Earthquake Alert

Such is life. I've only been back from the San Andreas Fault ridden California a couple of days and we go and have our own earthquake in the UK. 5.3 on the Richter Scale too, whatever that means (in our house this equates to "Rattling of windows, scary whooshing sound and ponderings as to the brick resistant properties of an 11 tog duvet.").

Actually it was rather frightening but there doesn't seem to have been any damage done. For me the worst part was the silence afterwards. It really was eerie.

Early Radio

As luck would have it I was due to do an early radio thing this morning. With added jetlag. Fortunately things worked out quite well, as my whacked out body clock had me wide awake at five in the morning, and I actually got to the studio early. Things seemed to go OK, and I staggered into work for a rest. Or something.

Bright and early Hull

A Mean Knight in Shining Armour

At 6:00 this morning I was sitting in the departure lounge (4:00am start - what joy). The girl sat opposite me was in a bit of a tizzy. Her iPhone had locked up and she asked if she could use my phone to make a local call. Being the kind generous soul that I am I said I'd rather not, because my free minutes don't work that well in the USA, in fact I get seriously gouged whether I make or receive calls (which made those two phone calls on Tuesday at 4:00 am unwelcome for a multitude of reasons).  Fortunately for her an American sat next to me was better placed to help, but I sat there feeling a right heel for not helping.

Anyhoo, it occurred to me that my best course of action was to solve the problem itself so I asked if I could see the defunct device.  It was stuck on an SMS send screen.  She reckoned that she had already tried to reset it but I'm made of sterner stuff. It turns out that if you hold down the menu and power buttons for long enough the device will actually shut down so that you can restart it. I wish I'd thought of doing that before I looked mean.

Live Forever with Ray

Ray Kurzweil gave the second GDC keynote. He was talking about the next 20 years of games, and specifically the behaviour of exponential growth in relation to human development.

Ray at the GDC

If something increases by a seemingly small percentage at regular intervals, the growth seems to chug along for a little while and then suddenly takes off at an enormous speed.  Start with 100 pounds and earn 10% interest per year. After 1 year you get 10 pounds interest. After 2 years you get 11 pounds interest. Three years gives you around 12 pounds. Spool forward a while and the rate of increase really takes off, after 10 years you have over 200 pounds. This is the principle that is supposed to pay off my mortgage, providing the rate of interest stays OK (which of course it hasn't.........)

Anyhoo, back to the keynote. Ray made the point that as technology progresses more and more of our businesses are becoming information based. He reckons that with a move to nano-technology for production industry will be information based, and that with the work on genome sequencing health already is, etc etc. And with exponential growth continuing in the field of information processing for the foreseeable future things are just going to get more and more interesting.

I'm not completely convinced by this argument myself, making wonderful hardware is all very well, but the human race has proved spectacularly inept making software and so I don't think that everything will turn out quite as rosy as the predictions from Ray. Having said that, he is rich and successful and I'm Rob, so we will see.

One thing he said did intrigue me though. Ray reckons that the pace of medical development means that at the moment for each year that goes by we add around 3 months to the average life-span. If this is exponential, and he reckons that now health research is based on information processing it should be, in the not too distant future we will be adding more than a year to the average life-span each year, which means that we are in potential "live forever" territory. I'm not sure where this leaves video games, although I suppose we'll all need something fun to do during our infinite retirement....

The Great Smell of Rob

I keep ending up in Wallgreens chemist (or pharmacy as they call them here). It seems to sell everything I need. Today I went in having exhausted my supply of the great smell of Lynx. The shop keeps things that are mildly valuable under lock and key in the aisles, and so I had to press a button on the display to get someone to come and liberate what I wanted to buy. As soon as I pressed it a digitised voice announced loudly "Assistant to Deodorant Display". A girl with a bunch of keys turned up within seconds, walked straight past everyone else and up to me, and opened up the shelf so I could get what I wanted.

Perhaps I needed the deodorant more than I thought...

Jack or Master

Today I went to a couple more sessions in the IGDA Education Summit. I like going to these, whilst they are not always directy relevant to what we do at Hull, they are always thought provoking. The keynote, by Ian Bogost, started by making the point that game developers will always need to know how to program. Always good to hear. Then things diverged a bit from my experience. Ian talked about the old days, when only one or two programmers made entire games, and some modern day games, for example Everyday Shooter, which have been produced by one person. Whilst there are one person bands who can do all the audio, graphics and design parts of the game it is definitely the case that when seeking employment a game developer will be employed to write code.

The way I see it, if you have knowledge of the other aspects of game development then this makes you a better game developer. If you are one of the lucky ones who actually can do the whole thing, there is no reason why you shouldn't show off by making a complete game. Whatever happens you should try to make something that will get your name out there.

One point that was made well was that if you want to make a good game you need to recognise that you will need people that are not like you to be successful. Which brought us back to teamwork again.

Exploding Umbrella

It rained today. Lots. Unfortunately I hadn't packed much waterproof, and so it was down to Walgreens (which is rapidly becoming my favourite store) to buy and umbrella. They had a big display of them right in the doorway. I don't remember seeing it yesterday when it was dry...

Anyhoo, I bought a modestly priced device which is trademarked "St. Crawford London". Perhaps Americans think that the brits are better with rain. It looked OK so I opened it up and sallied forth. Whilst waiting at an intersection for the lights to change I noticed a button in the handle. So I pressed it to see what happens..... The results were most impressive. The canopy instantly compressed at speed, dumping a load of water on myself and those around me. A portable version of instant unpopularity. I re-opened the thing whilst avoiding everybody else's eyes and slunk across the road. Stupid rain.

Learning the Ten Commandments. And other useful stuff.

No pictures today. Work beckons. I started off the day at the Education summit. The keynote was given by Ernest Adams who set out his ten commandments for Game Developer Education. I've not got time to list them all, but I was particularly taken with number 9 "Award precision and punish hand waving" and number 8 "Gameplay comes first". It was also nice to see commandment 5 making the point that you should "Require Teamwork". Some of the others weren't that applicable to us at Hull, because we concentrate on the programming aspects of games rather than the whole game production process (that way our game development students graduate as genuinely useful computer scientists) but it was nice to find that we don't break any major ones.

Next came a session on how to create a successful game development course. It was interesting to see that as one the members of the panel were keen on teamwork and communication skills. One even said that you should encourage your students to enter competitions. Go Hull.

In the afternoon I changed tack and went to some XNA presentations. There were three excellent talks on how to optimise and debug XNA games. This stuff was great. Proper computer science being used in a really strong context. At the end they gave us a CD-ROM with the sessions on it. I hope that this material will also make its way onto the web at some point. If you are into coding you would love this stuff.

Then in the evening we staggered out to a free party and then ended the evening in the sports bar.

Haircut Sir?

Had my hair cut today. Not a thing I do lightly, or often for that matter. Still, it needed doing. I'm not that keen on being the one in the family with the longest locks. Don't think number one wife and number one daughter are that keen either. Anyhoo, my head is now much lighter, and washing my hair takes a lot less time.

I was amazed by the amount of my hair that was left on the floor after my cut. It put me in mind of a wizard wheeze, where you dump a huge pile of hair behind the chair of your victim as they have their trim. Then watch their face when they stand up and see how much has been removed.....

Thanks For Coming

If you came to see us today during our Admissions Event, thank you for coming. I mentioned a couple of things that you might find interesting and promised I'd put the links up. Here they are:

The phone screen questions that you ask an aspiring software engineer are here and the story of the Hull student who is now working in the games industry is here.

Games on Vista

Today I did something I've not done for a very long time. I played a game on my Windows PC. I picked up a cheap copy of World in Conflict yesterday and loaded it onto the notebook. I stopped playing games on my PC a while back because that's what I buy consoles for, and anyway they clutter up the hard disk and get in the way. That's changed slightly now, since I can install games on an external USB drive and Vista seems to manage game installation a lot better. There was no footling around looking for different versions of DirectX or putting the game in some strange place on the hard disk. It installed with a minimum of fuss and pretty soon I was in the thick of battle.

It worked really well. The game can get pretty complex, and it would be really difficult to control everything using a gamepad, you really need to keyboard and the mouse to keep on top of what is going on. And, thanks to the fairly meaty graphics support in the notebook, I was able to work at a resolution much higher than you normally get from console games, even the newer ones. It was great fun.

We are working on setting up one of our labs as a games room, where students and staff can play these games. We are just sorting out licenses and access at the moment. And I'm getting a bit of practice in.....

Portion Control

I followed a butcher's van to work today. Writ large across the back was the impressive claim "Specialists in Portion Control". I thought this sounded great. I can just imagine how it works.

The scene, an Embassy Banquet. Posh types with beautiful girls on their arms are milling around around making small talk and dancing to a small orchestra which is playing expensive tunes. In the corner a white hatted master chef is serving food with an immaculate silver service. Suddenly a man bursts through the crowd to the table:

Man: "Nobody move!"

The orchestra falls silent. Every body stops moving. All eyes turn to the man, who reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a warrant card with a shiny silver badge on it.

Man: "Mike Zuton. Portion Control."

The crowd gasps in amazement and fear.

Mike Zuton, to the chef: "You. Step away from that ladle."

The chef lays the ladle down and steps back, his eyes flicking around nervously. Mike Zuton pulls a small measuring jug from his pocket, fills the ladle with steaming soup and then empties it into the jug. There is absolute silence in the room as he carefully scrutinises the scale on the side.

Mike Zuton: "Just as I thought. Five mills over. You're going down this time Maurice"

Chef: "But, but, I swear it was an honest mistake"

Mike Zuton: "Yeah, right. Just like those extra Ferrero Rocher you've been sneaking onto the desert trolley. The ambassador isn't made of money you know."

Mike Zuton gets a whistle out of his pocket and blows a loud blast. Twenty uniformed officers burst through the french windows.

Mike Zuton: "Captain, get the Baguette Squad down into the kitchen, and remember, anything over fifteen centimetres, I want to know about it...."

..and so on.

Then again, perhaps it isn't like that at all.

I was funnier when I was younger

For some reason (actually a search to find the seven signs of ageing - don't ask) I found my way back to my old Crazy World site today. I had a read of some of my old posts, circa 2005.

I was much funnier then.

Perhaps the extra  cares of the world in the intervening three years have worn me down. Perhaps I have run out of whimsey.  Either way, I have now resolved to up the light hearted content (and probably the number of puns) and really, really write another Trip Hazard episode.

And maybe a sequel to The Little Brown Ikea Pencil of Doom.

You have been warned.

Update on 2008-01-31 16:58 by Rob

I've been worrying about this. Perhaps I'm just more grown up than I used to be. After all, by my reckoning I've got three of the seven signs of ageing.

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.