Tag those T-Shirts

I spent some time this morning working on the logo for the 2010 Where Would You Think T-Shirts. We give these away to guests who attend our Admissions Open Days in the department and they have a slightly different design each year.

The release of the design is of course an event eagerly awaited by the fashion press, and it is rumoured that Chanel, Christian Dior and Yves Saint-Laurent actually hold back releasing their spring collections until they see what we have come up with.

The byword this year is “Tag chic”. You can point your cameraphone at the design and the magic of Microsoft Tag will take you to our admissions community site.

Microsoft Inspiration Tour with Andy Sithers

One of the people in this picture is a Microsoft employee. See if you can spot him. Clue: He has his eyes shut….

..and in case the other side of the room were feeling left out…

Andy Sithers from Microsoft came to see us today. We  all went for a meal in Staff House, had a quick meeting with the Imagine Cup teams to discuss their entries (looking good people) and then he gave a presentation as part of the Inspiration Tour. Great fun.  He dished out some hoodies and T shirts as prizes and then left me with some which I’m going to give the team that comes up with the best looking game idea to enter into the Game Design Challenge for the Imagine Cup.  One of the hoodies that was left is XL, i.e. my size. Better get those ideas in before the end of the month folks, or I’ll have something new to wear…

Angry Rob

I got very angry tonight. Banging the table angry. Not like me at all. Really. I was recording another in the XNA Screencast series (you can find the previous ones here). Normally I do the whole thing in one continuous take. That’s not to say that everything always goes right, it is just that I try and keep going whatever happens.

Anyhoo, this time I made a rather serious blunder, and was forced to stop and re-record a section which I then had to tidy up. Big mistake. The program I was using to prepare the screencast has an interesting foible on my machine. When editing things the mark points are never where you think they are. Whenever I cut out a phrase the program actually removed out another part of the soundtrack so editing just got more and more frustrating as I tried to compensate by cutting the “wrong” parts in the hope I would get what I wanted. I didn’t. In the end number one wife came in to find me thumping my desk with annoyance and told me I was being stupid, which I was.

Eventually I figured out that by cunning use of the undo command I could refine my edits to the point where I actually got what I wanted. And it only took me an extra hour or so. I’ve now resolved not to bash the desk any more. It doesn’t achieve much. And it hurts.

Windows 7 Tablet Madness

I think I’m on a quest to find the smallest and slowest computers around and then put Windows 7 on them. Latest contender is my venerable old Fujitsu Stylistic Tablet PC. One of the first tablet PCs ever, this boasts a mighty 800MHz processor and 512MBytes of ram.  I had this idea that, in the absence of the iPad any time soon, it might be a useful handheld device that I could use to sit around and read Safari books on.

And it mostly works. I had a bit of fun when I installed the “proper” graphics drivers. For some reason it didn’t register the installation properly, and so I ended up with a machine with three or four graphics devices, which didn’t end well. And every now and then the display would go black because these drivers didn’t support the correct version of Direct X. I solved these problems by using the original Microsoft drivers, which means I can’t rotate the screen, but it works fine in landscape.

..and it works!

All the hardware apart from the tablet buttons works properly, even the WIFI card works perfectly. Performance could be better, but browsing is just peachy and I’m even thinking about putting Office on there so I can look at documents. I might even upgrade the RAM to a massive 768MBytes to get even more speed. I guess the lesson here is that you really can bring dead machines back to life with the magic of Windows 7.

Hull Graduation Congregation

I did the warmup for today’s graduation day for students from our faculty. Thanks for being a great Congregation. It was a really good occasion and we had a lovely speech from our honorary graduate. I’m sorry that some of the pictures I took from the stage came out a bit more blurred than I would have liked, but you should be able to recognise yourself. There are much larger versions in Flickr. Click on the images to find your way to the pictures on there.

…to the right..

Left of stage

Right of stage.

Such Excitement

 

I think it was a great man that once said “Happy is the man who has a robot in the post”.

Or perhaps it’s just me.

Lion King in London

Went to London today to see the Lion King show. This meant getting up at 5:45, but as you all know I’m prepared to suffer for art, and so this wasn’t a problem.

We had lunch at the Masala Zone restaurant in Covent Garden. Masala Zone is a small chain of Indian Restaurants in London, each of which is decorated in a characteristic way, the one we went to has loads of puppets hanging from the ceiling, depicting the guests arriving at a particularly posh wedding.

The food was great. Really tasty, and very nicely priced.

If you want a place to eat in London that won’t break the bank, but will deliver a really good dining experience, then I strongly recommend it.

Then it was on to the theatre.

I’m not that big on musicals. I reckon that if the story is going to be interrupted by a song it had better be a darned good one.  However, the songs, sets, costumes and style of the whole performance worked for me.

I think I rather annoyed number one daughter when I said (somewhat tongue in cheek) “It’s good, but it’s no Avatar”. Actually it is far better than the movie. Avatar is highly polished, with incredible attention having been focused on getting everything to look as real as possible. Lion King takes the approach that since it is impossible to get the whole of the jungle into a theatre we will concentrate on giving you the impression of what it is is like there.  And it works a treat.

Avatar is like watching a really good computer game being played by an expert technician. Lion King is like having a beautiful story told by a bunch of people right in front of you.  If you want to see how far you can get with imagination and just plain cleverness, then go and see the show. Great stuff.

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….)