The Golden Compass

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I think I'm getting bored with movies packed with magic and mystery. I've seen too many bits where one character looks at another and asks in awe "You mean that this might be the chosen one?" And later someone says "..but no one must ever know..". And then we get a "..and took away my rightful throne...".

Well, The Golden Compass is all that and more, you even get a "..Luke, I am your father" moment towards the end. And you end up thinking "Meh. So what?".

Everyone plays their part quite proficiently. There are good goodies and bad baddies and baddies who might be goodies and I'm sure if they ever get to make the other two in the series we'll find goodies who are turned to the bad side by something or other. The special effects are pretty good, apart from a few "video game" moments in the fight scenes. Nicole Kidman, who must have been sponsored by a detergent company judging by the amount of white she wears, plays her part very well and even the child with awesome powers carries off her role with a certain amount of verve, even if her accent slides around a bit from scene to scene.

It is based on a book that I've not read, but it stands up well enough on its own if you like that sort of thing. And the problem for me is that there has been a lot of that sort of thing over the last few years.

Party and Fan Man

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Went to a party today. We had our "office do" at Fudge in Hull. Very nice it was too. Great food, great company, great times.

And no photographs. (I forgot).

Then it was back to Paul's, where he strapped a propeller on his back and tried not to fly around his garden. No. Really. Paul is a recent convert to paragliding, having just helped to create the world's first paraglider simulator. He wanted to show us his new rig and was offering drinks and sweeties, so we were all round there like a shot. So it was that, drinks in hand, we watched as he fired up his machine and tried to use it to blow cast iron garden furniture around. Now this I did get a picture of.

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Fan man

When Paul bought his house, it came with a collection of plates. Including this one.

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I'm not sure if it is dishwasher safe, but it does have a unique style.

After the party we wandered back to the office for some gaming. I had to zoom off early and do some other bits and bobs, but I did manage to win at Wii tennis (although Warren beat me at Guitar Hero).

EeePC Tiny Computer

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I really must stop doing this. Whenever I come into some money (in this case some modest royalties for a CD-ROM I wrote some time back with number one son) I spend it on a computer.

This time though I've got a little peach. It is an Asus EeePC.  I'd heard these were hard to get hold of. That's like a red rag to a bull where I'm concerned. If you want one, and they are really neat, I'd recommend trying your nearest Toys'R'Us, where I managed to pick one up, after considerable agonising, yesterday. They cost around 220 pounds. For your money you get a tiny laptop with a little 7 inch display. Of course you can get "proper" laptops for only a few pounds more, but the EeePC is interesting for a number of reasons.

For a start it really is small. If you want a proper laptop as small as the Asus you would be hard pushed to get one for less than seven or eight hundred pounds, and it has a battery life of over three hours, which is again very promising for the price and size. It also has no moving parts to break, unless you count a little fan and the keys, and uses an internal 4GB solid state drive for storage. There is an SD slot for additional memory, three USB slots for external devices, WIFI, a webcam, a wired network connection and even an external monitor socket. It feels very robust and is powered by an Intel Celeron processor tied to 512Mb of memory.

It can run Windows XP, but it is supplied running a variant of Linux which contains all the bundled applications that you would need to make the machine useful, including Open Office 2.0, Firefox for web browsing, a collection of Picture, Music and Media utilities, some teaching applications and a few games. The user experience is very like Windows, with just a few rough edges here and there.  It booted up, connected to our WIFI and worked a treat. The only scary bit was getting it to print, which involved compiling a printer driver and installing it (good job that Number One Son was around to do that bit).

If you want a tiny PC to take with you on trips, and would like something that won't break the bank and you won't fret about too much, then I strongly recommend it. If you are thinking of getting your kids a notebook PC, but are worried about their fragility and price(the notebook that is, not the kids), I'd recommend it very strongly. It is also a hackers delight. It is essentially a PC platform, but small and cheap and very easy to develop for. I'm going to put Mono on mine so I can keep writing C# goodness. Number one son wants to put one on a robot. There are stories of an Eeepc that has been made to run Vista (quite well so they say) and an XP version will be available in 2008 which will be very interesting.

What I want to do next is couple it up to the SkypePhone so that I've got a portable, high performance, network terminal. If I put XP on it I could do this tomorrow. The machine is supplied with a set of XP driver disks and I really am tempted to do this.

Deathmatch Bot Fun

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I took some time off from the glossary to have a go in our Deathmatch challenge today. We've run these before and they are always great fun. We write C# programs that control bots in Unreal Tournament and pit them against each other. I'd not had much time to write any code so I quickly knocked up a "happy camper" who grabbed a gun and then took pot shots at anyone who wandered past. If you want to run your own challenge you can find out more here. The going was tough.

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A tense moment

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Darren's Ripper Santa does the business (note my best score)

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Zoe takes first prize from Darren

"If you need me, I'll be in the Glossary"

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I'm presently writing the last, last, bits of the XNA book at the moment.

Pre-order it here in the UK and here in the US. You know you want to. You know I want you to. So go on. The best book on programming ever written. And the only one with cheese based gameplay.

The plan is to have a glossary at the end which describes all the programming terms. Good idea, except that I have to write it. Each time I used a term that I wanted to expand on I put a note in the glossary file that I needed to go back and fill that bit in. And the time has come to do the filling in. That means over 40 pages of writing.

I'm around half way through ("N is for Namespace") at the moment. It is due for the end of tomorrow.....

Deadly Toasters

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Never had much luck with toasters. The old one repeatedly tried to kill me, and the new one doesn't work at all. Ages ago we bought a shiny toaster, mainly because the picture on the box had a funny misprint. It worked fine, but it wouldn't give us the toast back. Kind of a pop-down design. It was practically begging me to insert a pointy, preferably metal, instrument into its innards to try and prise the hot bread out of its steely grip. Instead I used to turn it upside down and shake it, which spread crumbs around the kitchen and nearly set fire to the base, what with heat rising the way it does.

So on Saturday we bought a new set of toaster and kettle. The toaster has three buttons  and lights, a big dial and comes with a "User Manual". But if doesn't work. Of course by the time we got round to testing it we'd thrown away all the boxes and packaging, so I'm going to have to go down to Tesco armed only with a receipt and an aggrieved manner. No fair. I like toast.

What Can't You Fix with Cable Ties?

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Some aspects of life seem to have an irresistible attraction to me. Take car window winders for example. I seem to be acquiring considerable familiarity with the darned things, mainly because the cars that I own have windows that go down. But not up.

Thus it was with the Scenic, and now car of number one wife has the same problem. My first solution,a length of duct tape over the gap was not entirely successful, and definitely not elegant, so today it was out with the big spanners and into the fray.

Last time I tried to take the door of the car to pieces it won. I was so concerned about damaging the thing that I gave up and got out the sticky tape. But this time it was different. I had no such qualms. Truly I was a man beyond fear. Although I didn't want to break any fingernails.

There is something a bit embarrassing about forcing something off with a hammer and chisel and then finding that there is a perfectly simple, and really neat, trick to removal. But there you are. I won.

Anyhoo, once I had the thing to bits the problem was obvious. The car maker had sent a plastic boy to do a man's job. The most important component, the link between slide and window, was a bit of bent, and now broken, plastic slide. Ho hum. Time for a really subtle and cunning invisible mend. As I went to get a bit of wood to prop the window up I mentioned the problem to Dave next door.

"I'll just be a minute" he said.

He came back with some jumbo cable ties, linked slide and window and presto. Fixed. What a guy.

Bag Yourself a SkypePhone

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I wish I had more friends. Or more people who wanted to talk to me. The two free Skypephones that were very kindly sent to me for testing have languished on my office desk for the last week, whilst my iPhone keeps reminding me that I've not actually made a call for several days. I'm obviously not the kind of person who will go for the Skype part of the Skypephone, but the way that it provides cheap mobile network access for my notebook is attractive.

Today I saw someone up town offering the phones for 85 quid a pair, which is a very enticing price. And you can get them in white too.

If you want one for free you can take part in a little competition here. The idea is you pitch just how much you really want one, how it will change your life etc etc. The best pitches get a phones. My suggestion is not to go too far overboard on this though. A big production number with dancers and a sky-written message at the end would probably cost more to produce than the 49 quid or so you have to lay out for a phone of your own. But a cheap, heartfelt, plea might hit the spot.

By mentioning this I suppose that this means I'm actually taking part in some kind of viral marketing but what the hey, I like the product.

Audience Boosting

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Apparently, according to research posted on the Internet (so it must be true),  a blog post which expresses deeply held personal beliefs and opinions actually gets more comments and interest than one which just conveys information.

I've been looking through my last posts and decided that they don't actually do either. So, with all this in mind here goes:

"I don't like broccoli very much"

A Day of Pong

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Just had a great day.

Marking.

I've been working my way around the lab looking at programs that have been written for our first year C# course. All the students have to present their programs and I've seen some great work. I love it when people come up with ideas I wouldn't have thought of and then get them to work. The name of the game, quite literally, was to write a Pong implementation to run in the console window of the PC. Next semester, if they want, students can get the code onto a real console, when we convert the game to XNA for the Xbox.

Everyone I saw had a fully working version, some with sound, computer players, variable speed, the works. And many of the people that I saw only started programming in September. Great stuff.

I'm in the lab tomorrow too. Lucky me.

Rob's Guide to Entering the Imagine Cup

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I'm giving a presentation today at Hull on how to take part in the Imagine Cup. This page summarizes all the links I'm going to give out, and gives some advice. First thing you do is register here:

Imagine Cup Registration

This is free and doesn't commit you to anything. Take the quiz. This is fun, you and might win a prize. I'd have a go but unfortunately I'm too old. And not a student. And I'd win anyway.

Imagine Cup Quiz

There are a number of invitationals. Each of them is a separate competition in its own right. You can enter as many of them as you like. Each of them has its own particular entry process. Here is a summary of the ones I think you should enter, and how to do it.

Software Design

You'll need to form a team for this one. Once you have up to four people (all of them registered) you can work up your idea for an entry. The Idea is what will get you past the first round. The theme for this year is "Imagine a World where technology enables a sustainable environment".

All you have to do is fill in a form with an idea and then submit it. The idea has to have an environmental feel, but it doesn't have to be directly environmental:

  • Technology that lets people swap things rather than buy new ones
  • Technology that changes the way (or frequency) that something is used to reduce the impact on the environment
  • Technology that makes people aware of the impact of their behaviour on the environment and seeks to modify this
  • Technology that improves the efficiency with which a resource is used

Once you have a team, all sit around a table (possibly in a pub) and then work through the bullet points above and see if you can't come up with something. Map the points onto your life and see if there is anything that you could do to modify the way you do things. See if you know anyone in another department (Geography, History, etc) who might have an environmental problem you could have a go at. If you want an idea of what to do, take a look at this example by Ed Dunhill.

Fill in the form here and submit it. And be quick, the entries close on the 14th Dec.

Algorithm

Remember that quiz I mentioned above? Get through that and you are into the Algorithm Invitational round 2. You get to download some code and fiddle with it.

Well worth a look if you enjoy programming.

Embedded

You'll need another team (or perhaps the same one from the Software Development invitational). This round is also idea driven, in that the first round is based on an idea that you pitch to the competition. It can be the same idea as for the Software Development round, or it can be a different one. It should be based on an embedded device and if you make it through to round 2 you will get some hardware to play with. Again, you have nothing to lose by taking part except a bit of time to fill in your entry and write up your idea. You can find the details here.

Game Development (XNA)

You'll need to form another team  (or use the same long suffering chums). You need to create a game demo with XNA and pitch it. You can find out more here. Remember that XNA 2.0 provides Xbox Live network gaming between PC and Xbox. So your game could be multi-player. You could also use a PC as a gateway between the real world and Xbox clients, so you could feed live data into the games by doing this. There might be some really nice simulation/visualisation stuff you could do with this.

Programming Battle

Project Hoshimi is great fun. Write code of your own to take on other programs and win. Get started here. I'm told that getting through round 1 is actually quite easy. Ed Dunhill has a nice post here which should get you a long way down the road.

Information Technology

This one looks to be a hoot. You have to take an on-line test to get through the first round. There are a bunch of these in the run up to the close of round 1. If you get into the final you have to set up and manage a server which must then withstand a good kicking and stay up whatever is thrown at it. Find out more here.

Interface Design

Nobody from Hull has ever had a go at this one, and yet it looks very interesting. Essentially you devise a scenario in which a system could be created to help solve an environmental issue and then build a user interface for that system. You don't actually have to write the application, but you must create enough behaviours to allow the user interface to be demonstrated. If you can find an artist to team up with you could have some real fun in this one. Find out more here.

Photography

How hard could this be? Cameras even focus for you and everything now. All you have to do is come up with a photo essay (tell a story with pictures) on the environmental theme. You can find out what a photo essay is here.

Short Film

If four of you fancy making a film then you can. It might be great fun. The standard of the film entries to the Imagine Cup is usually pretty high (and someone from Canada quite often wins for some reason as I recall). Having said that,  I'd really love someone from Hull to have a go at this, take a look here to find out how.

Is it worth Entering?

Oh yes. Not everyone who takes part wins (even if they are from Hull), but that is not the point. If I was interviewing for Microsoft people it would go like this:

Me: "So, are you keen to work at Microsoft?"
Applicant: "Oh yes, yes, yes. Keen-ness on legs, big barrel of keen, uber keen. More keen than a very keen person from Keenchester central who is keen"
Me: "And yet you didn't take part in the Imagine Cup."
Applicant:"No. Never quite got round to it."
Me: (pressing bell on desk) "Next.."

I'm not saying that the only way to get to work with Microsoft, either as an intern, employee or Student Partner is to sign up for the Imagine Cup. What I am really saying is that if you want a real inside track on the process you should.

And even if you don't want to work for Bill in the future, it is still worth taking part 'cos it is great fun.

Cheap Fun and Games for PS3

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If you are a PS3 owner who is short of money (perhaps a bit of an oxymoron - although actually buying one can leave you a bit strapped for cash) then you should seek out this months official Playstation magazine. It has a Blu-Ray disk on the cover with a whole bunch of playable demos on it. I know that most of these are available for download, but I'm the the kind of impatient fellow that doesn't want to wait overnight for 800M of data to trickle down the broadband just so I can try out Sega Rally.

Turns out that Sega Rally is actually quite good. Nowhere near the simulation quality or graphics of the wonderful Colin McRae: Dirt game but it does have one thing that Dirt lacks, other cars on the road with you. Fighting against the clock is one thing, but ramming an opponent's car into a tree is another. Even though they instantly put on a burst of speed and zoom past you at the next corner. I think I'd ultimately find the lack of realism or feeling of control a pain, but for a quick half hour of powersliding for virtually nothing it is worth a whiz.

I then had a go at Stuntman: Ignition which struck me in the limited time (five minutes) that I had the patience to play with it to be deeply unpleasant. Maybe I'll go back and have another go. Maybe I'll be tempted to try one of the other twenty or so games on the disk instead.

One of the benefits of Blu-Ray is that it can hold a whole bunch of data. It is nice to see this ability being used to good effect.