Rob Miles is not on Kindle Yet

Who, me?

I got my new Kindle from Amazon today .  Of course, the first thing I did was search for myself in the Kindle store. Imagine my surprise when I found that I’d put three books on there and was charging over seven pounds each for them (that’s more than they are asking for Tony Blair’s memoirs – so they got that bit right). Either I’ve uploaded them and set the price in my sleep, or there is something strange going on here. I’ve asked Amazon to find out what is going on.

As for the Kindle  itself. It is a perfectly formed device that is going to spell the death knell for a lot of paper books. I got a Sony E-Reader some time back and quite liked it, but loading books was  a pain and the display was useless for anything interactive.

The Kindle fixes both these problems. You can even use it to browse to my blog and the pictures look strangely wonderful in grey scale. As a paperback replacement it is fantastic. It is ultra-portable (at the moment I’m using an A5 envelope as a case) and the screen is really easy to read. The integration with Amazon is impressive to the point of scary. I got the one with the built in 3G phone and stuff just arrives as though by magic. It also has WiFi which works fine at home but not on the university campus. This is because the Kindle doesn’t support the WPA2 Enterprise security that we use at Hull.

It is a bit glib to say that the Kindle will do for books what the ipod did for music. But I don’t think that it is far from the truth.

One reason for getting the Kindle was to experiment with page layouts that work best on the small screen. I’ll be putting properly a formatted version of the Yellow Book on the Kindle store soon.

But the ones there are the moment are not from me.

Pricey Filter

Just found this on Amazon. You’d better hurry, they’ve only got one left….

Hull Classic Car Show

Went off this afternoon to a Classic Car show in Hull East Park. The park is a fantastic place. Beautifully landscaped gardens, wide open spaces and, today only, a lot of very shiny cars.

A nice shade of purple

I used to drive a Mini. But it was never as shiny as this.

Now, that’s what I call an engine.

Never Ignore the SatNav

Nice view from the new flat though. Very suburban.

Drove down to London today to do some heavy lifting for number one daughter, who is moving flat. On the way down I did something that turned out to be very dangerous.

I ignored the SatNav.

She said A1. I went M1. At the time I thought nothing of it, and she didn’t say anything. But I’m sure that she started plotting….

Next route she sent us on involved a lot more “off the beaten track” than earlier ones. Twice we got sent towards roads that had six foot six wide gaps on them which the van couldn’t get through.  After a couple of hilarious (I’m being ironic here) U-turns backwards into traffic we started ignoring any suggested routes that didn’t send us towards dual carriageways.  And I’m sure we got sent through the same set of traffic lights at least three times.

Then, on my final route home there were loads of right hand turns onto busy roads with no gaps in the traffic, a long drive along twisty roads and finally, against my better judgement, I ended up on the A1 after all.

So, never ignore the SatNav.

Saying Au-Revior to Concorde

Now, that’s what I call a flight deck.

We went to see Concorde at Filton today. I always feel a bit sad when we go over there. The plane is amazing but it doesn’t deserve to be stuck on the ground. It really should be out there doing what it does best, and what nothing on earth can do any more.

This time the affair was even more poignant because as of later this year the plane will not be open for visitors at all, which is really sad.

Anyway, I took the big camera and a selection of lenses and tried to get a few shots.

Not surprisingly the team at Bristol is very busy at the moment as people take their last chance to see the plane for a while, but if you can get yourself down there you won’t regret the trip.

Rob and the Cube

I wasn’t looking to buy a new car. I never am. Particularly after just having had the current one serviced. But they had some Cubes at the Nissan dealership and I just had to go and have a look. And I think the Cube looks great. (Although opinions differ).

Inside it is a bit like driving a conservatory and I don’t think it will win any speed races. But I really like it. My definition of great car is “A vehicle that transports a really good SatNav and sound system around, along with space for gadgets”. The Cube does all that.  And it has a rear view camera. In colour. The plan is for some trickle down action, with number one wife getting my car so every body wins.

If you are looking to by something mini-MPV’ish with a really distinctive style (the only car I’ve ever owned that I would probably be able to draw a recognisable picture of) then there are some amazing deals on the Cube at the moment.

Jenny’s Abseil

Number one daughter did her abseil today. It got put back from earlier this year. If you sponsored her, well done and thanks very much.

If you didn’t there is still time:

http://www.justgiving.com/jennifer-miles

It was 450 feet you know…

Mystery Object Answer

Now it can be told. The tool is for making holes in network cables so you can attach a Vampire tap to them. In the olden days Ethernet networks were made of a single thick piece of co-axial cable (the same stuff we use to connect TVs to aerials). This had a terminator at both ends and the way you connected a station to the network was to drill a hole in the side of the cable and push a pin into the central conductor.  These connectors got the name of “vampire taps” for obvious reasons.

Getting the hole wrong (too big or too deep) was bad, as you only had the one cable for your entire network. So we used to use a device with a drill bit which had been cut to just the right diameter and depth in the tool you see above.

This was in the “Good Old Days” of networking,  10BASE5 style (this means 10MBits/second, baseband signals and 500 metre maximum segment length).  Nowadays we are up to 100GBits/second on some networks. That is  10,000 times faster.

The tool has rattled around in my desk for a while and I probably should get rid of it.

Having said all that, it does remind me of a Veroboard track cutter. I used to have one of those too. It’s a tool which lets you make breaks in copper tracks on circuit boards by cutting through them with a drill bit. So, I reckon that Dave G is a winner here and if he wants to drop by he can have is Windows Phone lanyard.

Perfect Afternoon

The finished product

I spent the afternoon eating chocolate and drinking tea while making my own Lego private jet and watching a naff James Bond movie in HD.

Perfect.

This is what Lego thinks the pilot uses to fly the plane. Right hand down a bit I reckon.

Instant Green

If you want to know how to get “green credentials” for your organisation do what the US Government does with its forms. They have the “Printed on Recycled Paper” logo on the bottom of all their PDF documents so anyone that prints them out is automatically eco-friendly.

Back to Work

Bellevue Movie Theatre looking good

..and today I go back to work…

Back in Hull

Got back to Hull today.  Nice to find the place just as I left it. There is nothing quite like not sleeping in your own bed.

I blame the jetlag.

Clothes Shopping with Jetlag

We got back to the UK first thing this morning, had a quick nap and immediately decided to go clothes shopping. As you do.

There was actually method in this madness, in that we were in Bristol, which is home to one of the few shops that sells clothes in my size. And they have a sale just right now. So it was off to purchase a whole bunch of outfits. Took number one wife with me to stop me buying anything purple or orange.

Birthday in Seattle

Lowells sign

Got to spend my birthday in Seattle today. Thanks for all the good wishes folks. Got a new Lego watch (and my own private jet as well).

We spent some time going around the city. Of course I took some photographs..

Ended the day out eating natchos in the Imax at Bellevue, watching “Inception”. Great film.

Windows Phone 7 Jump Start Studio Prep

Bob sets up the webcam while we sort out the introductions.

Today we went over to the room where we are doing our mammoth Windows Phone 7 Jump Start. It starts Tuesday morning and you can sign up here if you like. I was expecting a room with a desk and a webcam. They were there alright, in a studio with two proper cameras, a backdrop and all the trappings of a professional broadcast.

Oh gosh.

Andy settling in.

We did some dry runs where we found out a couple of things:

1. Both of us speaking at the same time– bad.
2. Neither of us speaking at all – bad.

However, I think we should be OK on the day.

Update on 2010-07-20 13:51 by Rob

If you want to take part in the fun, post to the course forum and download the materials you can go here:

http://borntolearn.mslearn.net/wp7/default.aspx

That way you can find the jokes before we say them....

Hello Seattle (again)

Nice view from the plane

The lady at US Immigration looked at the stamps in my passport and said “You come here a lot, don’t you”. I suppose I do, wouldn’t have it any other way.

Anyhoo, we had a very smooth couple of flights thanks to Continental airlines (although the airline food version of a cheeseburger is something I only want to experience once in my life) and finally arrived in Bellevue in time for a walk around. During which I broke my shoes in half. Fortunately they had a huge mall just around the corner which had loads of shoe shops and so I was able to get something I’ve always wanted, a pair of Converse All Stars. Excellent.

Downtown Bellevue looking good.

Then Sharon arrived at the hotel with a Windows Phone each for Andy and me. Truly, the day could have got any perfecter.

Mostly Writing, and then a Drive

Spent today feverishly writing Windows Phone 7 content and then driving down the motorway to Bristol to hook up with number one son ready for the flight out tomorrow.

I’m taking an entourage to Seattle with me, they are going to have fun going round and seeing the sites, and I’m going to have fun teaching.

Windows Phone 7 Training Mayhem

Who? Me?

I got an email a couple of weeks ago asking if I would like to do some Windows Phone 7 training. Thinking that this might be a useful stepping stone to getting my hands on a device, and it might be fun to do I said why not? Actually, it was a bit more complicated than that

I fly out to Seattle on Saturday. I started off thinking that I would be doing this using Live Meeting in a little room in our house, it turns out that I will be using Live Meeting out of a studio in Bellevue, Washington State, USA. 

At the moment I’m working on the content. We have 12 hours to fill…

Omar Sharif Graduates from Hull

Omar Sharif came to see us today and collect an honorary degree. He gave a superb speech, explaining his friendship with Hull born actor Tom Courtenay and his ups and downs as a long standing Hull City fan.

Great guy.

Graduation Day

Did the warmup for two graduation day ceremonies today. One of them was for students from Computer Science. I took the tiny camera and it seems to have done a pretty good job in difficult circumstances. If you were there you should be able to find yourself in this picture or the other one on Flickr.

A couple of great audiences, thanks for that folks.