Goodbye Graham

Today we said goodbye to Graham Brookes, one of our professors who has been in Hull for a very long time and given great service to the university, as head of the Computer Science Department and also as Dean of Faculty.

Thinking of the next line...

I first met Graham many years ago, when as a young, fresh faced, programmer in the Computer Centre I was asked to show him around the department on his first visit to Hull. Unbeknownst to me the building had undergone some changes and things had moved around a bit since I graduated and so when I proudly opened the door to "Our main computing resource" we were all greeted with the sight of a mop and a couple of buckets in what was now the cleaner's cupboard. Ever since then I have been trying, perhaps vainly, to convince Graham that I am not in fact an idiot.

The good news is that in spite of this display of stupidity at Hull he managed to overcome any reservations that he might have had, and come to work with us anyway. Today, at a nice ceremony in Staff House we said our formal goodbyes and Graham gave a little speech peppered with dry wit and common sense, as is his style.

I'm sure he is going to keep involvement with the business at some level, Graham is active in the British Computer Society and I don't expect him to stop wanting to achieve things. He took the Computer Science Department at Hull and put it firmly on the track it is following today, and for that we owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

C# Pop Quiz

This little exercise comes out of a First Year lecture last week. Given the code:

short i;
for (i = 0; i < 10; i--)
{
    Console.WriteLine("i is: " + i);
}

What would it do?

(For those of you that haven't seen it before, the i-- part of the for loop has the effect if reducing the value of i by 1. It is a shorthand version of "i = i - 1")

Zero Marks

Ever tried to explain arrays, subscripts and addressing in a C# programming lecture where somebody seems to have swiped all the marker pens for the whiteboard?

I have. It is really hard. Never mind. At least I got a blog post out of it. (as I said I would...)

Wonderful Monday and Preparing for PDC 2008

There is quite simply no better way to start a working week than by delivering a 9:15 lecture on Visual Basic. Follow this up with a 1:15 lecture on C# and a 5:15 session on UML design (with a few gripping meetings and a tutorial in between) and you can probably understand why I've been hitting the Strawberry Milkshake (no - really) rather hard tonight.

The good news is that I'm presently preparing for a trip to PDC 2008 in LA. I told the second year that I would be going away and the response was "Wot, again..". The way I see it, if I further my knowledge about technology and gadgets and stuff this will all feed into my teaching and make my lectures even more better than they already are. Oh yes.

I actually feel terrible about leaving all my students in the lurch like this. Rest assured that all lectures have been re-allocated so no study time is to be lost. And I will be checking forum posts and responding to email. (probably faster than ever since I will have nothing else to do when I'm wide awake at 2:00 am) Also bear in mind that the trip will involve me cramming into an economy aircraft seat with my knees above my ears for around 12 hours on the trip out and back.

I'm deep into preparation for the trip. I've activated my emergency credit card and I'm presently packing gadgets, power supplies, cables, cameras and memory cards. Oh, and perhaps a few clothes. I'll be blogging and posting pictures of my misadventures and I'll keep you posted on any interesting new developments. The way I see it, you have a lecturer who doesn't just go the extra mile. He goes 5,500....

Trip to Black Marble

On Wednesday the 22nd of October I'm taking a bus down to Black Marble to attend one of their developer events. If you are interested in game development, or just want to see what happens at a professional event, you can find out more here.

Hull City Looking Good

..and not just the football team...

Nice Colours in Autumn

You do get nice colours in Autumn.

The C# Yellow Book is now in PDF

Students lucky enough to come to Hull get a free copy of my C# programming book (this year in a snazzy yellow cover). If you come to see us on an Open Day we will also give you a printed copy. Until recently the only way to get sight of the book was to come to Hull and get one.

However, that has now changed, you can now download a PDF of the book from /c-yellow-book/.

Please let me know what you think.

Mad Magazine Rocks

I did something today I've not done for a while. I bought a Mad Magazine. I've been buying Mad on and off for over forty years (gosh, that does make me sound old) and it has always been good for a laugh. The magazine I got a while back wasn't that funny, and seemed to be packed with dodgy lifestyle stuff and advertisements, but the latest one seems to be a return to old style satire and gross out humour.

Just right for me then.

I particularly liked this book advert, part of a solid swipe at the Staples office supplies catalogue.

Indeed.

Ho for Hull Fair

Went off to Hull Fair in search of pictures. I do this every year. I've been taking progressively more expensive and complicated cameras up to Walton Street for a while now. I guess this will continue until I go up there and drop or lose one, at which point a rethink might be in order.

Anyhoo, I went on the big wheel to try and get some high level snaps.

Yep. That's a big wheel

By pointing the camera through a gap in the floor I managed to get some images, which, once I'd post processed them within an inch of their lives, I'm quite happy with.

"Fair from the Air"

Pomegranate Phone

I know you've probably all seen this before. But I like it. And I want one.

Dare to Dream Different

I've always loved the .NET Micro Framework. It lets you use the magical duo of C# and Visual Studio to create programs to run on teeny-tiny devices. I've been playing with it for ages, and even helped write a book about it.

Every year it gets better and more available. The latest version, 3.0 will run on a number of different devices. And you'll soon be able to use the Express (i.e. free) versions of Visual Studio to create and run Micro Framework programs.

The Micro Framework team have just launched Dare to Dream Different which is a development competition which starts with a great idea and then lets you build and promote it on embedded devices.

It looks like it will be great fun and you should have a go. But before you do, one word of warning.... students at Hull are going to enter this competition. Oh yes. I'm going to arrange some meetings and presentations about the Micro Framework in the department and and we are going to form some teams and pitch some ideas. So there might not be much point in anybody else taking part.

But then again, you never know...

Film Idea

I've decided to make a film about Barbie's Butler. It is going to be called "Valet of the Dolls".....

Weekends are for Video Games

Actually, they aren't. Not entirely. Apparently there are things like shopping and cleaning to be done as well. But then again, you have to do something when "Casualty" is on the telly.

And it's not watch "Casualty". So I've been playing video games.

Starting with "Uncharted: Drake's Fortune" on the PS3. This seems to me as much fun as the original Tomb Raider 2 for the PS1. Not as much fun as Tomb Raider 1, which was ace, but still pretty good. The reason I'm not that keen on it is that, as with Tomb Raider 2, they've added lots of bad guys with guns to slow the action down. The exploring and jumping about is great, once you've managed to stop people shooting with you. The first part of the game was really good, just you and your chum exploring together. Then, after a great level on a submarine, a whole host of blokes with guns better than yours, and more bullets than you, show up round every corner. I'm getting good at headshots, but now they seem to be evolving the ability to survive these, which is irritating to say the least.

I've just given up playing to cool down, if I hear one more of them say "Not so tough now eh?" as idiot Drake turns to black and white and dies in slow-mo. I might chuck the whole thing out of the window. If you are better at gunplay than me you might really enjoy it. The scenery is lush and looks superb, and the whole thing has a very lavish movie feel to it.

The other game I've been playing is "Pure", on PS3 and Xbox 360. Xbox owners looking enviously at Motorstorm, as well they might, now have somewhere to go to get down and dirty on a quad bike. Pure doesn't have the range of vehicles that Motorstorm does, but it does have a huge number of customisation options for your bike. This is a bit irritating at the very start of the game, where you pretty much have to build your ride before you are allowed to go race it, but I guess it comes into its own later in the game. I optimised everything for speed and then had all the parts chromed, which worked fairly well.

Plugging round the muddy courses is great fun, and you can get extra boost by pulling amazing stunts while you and your bike are in the air after a jump. This is hilarious, as you try to work out if you have time to stand on the handlebars before the ground comes up and hits you. The game looks about the same on PS3 or Xbox, and seems to handle you and your 12 competitors on the screen with no slowdown whatsoever.

At this point I have to declare something of a vested interest. Pure was produced by Black Rock studios, a division of Disney interactive. They came to see us earlier this year, hired some of our graduates and promised to send us some freebies. And a couple of weeks back some pre-release copies of Pure turned up. And I've been playing with them. However, even though I got to play for free (we'll give away the games at the next student event we hold) I still rather like the game.

Should Have Pressed F9.....

Just found out today that my beloved Yellow Book, which is the basis of our First Year programming course, has an insane table of contents. It is not wrong, it is wildly wrong, referring to a number of pages that don't actually exist. I've really no idea how this happened, I suspect a change of printers caught Word 2007 on the hop, causing it to kick back by inventing a page 253.

This is rather annoying as we've had loads of them printed. If you have got one of the hallowed tomes, then let me know and I'll send you a PDF with the right numbers in. The only good (if somewhat inexplicable) news, is that the index seems to be correct.

Musical Question

Do trumpet playing courses have tootorials?

Have They Learnt Nothing?

Today, with the news full of stories about collapsing banks and financial meltdown, I get a letter from the bank that says they've just increased the limit on my credit card......

Postgrad Party

Another day, another party. This time it was the turn of the postgraduate students. So it was out with Rock Band and the rest, and another set of specially "Jon Purdy proof" quiz questions.

These folks came first, with a rather impressive score, in spite of the horrid questions.

One point behind came this crew.

..and we had three teams that tied for third.

Well done everyone. Great stuff. And I still managed to get away without singing. And managed two ace serves in a row at Wii Sports Tennis.

First Day of Teaching

Today was the first day of teaching and I got to kick off both of my First Year courses. I think the lectures were successful, if only in terms of managing to offend just about everyone at some point during the presentation.....

Finished Ratchet and Clank!

I don't usually get around to playing video games all the way to the end, but with Ratchet and Clank I've managed it. And not on "easy" level too. It really is a splendid game. I especially like some of the weapons which are great fun, as are the mini games. I picked up a secondhand copy for the PS3 at the knockdown price of 15 pounds, which is very good value.

Next stop, Uncharted.....