Thanks to Microsoft for setting it all up, a good time was had by all.
Today is Slide 7 day. Slide (Students Learn Innovative Developer Expertise - or something - we picked the name because the domain name was available) is run by Microsoft the Academic team at Microsoft UK in Reading. They put on sessions about professional development and get a bunch of students to turn up. This year it was all about connected applications.
Our posse on the way into the Mother Ship....
I took a minibus full of folks from Hull to join the hundred or so others that had made their way from all over the country for the show.
And the show was good. There was a slight dip in quality after lunch, when I did my bit on Web Services, but the rest of the material was top notch. There were sessions on Web 2.0 (where we discussed the question of what Web 2.0 actually is), ASP, Windows Live and Orcas. And then a great talk at the end on Sliverlight.
People, you should find out more about Silverlight. You should also sign up for Popfly since this is mucho funo. I've been playing a bit with my Popfly account and it makes it dangerously easy to develop impressive applications.
My Audience (most of the students were next door, but we manage to make more noise than them...)
Mingling at the BBQ
At the end we had a BBQ and a great time was had by all. There will probably be a Slide 8, you should get your name down for it if there is...
Ed Dunhill, the Microsoft bod who made it all happen (Kudos Ed) is going to post all the slides and other material on his blog.
Then, after a five hour rumble up the motorway it was home in time for bed.
Just remembered a joke that I meant to use in the session on Thursday:
"What's ET short for?"
"Because he only has little legs"
This has been bothering me. No, really. If the sun shines on a lump of red hot metal does it make the metal warmer?
Had great fun today doing a session about XNA for DevDays. The audience were wonderful, and I took some happy snaps:
on the right...
...in the middle...
...and on the left
Thanks for paying attention people, and I hope you use XNA to get to some interesting places.
Before my talk we had a session from Dave Mitchell of Microsoft. He was able to tell us that the XNA Creators Club memberships are going to be part of Microsoft Academic Alliance. This is the best news. Now we can put a bunch of machines in our labs for people to write for and it won't cost us extra on top of our AA subscription. That news alone was worth going to Amsterdam for. If you are a member of a university faculty you owe it to yourself (and your students) to follow this up and get your hands on one of the best bargains in education at the moment).
Dave at the start of his presentation
Earlier today I went to a presentation by Scott Guthrie about Silverlight. This is a fantastic technology that lets you make very impressive user experience. It lets you put .NET powered behaviour into web pages and also gives you the Windows Presentation Foundation to drive your user interfaces. Excellent.
Scot talking about multiple language support in Sliverlight.
I've had a really good time in Amsterdam. I went out for a meal last night and took even more pictures:
Standard Canal picture
Artistic cake
There are some more on my Flickr site.
This morning found me boarding a plane for Amsterdam. I'm giving a session on XNA development tomorrow. Rather cleverly I didn't check in any luggage, so no waiting at conveyor belts for me. Rather less cleverly I'd also put my highly explosive shampoo and deodorant in my carry on bag. I managed to avoid the cavity search, but now I'm going to have to learn the Dutch for "Lynx Effect". Not that I seem to need it......
These two lovelies were wandering round the show accompanied by a bloke with a camera and printer strapped to him who was taking photos and printing them out for free. Very nice. Although the reason I look so pleased is that I'm clutching a copy of the Microsoft Mobile Developers Handbook. I wrote Chapter 13, which is about mobile graphics. I was stood in the bookshop reading my own printed words when the girls turned up. I resisted the temptation to hold up the pages and shout "Look, I wrote this!", since I figured they might not be that impressed. But I settled for a picture.
DevDays is neat. It is based in Amsterdam at the conference centre there. I'll grab some pictures from inside the conference tomorrow. For today, here are some external shots.
Outside the Conference Centre
Authentic Dutch bike rider
There goes another chunk of my life. Because the Adobe updater kicked in during a print this means that it broke the print operation and locked the file in the spool queue of the printer, which meant that I had to uninstall the printer, reboot and then reinstall it again.
Now, who do I send that bill to?
As I get older, I realise that time is becoming more precious to me. The number of hours left to me is not so huge that I can just squander them on wasted effort. Or have them taken from me.
Adobe Reader has just stolen half an hour of my time. All I wanted to do was read a document and then print it. Without being asked it went on line, found some updates, downloaded 30 MBytes of stuff, spent fifteen minutes installing this, rebooted my machine and then spent another five minutes rattling the disk drive.
Net loss to me, half an hour of my time.
Now, the Adobe reader is a program that lets me read documents. That's all. It does not control a heart-lung machine, fly a plane or operate a nuclear reactor. What can be so wrong with it that it requires 30 MBytes (more space than the original Windows 95 installer) to sort out? I know that the program is free, and so I probably can't complain. But this kind of behaviour means that I would be unlikely to pay for it anyway.
And now I've wasted another ten minutes moaning about the 30 minutes I lost. Bah.
Why not use babies to sell petrol. Indeed.
I think I'm turning into some kind of media person. Or something. If you get hold of a copy of this month's Windows Vista magazine you will find a picture of me and my photo frame. The frame, an Imate Momento, is actually proving very useful. It uses WIFI to link to the shared photographs and displays them without any faffing about with memory cards and the like.
Confetti
Went to a wedding today. We went to the service and then the reception and then came home. Everything was great, even the weather. Number one wife was going out to the evening party, whilst I stayed at home and nursed the jetlag. Before she went out again I thought I'd print off a few of the photos I'd taken. Bad plan. The process went like this.
Travel is nice, but being home is better. Even with jetlag that makes you fall asleep in the middle of a sent
Tonight I had to fly back to the UK. I'm a tall person. On the way out Virgin Atlantic were kind enough to swap my seat for one near the emergency exit so that I could sit with my legs in front of me. On a normal seat I just can't do this, so it is always nice when an airline makes an allowance for my particular shape.
On the way back Virgin Atlantic were also happy to swap my seat. As long as I paid them 75 dollars. I thought that stank. I paid up though, since the prospect of nearly nine hours sat with my knees above my ears and no circulation in my feet did not appeal. Are they really so strapped for cash that they have to resort to ripping off people who have no choice in the matter? Up until that point I had been very impressed with the airline, who seem to have the most chirpy and upbeat cabin staff I've ever encountered. Now I'm a bit less pleased. I've emailed customer relations (I'm reaching the age where I can dash off "Yours, disgusted" emails quite quickly) and we will see what happens.
Inside Orlando Airport. Big place.
Today was the day that Roger and I hit the stage to present the Micro Framework. I did the easy bit (the slides) and Roger did the hard bit (the demos). This arrangement worked fine for me.
Getting set up
We had a good sized audience, and they were polite enough to laugh at most of my jokes (I've never had anyone actually laugh at all of my jokes - and this is probably just as well). I did my bit and then Roger took over for the demo.
I didn't know exactly what he was going to do. We had rehearsed the timings and I knew he would be using two Micro Framework boards which he had managed to connect using the Zigbee wireless protocol. The only other thing I knew was that we would be playing poker with the boards. What he did though just blew me away, literally and in a card playing context too.
He had a very pretty program in which two C# programs were running, passing card data and plays between the two devices. So we played poker. I'm not very good at poker. If the money isn't real I just bet huge amounts and try to bluff every time. If the money is real I just leave the game out of cowardice.
Anyhoo, we started playing and I kept raising. Towards the end Roger decided that it would be really nice for him if the next card that was dealt was a six. So he stopped the program running inside his embedded device, tweaked the deck so that the top card was the six of hearts, and then continued the program. He got the six, and I got the shaft. This was a fantastic demonstration of the power of the embedded environment that you get with the Micro Framework, and a lesson to me never to play poker by computer.
Then we went off and reprised the whole session for a webcast.
After a morning on the booth telling people they were now embedded developers as well (most people with C# and Visual Studio 2005 are, thanks to the .NET Micro Framework) it was time to head out for some shopping. I quite like strange watches, and I knew that at the Prime outlet there was a Fossil watch outlet store.
My plan was to catch a bus up to the top of International Drive, have a wander round and then catch another back. As I was leaving the conference hall I heard a strange sound, like a very long round of applause. It was the rain on the roof. Lots of rain. I carefully charted my route back to the hotel so that I was under cover for most of the way, except for the last 50 yards.
I got soaked. In Florida, when it rains it rains. Muchly. After a complete change of clothes I ventured out again, but standing at a bus stop was not a plan. So I was forced to spend a goodly chunk of cash on a taxi ride instead.
I much prefer buses to taxis. In a bus I reckon you have safety in numbers. Being alone in a taxi cab with a person I've never met always makes me nervous. In a bus, even if the driver does turn out to be an axe wielding maniac with a passion for driving off cliffs you have a few people with you to help take him on. In a taxi it is strictly one on one. Also, with a bus when it stops at the lights or in traffic there is no worry about the price going up. In a taxi I can always see that number steadily rising, and making me poorer. And I always think that the taxi driver will spot that I'm from out of town and take me to my destination via Brazil or something. Having said all this the taxi drive was, like just about every one I've ever had, smooth and uneventful and within around 15 minutes I was at the Prime discount mall.
Which was a dump. I'd taken a camera so that I could snag some pictures, but there was nothing worth photographing. Everywhere had an air of decay and moving on, I suspect there must be other discount malls in Florida doing well, because this one was more than a bit quiet. Anyhoo, I found the watch shop and after a long and happy search through the display (I like looking at watches, OK?) I selected one for me and one for number one wife.
On the way back I was lucky to walk straight onto a bus which took me right back to the hotel.
View from a bus
Have you ever thought that there is more to life than you know? That there some fundamental truths out there, just beyond your grasp? And that knowing these truths will empower you in ways that could change your life forever?
Well, I've no idea about that kind of stuff myself, but if you come along to our session at TechEd 2007 on Thursday at 11:30 (LNC16 room N210B) Roger Wolff and I will show you how to take your C# and Visual Studio 2005 skills and use them to power tiny embedded devices.
You will also be privy to what could be the worlds first Zigbee powered poker game, and learn my current favourite joke in all the world.
If you are not lucky enough to be in Orlando, you can always catch up on the session in the webcast. Sign up here.
Another day on the stand describing the Micro Framework. Half way through an explanation I mentioned to one chap that on Thursday in our lunchtime session Roger will be demonstrating his program that lets you play wireless poker using Zigbee devices connected to a Micro Framework board. The delegate thought about this for a moment. "You mean the .NET Micro Framework lets you play poker against your fridge?" he asked.
I can't think of a better way of putting it. You can easily add lots of intelligence to a tiny device, and then connect it to other things to make life interesting. Although in that situation a poor poker player might starve to death, or at least have to drink black coffee for the rest of their life.....
After stand duty it was time to head up to a demonstration of the framework. I had been invited to provide some closing remarks (nobody can close down an event better than me) and so I told everyone there about one of my major claims to fame - around 10 years or so I wrote some code which helps put datestamps on bottles of Budweiser beer. There was no .NET Micro Framework then, of course, so the application was forged in the hell of cross compiling, no debugging, and code that had to be strange "just so it would work". I made the point that if I was doing the job today it would take me a lot less time, and be much more fun to do. You can read one report of the event here - it is great to hear nice things about the platform.
On the way to the event I poked the camera out of the bus window and grabbed a few snaps.
Apparently "Inverted pimply pyramid" means "Titanic Museum" in Orlando
Believe it or not
Nirvana in a box?
I spent a big chunk of today telling folks all about the .NET Micro Framework. We had a stand near the Visual Studio booths, so I had the pleasant duty of telling lots of people who had C# and Visual Studio 2005 experience they are now fully qualified embedded developers too. Embedded development is the fiddly business of putting code onto tiny processors.
One example application we have is a C# controlled massage char (which proved very popular as the day wore on) but we also have Micro Framework controlled RSS display sign and also a Z-Wave network interface device that was developed in weeks rather than months thanks to the fact that the company was able to use C#, VS 2005 and all the powerful emulation and debugging support that comes with it.
Once folks cottoned onto the idea they were well keen. Quite a few had experienced the horrors of writing embedded code and really relished the thought of controlling hardware with software again. Particularly as there are no new skills to learn (I'm starting to sound a bit like a salesman now, but what the hey, I like the stuff).
Then it was back to the hotel. I had a quick shower, lay down on the bed for a minute and then woke up four hours later. I love jetlag....
Another satisfied customer
What it is all about
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.
