Headed off down south today for a family visit. I don't know about you, but I'm noticing a lot more broken down cars these days. Time was when during a long-ish journey you would see two or three people stranded forlornly at the side of the road. But until recently you hardly saw any. Nowadays they seem much more frequent. Are cars getting less reliable, or are people not having them serviced as often as they should?
I've been spending some time scanning old photographs and loading them up onto the computer. It helps to pass the time whilst watching dross TV and I've found some gems in amongst the albums. The thing that has impressed me most is the quality of the results though. Using a fairly modest Canon scanner and 6x4 inch prints I've been able to get some very nice looking results, even when viewed on the big screen telly.
Today I used the Vista Media Centre option to burn a whole bunch of pictures onto a DVD. This is wonderful. It gives you a lovely, ever changing slide show of pictures which works in any DVD player. I've been dishing these out to family members, who have been very impressed. Even though the images include one of me wearing shorts.
I'm looking at the world through eyes half a century old. I'm also hearing the world through ears half a century old. And so on. In fact all of me is fifty today. Deeply scary. I never really wanted to grow up, let alone grow old. But there you are.
Defying the weather forecast (which mentioned everything but locusts later in the afternoon) we went out to Dalby Forest for the day. After a drive through the lovely countryside we happen to have around here, we found a quiet spot and set off around the Bridestones. And I took the biggish camera, and loads of pictures.
A walk in the woods
The edge of a stone
View from the top
A "Bridestone"
Flowers and stream
Woods
Geese arrivals
Flowers of some kind
Had a BBQ today to celebrate my upcoming annual event. Most surprisingly the weather was very good to me, with a break in the rain just long enough for Tim to cook some burgers and sausages, and us to sit in the garden and drink beer whilst solving the problems of the world.
Colourful cutlery
Folks turned up with presents and cards and I was supplied with a special T shirt to wear, celebrating the fact that tomorrow I'm very old. Unfortunately no photographs were taken of this.. Good stuff and thanks to all.
A great time was had, even though I was beaten at Mario Strikers on the Wii by someone less than a seventh of my age...
Rechargeable Battery (as owned by Rob): [noun] "An object which fits in the battery compartment of an electrical device. And serves no other purpose."
(does anybody know a manufacturer of good ones?)
Did the Scarborough degree ceremony today. Lovely. The weather was a bit brisk, but it never actually rained. I took the bigish camera and the wide angle lens. And had some fun taking photographs.
Fun on the beach
Grass
Graduand's Lunch
Funfair
View from the stage...
..and from the back.
There are a bunch more on my Flickr site.
You might not have heard of Clifford Stoll. But you should have. He wrote "The Cuckoo's Egg", one of the best books about the Internet and computers that I've ever read. He also maintains a very healthy skepticism about computers and their place in society. He wrote a book some time back, "High Tech Heretic" which should be required reading for people in computing. It was published in 2000, but is still very relevant today. If you think that computers are the answer to everything, the way and the truth, then you should read this book.
Went to see "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" tonight. You should too.
I took the medium sized camera with the wide angle lens down to City Hall to try and take a picture of the congregation. It sort of came out OK, but I had to turn the speed up to get any kind of picture, and that makes some of the detail a bit noisy. Nevertheless, I'm not too unhappy with the results...
Can you find yourself on here?
...or here?
Degree ceremonies today. Gosh it was hot. And humid. And they'd closed the windows of City Hall. So we all broiled gently. The best bit was the speech by Dr John Sentamu, the present Archbishop of York. He was awarded a richly deserved honorary degree in the second ceremony. In the context of having greatness thrust upon himself, he told a really good story, which I will now steal.
A great king had a beautiful daughter. He was very concerned that only the most worthy man should be allowed to marry her. So he built a large pool outside his palace and filled it full of alligators. Then he let it be known that he would grant his daughter's hand in marriage to the first man to swim across the pool. Many people gathered at the waters edge, but all were scared when they saw what happened when some meat was tossed into the pool and the hungry alligators attacked. Then, suddenly a young man was in the pool, swimming his utmost as the alligators chased after him. With a mighty heave the young man pulled himself out of the water and lay gasping at the feet of the king.
"You have done well" said the king. "You have shown great courage and may now marry my daughter".
"I am most grateful" replied the man "But although your daughter is very beautiful I would prefer you to grant me another wish"
"Very well" said the king, surprised at this "What can I do for you instead?"
The man looked at him and said "I would like you to bring me the man who pushed me in the water, so I can put my hands around his neck..."
If you see a printer out of the corner of your eye, is that what they call "peripheral vision"?
Since our microwave blew a fuse on Tuesday I've been morosely pricing up replacements. No fun. Today I thought I'd get some more fuses to replace the ones that blew. I picked up a pack in Wilkinsons and noticed something. They were red. Same colour as the one I put in the microwave plug. And they were rated at three amps. Now, for those unfamiliar with the ways of electricity, three amps will run a TV, a lamp and maybe even a mixer. But not a microwave when it tries to cook. I'd replaced the fuse in the microwave with one which will run the clock but will give up the ghost as soon as we actually try to heat something up.
I popped in a 13 amp version (coloured brown) and everything works fine. I guess this makes me an idiot. But a happy one just right now.
I was supposed to be getting on with some writing today. Unfortunately this meant watching some progress bars for long periods of time while I made some software work, but I did manage to get my room tidied up a bit, which is always nice. I'm hoping that my subconscious has been beavering away on my behalf.....
Went to Reading today to give a talk about the .NET Micro Framework for an Embedded Development day. I've often found that a bunch of academics make around the toughest audience you can get, but these folks were great - even though they showed a marked lack of appreciation for my jokes.....
My demos mostly worked and the tiny tablet behaved herself impeccably. And the trip back on Hull Trains was as smooth as smooth. And I watched "Love and Death", one of the best films ever, on the Smartphone. Wonderful.
I'd taken the camera, but I got the best pictures when I got off the train at Hull after the journey back.
Great to be back
Neat Sky
While I was going through Reading on the bus I saw a sign at Reading Baths that said "Learn to swim here". I thought about going in and asking "What if I want to swim somewhere else?".
But I didn't.
For those at the academic event, I'll have the slides and demos here tomorrow.
The Doncaster folks do excellent work, with students delivering taught projects which are saving their employers literally thousands of pounds. It is amazing how a little bit of the right knowledge applied in the right way can make a huge difference.
Got home today to find that half of the kitchen was without power. Since this was the half which contains the cooker it was into the bin with the chicken we were roasting and out to the takeaway for something in a cardboard box.
Turns out that a couple of fuses in mains plugs had blown for no reason. I found this out after I had shut down all the mains sockets in the house and power-cycled all the devices looking for failed power lines. Why this has happened is a mystery to me. Nothing else in the house has been affected, just the oven and the microwave.
It is a bit like one of those horror films, where they have lines like:
"Must be a power surge. I'll just go down into the basement/bilges/engineering and fix it". Cue ominous music followed by moving shadow followed by blood curdling screams.....
Think it must be the microwave. Tried to do some jacket potatos and there was dull thud and the fuse went again. Oh well.
According to the radio this morning you are more likely to be involved in an accident if your car is coloured silver or black.
That is, the most popular color and the one that is hardest to see in the dark.
Do these people get paid extra money if their conclusions are extra obvious?
So I got these "Alcatraz Rules and Regulations" playing cards. Each of the 54 cards contains a "Rule from America's Most Notorious Prison". I was hoping for something along the lines of "Transgressors who spit in public shall be hanged by the giblets from the North Tower until sorrye" kind of thing. So, what did I get:
Six of Spades : "You are required to work at whatever you are told to do"
Nine of Hearts: "At the wake up bell in the morning you must get out of bed and put on your clothes"
Queen of Diamonds: "You are not allowed to have money of any kind in your possession while in this institution"
Actually, it sounds remarkably like my life.....
Writing books would seem to be quite moreish. As soon as you've finished one you want to do another. So I am doing. This time it is a fun packed programming book which teaches C# and XNA at the same time.
If you know nothing about programming but want to make your XBOX do cool things then this is the book for you. If you have a wobbly table and need something to put under one of the legs, then this is the book for you. If you want something with a lot of words to colour in, then this is the book for you.
I'm presently working on Chapter 4 (I'll put some sample chapters up once I've decided where to put them).
Ten lines of C# will get you this funky clock....
We went for a walk this evening, it was end of "Cottingham Day" and the fairground was just winding down. I had the camera with me (of course).
Hollywood comes to East Yorkshire
Barrel'o'Lights
All the fun of the fair
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.
