Helicopter Sales

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Went up town to the sales today and bought a helicopter. It is a twin bladed Chinook type thing, which was knocked down to fifteen quid in Red5. Number one son has shown quite a talent for flying the thing, which seems a lot more controllable than the single rotor ones that we had bouncing off the furniture earlier this week. He can actually make it hover in one place and it has this fancy way of tipping the front rotor to make very controlled turns.

I think these will sell out real quick, but if you get the chance to buy one I'd recommend you do.

Ubiquitous Software

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I was having my hair cut yesterday (I was picking up number one daughter and I thought it might be good if she was actually able to recognise me) and the girl doing the cutting asked me what I did. I told her and she said that she had no real idea what computer programming was. A few years ago I would have had a problem at this point, because it used to be kind of hard to explain what computers were actually used for. Nowadays it is much easier. I just had to mention the Xbox 360 and PS3 and say that we produce students who write the games that go into them.

Afterwards I had a think about this and the way I see it, computer programmers now write the stuff that makes pretty much everything work. Just about any device that you buy with a mains plug will have a computer processor in it, as do all cars and so on.

When I started in this business we had one computer at the university, nowadays I don't think anybody knows how many there are on campus. I had no idea when I started in this business, but I'm very glad that I did, because it really is the stuff that makes the future go.

Of course, we also produce the stuff that makes it hard to print out things, but I'll let that pass for now. (Actually, and this is a  tip for all Photoshop Elements users, if you want to make a book of pictures you don't actually want to make a Picture Book, you want to make a Collage. A Picture Book is pre-formatted for an on-line printing service, whereas a collage is just a themed collection of pictures which can span several pages).

Useless Software

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Imagine you were thinking about buying a car. It had a satnav, heated seats, electric windows, a hundred and one extras that you will probably never use. It is attractively coloured and pleasing to the eye. You can almost afford it.

But it won't turn right.

Would you buy it? Me neither. And yet people are happy to buy and use software that fails just as spectacularly. I mentioned some time back my torment at the hands of some software by HP which purported to let me create albums but actually just messed me around until I removed it from my disk.

Today I've been playing with Adobe Photoshop Elements. This lets you create similar albums and, after a while, I've managed to get the images I want.

But I can't print them. That is, I can get them onto paper but the size is always wrong. I've wasted a couple of pounds worth of paper and ink. As I type this program is randomly resizing the images behind Windows Live Writer in a way that does not inspire confidence. I've tried numerous combinations of printer and paper configuration, screen preview and all manner of settings to try and get what I want, which is pictures on paper the same size and shape as the ones on the screen.

This is insane. I'm supposed to be good at this stuff. How someone less well versed in printer configuration would get by I have no idea. What you really want is a big red button that says "put these on the paper how they look on the screen". What I have got is several buckets full of confusion. I hate this. I would never let software go out of the door with this mix of complexity and uselessness.

I've had this before with various printers and programs. I M Wright has some things to say about the way that programmers always want to work on the advanced features and leave out the boring stuff like making the program actually do what it is supposed to do. How right he is.

Amazon Music Store Fun and Games

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Amazon are moving in to music distribution. Alongside books, computer games and toys you can now download unprotected MP3 files at very good prices including some albums at a loss leading 3 pounds each. So I had a go.

First mistake was to try and use the university network. So that meant a big hello to the university firewall and everything locking up and timing out. So, after a number of retries I just closed the notebook and went home, hoping that the machine would fire up and keep going on the home network.  Which it did. Problem was that I had initiated the download several times, and the rather stupid Amazon download tool insisted on fetching the same thing three or four times, just to be sure. So that was an entire evening of bandwidth out of the window.

However, once I'd got the files off the machine and tidied up all the excess copies I reckon it is a pretty good deal. The files are standard MP3s captured at 320K bps, which means that they will play pretty much anywhere with good sound quality.

Worth checking out, but don't press the download button more than once.

Christmas Bash

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We had our Christmas Bash today. Went rather well, right up to the point where I opened the box with the game disk for the quiz, right at the end, and found that it was empty. So, no quiz. But we did everything else and much fun, and pizza was had. It is a moment of great personal pride to think that I managed to get to the point where all of the 60 or so students were full up. We nearly had food left over. Amazing. I took the big camera and loads of pictures.

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Sam gets into Half Life 2

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Drinks and nibbles (and pink christmas trees)

Thanks for coming and thank to everyone who helped out.

You Can't Beat a bit of Rehearsal

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Went to Doncaster today. The University of Hull validates a couple of their degree programs (Integrated Technology and Business Computing and so I had a couple of meetings to attend, followed by a presentation to their students. The meetings went well and then I had to do my talks about the University and what we do, with particular reference to projects. They were a great audience, and asked loads of sensible questions. I wish I'd taken the trouble to read through my slides before I started the talk, I'd used them before but kept having déjà-vu moments, where I put up a slide all about something I'd just said. Oh well, next time I'll give them a read through first.

Thanks for making us so welcome folks, and I'm looking forward to seeing the projects next year.

Zombie Fragfest

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One of these people is a zombie....

Dropped in on the Hull Com. Soc. Frag Fest today. I was in a bit of a hurry, so I didn't take my machine with me. After I saw what they were playing I rather wished I had though. It was a hilarious mod for Half-Life 2, which pits survivors against a zombie horde which increases steadily as each human player falls prey to the creeping death. I had a quick go and, needless to say, I got zombified really early on each time, but it was still great fun. I took the camera with the toy lens (of which more later) and got some nice pictures.

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Nobody who is anybody has a machine with the lid still on......

Adverts on Exams

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One of my students has noticed that some institutions are now selling advertising space on their sample exam papers:

http://consumerist.com/5100958/teacher-sells-ads-on-tests-to-cover-printing-costs

I told him that I've got a few companies lined up for mine:

  • "Hutchinsons Resit Revision Aids"
  • "Johnsons Find and Destroy Lecturer Service"
  • "NeverRunOut pens Inc."
  • "The Cheater's Tattoo Parlour"

Microsoft are Coming to See Us Tomorrow

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A quick reminder to anyone at Hull who reads my blog. That's both of you...

Microsoft are coming to see us tomorrow. They are taking their Inspiration Tour on the road and will be giving their presentation starting at 2:15 pm in the Physics Large Lecture Theatre, which is in the same building as the Computer Centre, but up the big stairs and all the way to the back.

Be there, talk is of some free T shirts....

Cheered Up by Students

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Bit fed up today. I hate it when I'm not where I should be, and I had been looking forward to going to Copenhagen. Never been to Denmark before and it might be a while before I get the chance again.

The good news is that being back in the office meant that I got a steady stream of students coming by with programs to look at and projects to discuss. And that really cheered me up. I love seeing people making progress and doing stuff. Thanks folks.

Never Trust a Plane that still has a Propeller

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I was supposed to fly out to Copenhagen to give a session tomorrow as part of the Windows Embedded European tour. I had all my slides with the snazzy tour template, and a bag packed with hardware to show off.

Instead I went to an airport, sat in a plane for forty minutes, had a drink of orange juice, got out of the plane, queued for an hour, found out there was no way I could get to Copenhagen in time and went home.

We had all watched the plane land, and then were told that "For safety reasons" it was not able to take off again. I reckon the people that we saw arrive in it had a lucky escape.

Such is life I suppose. I tried to be relaxed about it. The only time I got a bit cross was when I was at the desk after an hour wait and the lady there was trying to sort out my travel plans. Having determined that there were no seats on any flights out today, and that a flight tomorrow would have me arrive far too late for my session, I said that in that case there was no point in me going. "So" she said, "You are choosing not to take up our offer of an alternative flight?". I made the point that it was not a matter of choice, if I couldn't get there today there was no reason to travel. "OK." she replied "I'll put on the file that you have decided not to take up our offer". I was too tired to put up much of a fight, and anyway a prominent notice reminded me that anyone who got too shirty would have the full might of KLM to deal with. Assuming they could actually get here of course, what with their transportation technology being so ropey.

I'm very sorry that I didn't make it out to Denmark. I was looking forward to meeting up with the students and seeing some cool Lego tech. Perhaps another time.

Jet Travel Sock Conundrums

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One of the daftest things I ever did was to get a set of socks with days of the week on them. I have now of course become fixated with wearing the correct socks on each day, lest some horrible sock-date-related misfortune becomes me as a result.

Today I'm flying back to the UK, losing a few hours of my life in an aluminium tube and crossing a dateline. In short, I take off on Friday and land on Saturday. I have two pairs of socks, one pair marked Friday and the other Saturday. This leaves me several options:

  1. Wear the wrong day and suffer whatever vicissitudes that fate decides to deal out as a consequence.
  2. Wear one sock marked Friday and the other Saturday. This should mitigate the effects of fate somewhat. It would of course leave me with another pair of odd socks that I could never wear again.
  3. Change my socks at midnight on the plane, which could lead to some consternation amongst my fellow passengers.
  4. Wear no socks at all.
  5. Stop worrying and get a life.

Hmmm. Tricky.