I was up bright and early today to review the papers for Radio Humberside. One of the nice things about being up town at 6:45am (and there has got to be at least one) is that you can take pictures of the town in the early morning sunshine.
I’m never sure whether my hobby is photography or “Buying cameras, using them for a bit and then selling them for a loss on ebay”. Either way, while I do take a lot of photos I also do a bit of camera shopping. Today I was in a camera shop asking about a camera I was thinking of investing in. I never say buying, that sounds like I might actually lose money on the deal.
Anyhoo, we find the camera and one of the assistants appears and offers to show me the device in action. Which turns out to have a flat battery. “Typical” says the assistant, although typical of what I’m not sure. No, they don’t have any charged batteries lying around. No, they don’t have any other versions of the camera, just the one on display. No they won’t give a discount if they sell the display camera. The best they can offer is to charge the battery and I can drop back later to take a look.
I wouldn’t mind but this is the third time I have had this kind of experience. Shop 1 the camera battery was flat. Shop 2 the battery wasn’t flat but they didn’t have an SD card that I could use to store pictures that I’d taken to test the camera. And now I get this.These are just random shops I’ve walked into around the country. They were not all in the same chain either.
The camera I was looking at wasn’t cheap. And I was fairly serious about buying it. If I was selling in this position I’d make sure that every camera was fully charged first thing in the morning. I’d have a pocket full of the relevant batteries and SD cards that fitted. I’d even go as far as having a bunch of sample prints that I’d taken to show any potential customer what each camera could do. I’d have a sensible policy on selling display models, even a modest discount might have sealed the deal.
The one way that these kinds of shops can compete with online shopping is on service. It is rather upsetting to find that they are not really trying on this score either.
Today Simon came to see me and told me to write a blog post about Revolution Software and their new project. Revolution has a long and distinguished history, some of which involves Hull, although they are now based just down the road in York. One of my many claims to fame is that a future member of the Revolution staff was with me in my brand new Vauxhall Astra when I crashed it. Things could have been really bad for that company (and me I suppose) if I’d managed to get six inches further out of the junction before that van hit us…..
Anyoo, motor mishaps aside, Revolution has produced some excellent “point and click” adventures in its time, including such seminal titles as “Lure of the Temptress”, “Beneath a Steel Sky” and of course the “Broken Sword” series. The rise of tablet devices has given their products a new lease of life, with a whole generation of new gamers who have the perfect platform for exploring their beautifully drawn environments and taut plotlines.
Revolution are presently seeking funding for their game and you can get a piece of the action by backing their Kickstarter project to raise the cash to produce the game. For a game of this quality the target funding seems quite modest, and they are well on the way to raising it. Simon says that if you don’t get involved he will be very disappointed and wear a frown for the rest of the week.
I used to be quite good at Table Tennis. Today I found that I’m not as good as I used to be. But it is still great fun. I’m going to take some bats and balls to work and see if I can track down a table. Anyone out there on the Hull campus fancy a game?
This is my first attempt at taking a panoramic picture of the lovely new Kings Cross station. I’m sure there will be more in the future.
This morning we woke up late after all the excitement . In fact, we were so excited last night that we didn’t notice that the car taking is back to the hotel delivered us at the wrong place. For a while we sat in the bar having drinks and charging them to a room that didn’t exist. After we had been ever so politely reminded of this issue we grabbed a taxi back to “the other hotel called the Hilton that is in Kensington” for bed.
Today was spent having a great lunch and shopping for presents appropriate for a Pearl wedding anniversary. My suggestion, a Pearl handled revolver and one bullet, was not well received (and potentially dangerous) and so earrings and a watch with a vaguely pearlescent case were purchased instead. Oh, and the earrings were not for me.
I wasn’t at the Olympic Closing Ceremony. Wish I had been. I normally hate these kinds of things, seeing them as overblown feasts of self congratulation.
This one was different. It was great. Even the music was amazing. All of it. And when they started with the intro to “Wish you were here”, and then, at the end when the guy on the tight rope shook hands (see 70’s Pink Floyd album cover reference above), well, words fail me.
I’m pretty sure that there will be someone on Radio 4 tomorrow moaning about the way that the whole thing showed “nothing about what being British really means”. (actually I’m very sure, I’m writing this on Monday morning and I’ve just heard it).
What daft thing to say. To me the whole Olympics thing has been about Britain saying “Actually you know, we are pretty good at lots of things. Including putting on a darned good show.” Well done Team GB. At every level.
Qn: When is an Ugg boot not an Ugg boot?
Ans: An Ugg boot is never an Ugg boot.
If this is confusing, welcome to the club. When we went to Australia one of the items on the agenda was the purchase of a pair of Ugg boots. Note that this was not my agenda.
Anyhoo, we found lots of shops selling “Genuine Australian Ugg boots”. So we bought a pair in Sydney. And they broke in Melbourne. So we took them to what we thought was the local Ugg shop. And we discovered that there is no such thing as “Genuine Australian Ugg Boots”.
We thought Ugg was like Nike, i.e. a particular manufacturer of shoes. Turns out that Ugg is a lot more like “sheepskin”. In other words, anyone who makes footwear out of bits of sheep can call them Ugg. The people in the shops aren’t exactly forthcoming with this information, which means that when you think you have bought a branded, supported product, you haven’t.
The only good news is that a search on the phone for Ugg Boot Repairs found someone just down the road who should be able to fix things.
I saw this on the way into the department today. Well done folks.
One thing that struck me while we were away is how things conspire to make your mobile phone useless when you go abroad. Just when you are in a place where you could make the best use of portable data access you find that it is prohibitively expensive, if it is available at all. Using voice is out of the question. I can’t think of anyone I’d be happy to pay 85p a minute to talk to, or receive a call from at 70p. So I made no calls on the phone while we were away. Then one night the network made my phone call itself. Which was very confusing for me, as well as costing me 1.55 a minute..
Then there is network connectivity. Charging 8 pounds a megabyte for data access from the phone makes it unusable on the internet. Are there people who can afford to do anything with data at this price? I don’t think so, because I didn’t run across anyone wearing a solid gold hat and looking up things on their phone. From a technical point of view it can’t be any more expensive to provide me with network access than it is to connect the local folks sat next to me on the tram. This is just plain and simple profiteering. Ugh.
So we go back to the hotel. They are happy to provide me with “unlimited” access to the interwebs for just 29 dollars a day. That is around twenty times the cost of my home connection. But wait, it gets better. Once I’ve transferred 100MBytes (i.e. read a few emails, uploaded some pictures and visited a few image heavy web sites) I can either pay extra per megabyte or get shunted onto a capped data connection that is actually slower than my dialup modem used to be. Double ugh. It’s almost as if they have concocted a tariff that makes it impossible for someone to, say, watch a movie from Netflix in their room. Or actually achieve anything.
My experience has been that the more posh the hotel, the more appalling the network charges. The Howard Johnston motel I stayed at had free WiFi. Once I found myself in a very pricey hotel in Las Vegas (I wasn’t paying fortunately) where a network connection wasn’t expensive, it just wasn’t there at all.
In the end we became the worst kind of WiFi leaches, looking for places that happened to provide working WiFi for free. It is always sobering to read all these reports of how connected devices are going to be the way, the truth and the future, and then find yourself in a place where the network either doesn’t work, or is so expensive as to be useless.
Today is my birthday. I’ve had quite a few of them actually. In fact, so many that I can remember using most of the things in this exhibit from the Powerhouse Museum.
Many thanks to those who sent birthday wishes. Had a great day, although thanks to the jetlag it ended at 7:30pm….
So, what would you like after 30 hours of travel? Would that be a cup of tea, or perhaps a nice lie down? How about a flooded kitchen? Thought not. Neither did I. All seemed well when we staggered back into the house. Although the kitchen floor did seem a bit shiny……
You can see the culprit above, the plastic fitting behind the washing machine had failed and released quite a lot of water into our brand new kitchen. So rather than any of the above, we were instead engaged in mopping up and making good, along with wondering if the place would ever get back to how we left it.
Oh well. Worse things happen at sea. For one thing, there is a lot more water there….
I got an email last night telling me that I’m an MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) for another year. Which is rather nice.
Now, here’s a little known fact that I only found out about a while back. If you are in Hull using Kingston Communications (or KC as they are more trendily known) for your broadband (like you have a choice) and you are stumping up for their “Pro” account, you can have a fixed IP address as part of the package.
This is really useful if you want to run services at home but don’t want to have to fiddle about with dynamic DNS services and stuff like that. I went online and asked them about it and I was fixed up with fixed in no time at all.
I bought this today to replace my old rechargeable drill, which started to make a funny smell whenever I tried to use it. Who knows what damage I can do with this new one?
Incidentally, I’m a bit confused as to why they call it a “funny” smell. It didn’t strike me as particularly amusing. The only funny smell I can think of is laughing gas. Ho ho.
Every time I log in to Facebook it seems to have a new feature which I have to engage with. The latest is “Close Friends”. Last time used the web site I was invited to pick people to occupy this cherished category. Unfortunately I seem to have pressed one button too many, and selected a chap called Toby Russell, who is one of our first year students and a thoroughly excellent fellow, but not actually a best friend as such. For the last weekend I’ve been getting updates just from Toby on my phone. I’m a bit worried that he might think I’m doing some kind of stalking, so I’ve removed him from that list now. Sorry about that Toby.
It looks as if Her Majesty’s stock is dropping a bit….
Having a couple of days in London. I like the place, but wouldn’t want to live there. Had lunch at The Diner. Always have lunch at the Diner. I insist. And nobody seems to mind. If you want some of the best burgers in London, you should pop along.
Then went off in search of camera stuff and bits and bobs. Paid homage in the Apple store (I always go in there wearing a Microsoft jacket to see if it will burst into flames). The new Macbook Pro looks very nice. But at the moment I’m loving my Samsung Slate 7 (on which more later) and so I’ll stick with that for now.
I’m breaking in a new camera at the moment, so I took a whole bunch of pictures.
Bright Shades
Patriotic Bike.
Indeed.
One of my favourite sayings is “What doesn’t kill you makes a darned good blog post”.
This is not always true.
I can’t say that the last couple of weeks have been fun, but they have been a lot better than they might have been, thanks to the kindness and thoughtfulness of folks around me. Thanks folks. In amongst the bad stuff there have been quite a few good things happening, of which more later. For now, I’ve got some serious marking to catch up on.
Ebay is probably seen as old hat these days, but if, like me, you have a gadget habit to pay for and limited funds, then one way to get some cash is to sell some of the gadgets that you have around the place. I’ve been doing a lot of this lately. Here are my tips for successful sales:
If you want to come to the Finalists BBQ and get some free meat (vegetarian options will be available too) then you need to get your tickets from the departmental office before the end of tomorrow (Wednesday 23rd). The BBQ is open to all 3rd and 4th year students (1st and 2nd year students don’t need to worry as we’ll be doing something similar next year and the year after). It is on Monday 28 May in Sanctuary from 2.30 pm to 5.30 pm.
If you prefer free pizza (or want to have both) the Microsoft Windows 8 developer camp will end with free food too. It’s on Wednesday June 6th and you can sign up here:
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
