office do" at Fudge in Hull. Very nice it was too. Great food, great company, great times.

And no photographs. (I forgot).

Then it was back to Paul's, where he strapped a propeller on his back and tried not to fly around his garden. No. Really. Paul is a recent convert to paragliding, having just helped to create the world's first paraglider simulator. He wanted to show us his new rig and was offering drinks and sweeties, so we were all round there like a shot. So it was that, drinks in hand, we watched as he fired up his machine and tried to use it to blow cast iron garden furniture around. Now this I did get a picture of.

Fan man

When Paul bought his house, it came with a collection of plates. Including this one.

I'm not sure if it is dishwasher safe, but it does have a unique style.

After the party we wandered back to the office for some gaming. I had to zoom off early and do some other bits and bobs, but I did manage to win at Wii tennis (although Warren beat me at Guitar Hero).

Deadly Toasters

Never had much luck with toasters. The old one repeatedly tried to kill me, and the new one doesn't work at all. Ages ago we bought a shiny toaster, mainly because the picture on the box had a funny misprint. It worked fine, but it wouldn't give us the toast back. Kind of a pop-down design. It was practically begging me to insert a pointy, preferably metal, instrument into its innards to try and prise the hot bread out of its steely grip. Instead I used to turn it upside down and shake it, which spread crumbs around the kitchen and nearly set fire to the base, what with heat rising the way it does.

So on Saturday we bought a new set of toaster and kettle. The toaster has three buttons  and lights, a big dial and comes with a "User Manual". But if doesn't work. Of course by the time we got round to testing it we'd thrown away all the boxes and packaging, so I'm going to have to go down to Tesco armed only with a receipt and an aggrieved manner. No fair. I like toast.

What Can't You Fix with Cable Ties?

Some aspects of life seem to have an irresistible attraction to me. Take car window winders for example. I seem to be acquiring considerable familiarity with the darned things, mainly because the cars that I own have windows that go down. But not up.

Thus it was with the Scenic, and now car of number one wife has the same problem. My first solution,a length of duct tape over the gap was not entirely successful, and definitely not elegant, so today it was out with the big spanners and into the fray.

Last time I tried to take the door of the car to pieces it won. I was so concerned about damaging the thing that I gave up and got out the sticky tape. But this time it was different. I had no such qualms. Truly I was a man beyond fear. Although I didn't want to break any fingernails.

There is something a bit embarrassing about forcing something off with a hammer and chisel and then finding that there is a perfectly simple, and really neat, trick to removal. But there you are. I won.

Anyhoo, once I had the thing to bits the problem was obvious. The car maker had sent a plastic boy to do a man's job. The most important component, the link between slide and window, was a bit of bent, and now broken, plastic slide. Ho hum. Time for a really subtle and cunning invisible mend. As I went to get a bit of wood to prop the window up I mentioned the problem to Dave next door.

"I'll just be a minute" he said.

He came back with some jumbo cable ties, linked slide and window and presto. Fixed. What a guy.

Audience Boosting

Apparently, according to research posted on the Internet (so it must be true),  a blog post which expresses deeply held personal beliefs and opinions actually gets more comments and interest than one which just conveys information.

I've been looking through my last posts and decided that they don't actually do either. So, with all this in mind here goes:

"I don't like broccoli very much"

A Day of Pong

Just had a great day.

Marking.

I've been working my way around the lab looking at programs that have been written for our first year C# course. All the students have to present their programs and I've seen some great work. I love it when people come up with ideas I wouldn't have thought of and then get them to work. The name of the game, quite literally, was to write a Pong implementation to run in the console window of the PC. Next semester, if they want, students can get the code onto a real console, when we convert the game to XNA for the Xbox.

Everyone I saw had a fully working version, some with sound, computer players, variable speed, the works. And many of the people that I saw only started programming in September. Great stuff.

I'm in the lab tomorrow too. Lucky me.

Selling at the speed of eBay

I think I've finally figured out how to sell things on eBay. Previously I've had real problems, with items hanging around for ever and then being bought by people from far away places with no Paypal. Not good.

Last night I put a couple of things up for sale and I tried a different technique. I just checked to see how much the last couple of identical items had gone for and then placed my items with "Buy it Now" prices five pounds or so less than these figures. Both items were sold by the morning, so it seems to work. Furthermore, because I've used Buy It Now it seems that buyers "Pay for it Now" which means that you aren't hanging around waiting for the money before you can ship the items.

Sunday in Dublin

The hotel had some really posh flowers

Sunday finds me in Dublin, for the XNA European tour. This evening I met up with the tour team, who face the enticing prospect of seven European cities in as many days. Charles and Dave from the XNA group were amazingly chipper, despite having arrived only today and being deep in jetlag country. We had a splendid meal out and talked technical and non-technical (including my delivery of the "Orange for a head" joke - which probably represented the low point of the proceedings).

I'm just around for the Dublin event, I'm giving a couple of sessions tomorrow. Should be fun.

Computers Just Know When to Break

I'm just trying to get the last part of "the other book" finished at the moment. So of course this would be a good time for my word processor to break. Suddenly Word 2007 wouldn't start. When it did run, after a wait for ages, it just sat there grinning at me. If I tried to do anything it froze up again.

Of course the first question I could ask is "How does it know I'm under pressure here?", but I long ago stopped worrying about this. Computer systems just know. Many years ago, when I was writing lots of presentations, my copy of Powerpoint developed the ability to crash whenever I thought "I really need to save now". It did this three times in a row.

I've had so much experience of things failing just when it would be most inconvenient that I'm now convinced that computers just know when to put the boot in.

After some serious digging around, and a near re-install, I found out the cause of my Word problem. I use a network printer at work which I have set as the default printer (which is kind of sensible, since it is where I do most of my printing). This means that Word looks for it when it starts up. Of course the printer can't be found on my network at home, so Word just sulks for ten minutes and then gives up the ghost.

At tip. If you have the same problem, just change the default printer on your PC to one that is always there (for example the document writer) and the problem goes away.

I was feeling very smug this morning when I figured that out and fixed it, and reckoned that I'd got one up on the universe.

Then my monitor abruptly stopped working....

Easy Money

I won 10p yesterday. I had a bet in a lecture that:

i=0;

j = ++i;

- would set j to 1. (it does, because the increment is done before the assignment). Someone didn't agree, a bet was made. Sample code was written and executed. And I won. I didn't keep the money. I handed it back with a magnanimous "Get yourself a drink on me" which shows how out of touch I am...

I went into today's C# lecture with hopes for similar financial gain, but it was not to be. I think the word may be out that I am some kind of hustler. I really like teaching the first year course. Every year we seem to get a great batch of students who ask sensible questions and enjoy learning how to program. It is rather nice at the moment because we are looking at things where there are no "right" answers, just ones which fit the context better than others. So we can debate these issues. Great fun.

Wide Screen Pain

My new notebook has a wide screen display which, over the week away, I'd rather learnt to like. So, bearing in mind that I spend a lot of time staring at a monitor screen I thought I'd get a new wider one. So I did.

The new monitor has a fantastic, jaw dropping display of amazing quality. Which is just as well, because otherwise I might have chucked it through the window by now. It is a 22 inch HP job, with an HDMI input as well as VGA and a lovely glossy finish. However, it and Vista just don't get on.

I know exactly how this should work. I know because I've read the White Paper "Transient Multimon Manager (TMM) Ver. 1.1" by Yu-Kuan Lin Program Manager, Mobile PC Business Unit. This is well written, comprehensive and has some nice scenarios that explain just what should happen. Essentially, the whole thing has been designed so that you set a monitor up once, Vista remembers that setup and then replicates it each time you plug that monitor in again.

This does not happen.

What happens is that you set it up once, and next time you plug it in the system does what the heck it likes, with a range of implausible and hard to select display options. Should you be stupid enough to let the screen saver kick in it then does something else. And if you are such an idiot as to put the machine to sleep you can look forward to no screen, a black screen with a cursor, a screen that you can't do anything with because the window is on the other screen or the blue screen of death when you come back depending on the whim of the system.

I'm not sure who to blame here. The monitor has the habit of reporting itself to Vista as one of a number of devices. The HP monitor control program refuses to believe that an HP monitor is plugged in. The Nvidia display driver doesn't even let me change options and Vista seems quite happy that nothing is wrong.

As for me, the picture is so good that I'm just about prepared to live with it for now. But I've lost a couple of hours trying to find out why something which should just be plug and play is nothing of the sort.

Update on 2007-11-12 19:06 by Rob

'tis a driver thing. I've managed to track down a set of NVidia drivers that makes the monitor mostly work.