I made my way back today. I started bright and early. Again. 
There's a bloke at Portugal airport who takes his cappuccinos very seriously. Even at 5 in the morning.
Airport sunrise
Later today we had an XBOX 360 multi-player Gears of War fest which was fun. I'll dig out the pictures tomorrow.
So, I'm sitting in my hotel room feeling peckish. Lacking the energy to go downstairs and actually find some food, I turn to the room service menu. It is very decadent, but the prices are reasonable and the menu inviting, so I ring up and order a sandwich and some chips. "Fifteen minutes" says the man. "Fine" I reply.
Fifteen minutes go by. then another fifteen minutes. No food. We english have a problem with complaining. We hardly ever do. Anyhoo, after 45 minutes hunger gets the better of me and I ring back.
The chap on the other end of the phone assures me that the food is on its way even as we speak. At the end of the call, almost as an aside, he asks "What room are you in?".
The penny drops. When I called the first time I assumed the hotel had one of those fangled things where the phone system tells the receptionist who is calling. The first time I experienced this it was really scary. I was jetlagged in a hotel and at 3:00 am I rang up to ask for a network cable so that I could connect to some people who were as awake as I seemed to be. "Good morning Mr. Miles" said the person at the other end. "Have we met?" I blurted out, before I figured out what was going on. This caused much confusion at the other end, as the poor desk porter tried to figure out why someone would ring them up at 3:00 to find out if they had met them. Anyhoo, I digress.
The first time I called for my food it did not occur to me to tell the chap at the other end where I was. Which gave them a problem. They had a beef sandwich and a plate of chips and no idea of where to send them. All the could do was wait until I rang back and complained, which with me being english, took a while.
The good news is that the food was excellent.
car-airport-plane-airport-plane-airport-taxi-conference centre-hotel
Well, that was my day. How about yours?
Some time back I got an email offering me a chance to speak at a student conference in Portugal. The date was a long way away, and I was pretty sure it was out of term time, my boss said it was OK, so I agreed to go. What with the Imagine Cup effort at Hull, and my term dates being messed up, I very nearly didn't make it. But I'm glad I did. Even if it meant getting up at 4:00 am and a couple of flights to get here, Lisbon is worth the effort. I was expecting to speak to a room full of students.
Well, there was a room, and it was pretty full, but it was a bit more than I expected. Tech Days is essentially TechEd for Portugal only. I'm rather jealous. I wish there was something like this in the UK.
TechDays has everything that TechEd does, speakers shirts, timetable of interesting sessions, plush venue. And loads of keen delegates, including several hundred students who are given a day pass to the most interesting sessions. One of which was mine....
I was talking about XNA, the way that you can write games in C# for your XBOX 360. It is a subject that I like talking about, and the audience seemed happy to hear about it too. Even putting up with the jokes... I was a bit worried whether or not my particular brand of humour would go OK with a Portuguese audience. But in the end everyone seemed to have a good time, and a bunch of students even stayed behind at the end to hear the famous "Orange for a Head" joke. And then promptly wished they hadn't.
I would very much have liked to stay longer. I only managed to get to one session, about the Microsoft Robotics Studio. This is something I'd love to have more time to get to grips with. It is a fantastic way to start programming robots, with a proper simulated physics environment and an interface to lots of robot platforms, including the new Lego Mindstorms. Maybe when I get back I'll set aside an afternoon as robot playtime and see what we can make.
At the end of the day I staggered back to my room in a very nice hotel, and just flaked out.
Anyway, thanks very much to Microsoft Portugal for inviting me and making me so welcome, for the audience for making the trip worthwhile, and to KLM for actually finding me some seats on the plane with legroom. I've only been in Portugal for around 16 hours, I can promise that I will be back, and that next time it will be for a proper look round.
I'm only in Portugal for around 16 hours. I took loads of pictures from the taxi on the way from the airport to the conference centre. The taxi driver thought I was mad at first, but after a while he was pointing things out for me. Great stuff.
View from the Taxi
Nice Stadium
Love the colours
Aqueduct
Lisbon has a nice bridge too
The TechDays in a break
At the end of the bill. Or is that top billing?
The audience. What a great bunch
..until I told the Orange for a Head joke.....
A great bunch of MSPs
Some more students. That chap in the middle needs a haircut...
Nice bridge by night
I'm away again tomorrow for a whistle stop trip to Portugal. I've been invited to give a talk at TechDays07 there, but I don't really have time. So tomorrow I get up at 4:15 and fly to Lisbon. Then on Wed. morning I'm going to get up at 4:15 and fly back. I reckon that my average speed over the next day will be around 100 miles an hour....
I've been playing with my wide angle lens attachment that I got in the 'states. This is the thing that I can put on the front of the camera which halves the focal length of the lens, making it into a wide angle so that it can see more. I was wondering what would happen if I got ten or so and put them all on together.
Would I be able to see behind me?
I hate it when I overhear the end of a conversation without hearing the start. Today, in Wilkinson's, I heard someone saying (loudly in case you think I was eavesdropping) "...of course, if you turn it upside down so that it drains out all the water and then let it dry out it should work fine.." I'm just baffled as to what they were taking about.
Today is Comic Relief day. This is a bi-annual charity event where people do silly things, like sitting in a bath tub full of beans, for money. I'm not convinced that beans would be good for my complexion, and so I usually give a lecture in rhyme instead. These are great fun, earn a bit of cash, and take ages to write. An therein lies the rub this year. I've simply not had time to put on my poets hat and crank out the verse. So, for the first time for a while, there is no lecture this year. Very sorry people, maybe next time.
What is it with Hull and winning? Only a few days after we got four teams into the UK finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup Software Design Challenge (something not achieved by any other university, ever - and something we did last year as well) I find that a team of ours has aced the British Computer Society (BCS) Computer Challenge, which took place yesterday in Leeds.
This was a fast paced quiz affair, all "fingers on the buzzers" and "your starter for ten" kind of stuff.
And we won. Congratulations to the team, Mat Steeples, Jamie Ashton, Sam Denison and Jon Stirling. This is the tenth time that we've won the competition in the 21 years that it has been running.
Go Hull.
While I'm talking about gadgets, I really should give an honourable mention to my favourite computer of the moment, the Motion LS800. This is the tiny powerhouse that I took to the 'states, and it really is lovely.
I was a bit ho-hum about it when I first got it, it was the height of summer and the lack of an internal fan was a bit of an issue. However, two things have happened since then. I've doubled the memory and put Windows Vista on it. Doubling the memory makes it a lot faster and also seems to make it run cooler (this sounds silly, but I'm sure it is true - less hard disk activity generates less heat). And Vista, with its powerful handwriting recognition, makes the LS800 very useable as a pure tablet.
The teeny tiny nature of the machine means that you don't notice it in your bag. The screen is only 8.4 inches in size, with 800x600 resolution, but this is not a problem. If there were more dots, with eyes like mine I would not be able to see them anyway. And in a week of use, including some sessions with Visual Studio, I was never hamstrung because of the small size of the display. Battery life is good at around 3 hours with a bit of care, and all in all it is now my traveling companion of choice.
While I was in San Francisco I bought a gadget. Those of you feigning shock horror expressions can stop right now. The thing I bought was a Zune. I've fancied one for a while, and with the dollar/pound rate the way that it is I reckoned that it would be an excellent deal.
The Zune is Microsoft's answer to the Ipod. I'm not sure about the name, perhaps the plan is to get as far away down the alphabet from Apple, but I could be wrong on this.
Anyhoo, as a device the Zune is very like an Ipod. Slightly more chunky, and with a larger screen for watching videos. It lacks the funky scroll wheel thing, making do with a ring of directional buttons, but these work fine.
The software is based on that from the Portable Media Player, an ill fated device that was launched by Microsoft and a bunch of hardware makers a couple of years ago. Of course, I had one of those too. I bought it to make use of the then shiny Microsoft "Plays For Sure" technology that would let me subscribe to Napster's music service. This is kind of ironic because the new Zune completely ditches that copyright protection and uses a new, exclusive one. If I had actually bought any music from Napster I'd be a pretty annoyed bunny at this point, but fortunately all I'd have to do is switch to the Zune music subscription service and fetch all my content again.
As an aside, I've never, ever, actually bought any music protected by Digital Rights. My philosophy has been that if Robert is going to part with money for something, Robert is going to actually get something for the money. I like the fact that I have a shiny CD in a nice box to fall back on if I ever change computer or player at any time. And if I buy from somewhere like Amazon marketplace I can usually undercut the download price anyway.
So, back to the Zune. I love it. Small, light, portable, great sound and an OK battery life (although it could be better). The Zune on-line music store is like the Napster one, only a million times better (and it works through the university firewall - a major plus). While I was in America I signed up for the 14 day free pass which comes with the device. It allows me to download and play any content I like for a fortnight. I put my home address in the USA as the hotel, which was true at the time.... And therein lies the rub for the moment.
I'm pretty sure that if I try to use the paid service (which is a major bargain compared to the price charged by Napster to UK subscribers) the system will take one look at my english credit card and refuse to play ball. This would be a bit of a shame, but I'm not that bothered as I didn't get the device for the subscription service. And hopefully when Zune launches properly in europe I can sign up then.
Microsoft are working very hard to make the Zune "cool". Making things "cool" is hard. Even someone as cool as what I am appreciates that being cool takes considerable effort. However, they are doing as much as they can. The Zune comes loaded with some very cool content. There are some fascinating artistic bits and bobs that you can download onto it and a whole range of sites offering customised backgrounds.
Whether or not Zune can "out cool" the Ipod remains to be seen. There is talk of big plans involving games and phones and all kinds of stuff. The Zune itself has built in wireless networking, so you can share media with your Zune owning friends (if you have any). It also works with the XBOX 360 as a media source. The hard disk could be bigger, 30GB will not hold a lot of video, but I'm quite happy with that for audio.
When it launches in the UK, as it surely must, it will be well worth a look.I've just plugged the Zune into the XBOX 360.
It just works.
You can find and play any of the media on the device, including photos and videos. Watching music through the visualiser is amazing.
Do I look stupid? Well, perhaps a bit. Maybe after a haircut things will improve. Mind you, Einstein had long hair. But Captain Picard was a slaphead. Confusing.
Anyhoo, some people on Ebay must think I was born yesterday. I love Ebay for buying stuff. From wing mirrors to cameras, I've bought lots of items. However, I've also tried to sell things. And it often ends in tears. I put a lot up last week (part of my PS3 sinking fund) and as usual all the bidding action was in the last two minutes. The price was reasonable, not quite what I was hoping for, but a goodly chunk of that shiny black console that I seem to have an irrational desire for.
Then the buyer revealed that he lived in Italy. Would I mind shipping the item there? Yes I would. Very much. A member with zero feedback who has bid on an item which I had said was only for delivery to the UK. So we switch to the next bidder down. Who reveals that his PayPal account has been disabled. Would I mind a cheque or perhaps a bank transfer? Hmm. Let me think about that for a nanosecond. Yes I would. Since the rest of the bids were below the reserve price (which I thought was very low anyway) that was the end of that. Blarst.
I don't think I'll try again for a while.
I'm pretty much exhausted. But I have a 9:15 lecture and so I drag myself into work to impart wisdom to the masses (or at least the first year). After that I had a whole bunch of things to do, but I got pretty much none of them done.
I kept being hassled by Imagine Cup finalists. Last year Hull managed the impressive feat of getting four of our Imagine Cup teams into the 10 selected for the UK final. In case you might think that this was a flash in the pan, we managed to do it again this year. We have got some really terrific teams and I've been giving help on their entries for a while now.
With the posters required for the next phase needing to be sorted by the middle of next week there were a lot of people with loads of questions. I think I've managed to sort things out, in that people know the general thrust of what they are going to present and say.
I'm going to take a look at some of the posters on Wednesday. Should be interesting. We are going to get a "battle bus" booked as we did last time, and hopefully take Reading by storm again. Last year all the top three winning teams were from Hull, I don't think that we'll manage to equal that feat, but I'd love to see one team in the top three at the final. And I reckon that we have got a pretty good chance too. Stay tuned for pictures and news as it happens.
..thank you and good night.
You may have gathered by now that I like San Francisco. Even though the streets are very sloping, I still loved walking around. I've taken more pictures in the last week than I have in the last six months. And I'm pleased with every one of them. Lovely place. But today we had to leave. Although there was time for a little shopping trip and a few more snaps.
Love the color
Inside the Apple store
Art Expo
Reflections
We did a lot of walking
A saint for every occasion
Can you see Jon Purdy in this picture?
Nice view after we had seen 300
Well, the conference has finished. I just thought I'd put down in words what I've managed to learn from my time in out here, at the various sessions and on the exhibition floor:
And with those profound thoughts floating out there into the ether, time for the Friday photos.
Dusk.
We didn't bother with steak in the end
..'cos Lori's had pinball
I just love this back screen. The rightmost zero is just stuck in there to make all the scores seem bigger...
It seemed a good idea at the time. Jon had never seen the Imax screen, there was a new film out which had received less than damming reviews and so off we went to see "300", a simple tale of simple people killing simply everything.
Just about everyone in the film is a bit dim. From the Spartan king who thinks that just because all his recruits had a rough childhood they can take on the might of the Persian army to the traitor who thinks that it is a plan to carry around his ill gotten gains in his pockets, complete with nicely minted head of chief baddy on every coin.
The violence is very well realised, so if detailed decapacitations are your thing you are in for a great time. Unfortunately they aren't mine, especially when projected on a screen the size of a house side. Jon said, at the end, "I don't think the Imax added much". He was right. What it gave you in this case was a much better and bigger rendition of something that you really didn't want to see in the first place.
If you are into comic books, computer games with slow motion fight scenes, comedy beards and utter tosh you will like the film. If you want plot, character and scenery other than very large piles of dead bodies then I suggest you give it a miss. However big the picture.
Thanks to help from Kieran at Rare, Jon and I managed to snag invites to the XNA party, which was held at a really swish nightclub.
We had to pick up the bus outside the Metreon centre
As soon as we got to the club, had our ticket taken, hand stamped and passport checked (no - really, it was that exclusive) we grabbed some free food and drink and, old people that we are, headed for the chill out zone. Which was really, er, cool.
The blue ceiling was amazing
Microsoft do parties well. Very well. Sitting watching the world go by with people bringing you free drink and food works for me. After a while though, we thought we'd explore the place.
Blue with XBOXes
We wandered into one room and found a band playing.
Forget the "Wedding Singer" looks. These guys were seriously good. And loud.
And they had even more XBOXes for gameplay whilst you party
Finally, we went upstairs and took a look at the winners of the XNA Express challenge. These people had spent the last few days at the show creating a video game from scratch using only XNA Express Edition. The winner looked very snazzy, with real time lighting and all sorts. If the competition runs next year there will be somebody from Hull in the mix, you mark my words.
XNA Winners
Then, having drunk and eaten our fill, and with the band ringing in our ears it was out into the chill night for a brisk walk back up the hill to the hotel.
We started the day bright and early. At 9:00 we were learning how to use shaders at an XNA lab.
Plenty of nice monitors for the XNA lab..
It has to be said that I'm not actually a great video game programmer. But after today I'm a lot happier writing shader code. Even if it looks a lot like C++. Once we'd got our flashy music player working I bailed out of the lab and headed for the next keynote. I really wanted to see the next man speak.
Building Mr Miyamoto
Shigeru Miyamoto is a true video gaming legend. The man behind Mario and a host of other Nintendo classics last came to GDC 8 years ago, and today he was back to give another presentation. The slant was broadly similar to the Sony pitch yesterday. Community is good. Games which are fun are good. And we now have games which can bring in people who up until now have never played games. Including Mrs. Miyamoto. The presentation ended with some mouth watering footage of Super Mario Galaxy.
Coming to a Wii near you soon
At lunchtime I took a bunch of pictures.
Reflections on a city square
Flowers
Another nice day
Later on there was another community themed talk, this time by the brains behind EyeToy, SingStar and Buzz. It seems to me that games are getting more and more mainstream, and soon they will be part of life for pretty much everyone. Later we went for another wander.
567 Pine
Grant
More nice lumpy streets
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.
