You know you're making progress when you start a scrap folder

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I'm doing some writing at the moment. V. exciting. I've spent some time playing with ideas and I've got something that I'm almost happy with. And one consequence of this is that I've opened a "scrap" folder for the project.  Turns out I never feel I'm making progress until I've started throwing things away. 

It might just be me, but my first attempt at something complicated is not usually much good. It's only when I've tried a few things and thrown them away that I feel I'm getting anywhere.

My scrap folder is a big part of this because one of my golden rules about working is that I never really throw anything away. Instead I create a scrap folder and throw it in there. Two reasons for this. The first is that these days I don't think anyone is ever really short of disk space, so deleting things is not necessary. The second reason is that it might be that my "better" idea is actually a worse one, and I need a way back to where I was.

I could use source code control for this I suppose, but since the work is really a collection of documents and bits and bobs it feels a bit like overkill. So I just make a folder called scrap and drop things in there when I don't think I need them any more.

Hairy Bikers at the Good Food Show

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I'm not a huge fan of TV shows about food preparation to be honest. I've been known to shout "But it's only cooking" at the telly during the final moments of MasterChef, when the music picks up tempo and the voiceover solemnly intones '..and now Anton only has two minutes to finish his Béarnaise sauce..".

To me cooking is that thing you do when you feel hungry, or if you are into advanced cooking an hour or so before you feel hungry, because that's the time it takes to bake a couple of potatoes and lob some sausages into the oven to have with them.

All this means that I didn't have the highest of expectations today when we set of to the Good Food Show. But it was great. First off they had lots of stalls dishing out samples of food (including a wealth of cheeses) and then we got to see the Hairy Bikers do a live presentation.

I was really hoping that they would bring out a Yamaha motorbike engine and discuss how to adjust the valve timings, followed by a few minutes on caring for greasy hair, but instead they did some cookery. However, it was great fun to watch then cook up some bits and bobs. They have a great banter and worked hard to make it very entertaining. Harrogate is a great location for this kind of thing. The theatre is lovely, see above, and the exhibition centre is near the middle of the town, which is a nice place to walk round.

We left burdened down with a whole bunch of samples (including a pint of milk each, which struck me as strange as I already know what milk is like) and some really nice cheese. Much more fun that I was expecting.

Last Open Day for a While

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We had our last Saturday Admissions Open Day for a while today. Thanks to everyone who came along, particularly those who had travelled a long way to get to us. Don't forget that you can get an electronic copy of the C# Yellow Book here. You can also find a complete set of our first year programming content on the same link.

We had a question about masters level Computer Systems Engineering during the Q&A session. If you want to know exactly which courses we teach (including MEng Computer Systems Engineering) you can go here.

If you want to keep up with news from the department you can keep up to date with what we are doing here. http://www.wherewouldyouthink.com/

Trains, Taxis and Open Days

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Today we travelled back to Hull. Things were a bit time critical as it turned out. The train arrived in Hull around 50 minutes before I was due to give an open day talk. But thanks to the magic of taxis I got up to the university in time and it all went swimmingly. Sorry if I bored you with tales of who I'd been mixing with the night before.

The talk went great, thanks for being a lovely audience.

Fixing your WiFi Radio

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I'm quite proud of myself. I've managed to fix something. In the kitchen we have an internet radio which works quite well. We need one because there are no other radio signals that work properly there. But sometimes it stops working, It's taken me a while to figure out the cause of the problem, but finally I have the answer.

It's the microwave. 

The confusing thing is that because the radio uses a lot of buffering it doesn't stop as soon as the microwave comes on and blocks out the signal. The radio plays for a minute or so and then drops out. Then, when you turn the microwave off it takes a few seconds for the radio to re-establish connections with the server and start working again. 

I've checked on-line and apparently this is not an uncommon problem and the microwave radiation isn't hazardous as such, but it is irritating. 

For me the fix was quite easy. I just switched the WiFi channel from 6 to 10 and the problem has gone away. Go me. 

Students that Blog

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I strongly encourage all our students to blog. Not because I think they'll gain a world following, but because it is a great way to practice writing. And it turns out you don't need a world following anyway. You just need that one potential employer to find their way to your site and suddenly you are streets ahead of everyone else.  I know students who have had job offers purely on the basis of their blogs. 

Anyhoo, here are a few Hull folks who have taken up the blogging challenge. These are just the first few that sprang to mind. Apologies to anyone I've missed out. Ping me an email and I'll update the list. If you want to go on the Blogroll (not sure about that name) at wherewouldyouthink, let me know about that too.

Hatless by Degrees

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Ceremony 2

Ceremony 2

Ceremony 3

Ceremony 3

There are two Rob Miles's working at the University of Hull. This can cause problems occasionally. As when you hear "We've ordered academic dress for Rob Miles to wear at the degree ceremony on Friday" and think that all will be well. 

Of course, that wasn't me. So I had to make do with a gown and cape that we grabbed from the returns, plus a hat that was strangely large. In fact I really wished that I'd spent some time practicing the Michael Jackson spin before the ceremony.  I reckon that I could have done one of those without my hat actually turning. That would have been so cool. At least I think so.

Anyhoo, hat problems aside (I gave up on the hat in the end as it kept falling off) we had a couple of really splendid ceremonies. It's always a bit nerve wracking getting everyone into line and doing the warm-up speech, but it was so worth it to see the looks on the faces of the graduates and their families. I took my usual pictures from the stage, they came out quite well. If you click through the pictures onto Flickr you can find the larger versions and seek out yourself. 

The only real snag with today was that it's put me in the wrong place to get into the Global Game Jam that is running over the weekend. Jon took a bunch of students over to the Grimsby event and I'm going to be nipping over during to see what is going on, but I don't think I'll have the time to get down and build an entry. Then again, when I find out the theme and the mood takes me, who knows..... 

The Quest for a Tidy Desk

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One of my more sensible resolutions is to have a tidy desk where possible. I tried this before and it worked well, until some kind of task based entropy kicked in and things got all untidy again. But today I started with my "making things" desk and it is now a lot more tidy, as you can see above. . 

The idea is to have enough storage space so that I can get something out, work on it and then put it away before moving onto the next task. We'll just have to see how this goes. When I get my office desk tidy (which is presently such a mess that I'm too ashamed to post a picture) then I'll be able to say that I've cracked this one. 

Greeting Card Conundrums

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card.jpg

So I'm tidying up at home today (it does happen) and I come across a box of Christmas cards that I bought last year and never sent. Oh well. 

Last year I got everything wrong. I bought a whole bunch of cards and then didn't get around to writing them. Then I noticed that some folks around the place were not writing cards this year, but instead donating to charity and sending round an email . So I thought I'd do the same.

Then the Oxfam web site crashed half way through my transaction and I wasn't sure whether I'd donated or not. By the time I got a bank statement that confirmed the money had moved it was too late to send any messages around. So I looked like I'd not even tried.

So this year I did things properly. Cards were written and delivered around the department (I was especially proud of how I wrote them in the order of the offices in the corridor so I could deliver them in one pass) and I've also made a donation. I had just enough cards too. (or so I thought until I found this extra box). 

The non-special Special Tool

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Last week a bit fell off our oven, forcing me to abandon some pinball fun and go home to fix it. I love pinball, but I like eating even more. 

Anyhoo, once things had been put back together I noticed that the bulb in the oven light had failed. It was underneath a screw in glass dome that wouldn't come off. So I did what every self-respecting man of the new millennium would do. I went on to Amazon to find out what was out there that I could use to fix it. And I turned up a kit that include a replacement glass dome, a bulb and, most importantly, a special tool that could be used to remove the dome. 

Except that it didn't work. What do you call a special tool that doesn't work? Well, it's not special, that's for sure. So I had to do something that really, really, hurts. In all kinds of ways. I called in a man to fix it. 

Thanks to a cancellation he turned up in good time, produced a special too that looked exactly like mine and used it to remove the dome. Oh well. Perhaps some of the specialness in these tools comes from the person wielding it....

Anyhoo, we are now in a position to be able to watch the Christmas turkey cooking, which is exactly where I wanted to be.