Head Tracking and Helicopters

Hand tampered hat with tracking LEDS

Number one son is here over Christmas, which is great. He’s brought his “proper PC” with a hairy graphics card and a helicopter game which is great fun to watch him play. Particularly the bit where he spends five minutes doing pre-flight checks, starting the engines, aligning the controls, lifting off and then instantly crashing sideways into the tarmac.

He’s been experimenting with head tracking, where you put a camera on the monitor which tracks three leds that are attached to the headgear of your choice (in our case a Visual Studio baseball cap). It works very well. Particularly the bit where you put a piece of exposed film in front of the camera to filter out the visible light and only allow the infra-red leds to show through.  (Thanks to Simon for the LEDs by the way).

After a bit of careful configuration we now have a system which allows the player to look around the cockpit of the helicopter. It’s not completely real of course, since when you move your head the view itself stays in the same place, but it is good enough to be useful apparently. Great fun.

New Doorbell

I don’t have any pictures of doorbells, but I do have a picture of a teapot.

It seems that, where doorbells are concerned when you have replaced all the batteries and it still doesn’t work properly it is time to buy a new one. The old one has served us well. The switch in the bell push broke and so I unsoldered it and swapped it for the configuration switch to eke another three years of life out of it. I was particularly proud of this soldering job because I did it without actually using any solder. At the time I could find my soldering iron but not the solder to go with it. Then I went through a patch where I had loads of solder, but the iron had vanished. Now I’ve got both readily to hand, but I don’t need either of them just right now.

Anyhoo, I got the new one from Homebase. It wasn’t particularly expensive but it has a whole ton of different melodies and the sounds lack the square wave sound of the previous one. We’ve found a suitably tacky sound to reward visitors with and so, if anyone comes to see us there is now a slightly higher chance of the door being answered.

Yahtzee Bowling

Simon does not look in any way scary in this picture.

We had our christmas party today, which was great fun. Afterwards some of us extended the fun even further, and went and did some bowling. It turned out that I was actually playing the “Yahtzee” form of the game, where you have to get one of every score, and plenty of zeros. Oh well…

Not Shopping

Spent some time walking around Bristol today. Rather nice to be able to do it so easily.

Great things begin with C

I was thinking today how many great things begin with the letter C. Particularly food type things. Like Cheese, Chocolate, Chicken, Crisps, Cola, Cake. And of course Christmas.

Christmas Bash Wordsearch Bonus

This could be you…

I’ve got a second Nerf Gun for the person that the highest number of the 54 “Departmental Christmas” words in the Wordsearch below:

D G S Z T G R Y S U I R O T S I P E I L A C R F X W C E X Z
M G U F T T E S P M O T N A I R B C L K V E G Y O S H V T Z
B I P T U Y D B P X G R A X S I M N M O D L I E B M R H D H
W D E C K N O S N I B O R R E T E P M N E A R R X I I O J W
D A R S L L E B K R A M J K U I L S A O N E X G H K S O I B
S O L A Z N E N F I U I N K T S D X N N T O A D X E T V A J
E Q A B V E I K C M N E R R A D E A I U A L J I Y B M Y P M
L Z B M A R T I N W A L K E R L R S P B G N W V A I A Q W I
I D A V I D G L O V E R V V A D P M U A E X I A S E S I A C
M W O R D S E A R C H M P E O A O E N I K L N D E L A K R R
B T M U U R W S E M I A N B P C Y D L R S S D C K B M R R O
O T I I A Y I Q W J J A O A X W R G B H I V O F O Y A V E S
R H K L Q D Q H V S J T D C A O O T F W D C W F O D N J N O
K J E O R Z C D M A T O I K I R U R G H D X S A R K D O V F
C O B A B J Y W M A P W R D D V Y Q U X R G T T B B A H I T
O G R T I S W M C O D A X O T F U J I Z A T E Z M U M N A N
C N A N N O E I U C H A N D R A K A M B H A M P A T I R N O
N A Y A G N B L G S T H G I R W N E L E H Y Y R H R L A T S
A I S H W Y O F L L D A R R Y L D A V I S Q J P A E L Y N I
H J H D A S P E R Y Y E D Y X U D B N F I K N L R R S N Z P
W G A C N A N L E N L Q A C S H P F I N J S W R G H O E E P
E N W U G E E E P N S G V Z V Z O B G U C A E F B O N R C A
R I S B L K H C P M T M I H D J P D G G Z T M G R Y F W E L
D P H E X Z M N O O A G D F C L E K V G S V T E G Z B I T C
N U H U Y D O B H R R P P X G L Y E R G N O M I S O R A X O
A S I M L Z N M N R B O A H I D H W D R O C K E T W O C K J
M O J W A L D A A E U S R J K U I L S X H O I B O A A G Z N
E N F M I U I N O L C K K Y T I S R E V I N U L L U H R L T
S D A O A X V A J L K J E Q J A N S P R I N G E R B V A D E
L J Y Y P Z B G A Q S V R S P A C E C H E E S E B A T T L E

Send me a picture of your solution and you can puck up the prize from my office if you are the the best one. Pictures must be sent in before the end of today (Thursday).

Simon Grey is not allowed to take part.

Update on 2012-12-14 09:32 by Rob

.and we have two winners. Josh Naylor and Josh Moon have both won after sterling efforts (even finding some great words that I didn't put in...)

They can come and get their winnings from me this morning (Friday).

Christmas Bash 2012

We had a great Christmas Bash today. A nice select turnout and plenty of fun was had.

We had a whole bunch of expensive hardware and a Wordsearch. Guess what everyone spent their time doing.

… and guess who won.

A lot of fun was had with Simon’s newly acquired toy…

What a room full of Computer Scientists do if you shout “Strike a Pose”

..and we even had Rocksmith as well. You can find all the pictures I took here.

Christmas Bash 2012 is Coming

We will be having our Christmas Bash on Wednesday 12th of December in the department. There will be hastily set up video games, food ordered at the last minute, and staff arriving just in time to be beaten at Team Fortress and whatever other gaming goodies that we can find, including a Wii U or two if we can get them to work. There will also be a last minute wordsearch with a prize that we will only just have had time to buy. In fact, this event is so "thrown together" that we've had to use the artwork from a couple of years ago.

But it will be fun for all that. Tickets are available from the departmental office. The fun starts at 4:30 pm in the Design Lab. And yes, we will be setting up the famous “Pink Christmas trees” once we’ve found them in the office stores.

Cottingham Lights

Cottingham has really good Christmas Lights. So tonight I took the big camera out for a walk and tried to capture them. Next time I’ll take the tripod too.

This is the middle of the village

And this is Santa.

Watching Progress Bars

I’ve bought a replacement disk for the SSD that has failed. I’ve got a Samsung one instead of the OCZ one that I used to have. It went into the desktop at around lunchtime and by mid afternoon I had Windows 8 back and running fine. Now I’ve been re-installing all the software and trying to remember just what I used to have on the machine.

And don’t tell me I should have made a backup – I had done, but Windows 8 refuses to recognise it. I made the stupid mistake of thinking that the Windows 7 backup tools that are present in Windows 8 could be used to restore a backup into Windows 8. What I probably should have done (although I’ve no way of knowing this) is install Windows 7 and then restore the Windows 8 backup from that.

Mending Stuff

I’m now officially fit enough to mend things. Today it was the turn of the doorbell. I did ask someone to come round and fix it but that didn’t end well. Apparently they turned up earlier this week but didn’t think there was anyone home (Old Joke Alert).

I’ve replaced the batteries in both ends and now it seems to work. Of course what I really want is one of the new fancy doorbells that plays MP3 files when someone presses the button. I could have some real fun with that….

The Evils of Solid State Disks

You’d think that a solid state disk would be more reliable than one which contains tiny moving parts that whizz around in close proximity to each other, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. And with solid state disks you don’t get any warning.

With hard disks I’m quite good at detecting when something is amiss. Files that take a long time to arrive, clicking noises from the box, all give warning of bad stuff to come. But with an SSD they can just fail. And not just one track or sector, but the whole thing at once. At least my SSD went a bit wobbly before it finally expired. It worked fine when cold, and failed when it had warmed up. The good news is that ebuyer sent me direct replacement of the broken disk. The bad news is that the replacement is way too identical to the original. It doesn’t work either. And the ebuyer system seems to come unstuck if you try to return a return.

Ho hum.

Therapeutic Pottering

I’m definitely getting better. It’s rather strange. I’m perfectly happy to dash around the place, running errands and fetching things, but I have real problems sitting down and doing stuff, especially at a computer. I mentioned that I didn’t feel “normal” last week to the doctor, and he made the perfectly reasonable response “Just what is normal anyway?”. Fair point.

Anyhoo, at the moment I’m just pottering around the house doing bits and bobs and taking every excuse to go out for a walk.

My First Cake (mostly)

Number one daughter is very keen on cooking, and some of this is rubbing off on me. This afternoon we made a cake (see above). I’m not saying I did all the making, but I did melt the chocolate and help with the stirring. Great fun, and turned out rather well if I do say so myself.

Getting Better All the Time

As you can see, I’m now eating a much healthier diet…

I’m definitely on the mend. I’ve been out for drinkies (that was not my drink above – promise), and even managed to make my first lump of bread.

And yes, that is cheese on top…..

Update on 2012-11-29 22:42 by Rob

And I would like to say thanks to all those who have wished me well. Means a lot.

Eye and other Tests

Two for one on Advent calendars. Which would you choose?

Went to the doctor this morning. Everything seems to be coming along fine, which is nice. Thought I’d double up and go for an eye test in the afternoon. Didn’t get the chance to use my optician gags:

Optician: “Tell me, have your eyes ever been checked?”
Me: “No, they’ve always been blue.”

or

Optician: “Can you see the eye chart on the wall over there?”
Me: “What wall?”

Anyhoo, my eyes seem to be around the same as they were last time, which means I am quite a bit up on the day, what with not having to buy any new glasses.

So Much for Solid State Disks

This is not good news. I fired up my computer (not to do any work, honest) and I saw this screen, among lots of other depressing ones. I think that my super fast SSD has broken itself.  The good news is that this provided a reason for another brisk walk (I’m very good at brisk walks at the moment) up to the Post Office to send the thing back to Expanys. The better news, I suppose, is that I can’t do anything much with my computer at the moment.

Christmas Lights

The Christmas lights are going up in Cottingham at the moment. They are being switched on tomorrow. If you get the chance, you should take a walk through the village after dark. I’ll try to take some pictures later.

Out and About

[Note: These posts are being made retrospectively. At the time I didn’t really feel like writing much, but I really want to get this stuff down just so I can remember it later.]

We went out today for a walk. Apparently walking is good for me. And cheese probably isn’t. Such is life. We went over to Manna in Cottingham, who do a really impressive hot chocolate, among other things.

Broken Hearted Rob

Well, that was fun. What I’ve had is referred to as an “elective percutaneous coronary intervention” The doctors used lots of these medical terms as they were working on me. I asked about this and they told me not to worry about what they were saying.

Unless one of them said “Oh shit”.

Anyhoo, it looks like it was a “find the problem”, “fix the problem” kind of procedure. One of the arteries in my heart was pretty much blocked apparently and the piece of stainless steel chicken wire that they inserted (actually a 2.75x32 Promus Element Plus drug eluting stent) seems to be working. I’ve now got a “non-tight feeling” in my chest which is actually rather strange. I’m back home now with a list of things that might go wrong in the 7 days and stuff not to do.

I’m going to be off work for a week or two, but hopefully when I get back I won’t be using the lift as much.