To be continued.....
So I spent a very happy chunk of today making a drawing robot that very nearly works. I got the kit as my big Christmas present. This drawing robot needs a bit of calibration and I need to stop the paper wandering around the desk, But it was all lovely.
I hope you had as much fun as I did.
Here are the finished awards, along with the super-rare "Blue Cheese" edition.....
... at a secret rocket and cheese production facility in the North of England....
... I'm making special "Space Cheese Mining" marker awards for all the folks who helped out with the First Year marking this year. I'm going to give them to Kevin, David, Phininder, John, Bailin and Brian to say thanks for their assistance in giving all of our students a great assessment experience and some splendid feedback. Guys, I'll have them for you for Monday.
For me, there's nothing quite like marking a nice looking, well structured piece of code, giving a good grade and then asking the student "So, when did you start programming?" and then having them tell you that they started in September this year.
Not a bad way to spend a Sunday lunchtime. Wander round Cottinham Food Festival, buy a pie from the Hull Pie stand and then go home and eat it.
Lovely.
What, with today being Sunday, I'm not going to do a blog post.
Oh.
Went to Bristol today to one of the few shops in the country that sells clothes that fit me. Bought another suit. I think I may be getting ideas above my station; which is worrying.
This had better keep working...
You should never try and do anything when you have jetlag. Especially print things. Today was the day I needed to print up all the materials for the Three Thing competition. Like I did for the last few years I fired up my printer and, like it did for the last few years, it promptly proceeded to jam up with paper.
Some things about the modern world confuse me. We can put men on the moon (although that was a long time ago). We can fathom out the deepest mysteries of science. We can create vast and powerful networks that span the globe. But we can't make a device that reliably feeds paper into itself.
Up until now I've just fixed all the paper jams and carried on, repeatedly printing until I get all the copies I need. But today I had jetlag, which reduced my tolerance of such foibles to avery bare minimum. So that, and the realisation that I'd have to do exactly the same thing next year, and the year after that, made me pick the printer up, throw it in the car and take it to the tip.
Then I went on to Staples and picked up a replacement printer. I think I may have annoyed the staff by the way that I went along the row, typing product numbers into Amazon and looking for a device with a set of good reviews. Turns out that there aren't that many in that situation. Which confuses me. (see above)
Anyhoo, the HP Envy device that I selected was well reviewed and comparatively cheap. It will cost a huge amount to keep going - of course - but I'm hoping that it will print reliably for a year or two.
I'm trying a new technique for dealing with jetlag on the return flight this time. It involves getting up at 2:00 am on the day you fly back (which is around 10:00 am in the target time zone). That way I figure that I will sleep on the plane and then wake up perfectly adjusted.
What could go wrong?
Bottom row on the left, if you are interested....
We are very lucky to have a bookshop right on the university campus. It's been through a number of names while I've been here. It started as Haigh and Hochland, then changed to Bowes and now it is Waterstones. I've not been in for a while, and I must admit to my eternal shame that I only dropped in last week out of vanity. Someone had mentioned that they still had a copy of my XNA book on sale, and it turned out to be true, which I found amazing. Now we just have to get someone to buy that copy and see if they restock....
Anyhoo, the bookshop is great. Like most bookshops it has branched out a ways, and along with course books there are is now a goodly selection of games and other bits and bobs. They've even got a copy of the awesome Cash and Guns board game. And a big shelf full of graphic novels that I don't remember seeing last time I was there. And lots of other stuff that would make good presents if I ever find myself in the position of needing something to give away in a hurry.
If, like me, you've not been in for a while, go take a look. If you are new to the campus it's a very useful resource. Bookshops are taking a hammering thanks to scarily useful services like Amazon, but we really should support their business. Starting by buying my book.....
I think the marketing people have discovered the apology as the latest tool to get you to engage with them. I've recently had quite a few companies getting in touch and apologising for not having been in touch with enticing offers. Ebay recently apologised profusely for something that I don't remember them doing and offered a special discount to make things up. Which I'm sorry to say I haven't used.
On the way out of the carpark I found this leaf on the ground.
We had our first University Open Day of the new academic year today. The place was mad busy and it was nice to see everybody having a good time in the sunshine. I did two talks. I promised to put the pictures up on my world famous (in my world) blog, so here they are.
This is the first cohort being told what to do by Mike
..and this is the second, slightly smaller, one.
I had a kind of highlight last week at the New Students Welcome Party. We were playing 8 player Smash Brothers and I, much against the advice of the "experts", decided to play as "Mr Game and Watch".
And I won.
This will probably never happen again, but it was rather nice. On Saturday, to celebrate this accomplishment, I invested in the Mr. Game and Watch Amibo. It's rather nice too. It comes with four different character poses which you can slot into the base, depending on your mood.
Just discovered that the university is using one of my pictures to illustrate the Room Bookings and Timetables site. I think this was taken at a Three Thing Game presentation a while back.
I wonder if people now think that students at Hull turn up to lectures in ponchos and sombreros? I really hope so......
This is the weekend of the Hull Freedom Festival. The BBC set up some tents containing all things digital, and the folks from Hive (Hull Immersive Virtual Environments) were there showing off their VR tech. Great fun.
I'm a strong believer in paying for stuff I use on the internet. I really like the idea of a service provider having a stake in making me happy. I've been a Flickr Pro member since 2005. But I'm not sure if I'm going to continue.
I've just received a notification that my Flickr Pro subscription is up for renewal, which is fair enough. But what isn't fair is how they appear to be hiding the cost of this. If I click on the "information link" in the notification email (which doesn't tell me the cost) I get a page which tells me of the "benefits" of a subscription. But nothing about the price. Even the FAQ page is useless in this respect (see above).
Turns out that I have to pay nearly fifty dollars a year to stay on the "Pro" service level, which strikes me as rather expensive. Having had a look at the benefits over the free service I don't think anyone would want to pay for that. So I'll be cancelling my Pro subscription. If the charge had been twenty and they had been up-front about it there's a very good chance that I'd have stuck with it.
Well, we got closure on our pipe situation. Just as I suspected, a tiny hole had opened up in the copper. This was in the process of getting bigger when we noticed it.
The good news is that it could have been worse. The bad news is that we now have a smoking crater where the downstairs toilet used to be. We'll have to wait for it to dry out a bit before we put the floor back in.
Since we were just down the road from it, we took a trip to Winchester today. Lovely town. Got a great big cathedral in the middle. Yesterday we were in Salisbury, today Winchester. I reckon this is cathedral country.
Anyhoo, it is a lovely place. It is huge, with a fantastic atmosphere. It is also the resting place of Jane Austen and there is a lovely memorial to her.
They also have some fantastic stained glass windows. I had a go at taking pictures of one or two. They are surprisingly tricky to get right. I ended up taking different exposures and then merging them to get something that looks reasonable.
Today was a special day for one of the family. Number one son got his birthday treat, in the form of a driving experience at Thruxton. Thruxton is a lovely little racing circuit in the south of England, near Salisbury. They have a number of experiences you can sign up for, including a chance to drive something like the car you can see above.
Number one son didn't get to drive the Lambo (as we call them) but he did get a twirl in a Porsche and a Formula Renault racing car. He had a great time, and we had just as much fun watching him whizz around the track and trying to take photographs.
We all attended the briefing for the racers and I worked had to absorb all the advice about corner apexes and car balance. I'm sure these'll come in handy for driving the Cube to work.
So, we were all set for a few days away. Bags packed. Cameras charged. Route planned. Then I heard myself asking a question that nobody wants to hear just before a trip away.
"Can you hear running water?"
Number one wife was even less happy to hear me ask than I was. But the thing about questions like this is that you can't really un-ask them. Instead you have to twiddle stop-cocks and faff around until you've determined that yes, there is water running when it isn't supposed to. And now you are half an our late leaving. Not good.
We've been here before a few times. It seems that our house was made with pipe with a penchant for leakiness. So we turned the water off at source, left a key for the plumber and headed off into the distance.
Who knows what we will come back to? But at least it shouldn't be underwater.
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.
