Pinball Wizardry

I'm going to have to have a go at taking some pictures as good as these.

The Importance of Meaning

I've found another interesting blog post. This one is about the way that Service Oriented Architecture (where you create applications from components which expose what they can do in terms of services that they provide via a network connection) may not be the way and the truth.

This is because although you could provide a service called "Sell Widget" you can only use it properly if you have a good understanding of the meaning of precisely what it will do - which is not something that is guaranteed.

On the way to his conclusion the author provides a nice description of the archicture. Worth a read.

Spell with flickr

You might not have seen this before. Seldom has Rob Miles looked better.

New York Times in WPF

If you want to read the New York Times for free, and in style, head off down here and download the Times Reader beta. This is a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) program which lets you read the newspaper on your Windows XP or Windows Vista device.

For the moment they are offering open access to the service, and it really works quite well. The environment itself is super duper, and a splendid way to see what WPF can be made to deliver.

Confused of Hull

I'm confused. This is why. Say we lived in an age where restaurants are new and fangled. People have just discovered the option of eating out and they like it. So I decide to open a new restaurant. Only mine is special. It gives the food away.

Not surprisingly, once word gets out my little restaurant is going great guns. Queues around the block. At this point things get a bit weird. One of the other restaurants in the neighborhood (it doesn't serve food quite like mine, and it is making quite a good profit at the moment) decides to buy me out for a huge sum of money, and then let me keep going giving my food away.

I get given a huuge wad of cash for starting a food business with no obvious means of support. The other restaurant gets something which may never be profitable, but at least somebody else hasn't got their hands on it.

In case you hadn't spotted it, I'm really talking about YouTube and Google. I use both of them. Google quite a bit. YouTube now and then.

I just can't think of a way in which I could ever be persuaded to pay for what YouTube has to offer. Even if they only charged me mini-bucks to watch the videos I'd find something else which was free to do in my lunch hour. In my opinion the only business plan which could possibly have worked for the YouTube folks was to get famous and hope that somebody rich bought them up before their money ran out. Which, fortunately for them, was just what happened.

Google have just spent literally billions getting their hands on YouTube, and I'm baffled as to why they have done this.

(for some reason the Microsoft LiveWriter spell checker suggests Outnumber as a replacement for YouTube - this just confuses me even more)

Code Monkey

Brian put me on to this video. It is very good, although I don't like the name of his boss....

Man Flu

I'm ill. My nose is not running. It is sprinting. I'm surrounded by tissues. My head feels as if someone has inflated a balloon full of porridge inside it. (not sure how I know this, but it does) 

I told number one wife that I was ill. Then I told her again as she brought me a cup of tea. She looked at me appraisingly. Apparently I have what is called "man flu". This is an illness which reduces a man to a useless, moaning wimp but has no effect whatsoever on women, who manage to just shrug off such minor afflictions and carry on regardless.

I was going to disagree. I was going to tell her never mind "Man Flu", that I was only keeping going at this restricted level thanks to my incredible mental strength and resilience. I was going to tell her that if she had what I've got she too would be laid out on the sofa and moaning.

But I didn't feel up to it. I just sipped my tea and asked for a chocolate biscuit.

I'm ill.

(but not too ill to write. I've just posted the latest episode of Trip Hazard. Book now for the movie..)

Busy Busy

Had a fairly quiet Sunday. Managed to mow the lawns (not sure why, every time I cut the grass the darned stuff grows back) and finished off the Moosaic program (I actually got my free samples from Moo last week and they are quite neat - next I'm going to make a 100 picture mosaic and see what it looks like). The program is working OK and I've got an installer too, but I have a rule that I play with my programs on a bunch of different machines before I send them out into the outside world, so it will be a couple of days before you can have a go at making your own Flickr mosaics...

Oh, and I've been dealing with a steady stream of emails from people who came to see us yesterday. Thank you for all the kind words, and if you haven't had a reply from me yet, I will get around to you tomorrow. We will also post out all the C# books then too.

Open Daze

We had an open day at the university today. Before hand we went up town to buy a few bits and bobs (I got two DVD collections - one six pounds and the other four - quality stuff). The light was good and I took the camera.

This is a view of the Hammonds Department Store. Impressive architecture when you notice it...

Then it was up to the university to give an open day talk. Before the talk Jon showed me this which was in a recent Develop magazine.

Quite cheering really, the quote is from a Microsoft XNA person.

Then we had a huuge turnout for people who want to see what we do. So many that they were sharing the glasses in the Hive (Hull Immersive Visual Environment). I took a picture of the audience with their 3D specs on...

Those shades really suit you.....

Thanks for coming folks, hope you enjoyed the presentations. Remember, if you have any questions, feel free to get in touch.

Cars and Horses

A car is a device which will take you from A to B. You turn a wheel and the machinery in it makes the car go in the desired direction. A horse is an animal which will let you sit on its back and might take you where you want to go. If you pull the reigns on a horse, and it agrees with that direction, it will go there. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, a horse will just take off. Or refuse to move.

I used to use a Toshiba M200 Tablet PC. This computer is a car. It does what I ask, when I ask. It just works. Lovely. Emboldened by this I then move on to a Toshiba M400 device. This computer is a horse. When it works, and you have the wind in your hair (metaphorically speaking) it is wonderful.

But every now and then it misbehaves. The screen goes dark and refuses to light up again. It freezes (usually in the middle of a presentation) and needs to be rebooted. Sometimes it slows down for no good reason. Some bits just don't work. At the moment it is just useful enough for me to live with the foibles. But if it locks up in the middle of a Software Engineering lecture again I may have to rethink its place in my life.....

Strange Web Site

This is definitely PR, but not as I know it.

Guitar Frenzy

One of the bad things which happened on Monday was that I found that my Guitar Hero saved game on the PS/2 had managed to corrupt itself. Unfortunately this meant that all the guitars, characters and, most importantly, songs, that number one son had spent ages unlocking were not available. This cramped the style of the party a little, in that we were down to 8 songs for the dueling. but it was still fun.

So tonight I decided to try and recover the situation myself. I've decided that losing all the saved game stuff is not a big deal. Because it means I can have all the fun of recreating it.

This is one wonderful game....

Update on 2006-10-05 13:41 by Rob

I've visited the Guitar Hero forums, and it seems that the saved game problem is not unknown. I think it is to do with the way that the game loads bits of itself off the DVD as it runs. If you have this game I'd advise you to only turn the PS/2 off once you have returned to the main menu screen, and not at any other time.

Green Green Grass of Google

Found an interesting blog post today. It is written by a bloke who works at Google (lucky chap).  If you are interested in the business of Software Engineering you really should read the post (and all the ensuing comments). It will take a while (I spent a whole lunch break reading it) but it is worth the effort.

If you think that things like computer programming are not prone to fashion and ideology the whole discussion should sort you out good and proper....

Party Masters

After Thursday's party for the first year, tonight it was the turn of the Masters students to sample our beer tokens. We followed the same pattern as last time, although this time I varied the presentation a bit by having the tablet PC battery go flat just as we were going through the quiz answers. Note to self, don't leave home without the power supply.

These are the quiz winners, note the slightly larger prize this time.

After the quiz, and a lot of dicussion about the answer to the last question (it is on the screen above - can you figure out what the question actually was?) we went on to more Guitar Hero and other silly stuff.

We had a guy turn up who was awesome on this. He played some of the tracks on "expert" mode. What a performance.

Then we tried to find out how far you could get from an XBOX 360 and still play Geometry Wars. (the answer is a very impressive 75 feet - then you lose sight of the screen and crash). Those remote controllers let you get pretty remote..

Hi for Collectormania

And so it was another Sunday of rising at 4:30 am and the zooming off down the motorway to mingle with the stars and buy silly bits of overpriced plastic at the Collectormania in Milton Keynes. We've been going to these for a while, initially to meet up with hobbits and the like, but now more likely to have a drift around the many stands selling all sorts of stuff. Of course I took a camera (or two)

..of course it is cool - I'm there

Maggie Grace signs her name

Amber Benson tries to get us to sign it for her

They have Krispy Kreme donuts at Milton Keynes now. "A heart attack with a hole in it". And free samples. Yay!

It was very tempting, but it wouldn't fit in our toilet and 60 quid is a bit expensive. I've no idea what the thing on the right is.

Then it was back into the car to trundle back to Hull.

To Durham. And Back.

Took number one son to Durham today for him to resume his studies. Then brought him back to Hull. All rather complicated. Tomorrow we are heading off for Collectormania (one of my dafter pursuits) and as he would like to go too, we are performing this rather strange shuffling of student and stuff.

Means a fair bit of driving though. I reckon that my average speed over the entire weekend will be around 20 miles per hour....

Shiny Doncaster

Went to Doncaster today for a presentation. The university has a relationship with Doncaster College, where we accredit two of their degree courses. The students are based and taught at Doncaster but we award the degree.

Anyhoo, I went down to say hello to the Business Computing crew and give a presentation about final year projects. They are a nice bunch and the talk seemed to go OK, although I may have spoiled the atmosphere a little by telling the undertaker joke right at the end.

The brand new Doncaster campus is very shiny - and this is just the back of the college

Fresher's Party

As part of the fresher's week we always have a party to allow the staff and students to get together. This year we are doing things slightly differently from last time, in that we are taking over a bar, dishing out beer tokens, having a quiz and then playing silly video games.

 
These are the beer tokens being prepared (took ages - won't do it this way again)

The crush at the bar once the tokens went into action

The quiz winners clutching their prize (sorry it is a bit paltry - I spent all the prize money on beer tokens)

I think it is fair to say that a rattling good time was had by all. We had Donky Konga on the GameCube (my bongos got a real hammering), Dead or Alive on the XBOX 360 and dueling Guitar Hero on the PS2. Plus a bunch of folks with their DS machines fighting it out .

Dr. Peter Robinson (right) showing how to lay down some classic riffs in the Guitar Hero duel (not that anyone seems that impressed....)

Way To Park

Our session has started, so the campus is full of people again. I really like this. Although the peace and quiet of summer is rather nice, I don't really think that things are right unless we have students around the place.  The semester starts with a "Fresher's Week" with all kinds of fairs and events. There is a marquee set up outside the union where various organisations are touting their wares. I was walking back to the office when I noticed a brand new, shiny, Porsche Boxster parked right across the footpath in the way of everybody.

In the windscreen was a handwritten note "Driver on the Barclays Bank stand" (or it might have been Lloyds-TSB - I can't tell banks apart any more).

I'm not sure if this is impressive or not. Random thoughts sprang to mind:

• I work for a bank and drive a Porsche so I can park where I like
• I must be a good banker because I have a posh car
• Bank with us and you can have a car like mine
• Bank with us and you can help pay for my car

Very confusing.

Happy Snaps

I've just pulled some pictures off my little camera and so I thought I'd post them on my otherwise boring (graphically wise) blog.

Last week my car showed me this. Scary eh?

Things were much simpler when cars were like this one I saw on campus on Thursday

Bulding a new Hull

University this morning.