Clean Machine

If you ever seen the film Amélie you'll know how good it is. If you haven't, then I envy you, because you get to have the experience of seeing it the first time. One of the best films ever. Ever.

Anyhoo, it has a scene at the start where it describes how her father likes to pass the time by emptying out his toolbox, cleaning it and then putting everything back in the right place.  It captures perfectly the idea of someone who likes to have one small part of his life completely under his control, and which he can make how he wants it. I think I'm a bit the same with my PC.

Today, for a number of reasons, I wiped my MacBook clean and restored everything from scratch. I've done a lot of work too, I've read all the final year project reports that I'm marking and I've also made a start on tidying my office. You can get a lot done when your computer is broken...

I've been meaning to re-install Vista for a while, there is a broken install of an old XNA version which is stopping it working with the Zune and it doesn't pick up my camera properly. It also has some software on it which I'd be happier without, and I wanted to re-partition the hard drive to give more space to Vista and less to OS X. Nothing wrong with the Mac operating system, it is just that Vista does all the things I need to do, and I know how to make it do them. I like using the Mac, and GarageBand is a program I'd love to spend more quality time with, but I don't think I need to give it as much disk space as I did.

So, after taking complete backups on four different disk drives I wiped the Vista partition and tried to use the Mac BootCamp program to create a larger one.

And there the fun started. The first time BootCamp didn't work, and told me that it couldn't move the partitions because some files were fixed. The second time it tried it crashed the machine, leaving the disk file structure a bit awry. I fixed that, tried it for a third time and had the same problem. So, I wiped OS X and did a complete install of that, so that I could then put Vista on afterwards. 

Operating installation is nowhere near as fraught as it used to be, both OS X and Vista loaded themselves onto the machine with a minimum of fuss. There were occasional moments of high drama, updating the firmware in the Mac was a bit scary, as was the part where I found out Apple was updating one part of the system whilst Microsoft was twiddling with another at the same time, which could have gone badly, but all in all it was just a case of looking up from what I was reading and clicking OK every now and then.

By the end of the day I'm about back to where I stared operating system wise, now all I have to do is put the applications and my document files back into place.

Remote Controlled Rocket Launcher for a Fiver? Yes please.

Went to Asda today to do the shopping.

I could have bought a magazine for a fiver. Or one of these.... Guess which I got?

It is ace, you can steer it round the floor and rapid fire off 12 missiles. If only we had a cat...

Pain in the neck

I don't think it was the Wii fit. In fact I'm fairly sure that it wasn't. However, the bottom line is that at the moment my neck doesn't work properly. I'm moving a bit like a Cyberman, turning my whole body to face people rather than just rotating the head part. Looking slightly to the right is fine, looking more hurts like heck.  It seems to be easing a bit, but I've been playing GTA 4 rather than exercising.

Just in case.

Hornsea Bank Holiday

Good weather on an English Bank Holiday? Shurely shome misthtake. We went to Hornsea for the afternoon.

Baby geese

Hornsea mere looking good

Even the sea front looks good today. Although that water does look a bit brown...

I love stalls like these.

This is Hornsea Sunday (and Bank Holiday) market. Amazing place, with a water feature and a place you can buy old photos that might have you in it. I checked, but there were none of me.

Collectormaina Calls

Today saw us up at the crack of dawn and haring down the motorway to Milton Keynes to take part in another Collectormaina. Well, at least it is a trip out.

So, who is this chap?

..or this lass?

The "throng"

I don't think this is a family portrait as such....

Any nightclub owners out there?

A Lego shop opposite an Apple shop. Seems somehow appropriate.

The Milton Keynes Tree. And some concrete cows.

I Must be Mad

Downstairs I have a copy of GTA4. Nico has been out on a date, taken my cousin bowling and killed a few times ("But they were all bad people"). And today, in my so called leisure time, I've spent a few hours writing C#. And having at least as much fun as I did with the video game.

Perhaps it is a control thing. When I'm writing code I not only have complete knowledge of what I'm doing, but I also created the thing I'm working within. I don't know, I'll leave the finer points of character analysis to those who already think I'm a bit strange, and move on.

Anyhoo, the code is coming along nicely. I'm finishing off (or at least moving on a bit) a thing I started ages ago. It uses a Tablet PC to help you mark class work. You fill in a form with comments, grades and suggestions and the program stores all this (including ink) in an XML file. You can then use this to generate a custom web page or set of report images you can send to the students. I've got all the storage and editing story sorted and I'm just finishing off the reporting.

When I've got the system working I'll post it for anyone to play with.

In the meantime I'm having a bunch of fun making it.

Cold Marking

Got a code in the node. I feel kind of bad because I've spent the last couple of days in the labs looking at student work and presumably breathing germs on everyone who has shown me their software. Oh well. According to a study (always the prelude to some enormous whopper or other) young folk today fall prey to all kinds of nasties because they aren't exposed to enough things to challenge their immune system as they grow up. So now I see my sneezing as a kind of social service.

Anyhoo, I really enjoyed the marking. The general standard was excellent. Students could either make a bank application or a game, and the split was around 50:50 over the cohort. I saw some "production quality" banks, with excellent code and some highly playable games.

Good work folks, and I hope I haven't made you too ill.

Down in the mouth

Last night I either dreamed I had toothache or I laid awake with toothache for some time and then woke up with no toothache. Most confusing.

Video Rob

I'm doing two sessions at DevDays in Holland next month. They asked me to make a video about them.

So I did.

http://www.devdays.nl/Nieuws/Default.aspx

Final Friday Club

Today was the (sniff) final meeting of the Friday Afternoon Club. Talk about going out with a bang. We did Threads, and tried to crash Vista by starting off 1,000 at once. Of course it just kept going (but the CPU usage in Task Manager did max out quite dramatically).

I took a couple of pictures.

You can click on them for larger versions from Flickr. I really enjoyed the lecture and I hope that you lot did as well. See you for Software Engineering next semester.

Monday with added jetlag

Back to work today. Plenty of business and stuff. The jetlag keeps switching my brain off at inopportune momen

The Missing Sunday

I don't remember much of today.

Which is probably just as well.

MVP Keynote

Today was the last day of the summit proper, and we had keynote addresses from Ray Ozzie and Steve Balmer

Gathering for the keynote

Ray Ozzie was first to speak and take questions.

Steve Balmer arrived looking like this:

..and left dressed like this

I think we had better find a University of Hull sweatshirt to give him next time.

I've never heard Steve talk before, and I must say I'm impressed. He was knowledgeable, smart, self aware and, above all, funny.  A great way to end a very interesting four days.

Over Gurned

You've got to be careful in hotels. They put mirrors all over the place. There are a whole bunch in the bathroom, which in my opinion (and my condition) is a really bad place to put a mirror. They also have them on the lift doors. I was alone in the lift travelling down to the lobby and, staring at my reflection, thought I'd have a go at gurning to pass the time. As you do.

I just managed to pull a truly deformed face (not, admittedly much of a stretch for me) when of course the doors slid open to reveal a rather well dressed couple who were on their way out to some posh do or other. They managed not to actually recoil at the sight of me, but they did seem slightly worried as they got into the lift and the three of us made it the rest of the way down in rather stony silence. Oh well.

Deep in the Mothership

Microsoft Redmond Campus is huge. No other word. Lots of buildings, lots of people, lots of software. And quite a bit of rain.

The rainy view of Building 118

..a more conventional view.

Today we had lots of sessions about this and that. I'm always surprised by how Microsoft send their chief product managers to get roasted by us. I'm glad they do though, it is always very interesting.

In the afternoon we slipped over to the fabled Microsoft Company Store, where you can get software at cost prices. We had been allocated 120 dollars to spend on stuff, so I duly did my bit. I was very pleased to be able to pick up a cost price copy of Microsoft Home Server, which I'm looking forward to having a play with. I was even more pleased to find that they had a big display of my book.

Rob in the Microsoft Company Store

I'm never sure whether having lots of copies left in a shop is a good thing ("We've sold loads") or a bad thing ("Nobody is buying it"). Anyhoo, it was just nice to see it there. I've found my book in Barnes and Noble and Fry's as well, so if people aren't grabbing copies it isn't for lack of opportunity......

They had a Microsoft Surface in Building 117. Think of it as a huge iPhone which lets you do wonderful things with multi-touch. Wonderful stuff.

Breaking Rob

For some reason I've felt awful all day. Maybe it's something I ate. Maybe it's excitement about going away tomorrow. Either way, today I did something I've never done before. I walked out of a lecture I was giving. I was only for a few minutes while I pulled myself together, and then I went back in and finished off. But at the end I felt awful. I was a bit sorry for the chap who asked me a question and got the answer "I'm very sorry, but I can't answer that right now as I have to leave the room for a while...".

Anyhoo, I staggered home and slept for a couple of hours, which gave me enough energy to pack.

Open Day Power

Today was the last big open day of the admissions season. And what a day. We had the biggest turnout ever. We had double tours and all sorts.

I had to use the ultra-wide angle lens to get everyone in. If you click on the picture you can find your way to the Flickr page and get hold of the large version for plenty of detail.

As usual we gave away a DS to one lucky student. This time I actually did the presentation. The winner was ticket number 1. As if anyone would believe that.

I'm on the right. Notice how the winner is keeping a good grip on the prize. As if I would run away with it....

Thanks for coming folks, hope it was worth the trip. To find out more about our course you can go to www.wherewouldyouthink.com. To find out more about writing games you can go to www.verysillygames.com.

Friday Night Club Reunion

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.

Free Pocket PCs

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...

Rob in Micro Mart

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.....