The Hand of Fate

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02ticket

 

I've always found probability interesting. Last week in the paper someone was writing about the way that things always even out, but over the very long run. You would expect that if you toss a coin 100 times you would get 50 heads and 50 tails but apparently this is very unlikely to be the case. In fact, you could find that you get many more heads than tails. And yet, just because you've had more tails this does not meant that the next toss is more likely to be heads (because it is "their turn") or tails (because they are popular at the moment).

I've been thinking about this and it makes a kind of sense. If you could use the fact that there have been 50 heads and 49 tails to predict that the 100th coin toss will definitely produce a tail then the coin toss is not random, and therefore something is wrong with fate. I even got to thinking that some part of the universe keeps track of the ups and downs of randomness and makes sure that things level out over the long run. Actually, this is unlikely to be the case, in that what is really going on is that stuff is just happening, and we are trying to draw conclusions from what we see. At the moment I'm in Las Vegas, a town built on probability, and it is interesting to see that all the roulette wheels have displays which show the most recent results to "help" the player decide which number is going to turn up next. As if.

Anyhoo, I got an even bigger does of probability today when I picked up a raffle ticket for a prize draw at one of the events here. I loudly told everyone around me that I might as well tear the ticket up right now because I never, ever win raffles. A fact that struck me as particularly unfair as the prize was a pretty good one – a shiny mobile phone. Of course, I ended up winning. The only snag is that the phone doesn’t actually work properly back home in England, but there is always ebay……

Rob Speaks

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Do you have those "What on earth am I doing here?" or "How did I get into this?" kind of moments very often. I don't have too many and fortunately, being of a literal frame of mind, I can usually answer the questions with "Giving a talk" and "Via the lobby". I had one of those today though, just before I gave my presentation. I've met people who say airily "Oh, I never get nervous before I give a talk". Well I do. I regard it as part of the preparation process. I reckon that a certain amount of concern about the way that things are going to turn out does tend to improve the final product. When I fly home on Friday I want the pilot to be fretting to some degree about the success of the take off and landing parts.

So there's nothing wrong with getting nervous, although I have found that if you turn into a quivering wreck on stage this can cause the audience to lose some of their respect for you. I reckon the key to nailing presentation nerves is preparation. If you have confidence in your knowledge of what you are going to speak about, have tested all the props and demos, and have contingency plans if they don't work, then you can just get on and do the job. So, after some pacing of the stage, the appointed time comes and off we go. And just about everything works. And the audience seem to like it. And I finish on time (always a plan if yours is a session immediately before lunch). And they even clapped at one point. Thanks folks.

MEDC 2006 Gets Going

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Went to the keynote of MEDC 2006 today. The first thing that caught my eye was the way that Platform Builder has now been tied very neatly into Visual Studio 2005. Platform Builder is the tool that you use to buld platforms (well - duh). More specifically, it lets you create a custom version of Windows CE for the particular target device. You use it to select which features (Media Player, Compact Framework etc etc) and it then builds the stuff that you put into your device to make it work. Previously this has been a slightly mysterious affair, with strange incantations and tools being required. But now it is looking a lot simpler with a new project option for studio (is there nothing this tool can't do) that does most of the grunt work and some very nice editing tools to help you with the rest of the job.

01banner

Startup Slide

Then it was on to a demonstration of how easy it is to build embedded systems these days, with a Point of Sale cash till being created on the fly out of various components. The next thing they mentioned was pure music to my ears. The .NET Micro Framework was announced. This is not going to be micro. Quite the reverse. It is a continuation of a development which started a couple of years ago, when a small company took the technology that makes the Spot watch work and then deployed it as a general purpose controller that you could program in C#. At the time I got very excited about this technology, but they unfortunately it all went quiet. But now it is back with a whack and Microsoft properly behind it. They were even giving away robots powered by .NET micro (I managed to get one and it will be taking part in the robot sumo competition on Wed. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, this technology is going to be very big indeed and will be super for teaching.

02camerakeynote

Camera's eye view of the keynote

After that, the stuff about the new Mobile Patterns and Practices was a little less exciting, but it is none the less very useful. One of the things that it provides is a set of libraries which allow you to create completely different layouts for different screen sizes and orientations. These are selected automatically as required, and should mean the end of things on the screen getting into a mess when you change the orienation of your device from landscape to portait.

02sumobot

My robot, ready for action.

Getting Started at MEDC 2006

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Today I got my conference bag. One of my rituals is to empty it out and see what swag I've got.

01swag

Not bad. Of course only a really sad person would post a picture of their entry badge as well...

02badge

Now promise that you won't copy it and take over my identity.

03lift

In 'Vegas even the lifts have chandeliers in them.

04figure

I'm not sure if they had one of these in Venice. But they have one here.

05hall

At the end of this beautiful corridor there are some slot machines. A lot of slot machines.

06hotel

A view of my hotel from the walkway.

07walkway

The only way to get in or out this hotel is via the moving stairway. Apparently this broke down last month and twenty people were trapped on it for two days. (I have used this gag before, but I still like it).

08tinbox

I got this lovely sumo kit. You get to make a .NET Embedded controlled robot, which you can program in C#. Wonderful. On Wed. we get to make them fight each other. But first I have to build it.

09sessions

I'm doing session 2. Scary eh? More tomorrow.

Venetian Posh

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01room

Neat view. I wonder if I could hit the pool from here.....

But now I am in 'Vegas, and staying at one of the poshest hotels in the city thanks to a Microsoft discount deal (I dread to think how much this place would cost if I was paying full price). I'm here to talk at the Microsoft MEDC (Mobile and Embedded DevCon) 2006.

My talk is on Tuesday about casual game development (the games are casual, not the development). My luggage has found me. I gave the case a serious telling off. I went and fetched it from customer services, and was comprehensively snubbed by the chap that I saw in the lift. I think he was of the opinion that anyone actually carrying a largish item of luggage must be staff, and in my case not even very well dressed staff.

My goodness this place is posh. Last time I was in the 'states I had room at a Howard Johnston motel in San Jose. This worked fine for me, although when I was talking to one bloke I mentioned where I was staying and he said "How interesting.." in a way which made me think that I'd just told him I was recently released from prison. However, posh as this place is (and it is very posh – I'll post some pictures later) Howard Johnson does have the edge in several important respects.

Mirrors: the Howard Johnston bathroom contained precisely one mirror, which was easy to avoid. In my current bathroom there are five. Five. That means that when I stagger out of the shower feeling particularly fragile (as I just have) it is impossible to turn so that I can't see the lanky, white, pot-bellied creature which has just emerged. And to make things worse, some of the mirrors are on opposite walls and reflect each other, so that I can actually see hundreds of pasty me's, disappearing off to into the distance. Must do wonders for the recruitment at the fitness spar. Does nothing for me.

Shampoo: in the Howard Johnston there was a single soap dispenser in the bathroom which dispensed a multi-purpose concoction good for cleaning your hands, face, hair and shoes. In the Venetian there are a number of different bottles which contain different lotions, most of which involve cucumber for some reason. However, they are all very similar in colour and all very hard to use. I had to squeeze the conditioner bottle so hard that it flew out of my hands and then proceeded to ricochet around the shower cubical for a few noisy seconds. Later I found I have conditioned my hair with body balm.

Coffee: in Howard Johnston's a room contains a percolator and enough bits and bobs to make a few drinks (it also contains a fridge – which was so efficient in Warren's room that it froze his can of Pepsi rock solid – but we'll pass over that). In the Venetian there is nothing of the sort. Instead there is a well stocked minbar which is squatting in the corner daring me to take something off its sensor laden shelves so that I can make even more money for the establishment. I'm going to make precisely one purchase (a jar of Venetian banded jelly beans ($9.00) on the last day for number one daugher. So there.

WIFI: Howard Johnston had free WIFI. True, I'm not actually sure it was operated by them, but it did work and was free. The Venetian seems to have nothing of the sort. There are a bunch of networks with enticing names but nothing that seems to work. The room guide talks about internet access but no details are available. Then again, perhaps people who come to 'Vegas and then have an urge to surf the web would be regarded by the resort operators as a lost cause from a profit point of view.

Access: I could get to my Howard Johnston room straight from the car park. As could lots of other people I suppose, but at least entry was quick and immediate. To get to my room here I have to use two lifts and pass a bunch of security guards. Actually, I quite like this, as in the HJ I had to put things into the little floor safe all the time, which meant kneeling on the area of carpet which was damp when we arrived and never stopped smelling funny. I did wonder if they had been cleaning off the chalk outline that is drawn around dead bodies in CSI. Or perhaps it was a dropped jar of pickles. Anyhoo, I reckon that the Venetian wins here, as I've looked around carefully but I've found no evidence of such things. Or any pickles for that matter.

However, having said all this, I do really like this room. I just wished I earned enough to be able to afford it properly.

Off to Vegas

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01wrightplane

At least this plane doesn't have hydraulics.

Here's a little tip for travellers. If you are travelling via Amsterdam airport (or Schipol) make sure that in your hand baggage you include enough clothes to get you through the night after you arrive. Don't just think about doing this, like I did. This means that when (and I do mean when) your luggage gets lost you can at least have something to change into when you finally reach your hotel room at twenty eleven o'clock or whatever time it was that I finally got here. Having forgotten this step I was stuck with the clothes I was standing in. Which after around 20 hours of travelling are probably actually capable of standing up by themselves.

The very helpful lady at Las Vegas airport just went "Ah, Amsterdam" like it happens all the time. The other interesting thing about Amsterdam is that you can land at a runway which seems to be at the other side of the city. Once we had touched down we must have spent around twenty minutes motoring along to get to the terminal. We even stopped at two pedestrian crossings (this is not actually true, but it would be so neat if you could have planes waiting while you crossed the road). The whole thing reminded me very much of a World War 2 flying game from way back. We discovered that if you didn't leave the ground you could taxi all the way to the target at 200 miles an hour (including over the channel) drop your bombs with total accuracy and then rumble home without a scratch on the plane. These days of course you would get caught by loads of speed cameras.

Anyway, apart from losing my luggage, and the plane breaking down as it was taxiing onto the runway to take off, it was a fairly uneventful journey. I used to have an Austin Mini, a car made up of roughly equal parts rust and filler. One day, as I was approaching a junction, I put my foot on the brake to slow down a bit and the pedal went all the way down the floor without (and this is the worrying bit) having any affect on the speed whatsoever. Scary stuff. The pilot of our plane out of Minneapolis must have had roughly the same sensation as he discovered that one of his hydraulic systems did not actually have any fluid in it (which turned out to be what was wrong with my Mini too). So we had to find a none-broken aircraft which added an extra 90 minutes (but a lot of excitement) to the final leg of the journey.

The best plan with jetlag (I've been told) is to force yourself to stay up as late as possible so that you quickly get used to the new timings of day and night. It is now 9:30 pm. The heck with the best plan. I'm off to bed.

Rob at the GDC

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I'm at the Games Developers Conference this week. You can read all about it in my blogs on the right.There are also some spiffy pictures too.

If you want to download the code from the presentation that I'm giving, you can find the stuff in my downloads section.

Well, the presentation has been and gone. I've celebrated by going off and spending over 100 dollars on presents for the family. What kind of person goes to GDC and buys T shirts? That'll be me....