Hull Pie, Parade and Classic Cars

Did something today that we've been meaning to do for ages. Had lunch in Hull Pie. The word on the street (love using that phrase, although I'm probably not of an age to be streetwise any more) was that the food was ace.

And it was. Good prices, amazing cuisine. I had chicken, ham and leek pie on mash and it was great. Number one wife had the quiche and salad. Both were thoroughly excellent. Yesterday was the Lord Mayor's Parade and Hull was packed. We missed the World War 2 Hurricane flypast (we were eating pie at the time) but we did see some of the celebrations.

Little Drummer Boy

Look at all those buttons and dials. Must be at least three of them...

Me and the Town Crier go way back. No, really.

They had a big parade, which was very big, and a collection of classic cars, one of which actually was a Ford Consul Classic.

This was the car that my dad really wanted to buy in the early 1960s. We had to make do with a Ford Cortina. If they'd had one of them at the show I'd have been in car heaven. 

The car we never had

Saturday Open Day with Added Stupidity

We had an Open Day at the University today. The place was nicely busy, and of course I took pictures of the folks that turned up. Except that for the first group I forgot to put a memory card in the camera. Which was not optimal. Sorry about that folks. I got you to smile and everything, and then took a picture that turns out not to exist.

Anyhoo, the talks went well (at least I thought so) and some of the Wedding Lights made a guest appearance. I hope you all enjoyed the trip. You can find the C# book (and a fair few other things) here. 

Rainy Saturday

It rained a lot today. Here's a picture of slightly less rainy times. Thursday evening to be specific. 

Driven to Distraction. And Bristol.

Spent a big chunk of today driving down to Bristol. If you ask me, the day of the self drive car can't come soon enough....

Hull Holy Trinity Church

Hull Holy Trinity Church must count as one of Hull's biggest "hidden treasures". It is huge, right near the centre of the town and when I visited it was ringing its bells as loud as it could. And yet there was hardly anyone inside. This is sad. It is a very lovely place. I reckon the stained glass windows rival the best in the country. I took some pictures there yesterday which I think turned out quite well. 

If you are in the middle of town and fancy somewhere nice to just sit (they serve coffee and biscuits too) then it is great place to go.

Hull Tigers. So nearly winners

In the middle of Hull they had an amazing collection of motorcycles today. Use your skill and judgement to work out which make. (and then look in the top right corner)

I don't sit down and watch a football match very often. But then Hull City don't make it to the final of the FA cup very often. So it was get out the beer and the nibbles, close the curtains against the blazing sunshine and then on with the game.

I think it's fair to say that Hull weren't the favourites. That is until they scored two goals in the first eight minutes..... Amazing stuff. The other team, a collection of expensive players that dwarfed our plucky lads in cost if nothing else, then had to try and redress the balance and save their managers' job. Eventually they prevailed and after nail biting session of extra time they managed to snatch a winner. Hull 2, Arsenal 3.

Oh well. The good news is that there are now millions more football fans around the world who have seen the Tigers roar, and with games in Europe next year the outlook for Hull is something spectacular. 

Wedding of the Year

Number one daughter got married today. And it was lovely. Everything and everyone involved worked, ran on time, played their part to perfection and made it a properly grand occasion. If you were there (I gave the blog a plug during my "Father of the bride" speech, as you do) then thank you so much for coming. There might have been a few people on the day who were happier than me (I can certainly name two) but there can't have been very many. And so now, along with "number one daughter" and "number one son", I now have "number one son-in-law". Welcome sir.

During my speech I mentioned that on these occasions, along with quite a few others, it is best to make sure that the man makes all the truly important decisions. Number one wife and daughter dealt with all the low level details such as the groom, the venue, the date and the time, the food, the colour scheme etc etc. I was left to wrestle with the really difficult stuff, such as the type and configuration of micro-controller to put in the table decorations and how to make them all remote controlled from my phone.  Number one daughter had asked for "some coloured lights in vases". I reckoned I could do a bit better than that. 

Above you can see the system in action. The application in my phone is talking to a Bluetooth adapter in one of the lights which is then relaying commands over a 2.4 GHz connection to all the other lights, each of which can be addressed with commands to make it flicker, change colour and do a few other tricks. All the lights and the vases were 3D printed and assembled specially for the occasion. And it all worked splendidly on the day.

I'm going to write up everything and make the code available which essentially gives you two way communication between a phone application and any number of remote network sensors/controls. Making it all work was great fun and a perfect distraction from the proper aspects of the occasion. At least until the enormity of what was going on hit me as they were going through their vows.... 

CPC Good Service

Rather a big box for just 10 3.5mm jack plugs, but it did arrive the next day....

I think you find out most about a company when they are operating in "failure mode". CPC just did this, and they passed with flying colours. I'd ordered some bits and bobs for the wedding lights (where I've been spending most of my time recently - big reveal to come later - at a wedding) and I'd ordered a pack of 10 plugs. However, just 1 turned up in a bag all on its own.

I rang up CPC and told them how lonely the plug was, and how it was missing its 9 friends who somehow seemed to have got left behind. They promised to sort it out and the following day a box with the missing plugs in it turned up. Of course I'd have been slightly more impressed if it had all arrived at the same time, but I'm very pleased to see that when things don't go right they own the problem and then fix it. 

If you are buying any bits and bobs they are a great place to take a look. Their service is good (see above) and their prices are pretty reasonable too. 

Back to Hull

..and so we are back in lovely Hull. Good weather and a trip up town for a Roast Beef and Stilton sandwich down at McCoys. Life is good. 

No Mr. Bond. I expect you to fry......

Feel quite a bit better today. Well enough to watch some telly. It's Sunday afternoon, and so that means that ITV will be showing a Bond movie. And they are. "The Spy Who Loved Me". One of the worst ones in my opinion. But at the very end I saw something that piqued my interest. The last part of the credits was given over to mentions of people the producers wished to thank. This is the list of sponsors who have given money for product placement. All the usual suspects were there, Lotus cars, Seiko watches, etc etc. And right at the end: "North Thames Gas Board". 

North Thames Gas Board? What on earth did they do? Perhaps they were mentioned in early drafts of the script:

Scene 67: James Bond's apartment. James and an exotic Russian spy are having a candle-lit dinner. The exotic spy (her name is not important) looks up from her caviar vol-aux-vents and speaks:

Exotic Spy: 'James?'
Bond: 'Yes, my darling?'
Exotic Spy: 'This food, it is so delicious. Did you cook it yourself?'
Bond: 'Yes, my darling.'
Exotic Spy: 'And tell me,  what is your secret to achieving such fantastic flavours?'
Bond: 'Well, er, actually, its all about the gas that you use......'

Scene 210: Evil lair. Bond and the exotic spy (her name is still not important) are tied together on the end of a long rope which is hung over an enormous, fiery pit. The evil villain (his name is not important either) addresses them from a control room full of shiny sponsored machinery and expendables in brightly coloured boiler suits:

Bond: 'You won't get me to talk you know.'
Evil villain: 'I think I will. You see that fiery pit below you...'
Bond: 'What of it?'
Evil villain: 'Do you want to know what kind of gas I'm using.......'

Real Man Flu

Well, that's it. I'm properly ill. I feel like I've been savagely beaten by experts. And not in a good way. I spent half of the day lying in bed feeling sorry for myself and the rest of the day pottering around the place.

Feeling sorry for myself. 

Falling Ill

I think I'm coming down with something. It took me 30 minutes to change a brake light bulb on the car, and 20 minutes of that time was finding the socket spanner that I'd dropped into the toolbox to make it easier to carry.

April Fooling

I didn't have time to set up any April Foolage this year. The best one I ever did was this one, which I did three years ago. Blimey, how time flies. Great fun. Maybe next year...

Properly Lazy Sunday

Spent a lot of time today not doing much. And really enjoyed not doing it.

Skipping

Spent a big chunk of the day in the garage. In the "Good Old Days" (tm) a garage was somewhere you kept the car. Nowadays it seems to be the place where you keep the family collection of empty cardboard boxes,bits of wood that at one time you thought you might have a use for and things that the kids once played with.

Anyhoo, I've filled the skip with stuff and covered myself with dust and nostalgia. Next stop, the loft.......

When water turns bad...

I have a love hate relationship with water. It's great for some things and I understand that it is one of the primary components of Strawberry Flavoured Milk, but I don't like the way that it lurks in my loft looking for a way out. Tonight I discovered that it had found one, courtesy of a leaking pipe connection to our cold water tank. 

I noticed this just after a shower (good water) when I found that some of the pipes in the back of the airing cupboard were damp (bad water). For half a second I managed to convince myself it was condensation, but then reality set in and I had to go up the ladder and take a look. And there it was. 

Fortunately I've got to the stage in my life where I have a collection of suitably large and scary spanners to hand which can be used to tighten things up a bit and so for now I think the leak has been sorted. And there is a Lego bucket (that is a bucket that used to contain Lego not a bucket made of Lego, that would be silly) underneath the offending joint just in case of future problems. 

The good news is that most of the water had traveled straight down the outside of the pipes towards the airing cupboard, and evaporated on the way. The bad news is that some of it stopped off in the cupboard above to ruin some bedding that we had put there. 

Oh well. At least it stopped me having a boring evening playing with computers.....

Extra Large Applicants Event

We had our last Saturday Applicants Day today, which was our biggest ever I reckon. We had overspill seating beyond the overspill seating, and Lecture Theatre A was pretty much full as you can see above. I reckon these folks are well on the way to becoming great students, they have already picked up the knack of sitting towards the back of the auditorium....

Anyhoo, a good time was had by everyone and now I can get used to not having to wear a suit on a Saturday. Thanks to all those who came along, I hope you have a good journey back and that the day was an interesting one. 

Mad March Hackathon

This evening I dropped around to see how the Mad March Hackathon was going.  It seemed to me that things were picking up nicely. The event was hosted by the Platform Expo crew and organised by James, one of our students.  I've got an open day tomorrow which means that I will need a considerable amount of beauty sleep tonight, but I stayed around long enough to make encouraging noises and take a few pictures. 

W'eve got some big plans for hackathon events in the future, it's great to see that they are as popular as ever. 

Stand Up on Friday 21st March

I've mentioned this before, but it is getting closer now.  On Friday 21st of March I'm doing some stand up comedy as part of the Geeks vs. Nerds. You can buy tickets here or on the door. Tickets will also be sold in the Students Union on the Hull University Campus every Thursday and Friday at 12-2pm.

I know my name is not actually on the poster. Maybe next time.....

Update: Unfortunately it looks like the event has been cancelled. I'm very sorry about this. Anyone who has bought tickets can get refunds, go to the site for details. The good news is that I hadn't got around to hiring the clown costume so no money lost.....

Cheque Mate. And Open Day

I was in the bank paying in a cheque  this morning. Ages ago I wrote some stuff about Learning to Program a PIC in C and last week I got what will probably be the last royalty payment as the plan is to open up the content and make it freely available. I'll let you all know when it is released.

Anyhoo I was stood at the machine and looking baffled, as only I can do, and this nice assistant ended up having to come over and point out that the "Payments and Transfers" button was the one you press to pay a cheque in.  Which I found most confusing. Why can't it just be have "PAY IN A CHEQUE" written on it in large friendly letters.

I was thinking about this before I did my talk to the Open Day crowd. They were expecting to hear from someone who is versed in the latest technology and able to bend all machines to his will. Oh well.