Doing the Impossible with Vista

I put Service pack 1 on another machine today. It was the media PC I built a while back and use it for watching the odd telly program. The upgrade took ages. There was much hard disk rattling and everything moved as if in treacle. I wasn't very impressed to be honest, in fact after the upgrade everything seemed to have slowed right down, even simple things like opening up the browser took over a minute. Very poor. Then one program claimed that there was not enough memory for it to run, which was a strange thing for it to say on a one gig machine with nothing else loaded.

Except that it wasn't a one gig machine any more. The ram had come loose and I had Vista Ultimate running on a box with 256M of RAM. I suppose I should have spotted this earlier, but I'm very impressed that it did anything at all. I opened up the box and re-seated the chips and it seems a lot better now....

At Your Service

I put Vista Service Pack 1 on my machine today. It just worked (although it did take a while to finish). To be honest I've not noticed much different yet, but it certainly isn't worse.

Déjà Vu with Vantage Point

Just been to see the movie Vantage Point. Kind of In the Line of Fire crossed with Groundhog Day. The president has been shot and you get to see this part of the action several times from the viewpoint of different protagonists.  Each time you find out a bit more of the plot until finally you make it to the evil doer's point of view and find out what is really going on. Then you get a really good car chase and a happy ending for those that survive. The constant repetition of the same scene grated a bit for me, but the ending mostly made up for it. Not as big or dumb as Die Hard 4.0, with no characters you really get time to empathise with, but not a bad way to spend an evening.

And we did get to see the amazing Grand Theft Auto Coke ad.

Basic Instructions is Very Funny

I'm quite proud of myself. I've actually found a really funny comic web site that number one son hasn't heard of.

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Just watched Die Hard 4.0 (Will there be a 4.1? Will it have networking and workgroup support?) on DVD. Not seen it before. It is a big, dumb, action movie with some great lines and even greater explosions. For me the best bit was the credits, where some up and coming actor was billed as playing the part of "Nearby Agent". I don't think that's very helpful as a description. Lots of agents were near to John McClane at one time or another in the movie, but not usually for very long....

WiFi For Your Camera

This is a very cute device. If your camera uses SD cards it gives you a very neat way of getting your pictures into your computer, with no wires.

Union Building

For ages they have been working on the Students Union building on campus. Now that we can see what it is they have been doing, it actually looks quite nice.

And the campus is looking good at the moment too.

Flower Picture

I took this in the conservatory today. Of course, I've no idea what it is.

Holding the Baby

Had a visitor today who brought her four month old baby round to see us. Other people's babies are great. You can hold them for a while and when they burst into tears, look like they are going to throw up or make a funny smell (or all three at once) you can hand them back to the parent with the words "I think she wants you now..".

Actually Ellie was great, and took me back to the halcyon days when our two were tiny tots and didn't know more about programming and science than me.

An Eternal Question

I'm in Schipol airport trying to answer the eternal question "What do you do if you have five hours to kill in an international airport?". I've spent 3 euros on 15 minutes of internet time. But what next?

Pictures of Lisbon

This place reminds me a lot of San Francisco. Same nice weather. Same driving on the wrong side of the road.

Kind of similar bridge

Same amazing skies

..and they had a very nice conference centre too

I had a really good time over here. Next time I'm going to try to stay a lot longer.

On the way back to the hotel I passed a bus full of students who had been at one of my talks and were now heading home.

Frankly, I fear for them....

.NET Microframework at TechDays

My .NET Micro Framework talk seemed to go well. Got a good sized audience, and of course I took their picture.

I'm sorry I didn't have any hardware to show you. If I come back next year I'll try and find space in my carry on for some toys.

Hello From Lisbon

After a very smooth trip last night I'm now in Lisbon at TechDays 08. I came along last year, to the sensibly name TechDays 07 and had such fun that I've come back again and to do two sessions. I've just finished the XNA one and it seemed to OK from my point of view (although I'm worried that I might not have mentioned the book enough....)

Where I'm speaking (they have lovely weather here)

As is usual for Portugal, I had a fantastic audience.

Left

Middle

Right

After I told my first joke (the people at the back are sound technicians who are paid to be there....)

I had a great time promoting the book and VerySillyGames. I've got another session this afternoon. Wish me (and the audience) luck.

Airport departure lounges I have known

Very Silly Games Merchandise

According to this very good blog post, where there is passion there are also T-shirts.

You can now get Very Silly Games merchandise from Cafe Press. Including T-shirts.

Gadget Review

Zoe sent me this. I find it rather funny.

But What Will We Buy?

I was going down the escalator in the HMV shop in London yesterday when it occurred to me that soon everyone in this bustling, busy, store would have no reason to be there. In a few years only those who want hardware will actually need to turn up. All the music, movies and games will be available digitally via the Internet. If you factor in piracy, we are pretty much there now I suppose.

I began to wonder what we will actually go out buy in the future. I think that people's love of shopping will drive them out of the house to purchase stuff, but I'm not sure what they will actually take home. Maybe the entertainment vendors will still let us take boxes home, but now they will just contain keys to downloaded material. Maybe eventually all the media shops will vanish. In the future the high street will contain nothing but clothes shops, chemists and Starbucks......

The Bookshop of Happiness

We went to London today. We went into Foyles, the best bookshop in the UK. Other shops have a self of books about computing. Foyles have rooms. And rooms. Everything you want to know is there.  Wonderful. They had my book too.

This is the first time that I've seen my book on sale in a shop. Amazing. Actually, I bought one of the two they had, to give to number one daughter who was with us. That makes two copies of my own book that I've bought, which is probably rather worrying...