I have a C# lecture on Friday afternoon at 4:15. Not the best time. I call it the Friday Afternoon club and I always take a picture of the audience.
Today was no exception. It was building applications using forms. Thanks for staying awake people.
We have an embedded course as part of our degree. This year for the practical David has designed this rather neat project which uses the current location of the user to plan routing and stuff. Only thing is, to really do it properly you need a Pocket PC with built in GPS.
So we bought a few.
Each student gets the use of the device for the practical work. This means they get proper experience of real device development. I dropped by to take pictures of the first students picking up their devices.
These were the first two to pick up their toys. Have fun...
You know you've made it big when you are in Micro Mart. At the end of yesterday's lecture I was shown a picture of my ugly mug staring out of page 94 of issue 997 of Micro Mart magazine. It was part of an article about Social Gaming, and I had been quoted saying sensible things about XNA (I must have been caught on one of my "sensible days" - which are getting fewer and further between these days).
Of course I shot over to the Students Union and bought a copy of the magazine (incidentally, and I've no idea why this should be the case, but our Students Union shop has an absolutely fantastic range of magazines. There are titles there that I've had bother finding in other places. Kudos.)
Anyhoo, I like the magazine. And not just because it has me in it. For a weekly magazine it has some very good editorial content and it made a very good lunchtime read. Of course the downside is that it also has lots of adverts for stuff, and so it might have proved a rather expensive purchase.....
April Fools Day is now an institution, perhaps it is even beyond that. When the first thing you hear on your radio alarm at 7:30 is the question "Have you found any hoaxes yet?", the chances of catching someone unawares are somewhat limited. But that doesn't stop fools like me trying.
I had a 9:15 lecture with the First Year and we hardly ever have lectures on April Fools day, so I had to try something. Plan 1 involved me demonstrating debugging with a hammer and chisel. This would have been very impressive but there were health and safety implications, and anyway nobody would lend me their laptop for the demonstration.
Plan 2 was much more subtle. So subtle that nobody noticed. When my machine went live on the video projector to show the presentation the desktop showed an open copy of Word with the document "Exam Questions 2008" available for viewing. I left it up there for a while but nobody seemed to spot this. Ho hum. I switched the view to document 2, "Top Secret Plans to merge the Computer Science and Media Studies departments". Still nothing.
Ah well. Maybe next year.
Yesterday the washing machine started to make a funny noise. Today it wasn't making any noises at all. And the big drum thing wasn't going round any more. My professional opinion is that it is broken. Bearing in mind it is four years old, I think it is new machine time.
I usually have a go at mending them, and I'm actually pretty good. I've rebuilt motors, replaced pumps and unclogged valves. I've only really got it wrong once, when I didn't quite fit a seal properly and the back of the machine fell off, putting the kitchen under three inches of water. But apart from that slight mishap I'm quite good. But this time I think I'll get a new one.
The one before this failed under very impressive circumstances. Two chaps had just turned up and fitted a new cooker. They turned it on and the washing machine across the kitchen blew up at exactly the same moment. They were most apologetic, before they realised that it was not their fault.
This time I've managed to get a replacement machine organised without even leaving the keyboard. Trawled through some Which reports to find a brand that is broadly OK (Why are all the best buy ones hugely expensive?), found a local supplier, checked stock levels, ordered and paid. It arrives next week. I hope it is on time. I'll probably have to change my socks at some point.....
We put our recycling bin out for collection a day early by mistake today. It was nice to see that all the other people on the street followed our example.
I'm out visiting the in-laws at the moment. My father in law has a computer which he finds very useful, but a couple of weeks ago it broke. It started displaying strange messages on boot up and after a chat on the phone we decided that it was hardware. So he called in a chap who advertised in the local press as a computer fixer. This "engineer" turned up and took a look at the machine, agreed that it was broken, said it was too old to repair/not worth mending and then asked for 25 quid call out fee. Which he got (having rather presciently not advertised a no fix, no fee policy). We took a look and found that it was the power supply, dropped in a replacement and the machine woke up and ran a treat.
This is a truly nasty little business. It was very obvious to us that the power supply was wrong (if the BIOS reports 4.3 volts on the 5 volt rail the number of suspects is somewhat limited) and so I'm inclined to not give this chap the benefit of the doubt. So if you are calling someone out to mend your hardware you should make sure that they are no fix, no fee operators.
For some reason I saw some GMTV this morning. I usually shy away from such things because they are bad for my blood pressure. But I happened to be in the room and the TV was on and they were interviewing a hairdresser. And the hairdresser said:
"Of course, your hair changes every seven years....."
And the person talking to her just nodded and agreed. And my blood pressure went up (told you it would).
I just hate it when people make statements like these (and I hate it when others agree). What is the basis of saying this? How do they know? Why is it seven? Was my hair exactly the same for the first seven years of my life, and then turned another colour, or curly or vanished, until I was fourteen when it came back, or whatever? What happens if you are bald? Does this only happen on multiples of seven years. If you make it to 22 with a full set of follicles does this mean you are OK for the next six years?
I've done some research on this (actually searched for "hair changes seven years" on the interweb) and I did find one other person that mentioned this "fact". So I guess it must be true..
Had a visitor today who brought her four month old baby round to see us. Other people's babies are great. You can hold them for a while and when they burst into tears, look like they are going to throw up or make a funny smell (or all three at once) you can hand them back to the parent with the words "I think she wants you now..".
Actually Ellie was great, and took me back to the halcyon days when our two were tiny tots and didn't know more about programming and science than me.
I was going down the escalator in the HMV shop in London yesterday when it occurred to me that soon everyone in this bustling, busy, store would have no reason to be there. In a few years only those who want hardware will actually need to turn up. All the music, movies and games will be available digitally via the Internet. If you factor in piracy, we are pretty much there now I suppose.
I began to wonder what we will actually go out buy in the future. I think that people's love of shopping will drive them out of the house to purchase stuff, but I'm not sure what they will actually take home. Maybe the entertainment vendors will still let us take boxes home, but now they will just contain keys to downloaded material. Maybe eventually all the media shops will vanish. In the future the high street will contain nothing but clothes shops, chemists and Starbucks......
Today was kind of special. We had some of our ex-graduates come to see us. These are people who are now working in the games industry, and they popped by to say hello and see what we are doing. Unfortunately I was moving at speed, having to pick up the pieces that seem to result if I go away from the office for a couple of days. So all I managed to do was grab photographs. There was no time for much chat. I'll fill in the details when Jon lets me know who's what.
The chap on the right (who's name I completely forgot to note down) is an ex-Hull grad who now works for Blackrock Studios. The game that is being played on the big screen is a yet to be released title they brought along to show off. From what I saw it looked pretty darned good.
Now, some of these people I do know. In amongst this gathering are the Electronic Arts posse, including Steven Yau (third from right in dark blue). He was once a project student of mine and is the chap who wrote the article about how how to break into the video games industry. It seemed to work for him.....
Finally, these two look pleased because they are team D&D, who have made it into the next round of the Microsoft Imagine Cup XNA Game Development competition. You can find out more about their entry here. Well done folks, and good luck.
We had an open day today. Loads of people turned up and so we had to move the talk into one of the lecture theatres. You were a great audience, and I apologize for plugging my book so shamelessly. (I just got my own copy this morning and I was rather proud of it).
I also apologize for vanishing so abruptly in the middle of the afternoon. Four of our student teams were taking part in the Imagine Cup accelerator event in Manchester, and I had to rush off and catch a train over there.
I hope you had a good afternoon, and that the trip to Hull was worthwhile.
Kieran and Kostas came to see us today. They both studied at Hull and now work for Rare. They are part of a series of game company visits that are taking place at the moment as our students show off what they have been doing, with a view to getting into the games business.
Kostas did our game development MSc course some time back. He is famous in the department as the winner of one of our programming events. I took some pictures this afternoon, but I've not got them with me at the moment, so I'll put them up later. Instead, here is a blast form the past, Kostas is the one right at the front looking thoughtful (as well he might..).
Thanks for coming guys, it was good to see you.
One of the sessions at GDC last week (it seems ages ago) was given by Peter Molyneaux, who is a fascinating character with a great gaming history, being pretty much the creator of the "God" game genre. He was at GDC to talk about Fable 2 which looks really good. Sort of like Oblivion but more so. And you get a dog. And your friends can join you on quests.
At one point he mentioned that the best games force you to make choices and then live with the consequences of your decisions. In Fable 2 the nastier you are the nastier you appear in the game. Which seems a bit unfair on ugly people who are actually nice folks, but there you go. Perhaps I am over simplifying again.
Anyhoo, in the course of the discussion he mentioned that according to research, only around 5% of players choose to take "the dark side" in games like this. Most players prefer to reach their goals using wholesome means. Peter saw this as something of a wasted opportunity for gamers, in that the game maker still has to create all the scenarios and dialogue for the naughty actions and so you are not playing the game to the full until you have experienced it as a villain.
I saw this as quite a hopeful sign, in that, perhaps humanity has a natural tendency to be nice when given the choice. Or perhaps it only applies to video game players (or at least 19 out of 20 of them).
What do you do if you have had a rotten day, where pretty much nothing has gone right?
You give two lectures in quick succession at the end of the afternoon, to the .NET Post-Grads about class design and the First Year "Friday Afternoon Club" about inheritance in C#. Wonderful stuff. Special mention to the First Years, who were great fun and quite mad. I think teaching someone something is a great way to cheer yourself up. And Tom had a copy of my book to show me, first time I've ever actually seen one. Perfect. I'm going home for Fish and Chips now.
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.
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
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.
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....
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...
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
