Marking and the Micro Framework

Spent a big chunk of today (like yesterday and the day before) marking exam scripts. However, I did find time to upgrade my system to the .NET Micro Framework version 4.0. This platform is getting really interesting just now, with some fantastic hardware coming out and a whole set of great new features for embedded developers. I’ve been a fan of the framework ever since I saw one of my C# programs running on a device the size of my fingernail.

Much more fun than marking.

LaserQuest!! Pew Pew Pew

Dan from Seed Software organised a bit of shooting fun tonight. And so a bunch of us turned up at LaserQuest in Hull. Some of us were dressed in black, which I thought was a good idea, until I discovered just how much it makes your dandruff stand out when they turn up the UV light. And from the look of everyone’s teeth it looked like we now all lived on the far side of the uncanny valley. Of course, I took the camera, although I didn’t use the flash and had to set the sensitivity to a very silly value.

I think you should know that I got shot several times while taking this picture.

One of the few remaining pictures of “The Outfit”

Into the fray

Peter uses a laser to lay down the law

Ha. Go Red Team. And I wasn’t the worst one there either…

Mad World Shopping

Three bags full

Did the shopping today. All on my own. I did have a list, but even so I’m very impressed with myself. Anyhoo, the supermarket was selling off Mad World for the Nintendo Wii for a very nominal sum and so I invested in a copy.

Note: I never buy a computer game. I invest in a copy. This makes it sound much less like a waste of money. Although, perhaps investing is a waste of money these days too .

Anyhoo, once I had got home and figured out which cupboard to put things in (Hint: Use the very cold cupboard with a light inside, I think it is called a fridge, for items like yoghurt and sausages) I had a go at the game.

It is very bloodthirsty, violent and foul mouthed. You play a participant in a warped TV gameshow who has a chainsaw for an arm.  The gameplay revolves around extreme violence where you use the chainsaw, road signs and just about anything else around to bloodily despatch people who are presumably very bad. At least I hope they are/were…..

When you go into chainsaw mode the Wii remote actually makes chainsaw noises. The game  is like being inside a slasher movie and has absolutely no moral centre. I quite like it.

I See Dead People

On Tuesday night I can watch CSI Las Vegas. And see  autopsies.

On Wednesday night I can watch NCIS. And see  autopsies.

On Thursday and Friday night I can watch Silent Witness. And see  autopsies.

Then on Saturday we get CSI New York. And see  autopsies.

I’m sure this can’t be healthy.

Power Mad

In Tesco yesterday I nearly bought one of these power monitor type things.  You strap a little sensor to your mains supply and a receiver box in the house gives you a second by second readout of how much your electricity is costing you. I was tempted, but in the end I didn’t invest. Not because I don’t think it is a good idea, but that I think in wrong hands (i.e. mine) such a thing would prove highly dangerous.

I know that as soon as I started getting live data from the device I’d turn into a power crazed madman, searching for hidden mains adapters and wincing whenever the kettle was turned on. I’d become obsessed with getting the thing to read zero pence at all times (which I know is impossible) and lie awake at night trying to work out where that thing which is costing me ten pence a day actually lurks.  I’d probably end up stressing about how much power the monitor itself consumes, and set up a treadmill somewhere which is attached to a generator.

I strongly agree with energy conservation, (that’s how come my loft is always so cold) and I’ve got loads of energy saving lamps all over the place.  Although (and I wonder if I’m the first person to notice this) when you turn on one of these fancy expensive bulbs they actually seem to make the room darker. I think this is because when they first come on the starter circuit gives a brief flash of bright light. This is then replaced by the dim glow produced by the tube itself which, if you are lucky and the bulb is less than a few months old, will eventually become bright enough to read by.

Anyhoo, in the light of all these things I’ve decided to give the energy monitor a miss for now. Perhaps in summer…

Help me lower my bounce rate

I spent some time this lunch-hour playing with Google Analytics. I use it to track access to this site. I take a great interest in visitors here. In fact, even as you read this I’m actually looking at you. That’s me,  behind the third window along in the building above…..

Actually no, but every year or so I check on how the site is doing. I do have some readers (which is nice – thanks for coming) but I also have a “bounce rate” greater than 60%. Anything more than 20% is bad so they say. Of course, once I found this out I had to do something about it. The first thing I had to do was find out what “bounce rate” actually means.  It means the visitors that have been tracked as just arriving at the site, looking at one page and then disappearing.

From a business point of view this is probably not a good thing. It means that around two thirds of my visitors take one look at the place and then go no further. So, in order to make the Google machine happier, I ask you, dear reader, to stick around a bit more. Take a look at Trip Hazard. (New episode coming soon eventually). Discover the terrifying tale of  the Little Brown Ikea Pencil of Doom. Download some free software or a book. Even try to find some funny stuff from the archives.

How to be a Great Weather Forecaster

In the time honoured tradition of “Shoot the messenger” I bring you my guide to weather prediction…

1. Spend the first two thirds of the forecast talking about weather that has already happened. It is unlikely you will be particularly wrong about this bit.
2. Say that the weather today will be about the same as yesterday. But use more words. Since this is the case around 60% of the time you are probably going to be more accurate than all the complicated computer programs presently being used.
3. Make good use of “for the time of year”. Since nobody remembers what on earth that is, everyone will believe that what happens is what was supposed to happen.
4. If something you didn’t predict happens make good use of “since records began”. This implies that nobody else has seen this happen and so you shouldn’t be expected to anticipate it either. Don’t make the mistake of adding that the records you are referring to are the notes you made on a napkin a week or so ago.
5. Use words like “intermittent” and “scattered”, particularly in respect of things like rain and sunny periods. That way, if people don’t get that kind of weather where they are it can be rationalised as bad luck on their part.
6. Use a higher pitched voice for good weather, with a rising inflection at the end of sentences. Use a lower pitched voice for bad weather, with a falling inflection at the end of sentences.  And stare straight at the camera for the really bad bits.
7. Check out of the window before each forecast.

Snow Bored

I’m getting bored with the snow. I’m also getting bored with every news report leading with the story of how bad the snow is. I don’t actually need to be told this. I can find out how cold and slippery it is just by going outside. 

I’ve been trying to find activities that warm me up. Here they are, with notes about there usefulness:

Marking Software Engineering coursework

Absolutely useless. There were not even any really bad designs that would make me boil with indignation.

Driving Home

While the car itself got toasty warm after a mile or so I spent the entire drive in a cold sweat wondering if I was the only person on the road aware we were driving on ice. By the way everyone drove so close to me I reckon I probably was.

Playing Uncharted

Useless.  Unless you count the effort involved in restraining myself from throwing the gamepad at the wall after being killed by one of those really nasty goblin type things that keep coming after me with crossbows.

Watching “The Red Dahlia: Above Suspicion” on ITV

Pretty useless. Certain amount of warming anger about the way that the master criminal was tracked down by the expert police team simply by having someone ring up and say “It was him!”. Otherwise no good for keeping warm.

Playing Wii Sports Table Tennis

Actually worked quite well. Even though I lost.

Paper Review

I was up at 6:15 today and out onto the frozen roads to review the papers for the local BBC radio station. It was actually great fun although I’m not sure I could manage to do it every day. Everyone was very bright and chirpy at 7:00 am, which is not the kind of thing I could manage on a long term basis..

The centre of Hull at 7:55 am.

Back at Work

Today is officially “The Most Depressing Day of the Year (tm)”, what with the end of the Christmas and New Year break and a long wait to Easter.  At least the office was nice and warm when I got to work. What better way to start the new year than with a big pile of marking….

Actually, I’ve found a good way to banish the start of years blues. Play Turn it Up by Pixie Lott very loud. Works a treat.

End of Christmas 2009

Put the Christmas decorations away today. We hate doing this, although I reminded number one wife that putting them away now is the first step towards decorating for Christmas 2010.

New Years Damage

Another attempt for Humanclock. It snowed a bit last night. Use your powers of deduction to work out what time the picture was taken…

I’ve hurt my “mouseing” finger. The index finger of my right hand. The one I click with. I did it by removing some cable trunking covers. It is a rule (at least in my house) that the TV with the worst low signal performance is on the end of the longest aerial cable. This means that it can’t receive some channels, in particular the new “Quest” channel (38) which was showing a marathon of Mythbusters today. So we removed a bunch of wires in an attempt to find out where all the signal was going. The results were inconclusive, but I did carve a nice chunk out of the side of my finger, which counts as progress I suppose, but not necessarily in a desirable direction.

Update on 2010-01-04 09:10 by Rob

Both my pictures are now on Human Clock. Wahay!

Happy New Year’s Eve

Had a great time this evening. Amongst other things we had a go at Bohnanza.  This is a card based training game that is a bit like a cross between Happy Families and Pit. You collect and plant sets of bean seeds in fields in an attempt to harvest them and get the most gold coins. It has a lot of trading and negotiation, which was the bit I enjoyed the most.   We got so engrossed in playing that we nearly forgot to celebrate the New Year itself.

The card game was a gift from the folks at Black Marble, who have an eye for a good game it seems. Thanks folks.

I’d like to wish all my readers (gosh, this sounds like I have readers) a very happy new year and all the best for 2010 (which doesn’t sound like a year to me – more like an eye test result….)

Evil Inkjet Prices

I ran out of yellow ink today. I thought I’d been rather cunning by getting a printer with separate ink tanks for each colour, so that I don’t have to replace an entire expensive cartridge just because one colour runs out. Unfortunately it seems I’ve actually been a bit silly, in that the price of a single colour refill seems to be about the same as my old “expensive” all in one option. Ho hum.

The good news for me though is that I can get a complete set of compatible refills for much less than the cost of a single authentic one. Usually I try to get the proper ink, because this does seem to produce better printouts, but with a price difference like this I’m feeling that I would be daft to go full price.

Digital Fun

Since I’ve been on holiday for a while I’m starting to get the urge to actually do stuff and mend things. Today I thought I’d start small by sorting out the aerial wire to a TV that, since the digital TV signal was “upgraded”, fails to play half the channels it used to. I attempted to solve this by improving the signal a bit. This turns out to be a multi-step process:

1. Replace nearly working connection with disconnected wire. Discover that there is now no picture at all.
2. Connect input to disconnected wire. But there is still no picture.
3. Search for and install antenna amplifier that has been lying around for a while and insert into signal chain to provide much needed boost.
4. Find that there is still no picture.
5. Discover that output is now being sent down wrong wire.
6. Connect to right wire and note that picture returns and mostly works. But not as well as before we started.
7. Discover that antenna amplifier is not actually plugged in. Plug it all the way into the socket. Now the picture is watchable, and we are just about back to where we were six months ago.

While I was up in the loft I got down an old computer from way back, just to see if it still works. It does, and so we recorded some old music files from it. Some of them go back to 1991. This was a ground breaking machine at the time, and it does boot fast from its 80MB disk. Any ideas which machine?

Sale Hunting

Went out today to get some things in the sale. Note to self, if you need to use a pound coin to get a trolley to fetch stuff from the store it is best if you actually have such a coin with you. Otherwise you can’t get what you want.

Actually, I could have solved this problem quite easily, but I reasoned that if I bought anything I’d have to carry it home and fit it (we were in a DIY store) and so this worked out quite well. Did manage to get a 10 metre rope light for only 10 pounds though, which struck me as good value. No idea what I’ll use it for, but it looks nice even coiled up.

Back in Hull

Drove back to Hull today. Again the roads were very friendly and the journey was smooth.

Christmas Cheer

Had a great Christmas. Got my Chumby, which even as I write is cycling through a bunch of widgets. I’m going to have a go at writing some widgets of my own when I get back to Hull.

I also got some eggs with surprises in, some books, slippers and of course socks. But nice ones.  I hope you all got what you wanted as well.

We went for a walk after lunch. Number one son took the best picture.

Driving Off for Christmas

Today we drove the length of the country (or a substantial part of it) to meet up for our Christmas celebrations. The weather has been dodgy to say the least, and last night the radio waves were full of dire warnings about dangerous roads, sheet ice and fog. There was no mention of a plague of locusts, but they were forecasting pretty much everything else.

We set off anyway. The direction we were going was away from the bad stuff, and things are supposed to be warming up. And so it turned out. The drive was actually quite boring and we arrived (with all our presents) in good time.

Semi-Colons in Tweet War

Never done this before, but Alfred2 made a post on Twitter that mentioned the way that Visual Basic programmers can eschew semi-colons that other languages seem to need to find the end of statements.

I responded that I quite like semi-colons, as they help me lay my programs out how I want. We then exchanged a couple more tweets about compiler design and there the matter rested. I think this was my first “Tweet War”

I quite like discussions like this. Of course there is no right answer in these situations (it is a bit like the the brace wars of way back where programmers debated the best way to lay out source code) but during the discourse you can pick up useful snippets of information and any experience in pitching arguments and defending your position is a good idea – as long as you approach it in the right frame of mind.

Years ago we had a debating society at the university and I ended up proposing the motion “Software Engineering is not Engineering”. I would have won the debate too, if I had taken the trouble to make sure that all my posse turned up – something my opponent had done first…