Breaking Rob

For some reason I've felt awful all day. Maybe it's something I ate. Maybe it's excitement about going away tomorrow. Either way, today I did something I've never done before. I walked out of a lecture I was giving. I was only for a few minutes while I pulled myself together, and then I went back in and finished off. But at the end I felt awful. I was a bit sorry for the chap who asked me a question and got the answer "I'm very sorry, but I can't answer that right now as I have to leave the room for a while...".

Anyhoo, I staggered home and slept for a couple of hours, which gave me enough energy to pack.

PageFlakes and flakey Maps

I've found this rather nice custom homepage maker:

http://www.pageflakes.com

It lets you make your own home page with customised content (yes, I know there are loads of these but this one is quite nice). I've only found one snag so far. It figures out where you are and then offers up a list of events in your region, added to a map so you can find them easily.

I just hope everyone can swim.....

Photographic History

We are having a kind of clear out in the department. All kinds of stuff is going out. We found this rather anonymous looking boxy thing. Which turned out (once we have worked out how to open it) to be a Polaroid SX-70.

A real blast from the past. This is an incredible device which when it was launched was an instant camera that worked like an SLR. It had special film that gave amazing results. I vividly remember seeing it on Tomorrows World when it first came out. And now we are chucking them out. Such is life.

Fortunately the Hull University Photographic Society (HUPS) was on hand to take the camera into its collection and give it a good home (well, better than being left in my office).

It is getting very hard to find film for these cameras, but the pictures it produces are incredible. I hope that we can stump up enough cash to get a film pack and run off a few shots with a piece of photographic history.

RSS Reader on Very Silly Games

If you've ever wanted your own RSS feed reader written using XNA (and who hasn't), you can now get one at verysillygames.

You Lucky People.

Blarst from the Parst

I found this around four years ago. And now, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I've found it again. And this.

Meet Trevor

Trevor is a Pleo. That is a computer controlled robot dinosaur. He's been through a few changes since we got him, since you can upgrade his firmware using an SD card. He has a couple of processors, a camera in his nose, 20 motors and over 100 gears. And he can't walk in a straight line as one of his back legs seems a bit gammy. And some of the white has come off his teeth because the paint sticks to the leaf that we got to feed him with.

But we like him anyway.

Update on 2008-04-08 10:10 by Rob

You can find a really good guide to how a Pleo works here:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/pleo.htm

Whitby Trip

The weather was supposed to be horrible. Snow on high ground. Roads becoming impassable. Etc etc. But we went anyway. After all, we like Whitby very much. It is a strange place really, touristy in a way that only England can do properly. And we were dead lucky, because the weather, although very cold, was wonderful. Especially for photos.

Whitby church on top of the cliffs, and a few boats

The bay.

Steam Train. Mike knows which one.

Air Sea Rescue

They say Dracula is buried here somewhere. I'm not going looking.....

Open Day Power

Today was the last big open day of the admissions season. And what a day. We had the biggest turnout ever. We had double tours and all sorts.

I had to use the ultra-wide angle lens to get everyone in. If you click on the picture you can find your way to the Flickr page and get hold of the large version for plenty of detail.

As usual we gave away a DS to one lucky student. This time I actually did the presentation. The winner was ticket number 1. As if anyone would believe that.

I'm on the right. Notice how the winner is keeping a good grip on the prize. As if I would run away with it....

Thanks for coming folks, hope it was worth the trip. To find out more about our course you can go to www.wherewouldyouthink.com. To find out more about writing games you can go to www.verysillygames.com.

Friday Night Club Reunion

I have a C# lecture on Friday afternoon at 4:15. Not the best time. I call it the Friday Afternoon club and I always take a picture of the audience.

Today was no exception. It was building applications using forms. Thanks for staying awake people.

Free Pocket PCs

We have an embedded course as part of our degree. This year for the practical David has designed this rather neat project which uses the current location of the user to plan routing and stuff. Only thing is, to really do it properly you need a Pocket PC with built in GPS.

So we bought a few.

Each student gets the use of the device for the practical work. This means they get proper experience of real device development. I dropped by to take pictures of the first students picking up their devices.

These were the first two to pick up their toys. Have fun...

Rob in Micro Mart

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

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

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

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.

Lost Odyssey

If you are after an engrossing and beautiful RPG for your Xbox 360 you should get Lost Odyssey. It comes on four DVDs (there is only just room in the box) and it looks amazing. The characterisation and dialogue is also excellent. I'm not much good at these things but number one son (who takes this things very seriously) is. And he likes it.

Four Days of Not Washing

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

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.

Trend Setters

We put our recycling bin out for collection a day early by mistake today. It was nice to see that all the other people on the street followed our example.

Nasty Con

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

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..