I was talking to someone today who reckoned that I might have a fault on my blog server. "You know" he said, "There are no updates for ages then a whole bunch appear. Either there is a problem with your hosting or you just wait a while and then put up a load of posts all at once."
Indeed.
My little Samsung Q1 PC has not been a well machine for a while. Fresh from its Java update over the weekend it has taken to sulking shortly after being powered up. Investigations revealed that a certain svchost process was taking the computer away without being asked. Being the subtle soul I am, I discovered that if I just kill the process the machine comes back, but this is hardly an elegant long term solution. So today I did some digging.
Turns out that Windows Update has a dark side which can cause it to lock your machine up. I took a while to find out what to do to get back into the driving seat, but if you have an XP system which has mysteriously slowed right down you might find it useful to take a look here.
I'm not sure how much of this is true. But if it all is, we are in for interesting times.
How much fame can a man take? Some time back Jon Gordon from 360 magazine came up to Hull to take a look at what we are doing with XNA. Jon recorded a chat with me, spoke to some students and then went back to headquarters to prepare the article. Today I received an advance copy of the magazine, issue 23, it should be in the shops at the end of this week.
And there I am, with the whole interview laid out along with quotes from students and everything. Great stuff.
What with this, and my picture in Vista magazine, I think I might see about getting an agent.....
Imagine you are going on a journey. You get the car out, and then nip back into the house to fetch your luggage. When you get back outside you find that your car has driven itself off to the garage to sort out a problem with one of the wheel trims and it will be there for the next couple of hours.
I don't think that many drivers would put up with this. But computer users get it all the time.
This morning I needed to use a computer that I hadn't turned on for a while. For some reason I thought this was not going to cause me problems. How wrong I was. When the machine woke up it decided to upgrade its Java installation.
Now, I don't use Java very much, I only added the runtimes so that I could run some programs that I needed to take a look at. Java is a nice enough language, it is just not one that I use any more. I certainly don't need an update. Particularly one which takes the thick end of half an hour, and which seems to lock up the machine while the update completes.
Nothing strikes fear into my heart more than the phrase "New updates are ready to install". This usually means that I have to fire up my other computer so I can get some work done whilst checking on the updating machine for buttons that I need to press. You can't just go off and have a coffee, oh no, because as soon as you turn away from the machine it pops up a spurious dialogue box which you have to click on to start the download of the download downloader or somesuch rubbish.
We really need to get a handle on this kind of thing, the tail has started wagging the dog I reckon. I know you can get the machine to do updates at midnight, but this means leaving the machine on overnight, which I'm not always keen to do and is probably not a very efficient thing to do from an environmental point of view.I get really cross when I fire up my machine and all kinds of dross gets to run before I can see my email.
I think there should be a kind of "happy hour" on a machine when it first wakes up. Rather than starting up all the updates, sidebars, screen savers, sync centers, search indexers, de-fragmenters, bluetooth managers and god knows what else, for the first hour of use a machine should just concentrate on running the programs that I start. Once things have settled down, and I'm sitting there wondering what key to press, then the operating system can start gradually introducing the things that can be left to catch up later. Should be easy enough to add and it would make lots of people happier. Including me.
Went up town today. Took the tiny camera as it was nice weather. Actually I always take the camera, in case something interesting happens. Nothing interesting, but a few pictures turned out OK.
One of our better logos...
Neat sculpture
Water Polo by the shops
I upgraded the memory in my Media Centre today. It has been running well, but I'd managed to convince myself that it was short of memory. And I was anxious to make the most of the "ten pounds off every purchase over thirty quid" offer still running at ebuyer.com. The memory arrived today, so it was off with the lid to begin the "two minute job" which was actually plugging in the chips. And I saw what Sony had done. And I said a naughty word.
The memory sockets were right where I could see them, really easy to get at, which was good. However the catches at one side of the sockets were completely fouled up against the graphics card. There was no way to add the memory without taking part of the machine to bits. I'm a great fan of good design. Unfortunately this means that I hate badly designed stuff. Hence the naughty word.
Anyhoo, I took all the cables and bits and pieces out and got hold of the card. It moved up a quarter of an inch and then stuck. I gave another gentle tug and noticed that other parts of the system board were bending in a generally non-good way. Turns out that, not content with making a mess of the positioning of the memory and graphics card, the designers had also placed some components together which have meshed together in some stupid way, so the card would not come out. So I said another naughty word and had tea.
Incidentally, have you ever noticed how it us usually time to eat just at the point where a tricky job becomes critical? You're just about to fire up the program for the first time/start the engine/wire up the lightning conductor and throw the circuit breaker etc when the oven timer goes ping and you have to walk away and eat. There was a time when this used to infuriate me, but now I take it in good grace, walk away from the job and then go back with a fresh mind and a full stomach. In this case it was probably a good thing, because on return I managed to slide the card sideways and "twang" the memory in without any further ado.
Then it was time to test the system, put the lid on, and see what happens next. Shaun the sheep looks just the same, of course, but on the whole I'm happier.
Wednesday: Go to see Spiderman, where a sticky oozy thing takes over the hero and turns him into some kind of extra powerful evil version who wears his hair down over one eye.
Thursday: Get some chewing gum on my shoe.
Coincidence? I think not. Now, where's my comb?
Two years ago I helped set up a student conference down at Microsoft Reading. Everyone turned up, had a great time, learned stuff, drank some beer and went home. It was called Slide 5.
It was good.
Microsoft are doing it all again. Compelling (and very useful) content. Microsoft experts to talk to. A sesson from me. Free food (a BBQ even). And beer. Slide 7 is on the 18th of June and registration is free. You can find out more, and sign up, here.
If you are lucky enough to be a student at Hull who is still in Hull on the 17th - 18th I'm taking a mini-bus down to the event. We are going to stay in a Travelodge on the Sunday night and then go to the conference on Monday. You can sign up for a place on the magic bus here.
When I was in the 'states I got myself a pair of cheap noise canceling headphones. I wasn't expecting them to be up to much, but it turns out that they are quite effective. You turn them on and they do nothing for a few seconds and then there is a kind of un-thump and the sounds outside you vanish. It is a bit like having a wet flannel suddenly wrapped around your head.
I've been wondering what would happen if I played the same music into some speakers and the headphones, sat next to the speaker, and then turned the noise canceling on.......
Is it just this area, or is the local council tip now the "place to be seen". Last time I went down there I was relieved that I had a slightly newer car, as previously I'd felt a bit out of place in Ye Olde Scenic, surrounded as I was by shiny 4x4s and Mercedes. I had to go again today, and it was just the same, maybe worse. One pair even rolled up in a brand new BMW open top sports car. And the girl sweeping up the leaves was wearing bright green eyeshadow. Very strange.
I kept waiting for the music to start up, at which point everyone would rip off their overalls to reveal spangled costumes and then go into some appalling song and dance routine like that garage bit in "Grease". Fortunately this didn't happen. (or perhaps it did just minutes after I left)
There are two theories that I can advance that fit my observations:
We were up bright and early this morning to head off to Milton Keynes for Collectormania again. Not quite so early this time, as I wasn't chasing autographs, but early-ish, and still fairly bright. We were really just going for the atmosphere, although I did manage to pick up a couple of import blu-ray disks which was nice. I also took the camera.
This picture is crying out for a caption
Bargain hunting Daleks
Pick a card...
...and a badge
Bored with plain old "Rock, Paper Scissors"? Try this.
When number one son got his Mac one of the programs that I was dead jealous of was the Comic Life program that can be used to create comics. I've just found out that you can now download a beta version that works on Vista and Windows.
Oh, and if you have a question for the Oracle Pig let me know and I'll see if it can give you the answer in comic form....
I really like my Media PC now. I've just found out how easy it is to make a DVD of all my Shaun the Sheep recordings using Media Centre in Vista.
Little things I suppose....
My Media Centre PC is now settling down nicely. I've stopped using the cable that crashes it and, guess what, it doesn't crash any more. I've just ordered another gig of RAM for it which should give it a bit more room to move around in.
A tip, you can get 10 quid off any order more than 30 quid at Ebuyer at the moment if you sign up to the Google ordering thingy. I've used it twice now, I'll take money from anyone...
Anyhoo, I told the Media PC to get all the showings of Shaun the Sheep 'cos I think it is ace. It is aimed at kids, so it goes down a treat with me. Just simple farmyard antics with the character from the Wallace and Gromit "Close Shave". My present fave is the one with the bees. Catch it if you can.
Today has been busy. Oh yes. It started with an unexpected lecture. We are now in week 11 of the semester, with teaching supposed to have finished at the end of week 10. But the first year students wanted more, and so I went off at 9:15 to deliver. Actually, it worked quite well, in that I was able to go through the quiz that I set last week.
Then it was back to the labs to get ready for our XNA event. Andy Sithers from Microsoft had come over to formally hand over the XBOX 360s they have given us to help with our XNA teaching in the first year. We had to set them up in the lab for the pictures, and get some stuff working. Simon Dickson and Phil Cluff from our first year came in to show of what they have been doing.
Then, after a quick lunch the presentation tool place. We all contorted ourselves into the best position for the perfect shot for the papers. Danielle Cod from Radio Humberside interviewed our head of department, Andy, Simon and Phil and finally me, in search of the perfect soundbyte. You can grab the resulting two minute piece here. Much to my dismay they seem to have left Andy and Warren on the cutting room floor.....
This picture kind of captures the event. In the back Warren Viant, our head of department, is being recorded whilst Andy Sithers ponders the code and Simon grapples with debugging and being interviewed all at the same time....
After all this we had to dash off to an event that I had pretentiously entitled our "Software Symposium". (Did you know that symposium used to mean drinking session?). Anyhoo, the event started with a double headed presentation from Robert Hogg of software developers Black Marble and Ed Gibson who is Chief Security Advisor for Microsoft UK. The topic was safety and computers.
I'd heard bits of it before at the Black Marble event last year, but it was obviously news to the audience, who sat silently as Robert and Ed laid it on the line about just how scary things are. I managed to be both petrified about what was going on out there and relieved that Robert and Ed are going around spreading the word and engaging budding software developers with the problems posed by the wonderful connected world we live in.
The point they made forcefully and effectively is that the big problems are not down to technology, they are down to people. If we don't keep our software up to date and we allow ourselves to be bamboozled into giving passwords to cunning callers then no amount of code is going to help.
Next, and on a somewhat lighter note, the Seedlings, our Imagine Cup winning team, gave us a presentation of their entry. The First Programming Language they are working on is aimed to engage everyone with the kind of problem solving techniques that will allow them to use a computer to best advantage, whether or not they end up writing programs.
Then after a closing address from Andy Sithers of Microsoft, about the value of competition and the usefulness to students of just plain taking part, it was time to zoom off and try to find a recorder for the radio broadcast.....
Busy day.
Today I had to reboot Vista. Not something I do very often, or by choice, but I'd just installed some new software and it needed a reboot, so off we went.
On the way back it did a checkdisk. Something about broken chains somewhere. I'd not seen this message before, but I figured out it might be nature's way of saying it was time to take a backup. I fired up the Backup and Restore centre in Vista and two clicks and two hours later I'm the proud possessor of a bunch of files on my network storage device which will probably allow me to reconstruct my life should my laptop disk decide to tip over. The next thing I'm going to do, of course, is pick a file or two at random and try to restore them from the backup. When this works I can relax.
I remember a horror story from the back in the mists of time where a system manager (not me) had a hard disk crash. He was feeling quite relaxed about this, as he loaded up his backup tapes. Ten minutes later he was feeling less relaxed, when he found that his backup command saved the directory structure, but not the files. He hadn't thought to check that he could actually get anything off the tapes that he had been carefully creating and saving for years.....
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.
