Ratatouille

/

Rat's are not generally nice. We don't root for rats. Ratatouille is a film with a rat at the centre. And not a stylised "cute" rat in the mould of Micky Mouse. This is a proper ratty rat, who scurries and scampers and has many hundreds of swarming friends and family. Who don't always wash their hands.

That you know all this, and see all this, and still want the best for Reny, the gourmet cook with the wrong kind of whiskers, is testement to just how good this film is. The story is good, if it does sag a bit in the middle, the characterisations and voice acting is great and the rendering is beyond reproach. Everything looks great, and the images have an effortless quality about them. One of the great things about CGI is that you can take the camera anywhere, and they do this wiith verve and aplomb.

This is an excellent film at every level. Just go see it and give thanks for Brad Bird.

A Sad Moment

/

All good things must come to an end, so they say. At the end of the week we turn off our old departmental forums. I set them up many years ago and they have been a roaring success. Many students have signed up for them and some have stuck around for years after they officially left Hull, passing on help to undergraduates. Some of the debates have been truly hilarious, and others very thought provoking.

However, with a move to a more unified and managed set of resources we are finally turning off the old forums and moving on to our new shiny system. I'm sure that they will will soon be hosting the same level of discussion, debate and odd bit of stupidity that made our old forums so much fun.

But I'll still miss the original system....

The Silliness Starts Here

/

I've put my first XNA file on VerySillyGames. It is just a silly screen display. The source code will be provided when the book is released. It is a nice example of how you can get really good graphical effects almost by mistake. You can find a runnable version of the program for the PC at www.verysillygames.com. It is optimised for 1280 x 1024 displays on a PC with the XNA framework installed. An Xbox version will be available later.

1580731593
I've added rotation to the original program, let me know what you think

If you are lucky enough to be a student at Hull you can join the VerySillyGames.com development effort, where we are going to take some of the silly game ideas and try to make them real. This time next year we'll all be millionaires. Oh yes.

How to succeed at Lan Parties

/
  1. Turn up late.
  2. Bring your own game.
  3. Play your game until it looks like you might lose.
  4. Leave.

It worked for me. Hull ComSoc had a lan party today. They had Halo 3, Quake, Wii Tennis, Guitar Hero, in fact all kinds of games. I took along my copy of Virtua Tennis for the PS/3 and played a few games, which was nice. I kept carefully away from all the games I was less good at (i.e. everything else) and managed to make sure I didn't lose. Wonderful. And you don't have "friendly fire" in tennis. I did take the camera though, and grabbed some snaps.

1561992468
Halo 3 multiplayer semi final. Tight stuff.

1561125915
A tense moment in the final

1562029280
Mission Control

Hull Fair Heights

/

Hull Fair is one of the biggest fairs in Europe. Which attractions are there? All of them. We went tonight, and I took the medium sized camera. I conquered my fear of heights and parting with money to buy a seat on one of the two big wheels, and grab some overhead shots of the action.

1536379490

Just a small part of the fair. You can see the Humber Bridge on the horizon.

1535536313

More of the fair. We didn't get around to going on the other big wheel you can see in the distance.

1535667539

My kind of game of chance, a prize every time..

1535647387

Probably my favourite of the trip, although there are some other ones that I like on Flickr.

Ancient History

/

Whilst digging around on my hard disk for some files I came across the notes I wrote for my Workstation Technology course in 1995. I thought it might be fun to pdf them and put them on this site. You can find them here. It is interesting to read them and see how much has changed.

And how much hasn't...

And just to prove that I'm still working in the present, I've put up another chapter in the XNA book.

End of Week 2

/

The first couple of weeks of a session are always pretty exhausting. Getting to know a new group of students (who are all a great bunch by the way), bedding in new courses and writing new material does seem to take it out of me a bit. Not to mention trips to Grimsby with a robot dog and trying to finish chapter 7.

This evening I sat in the car wondering what this big round hoop of plastic was doing in front of me. Then I remembered that it was the steering wheel, and it was time to drive home.

STEM Fun

/

Just had a great time at a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) careers fair in Grimsby. Somewhat exhausting, as I was presenting continuously from around 6:00 to 8:10 this evening, but great fun. Of course, Digby the robot dog stole the show as usual...

The audiences were all great and I took a few pictures of them.

1486146912148614070214852807271485273911

1485267595148526101114861076041486100180

Click on the pictures for a larger versions on Flickr.

Excel Prize Competition

/

I don't use spreadsheets very much, but every year we have to produce a demonstrators timetable, and Excel is how we do it. I've got a very clever spreadsheet that lets you enter things and automatically highlights cells for the demonstrators, counts their loading and all sorts. I'm quite proud of it.

It uses a named range, called Times, which has all the timeslots in it. This year we have added modules and moved things around, and now the named range does not reflect the part of the spreadsheet that I want it to.

And nothing in Excel 97 would seem to let me change this.

The help, like always, tells me in mind numbing detail how to do things which are either too simple for words or too complex for me to ever want to use. I have that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that there is a very easy way to do this (in fact I even remember doing it once many years ago) but I don't know what it is.

Very frustrating.

So, I turn to you, dear reader. You have already shown that you are highly intelligent just by the kind of blogs you read (i.e. this one). So prove this by letting me know how to do this "simple" thing. First answer that works wins a Mars Bar.