Eight Hours Driving

Well, we were on the road at 6:00 am, over the Humber Bridge at 6:20 and in our first traffic jam at 6:35. Fortunately we managed to get around this road closure (I felt sorry for the big trucks that had no chance of turning round) and make it with a few minutes to spare.

It was nice to see some people that we haven't seen in a while, the circumstances were not the happiest, but the weather was kind to us, there were lots of flowers, and the service was a celebration of a good life lived to the full, which is how it should be.

And then it was time to get back into the car for another four hour drive back to the homestead.

Best Laid Plans

We had to be somewhere else today. Not a particularly happy somewhere else, in that we are attending a funeral, but a somewhere else nonetheless.

Unfortunately the weather had other ideas. We set off as planned for our overnight stop and we turned the radio to the traffic news, as you do. At the Humber Bridge we stopped to have another listen. The RDS system that automatically flips between travel news on different stations was having a field day. We didn't manage to hear the end of four different reports. And all of them were telling us that today was a bad day to travel. Basically, all the roads between where we were and where we wanted to be were full/broken.

So we went home and had some fish and chips. It will mean an early start tomorrow to get where we want to be, but I don't think tonight was meant for traveling.

The Earth in Your Pocket

Where I work. All it took was the search term you see.

If you have a Windows Mobile device, and are lucky enough to be on an "all you can eat" GPRS tariff, you really should get a copy of Virtual Earth Mobile. It is a free download from here. It lets you search for places anywhere in the world and then display them in map or aerial photo view. What is really impressive for me is that the search facility works really well. I banged in my home address and it took me straight to a view of our house. With my car in the drive.

Performance over GPRS is a tad slow, but the pictures are worth waiting for. It will also do route planning and connect to a GPS device (although I've not tried that). And all for free. How can you go wrong?

Inside a Wii Controller

I was sitting waiting for an ebay auction to nearly finish so that I can pile in with a last minute bid when I wondered to myself if there was anything about the inside of the Wii remote controller out there on the interweb. Turns out there is.

Very interesting, and lovely pictures.

EA Good Sports

If you are a student at our university you might be interested in a little event that we have been invited to. Hull University has been recognized by Electronic Arts as one of their key partners, which is rather nice (well, they did hire a whole bunch of our students last year).

Anyhoo, they have very kindly invited our students to a "do" at the Science Museum in London. It is based at the Game On exhibition, which traces the history of video gaming by means of a whole bunch of old consoles and arcade machines.

Which you can play on.....

I was going to make a trip down there myself later this year, but the chance to attend for free, and with a talk from Bing Gordon, EA's Chief Creative Officer, is just too good to miss.

Hull students can apply here.  Note that unfortunately, because they have an exam on the day of the trip, first year students will not be able to attend, but any others can. Places are limited people, so get your names down as quickly as possible.

Make Anything

My co-writer on the .NET Micro Framework book put me on to this. This is a machine which can make anything. So called fabbers can be regarded as three dimensional printers. We have one at the university which is used in the engineering department and it is amazing. It even makes spare parts for itself.....

Anyhoo, you can now think about making one of your own. Take a look here.

Code that sucks

I'm writing some background stuff for the .NET Micro Framework book. We've been working on the final project, which we want be a mobile robot of some kind. I suggested a Micro Framework controlled vacuum cleaner, and so today I started work on the emulation environment for it.

The idea is that we can simulate "pixel dust" on the floor and the "virtual sucker" will sweep this up and collect it. Our vacuum will have a dust meter which will allow it to tell how much dust is being collected and the name of the game will be collect as much dust as possible whilst avoiding crashing into the "virtual furniture". Then we are going to try to put exactly the same code into a real roving robot and see what happens, Great fun.

It also means that I can write properly factored, well commented code with methods called "doSuck". Wonderful.

Warioware Smooth Moves for the Wii

I didn't mean to buy it. I'm supposed to be on iron rations and saving up my pennies for a Playstation 3 (which is going to take a lot of saving). But number one son told me to buy it "The best Wii game you can get at the moment" was how he described it.

So I weakened.

And do you know (and most annoyingly) I think he is right. I mean, it is bonkers. But I like bonkers. It is cute. But I can handle cute (within limits). I've loved the Warioware games ever since they first appeared on the Gameboy years ago. This one takes the idea (mad mini-games that take seconds to play which are thrown at you in rapid succession) and adds the new Wii controller, which is used in a variety of configurations including "The Samurai", "The Chauffeur" and one where you stick it on the end of your nose. Oh yes.

If you have a Wii you owe it to yourself (and the rest of your family) to get this disk of insanity. Last night I watched the pantomime, a show which managed to keep three generations amused at the same time. This game is one of the few that I've seen (and most of the others are on the Wii as well) which I reckon will do the same thing. Fantastic.

Oh Yes We Did

We went to see the pantomime tonight. Just the two of us, which meant we felt a bit out of place amongst all the complete families that packed Hull New Theatre, but number one wife has always liked the Chuckle Brothers and I like watching professionals drive an audience so off we went.

One of the reasons we ventured out was that we heard this was a good one, and so it turned out. The Chuckle Brothers are the kind of comedy institution that it is popular to throw rocks at in this interactive, multi-channel, reality TV driven world. However, the simple fact is that you can put them in front of an audience and they will give darned good value for money. And so they did. Very funny.

I found it interesting to look across the theatre and see three generations of a family all laughing like drains at the antics on the stage. I enjoy a good pantomime. There aren't many traditions like it in the world and I love the idea that successive generations will turn up as grandkids, parents and grandparents and all enjoy something which, with a modicum of tweaking, has stayed fundamentally the same for many years.

The rest of the cast were well up to their roles. The story was Cinderella, and the ugly sisters were suitably nasty, the prince dashing and the fairy good mother flew about the stage with the right amount of bangs and puffs of smoke. They all had real barnstorming voices too, and belted out their versions of recent pop songs with great gusto. I'm very impressed that they managed to keep up the pace and the volume even after a month of solid performing. Good stuff.

Retro TV

With number one wife out for the evening number one son and I had free access to the big telly, and so a night of retro TV was in order.

First up was Thunderbirds, a puppet series which had me enthralled in the 1960's. I must admit it looked pretty darned good on the large screen, and the remastered sound was fantastic. Even after all these years it still packs a punch. In the episode that we watched all the trouble was caused by a "World Navy" exercise which went wrong when a missile strayed off course. Until now the idea of a world navy seemed quite sensible, but tonight I was wondering just who they would be fighting against. Anyhoo, it all ended well, although there were some rather large explosions. The really weird thing was that as we were watching a story of a gas rig in peril there was a real life drama of the same ilk playing itself out in the North Sea less than a hundred miles away.

Next we fired up "The Prisoner", a strange spy series of the sixties which was filmed in the wonderful Portmerion (which I really must visit one of these days). This stands up pretty well, it seems no more or less silly than things like "24" or Prison Break, with a cast of all the greatest TV actors of the time. Familiar faces kept popping up all over the place. Great fun.

Good Evening Mr Bond

Went to see the new James Bond movie tonight. A bit late, but we've only just got around to it. Well worth the trip though. Perhaps the best Bond movie that I've ever seen (and I've seen most of them - apart from a couple of the well dodgy Roger Moore ones). The action starts at frantic and then never lets up. The plot is good too, rather than a tale involving far fetched world domination with expendable chaps in coloured boiler suits on enormous sets we have just some very nasty people with cash flow problems.

The film manages to get the feel of how Bond should be and seems truer to the books than anything else, even matching the plot of the original Casino Royale story pretty closely. One thing to note though, Bond doesn't do much for local property values. Early in the film he causes a substantial amount of collateral damage on a building site and towards the end there is some serious mayhem aboard (and I do mean aboard) a block of flats in Venice.

If you want to see why the new Bond has been so highly praised you should go and see the film. If you want to see a high quality action film, with good production values and a twisty, gnarly, plot, you should go and see the film.

Vista is a Scroll Wheel

I've had Vista running for a couple of weeks now. I'll not deny that I've had problems, but I reckon that most of these are down to the fact I'm using pre-release drivers for my particular hardware. Hopefully by the time Vista is turned loose on the world these will have been fixed.

Anyhoo, I like it. It is a bit like the scroll wheel on the mouse. I remember the first time that I got a mouse with a scroll wheel. At first I couldn't see much point, but as I used more applications which supported it I got to use it more and more. Some time back I used some very old programs which did not support it and I found them very hard to get to grips with.

Vista is like that. Its usefulness kind of creeps up on you. I like the 3D effects. I like the way that I'm finding it easier to move between folders, see what files I've selected and navigate around running programs. When I use an XP machine it feels clunky and less elegant and I'm now glad to get back to Vista.

I've stressed it really hard, with loads of simultaneous applications doing lots of different things and it just seems to come back for more. Drivers not withstanding, this is one solid operating system.

And, like the scroll wheel, I reckon it is going to be the way that we use computers for some time to come.

Delinquent Children

Number one son keeps getting busted by the police. One of his little prangs has just cost me 34,000 dollars and things have now got a lot worse. He's gone and bought a motorbike. Fortunately this is not real, this is Test Drive Unlimited for the XBOX 360, which is slowly taking over our lives. We've won a few races, run a few errands, bought a new house and spent a while exploring the neighbourhood.

I'm impressed with this game. The graphics are very believable, and the roads go on for ever. You start to explore places just to find out what is round the next corner. Perhaps we'll soon identify a few haunts to hang out at and get to know some of the locals.

If you like driving games and exploration you should track down a copy. Maybe we'll meet up in Hawaii.

Five Things to Know About Me

I've never been "tagged" before. But all that has changed. Alfred from Microsoft has tagged me. The idea is that I have to write five things about myself that you probably don't know. And then tag other bloggers to get them to do the same. A bit like a chain letter. Without the chain. Or the letter. So, here goes:

1. I once had a whole page of poetry published in "The Indepedent", a UK national daily newspaper. It was illustrated by Heath, a famous cartoonist. It was in 1987 and was fallout from my first ever lecture in rhyme. I have a copy of the paper in my office, one of my most treasured possessions. It is getting a bit yellow now, I must scan it sometime.
2. I used to present on Hospital Radio. My show was called "Better by Miles" as I remember. After the wonderfullness of the title it was all downhill from there.... I made my own jingle machine using eight track tapes and still have some recordings in the loft. And they are staying there.
3. I wrote the software which puts datestamps on bottles of Budweiser beer (I'm very proud of this). It controls a special disk drive which puts metal masks in the way of a very powerful laser which blasts ink off bottle labels as they fly past. I do Asahi Beer as well, in addition to Cadburys Roses, Wheetabix and a bunch of other stuff.
4. I teach Sunday School. I've been going to our local methodist church religiously every week for years. I'm not particularly evangelical, it is just that for me a universe with a god in it makes more sense than one without.
5. I own a pinball machine. Oh yes. It is a Twilight Zone from 1993, one of the best machines ever made and great fun to carry up flights of stairs.

And now I have to pass the tag on to other people. I'm going to tag Jay Wakefield, Matt Jones, Carrie Francis, Geoff MacDonald and David Grey.

Travels with a GPS Logger

I'm writing some software which works with GPS. It is for the .NET Micro Framework book and will let you use a Micro Framework based device to log and display location information (assuming I can find a copyright free source of aerial maps).

Anyhoo, it occurred to me that I'm going to need some test data for the system so today, as we drove about East Yorkshire dropping people off and getting free food of friends and family, we took the Samsung Q1 with the Microsoft GPS sensor and a little program to capture the data stream. If you want to relive last night's epic journey from Howden to York you will soon be able to do this. Oh yes.

Your Brain and How To Use It?

The Sunday Times has been advertising a new feature aimed at improving the mental prowess of the nation. On Sunday you will get a free DVD which will let you measure your brain power. Whoopee.

I hate things like this. I hate IQ tests, I think they are silly. If you get a low score you get upset because you think you are thick. If you get a high score in one of these tests you get upset because you are not running the country (not that this is necessarily an advert for cleverness).

Of course the real reason that I hate the tests is because I get very confused/irritated by them. When confronted by a "pick the right answer/odd one out/next in sequence" kind of question I can usually think of a whole bunch of reasons why any one of them could be the correct one, depending on the whim of the person setting the test. So what I'm really finding out is if my interpretation of the situation is the same as someone else. Who presumably has a "gold standard" of cleverness in their office.

You might find it strange that someone who often has to measure how good people are at something by setting exams and exercises dislikes IQ tests so much. I think the thing is that what I try to assess is how useful somebody would be. Given a bunch of learning outcomes (which is what courses have these days) I'm going to set questions that will try to find out how useful you can be with the knowledge that you are supposed to have.

I'll start by asking a few things which will determine whether or not you have taken the trouble to learn the fundamentals of the subject and then give you a bunch of situations where you can demonstrate that you can use this understanding to achieve things. Finally, I'm going to try and get you into a place where you can say "There are no right answers here, just different compromises which reflect different priorities" and then tell me all about these.

Of course not everything can be nailed down like this, and I'm also going to want to see how well you can present your understanding (which is why we get the first year students to demonstrate their programs), but it is a good start.

I've nothing against doing stuff which keeps your brain agile (I love the little brain power games for the Nintendo DS). But I am strongly against dodgy pseudo-scientific tests which don't really prove anything useful.

Leeds Bargain Hunter

Leeds future sky

Went to Leeds today to look out for cheap clothes in the "Shop for strangely shaped people that cares not for style, quality or its customers". A tip, oh managers of such shops. Bearing in mind that the aim of a retail establishment is to entice shoppers inside to part with funds for goods, do not put something eerily tasteless in orange and brown directly inside the front door. Things did not improve much once we got further inside. A duffle coat that looked good in a picture turned out to be made of fuzzy felt and one of the buttons fell off as I tried it on.

However, we did manage to find a couple of tasteful items worthy of investment (thank heavens for Ben Sherman shirts) and so the trip was not a complete waste. And we did get to to go Ikea for meatballs.

In Praise of Insomnia

I've started waking up in the night every now and then (last night it was easy because number one son and daughter got up at some ungodly hour to go to London). Quite often I find it hard to get back to sleep, but this is sometimes a bonus because I do have some of my better ideas at that time (or perhaps it is because my critical faculties are asleep at that time as well).

Anyhoo, last night I had a neat idea for the "Flashlight for the Fiftieth Century" (US version) or "Posh Torch" (UK version) that I'm developing as a worked example for the .NET Micro Framework book I'm presently writing. Yesterday I got a GPS interface sort of working. As I was lying in bed it occurred to me that it would be nice to add some mapping features to the software. So now I'm going to download some map images so that the device can have a "you are here" kind of display for certain areas. 

Mouse Waggling

Many years ago I got hold of the first version of Windows NT (Version 3.1 for some strange, marketing related, reason). This was the beginning of "proper" 32 bit operating systems underneath Windows, a trend which has continued all the way to Windows XP and finally Vista.

However, as it was based on an Intel 486 chip with only 64 MBytes of memory the operating system used to struggle a bit. We used to have a game called "mouse waggling", where you would fire up the performance counter and see how much CPU load you could create just by moving the mouse pointer around the screen. Sad but fun (particularly on somebody else's computer). A good player could get up to 50 or 60%.

I tried the game today on Vista (it has some really nice performance displays in the sidebar). Except this time I was dragging a window, complete with contents, over a large and complex desktop.  The needle does move, but nothing like as far as it used to. I guess this is down to the use of the graphics hardware to underpin the display system, either way it is impressive.

Boomerang Settings

I've just about got Vista how I want it. Every now and then I do something which means I have to load or configure another program I used to use, but most of the time I can putter along and get things done. And I rather like my new workplace. Except for one thing.

Settings that I've changed keep reverting back to their previous values. I'm using a network storage device which is based on a Linux processor and uses SAMBA, so I have to modify a Local Security Policy to make it work. I can make the change fine, and the drive works fine for a while. Then the setting flips back to the original value. Similarly, to get Outlook to log on to our Exchange server I've had to add a registry key. Which keeps vanishing.

The only thing I can think of is that the system thinks it is under attack, and puts things back to their safe values. I've had a cursory dig around but nothing out there tells me how to fix it. Very strange.