Monday with added jetlag

Back to work today. Plenty of business and stuff. The jetlag keeps switching my brain off at inopportune momen

The Missing Sunday

I don't remember much of today.

Which is probably just as well.

Cramped Saturday

Before flying back we had our last "Breakfast in America" at our favourite diner. Which has very shiny stools. Then it was up to the airport to be crammed into a metal tube for 9 hours.

At the airport they had this lovely little thing. Sort of robbery target and getaway vehicle all in one.

I didn't get any extra space on the long flight. But the bloke who was sat next to me, who must have been all of four feet tall, had one of the precious legroom seats. And my in-flight entertainment thingy didn't work. Oh how I suffered.

Friday Food

Went out for a meal with Andy and Andrew tonight. Andy suggested a place where they come to the table and cook your food in front of you.

We had "The Chef in the Green Hat". He was very cool. And the food was delicious.

The right way to burn an onion...

A great place to eat

Cunning use of minimal space on the ground. But I wouldn't like to live there...

Friday Boat Trip

Today we went for a boat trip out from Seattle to Bainbridge Island, which is around half an hour away. There was nothing particular on the island we wanted to see, but it was a nice trip nonetheless.

On the Boat

Seattle from the bay

The weather could have been nicer, but the views were excellent. It just made me more determined to come back here in sunnier times.

MVP Keynote

Today was the last day of the summit proper, and we had keynote addresses from Ray Ozzie and Steve Balmer

Gathering for the keynote

Ray Ozzie was first to speak and take questions.

Steve Balmer arrived looking like this:

..and left dressed like this

I think we had better find a University of Hull sweatshirt to give him next time.

I've never heard Steve talk before, and I must say I'm impressed. He was knowledgeable, smart, self aware and, above all, funny.  A great way to end a very interesting four days.

Over Gurned

You've got to be careful in hotels. They put mirrors all over the place. There are a whole bunch in the bathroom, which in my opinion (and my condition) is a really bad place to put a mirror. They also have them on the lift doors. I was alone in the lift travelling down to the lobby and, staring at my reflection, thought I'd have a go at gurning to pass the time. As you do.

I just managed to pull a truly deformed face (not, admittedly much of a stretch for me) when of course the doors slid open to reveal a rather well dressed couple who were on their way out to some posh do or other. They managed not to actually recoil at the sight of me, but they did seem slightly worried as they got into the lift and the three of us made it the rest of the way down in rather stony silence. Oh well.

Campus Calisthenics

Today was our final day on the Microsoft Campus. Yesterday I carefully scoped out the best place to sit on the bus for photographs and today I took some.

Driving past the bay

The view down the road

The road is interesting, in that for parts of the journey you are pretty much level with the lake, which is a bit strange. Once we got to the campus we again went off for some sessions, and then I got to "Have lunch with my publisher". I've always wanted to say that. We went to a very nice place and I showed my poise and breeding by choosing the one thing on the menu that came with chips. And very nice it was too. The good news (for me at any rate) is that I think I'm going to be writing another book. 

After lunch I met up with Brian, another MVP who teaches with XNA (all these acronyms - don't we sound cool) and then I shot across the campus to meet up with Andy Sterland and Andrew Neil, ex Hull students who now work for Microsoft. As we were talking I noticed a chap outside the building who looked a bit familiar. It turned to be the legendary Phil Price, another Redmond employee from Hull. Out came the camera......

Andy, Phil, Andrew and Andy. If you see what I mean.

Then I shot back to another meeting (they have these amazing shuttles to ferry you around the place), and finally made it onto the bus. The journey back took a while, but I did get some interesting pictures.

This guy is using his laptop whilst driving....

I love the idea of a "Super Heavy" sticker. And talking of "super heavy"...

I took this at the Summit party, which was ace. They had Rock Band set up in a theatre and were letting folk have a go. These guys got booed off after around 30 seconds....

More entertainment

The party in full swing

Deep in the Mothership

Microsoft Redmond Campus is huge. No other word. Lots of buildings, lots of people, lots of software. And quite a bit of rain.

The rainy view of Building 118

..a more conventional view.

Today we had lots of sessions about this and that. I'm always surprised by how Microsoft send their chief product managers to get roasted by us. I'm glad they do though, it is always very interesting.

In the afternoon we slipped over to the fabled Microsoft Company Store, where you can get software at cost prices. We had been allocated 120 dollars to spend on stuff, so I duly did my bit. I was very pleased to be able to pick up a cost price copy of Microsoft Home Server, which I'm looking forward to having a play with. I was even more pleased to find that they had a big display of my book.

Rob in the Microsoft Company Store

I'm never sure whether having lots of copies left in a shop is a good thing ("We've sold loads") or a bad thing ("Nobody is buying it"). Anyhoo, it was just nice to see it there. I've found my book in Barnes and Noble and Fry's as well, so if people aren't grabbing copies it isn't for lack of opportunity......

They had a Microsoft Surface in Building 117. Think of it as a huge iPhone which lets you do wonderful things with multi-touch. Wonderful stuff.

Added Value

Today was the first day of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Summit. Before everything kicked off we went for a walk around Seattle.

We found this really cool magic shop. Check out the Elvis Zoltar inside...

I managed to blag a visit to Alan's room. His hotel room is rather high, with some nice views.

Overhead view of the monorail

Seattle skyline, with clouds

Gathering for the opening session. I've never been to one of these before, but the thing that struck me was just how many MVPs there are. This is a big affair. And there are people from all over the world.

This was the gathering before we went in for dinner.

The food, and the company, was excellent. On the way out I grabbed a picture of the view from the conference centre.

Shopping Trip

The quality of the weather dipped a bit overnight, but at least it wasn't raining. Went over to meet up with Boss at his hotel and it looked like they were prepared for him.

Did somebody call the cops?

Turns out the Dalai Lama was in town, and staying in the same place as Boss. These were the outriders for his trips out. We went off in search of breakfast.

This place does good sandwiches

This place does nice peppers

The Dalai Lama hits the road.

Boss and hired car

Boss in hired car

Lego bits, lots of them.

Lego pigs

I nearly bought lots of things, but was actually very good. Perhaps tomorrow.

The Return of Jetlagged Software

I woke up at midnight here, 8:00am back home. Of course it is time to write some software. I started doing this in Seoul last year, and now I'm doing it again. We went out shopping yesterday and I frequently wanted to know how much things were in pounds. Of course you can get a very rough idea by dividing dollar prices by two, but I wanted more accuracy. You also need to factor in the local sales tax, which comes in at 9%. What I wanted was some form of Damage Calculator which would hopefully discourage me from spending too much. As if.

I wrote a currency converter jetlagged app last time, and so I thought it would just take the code and modify it. Except that the code is of course on the computer I took to Korea, not this one (I really must work on my source code management).

So I've written a better one. It converts from dollars to pounds and back, working out how much you lose to tax each way.

What you get if you enter the price of, say, a PS3 Dualshock 3 controller that you are probably going to buy. That will do nicely.....

If you are lucky enough to be in Seattle and need this, you can find the code here. Just unzip the binary and drop it into your mobile device.

Seattle in Good Weather Shock

We went out for a look around Seattle. And the weather was lovely. I'm breaking in a new camera (what a surprise). It is a tiny Fuji FinePix F50fd. I was unsure it would improve much on my old FinePix F10. But it does. It has already taken some lovely shots. Fuji seem to put some magic pixie dust or something in their cameras that make them just take good pictures.

Like this

Or this.

We had tea in a super little place on the waterfront. Seattle seems to give priority to the quirky, home grown kind of establishment, and I reckon this is a seriously good move. It gives the place real character.

This is where ate. When I took this picture they were playing a Bay City Rollers track ("Saturday night" if you must know..). If that's not personality, I don't know what is.

It had a good view of the bay too.

After tea we had a walk around.

How tasteful. But not as scary as....

Of course they have skyscrapers

"Pig and Pigeon" Sounds like a good name for a pub.

 
I think Seattle is going to replace San Francisco as my favourite city in the US. Then again, the forecast is for rain tomorrow.....

Hello from Seattle

Woke up this morning feeling much better. So it was off to the airport and on to the plane. I'm going to the Microsoft MVP Summit in Seattle and to be quite honest I'm rather excited.

I've also taken the camera(s).

Obligatory Taxi shot from airport

Seattle skyline

The view from my hotel window. Might be a bit noisy tonight....

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