Imagine Cup Update

Korea is an amazing place. I know we are getting 90% posh hotel and 10% Korea, but it is still amazing. Tomorrow we take a break from the competition and go for a look around Seoul, so that will be a chance to try and see what the real place is like.

For me, formal involvement in the Imagine Cup 2007 is pretty much over. Today, after a very intense but hugely enjoyable set of judging rounds I've completed my duties. In all I've sat through 22 team presentations, and I've enjoyed every one. I've a whole bunch of comments for each team and I plan to go round and try to have a chat with each at the World Fair at the end of the week.

Sadly,"The Seedlings" are also out of the competition. I've not seen their final presentation but I do know how hard they have worked and how much they put into their entry. Very well done guys for getting this far. It is a perhaps a bit of a cliche to say that "Nobody leaves the competition empty handed" but, in terms of the value of the experience and the way that having taken part in will change their lives, I reckon that for the Imagine Cup it is definitely true.

"The Seedlings" - Master of Complications all

I've got a garden shed full of respect for you guys, and your mentor from Black Marble, Robert Hogg. (You must come round and get it soon - I can't reach the lawn mower).

Jetlagged Software

I'm trying a new trick to deal with jetlag. The name of the game is "get enough sleep to stay sane". This means that if I find myself wide awake at, say 2:00 am in the morning, the trick is to go with the flow, work on something for a little while and then go back to bed.

Snag is, this means that I need something to do in the time. So I've decided to start writing silly software in this situation. I've written a daft little application that I'm now using in Korea on the wonderful Smartphone (which gives me another advantage for the device - if I find something I need to make it do, I can just write a program).

You can find out more here.

Note: I nearly bought "jetlaggedsoftware.com" to go with the product but in the end I backed off. Perhaps I'm (gulp) growing up....

Imagine Cup 2007 Launch

I feel a bit of a fraud. I'm here at the Imagine Cup Finals in Seoul, in the poshest hotel I've ever stayed in (the room itself is worthy of a whole bunch of pictures - and it will get them) and all I have to do is watch some student presentations and write down how good I think they are.

I was lucky enough to go to the world finals last year in India, and they were incredible. The place and the people combined to give a once in a lifetime experience. And here I am again in the same position, but as a judge this time. I wonder if this means I'm getting two lifetimes?

We given a warm welcome when we arrived and that has continued right through the day. The organization has  been faultless and, like last year, everyone you meet is determined to do everything they can to make this a special occasion.

Imagine Cup 2007 Welcome Reception

Things got formally under way with a welcome reception. Joe and the rest of the team set the scene for the next few days. Wednesday looks like a particular highlight, with all kinds of cultural events planned, ending with dinner with the mayor.

Joe Wilson gets the party started...

 When a student competition is invited to eat with the mayor of a city of over 10 million you know you are in the middle of something special.

Competition proper starts tomorrow, with teams from the 100 countries taking part getting down to the serious stuff. The Seedlings will begin their progress through the Software Development Challenge with a presentation tomorrow.    

Gadget Trip

What do you do if you are in a strange city thousands of miles from home, you've had two hours sleep over the last day and you take twenty seconds to answer a hard question like "How are you?"

Well, we went gadget shopping. Having checked in, grabbed some food (in the most amazing place - pictures tomorrow) and sorted out a few bits and bobs we boarded bus "B" to the Techno-Mart. Apparently this is not the biggest one - only 10 floors of hardware -  but it is pretty darned huge. Think Harrods but with technology and you are about there. Although, unlike Harrods, there are actually lots of individual traders in there  - we saw a huge number of somewhat identical displays of hundreds of cameras.

The place to be

10 floors.

After a while we found two solid floors of computer stuff; including brand new, original copies of Windows 98. I wonder how many of them they sell a day...

These girls were outside. No idea what they were selling, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Sculpture

Seoul street

View from Bus B

Street corner

After an hour the jetlag was really getting to everyone and we staggered out onto the bus again. And I had bought nothing. I'm so proud of myself. Lots of tempting toys and and the credit card stayed firmly in the wallet.

But we are here for the next few days. And I know where it is.....

And So to Seoul

(For the next few days you are going to get some graphics heavy posts. But I hope you like the pictures people...... There are even more on Flickr.

We took off from Heathrow on time, which was nice.

Name that town, and win a prize

Leaving the White Cliffs of Dover behind...

La Belle France. Look closely to spot cars driving on the wrong side of the road....

The team make some last minute changes

Very cute airport terminal at Paris

Cactus at Seoul airport

We all wanted a go on this

Boarding the bus

The team on the poshest bus I've ever been on

Nice Bridge

Amusements

Riverside

Shiny building

Why we are here. I'm off for lunch now, more later

Team Building with Donuts

Went out with the UK Imagine Cup team this evening. Good food, good company, good stuff.

"The Seedlings": James Alexander, Matthew Steele, Matthew Steeples and their mentor Robert Hogg.

Then back to work for some finishing touches.

Donut powered programming....

Oooh. Nice sunset over Heathrow

We get up at 5:00 am tomorrow. Wish us luck....

Wonderphone

Well, I'm sitting at the Crowne Plaza in Heathrow typing on the teeny tiny keyboard on the teeny tiny machine and marveling at my little Smartphone. It is the best phone I've ever had (of course it should be, it is also the newest phone I've ever had - but I have been known to go backwards)

It can make phone calls, send sms, send mms, send email, receive active push email (like a Blackberry, but better). It has two movies and season one of Spaced on it, along with several hundred music tracks. I can browse the web, get maps, send pictures to Flickr, all kinds of stuff. In short it is pretty much everything I want in a mobile device.

As I write this it is providing a very useable Internet connection which just worked. Just worked! When I recall the grief I used to have trying to get on line with my phone I just can't believe how easy it was. Vista and Windows Mobile 6.0 really do get on well in this respect. I've had three hours of high quality music on the train on the way here too.

It is the HTC S710. And it rocks.

Very posh hotel room desk. But Internet at eight pounds an hour? I don't think so...

Travel Essentials

I'm setting off for Korea later today. So it was off to Cottingham to get a few travel essentials.

One of these items is not going to Korea....

Back from the smoke

Spent today recovering from the London day trip. We got up bright and early and were in London by 9:30.

Kings X

We drifted over to Tate Modern, had a look round and a coffee and took in the view over the river.

St. Paul's, wobbly bridge and boat

Then we wandered down to Covent Garden

St. Paul's rear entrance (so to speak)

Badges and bangles

Then it was on to Harrods for coffee and donuts.

Oh goody, they have a sale on....

And then back to Hull and a lovely sunset

The train wot brought us home.

Embedded Reading

Went to Reading today to give a talk about the .NET Micro Framework for an Embedded Development day. I've often found that a bunch of academics make around the toughest audience you can get, but these folks were great - even though they showed a marked lack of appreciation for my jokes.....

My demos mostly worked and the tiny tablet behaved herself impeccably. And the trip back on Hull Trains was as smooth as smooth. And I watched "Love and Death", one of the best films ever, on the Smartphone. Wonderful.

I'd taken the camera, but I got the best pictures when I got off the train at Hull after the journey back.

Great to be back

Neat Sky

While I was going through Reading on the bus I saw a sign at Reading Baths that said "Learn to swim here". I thought about going in and asking "What if I want to swim somewhere else?".

But I didn't.

For those at the academic event, I'll have the slides and demos here tomorrow.

Amsterdam Gets XNA

Had great fun today doing a session about XNA for DevDays. The audience were wonderful, and I took some happy snaps:

on the right...

...in the middle...

...and on the left

Thanks for paying attention people, and I hope you use XNA to get to some interesting places.

Before my talk we had a session from Dave Mitchell of Microsoft. He was able to tell us that the XNA Creators Club memberships are going to be part of Microsoft Academic Alliance. This is the best news. Now we can put a bunch of machines in our labs for people to write for and it won't cost us extra on top of our AA subscription. That news alone was worth going to Amsterdam for. If you are a member of a university faculty you owe it to yourself (and your students) to follow this up and get your hands on one of the best bargains in education at the moment).

Dave at the start of his presentation

Earlier today I went to a presentation by Scott Guthrie about Silverlight. This is a fantastic technology that lets you make very impressive user experience. It lets you put .NET powered behaviour into web pages and also gives you the Windows Presentation Foundation to drive your user interfaces. Excellent.

Scot talking about multiple language support in Sliverlight.

I've had a really good time in Amsterdam. I went out for a meal last night and took even more pictures:

Standard Canal picture

Artistic cake

There are some more on my Flickr site.

DevDays 2007

This morning found me boarding a plane for Amsterdam. I'm giving a session on XNA development tomorrow. Rather cleverly I didn't check in any luggage, so no waiting at conveyor belts for me. Rather less cleverly I'd also put my highly explosive shampoo and deodorant in my carry on bag. I managed to avoid the cavity search, but now I'm going to have to learn the Dutch for "Lynx Effect". Not that I seem to need it......

These two lovelies were wandering round the show accompanied by a bloke with a camera and printer strapped to him who was taking photos and printing them out for free. Very nice. Although the reason I look so pleased is that I'm clutching a copy of the Microsoft Mobile Developers Handbook. I wrote Chapter 13, which is about mobile graphics. I was stood in the bookshop reading my own printed words when the girls turned up. I resisted the temptation to hold up the pages and shout "Look, I wrote this!", since I figured they might not be that impressed.  But I settled for a picture.

DevDays is neat. It is based in Amsterdam at the conference centre there. I'll grab some pictures from inside the conference tomorrow. For today, here are some external shots.

Outside the Conference Centre

Authentic Dutch bike rider

Virgin on the Ridiculous

Tonight I had to fly back to the UK. I'm a tall person. On the way out Virgin Atlantic were kind enough to swap my seat for one near the emergency exit so that I could sit with my legs in front of me. On a normal seat I just can't do this, so it is always nice when an airline makes an allowance for my particular shape. 

On the way back Virgin Atlantic were also happy to swap my seat. As long as I paid them 75 dollars. I thought that stank. I paid up though, since the prospect of nearly nine hours sat with my knees above my ears and no circulation in my feet did not appeal. Are they really so strapped for cash that they have to resort to ripping off people who have no choice in the matter? Up until that point I had been very impressed with the airline, who seem to have the most chirpy and upbeat cabin staff I've ever encountered.  Now I'm a bit less pleased. I've emailed customer relations (I'm reaching the age where I can dash off "Yours, disgusted" emails quite quickly) and we will see what happens.

Inside Orlando Airport. Big place.

Prime Outlet Shopping

After a morning on the booth telling people they were now embedded developers as well (most people with C# and Visual Studio 2005 are, thanks to the .NET Micro Framework) it was time to head out for some shopping. I quite like strange watches, and I knew that at the Prime outlet there was a Fossil watch outlet store.

My plan was to catch a bus up to the top of International Drive, have a wander round and then catch another back. As I was leaving the conference hall I heard a strange sound, like a very long round of applause. It was the rain on the roof. Lots of rain. I carefully charted my route back to the hotel so that I was under cover for most of the way, except for the last 50 yards.

I got soaked. In Florida, when it rains it rains. Muchly. After a complete change of clothes I ventured out again, but standing at a bus stop was not a plan. So I was forced to spend a goodly chunk of cash on a taxi ride instead.

I much prefer buses to taxis. In a bus I reckon you have safety in numbers. Being alone in a taxi cab with a person I've never met always makes me nervous. In a bus, even if the driver does turn out to be an axe wielding maniac with a passion for driving off cliffs you have a few people with you to help take him on. In a taxi it is strictly one on one. Also, with a bus when it stops at the lights or in traffic there is no worry about the price going up. In a taxi I can always see that number steadily rising, and making me poorer. And I always think that the taxi driver will spot that I'm from out of town and take me to my destination via Brazil or something.  Having said all this the taxi drive was, like just about every one I've ever had, smooth and uneventful and within around 15 minutes I was at the Prime discount mall.

Which was a dump. I'd taken a camera so that I could snag some pictures, but there was nothing worth photographing. Everywhere had an air of decay and moving on, I suspect there must be other discount malls in Florida doing well, because this one was more than a bit quiet. Anyhoo, I found the watch shop and after a long and happy search through the display (I like looking at watches, OK?) I selected one for me and one for number one wife.

On the way back I was lucky to walk straight onto a bus which took me right back to the hotel.

View from a bus

Play poker with your fridge

Another day on the stand describing the Micro Framework. Half way through an explanation I mentioned to one chap that on Thursday in our lunchtime session Roger will be demonstrating his program that lets you play wireless poker using Zigbee devices connected to a Micro Framework board. The delegate thought about this for a moment. "You mean the .NET Micro Framework lets you play poker against your fridge?" he asked.

I can't think of a better way of putting it. You can easily add lots of intelligence to a tiny device, and then connect it to other things to make life interesting. Although in that situation a poor poker player might starve to death, or at least have to drink black coffee for the rest of their life.....

After stand duty it was time to head up to a demonstration of the framework. I had been invited to provide some closing remarks (nobody can close down an event better than me) and so I told everyone there about one of my major claims to fame - around 10 years or so I wrote some code which helps put datestamps on bottles of Budweiser beer. There was no .NET Micro Framework then, of course, so the application was forged in the hell of cross compiling, no debugging, and code that had to be strange "just so it would work". I made the point that if I was doing the job today it would take me a lot less time, and be much more fun to do. You can read one report of the event here - it is great to hear nice things about the platform.

On the way to the event I poked the camera out of the bus window and grabbed a few snaps.

Apparently "Inverted pimply pyramid" means "Titanic Museum" in Orlando

Believe it or not

Nirvana in a box?

Free Massages

One of my favourite ever jokes was on an old Monty Python record. As I remember it went "And now for a massage from the Swedish prime minister". Followed the sound of heavy slapping. Wonderful stuff.

We haven't got the Swedish prime minister available, but we are giving out free massages at our stand in the TLC Blue area at TechEd 2007. We have a couple of .NET Micro Framework controlled massage chairs which are just the thing to ease away the strains of the day. And you can find out all about how you could be an embedded developer but just not know it yet....

Hot Spot

I wandered out to register at the conference. I mutter about my air-con in the room (I call it "Old Faithful" now) but I'm darned glad that it is there, because when you leave the hotel it is like stepping inside a hair dryer. This is not a cooling breeze, it is the output from a blast furnace.

Branded Lamp Post

My hotel

This probably symbolizes something

Why we are here

Guess what it is, and win a prize

My universe for the next few days....

Apparently it is going to be even hotter for the rest of the week. Oh goody.

Bright and Early

Slept surprisingly well considering. I seem to have an air conditioner in the room which was designed by the same person who does jet engines. And air raid sirens. It came on by itself in the middle of the night. The first time it did this I managed the amazing feat of leaping up in the air from the bed, whilst remaining completely horizontal. Since the unit seems to start up every ten minutes or so, I'm now mostly used to it, the sound only causing mild palpitations at the moment. By the time I leave here you'll be able to drop a piano on the ground behind me and I'll hardly bat an eyelid.

Noisy beast

The room is huuge. It is the entertainment part of a luxury suite, which means I get the sink, the fridge (bigger than the one at home and also with a distinctive sound) and the bed that pulls down from the wall.

Rich Living

I managed to sleep in until around 5:00 am, which for a first night away is pretty good. I was lured from my bed by a rather nice sunrise.

I bet all the sunrises are all like this here....

Later today I'm off to meet up with the rest of the team. For now, it's time for breakfast.

The Road to TechEd 2007

Author's Note:

From now on pictures are going to be presented in "SlightlyLargerVision" (tm). I've modified my Flickr plugin for Live Writer so that imported images now fill up the available screen width. Just one of the many ways I strive to make your lives better. Next I'm going to add a settings page so that you can adjust this. Not sure when, depends on how the jetlag goes.. 

Today's the day I head out to Orlando for TechEd.

My plane (although there were others on board)

The taxi from the airport. Note the rather worrying umbrella handle..

Trees and planes

The conference centre looking good

Pretty skyline

More tomorrow

TechEd here I come

I'm on the road again. TechEd 2007 in Orlando is beckoning. I'm doing some stuff about the .NET Micro Framework including promotion for the book, helping at a press launch of the Micro Framework, manning an exhibition booth and giving a lunchtime session and webcast.

If you are going to be at TechEd be sure to come and see me at the .NET Micro Framework stand or at the talk on Thursday lunchtime. If you are not at TechEd you can join in with the fun at the webcast above. Signing up is free and I'm going to tell a new joke - so it will be well worth a listen.

I'll also be taking the medium sized camera and blogging like crazy. Well, you have to do something when you are wide awake at four in the morning....