Rob in Micro Mart

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You know you've made it big when you are in Micro Mart. At the end of yesterday's lecture I was shown a picture of my ugly mug staring out of page 94 of issue 997 of Micro Mart magazine. It was part of an article about Social Gaming, and I had been quoted saying sensible things about XNA (I must have been caught on one of my "sensible days" - which are getting fewer and further between these days).

Of course I shot over to the Students Union and bought a copy of the magazine (incidentally, and I've no idea why this should be the case, but our Students Union shop has an absolutely fantastic range of magazines. There are titles there that I've had bother finding in other places. Kudos.)

Anyhoo, I like the magazine. And not just because it has me in it. For a weekly magazine it has some very good editorial content and it made a very good lunchtime read. Of course the downside is that it also has lots of adverts for stuff, and so it might have proved a rather expensive purchase.....

Single Spies

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Went to the theatre tonight. Single Spies by Alan Bennett.  Two tales of soviet espionage. In the first half we had Guy Burgess in his awful Moscow flat (which reminded me a bit of my first bedsit) getting actress Coral Browne to order him a new suit from his London tailor. In the second half we had Anthony Blunt being buttonholed by the queen who may, or may not, have been aware at the time that he was the traitorous fourth man.

The dialogue was very sharp and very funny. I'm not sure that real people speak in a way as well written as these did, but the leads, Nigel Havers (who played both spies) and Diane Quick (who played Coral Browne and the Queen) did a splendid job in recreating the times and trying to give some insight into what makes people turn against their country. The answer, in both cases, seems to have been that it seemed to be the right thing to do at the time.

Failed Fool

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April Fools Day is now an institution, perhaps it is even beyond that. When the first thing you hear on your radio alarm at 7:30 is the question "Have you found any hoaxes yet?", the chances of catching someone unawares are somewhat limited. But that doesn't stop fools like me trying.

I had a 9:15 lecture with the First Year and we hardly ever have lectures on April Fools day, so I had to try something. Plan 1 involved me demonstrating debugging with a hammer and chisel. This would have been very impressive but there were health and safety implications, and anyway nobody would lend me their laptop for the demonstration.

Plan 2 was much more subtle. So subtle that nobody noticed. When my machine went live on the video projector to show the presentation the desktop showed an open copy of Word with the document "Exam Questions 2008" available for viewing. I left it up there for a while but nobody seemed to spot this. Ho hum. I switched the view to document 2, "Top Secret Plans to merge the Computer Science and Media Studies departments". Still nothing.

Ah well. Maybe next year.

Driven to Distraction by Gran Turismo

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I've always liked Gran Turismo. Ever since the first version on the Playstation 1 I've enjoyed it. Of all the car games I've played it seems to capture the spirit of driving better than any other. I was a particular fan of the PS2 version, I even bought the force feedback steering wheel with the game on the day it came out, which must have been nearly seven years ago.

So, on Saturday I bought the Prologue version for the PS3. I was expecting it to be good. I wasn't expecting it to work with my nearly seven year old steering wheel. But it is and it does.

Once you've played a driving game with a proper steering wheel you can't go back. My first ever attempt at this was with the Mad Catz wheel for the Playstation 1, which I used with the original Need for Speed. I blu-tacked the thing to my desk and had a whale of a time getting caught by the cops. They only had around four or so "cuff and stuff" videos for when you got pulled over, but they were great fun none the less. The actual wheel was a bit primitive, what force feedback you got was provided by a large elastic band, but the sensation of driving was much better. I've been through a few odd devices since then. There was that strange Necon twisty thing, and a very odd jogcon force feedback controller which sort of worked. But nothing beats a real wheel.

I never got around to buying the wheel for the Xbox 360, maybe I'll get one some time. But with Gran Turismo a steering makes the whole thing like driving. It is hard to turn when you expect it to be, and you can feel the weight of the car shifting on the tyres as you go into corners. You can even feel the front wheels letting go at the start of a skid. I've spent far too much time today trying to coax my little car into third place on one of the B series races (the solution for me was to ignore the racing line and just blast around the outside of the track) but I've enjoyed every minute of it. If you have a PS3 you really should have this game. And a steering wheel.

Four Days of Not Washing

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Yesterday the washing machine started to make a funny noise. Today it wasn't making any noises at all. And the big drum thing wasn't going round any more. My professional opinion is that it is broken. Bearing in mind it is four years old, I think it is new machine time.

I usually have a go at mending them, and I'm actually pretty good. I've rebuilt motors, replaced pumps and unclogged valves. I've only really got it wrong once, when I didn't quite fit a seal properly and the back of the machine fell off, putting the kitchen under three inches of water. But apart from that slight mishap I'm quite good. But this time I think I'll get a new one.

The one before this failed under very impressive circumstances. Two chaps had just turned up and fitted a new cooker. They turned it on and the washing machine across the kitchen blew up at exactly the same moment. They were most apologetic, before they realised that it was not their fault.

This time I've managed to get a replacement machine organised without even leaving the keyboard. Trawled through some Which reports to find a brand that is broadly OK (Why are all the best buy ones hugely expensive?), found a local supplier, checked stock levels, ordered and paid. It arrives next week. I hope it is on time. I'll probably have to change my socks at some point.....

There Will Be Blood

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Whenever I go to see a movie I write a report of it. Not sure why, let's just put it down to my determination to improve the value of this site. Then again...

Tonight it was "There Will Be Blood". Normally I avoid movies with the word "blood" in the title, but it has been well reviewed and number one son fancied seeing it.

Three hours later, as we emerged from the cinema, I reflected that I hadn't really learnt a great deal more about the human condition from the movie.  Some people are nice (though not many in this film), some people are nasty, and sometimes there are films about nasty people.

Daniel Day Lewis won an Oscar for his portrayal of Daniel Plainview, an aspiring oil baron with a very dark side. For an actor who wanted to get an Oscar the part must have been a dream come true. You can count the number of scenes which don't contain our flawed hero on the fingers of one leg. In this respect the film reminded me a lot of the The Aviator, in which which Leonardo DiCaprio played Howard Hughes, another big businessman who might not have been as nasty as Daniel, but ended up just as bonkers. Leonardo didn't get the Oscar though, which must have been a bit annoying for him.

Anyhoo, I can't really say that the film did a great deal for me. I'm not sorry that I saw it, it was well made and acted, but I learnt as much about ways of folk from The Emperor's New Groove, and it was a much more uplifting experience.

Nasty Con

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I'm out visiting the in-laws at the moment. My father in law has a computer which he finds very useful, but a couple of weeks ago it broke. It started displaying strange messages on boot up and after a chat on the phone we decided that it was hardware. So he called in a chap who advertised in the local press as a computer fixer. This "engineer" turned up and took a look at the machine, agreed that it was broken, said it was too old to repair/not worth mending and then asked for 25 quid call out fee. Which he got (having rather presciently not advertised a no fix, no fee policy).  We took a look and found that it was the power supply, dropped in a replacement and the machine woke up and ran a treat.

This is a truly nasty little business. It was very obvious to us that the power supply was wrong (if the BIOS reports 4.3 volts on the 5 volt rail the number of suspects is somewhat limited)  and so I'm inclined to not give this chap the benefit of the doubt. So if you are calling someone out to mend your hardware you should make sure that they are no fix, no fee operators.

Hair Expertise

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For some reason I saw some GMTV this morning. I usually shy away from such things because they are bad for my blood pressure. But I happened to be in the room and the TV was on and they were interviewing a hairdresser. And the hairdresser said:

"Of course, your hair changes every seven years....."

And the person talking to her just nodded and agreed. And my blood pressure went up (told you it would).

I just hate it when people make statements like these (and I hate it when others agree). What is the basis of saying this? How do they know? Why is it seven? Was my hair exactly the same for the first seven years of my life, and then turned another colour, or curly or vanished, until I was fourteen when it came back, or whatever? What happens if you are bald? Does this only happen on multiples of seven years. If you make it to 22 with a full set of follicles does this mean you are OK for the next six years?

I've done some research on this (actually searched for "hair changes seven years" on the interweb) and I did find one other person that mentioned this "fact". So I guess it must be true..

Pitch Car Fun

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I bought a new game on Saturday. Nothing strange about that. But this one is a racing game which is made of wood. It is called Pitch Car and it is very silly. Not as silly as Very Silly Games of course (cunning plug) but silly nonetheless.

Pitch Car originates from France and is a racing game where you flick wooden cars along a smooth track made out of pieces that you can fit together. Sort of a grand prix shove-halfpenny game. I've a feeling that it could be quite skilful, but we've only played a couple of times so far. But it is great fun. Oh yes.

I got the game from Archeron Games who operate out of a shop in the middle of Hull. They are worth seeking out, and - because one of the people recognised me from my day job - I even managed to get a bit of discount.  They have some really neat board games, along with other bits and bobs.

MVP Chronulator

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One of the nice things about being a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional is that you get a free gift each year. Last year the gift was a rather nice business card box with some toys in it. Whilst it was a nice box, I don't have much of a need to store that many cards. Having seen number one son's Chronulator I had an idea....

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The world's first MVP Chronulator

The workmanship is not first class. You can see a scuff mark on the bottom left where the Dremel slipped, and I need to line the meters up a bit better.  I should also change it so that right hand meter goes up rather than down.

But it works, and it is showing the correct time (near enough).

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The guts.

Doing the Impossible with Vista

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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....

Déjà Vu with Vantage Point

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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.

Top Billing?

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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....