Team Building Gets The Hardware

/

I got a lovely surprise today. The hardware for our Micro Framework entry turned up. And it is wonderful. It is one of the latest Tahoe II boards from Device Solutions. I installed the drivers, plugged it into the laptop and got my first program working in minutes.

3220357728

My first program just displays a picture of the team (as well it might). Next step is to see if I can get the touch screen going, then I'm going to play with the Zigbee wireless networking(we also got a Zigbee adapter for the PC) and interface some sensors and, and, and.....

Good thing I've finished my marking.

Slumdog Millionaire

/

I wasn't sure if this was the kind of film that I'd enjoy, but everyone else wanted to go and so I went along.  Glad I did.

The plot of Slumdog Millionaire sounds a bit trivial. A poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks gets a shot at the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire". However, there is a lot more to it than that.  With every question answered there comes another step on the backstory that builds to a very satisfactory climax.

The film is beautifully shot and captures a lot of gritty detail about life in India, but it also shows how the human spirit can triumph in just about any circumstance. The actors are particularly impressive, particularly the child cast who are brilliant. Some bits are hard to watch, but in the end I think you will find the film worth the effort.

Presidential Priorities

/

I had a call with Devon from Microsoft in the 'states scheduled for late this afternoon. We agreed that it might be a good idea to postpone it slightly. After all, you don't want to have to answer the question "Where were you when America inaugurated Barack Obama as president?" with "Oh, I was on the phone at the time".

The Fault is Never Where You Think it is

/

One of my rules for debugging programs is "the fault is never where you think it is". This is because if the fault was where you thought it was, you would have fixed it by now. The fault isn't where you think it is because one of your assumptions about the problem is wrong. So I begin by checking all the assumptions I am making. Starting with "Am I running the program I think I am?" and going on from there.

I was reminded of this when I set out to find the source of a rattle in the sound system in the car. The nearside rear parcel shelf speaker was making an unholy death rattle in time with the bass notes in the music, and it was getting worse. So, armed with a bunch of screwdrivers I thought I'd go out there and frighten it into submission. I assumed that either something had fallen down the slots above the speaker into it, or I'd broken the cone by playing too many "bangin' choons".

So I set some music playing and sure enough, there was the rattle. So I spent a few minutes trying to find out how to get into the rear parcel shelf and listening carefully and came to an interesting conclusion. There is no speaker in the rear parcel shelf at all. The speakers at the back are in the doors. Well, how was I supposed to know? I've only had the car three and a half years....

Anyhoo, in the door pocket I found a happily rattling five pence piece. So, I now have rattle free music and I'm five pence up on the day.

Win.

And I remembered to take my camera with me today.

3207626560

Cottingham Church

Songsmith

/

The people behind SongSmith reckon that "Everybody has a song inside". I just hope that in my case it isn't "Shaddap You Face".

Anyhoo, the program itself is rather clever (as it might be, coming from Microsoft Research). It will orchestrate a tune that you sing, adding accompaniment in one of 30 styles. It does this by analysing the notes that it hears and then using some clever algorithms to pick chords that would sound the best alongside.

It is a free download, and looks like fun. Perhaps it might be useful for some cheap and copyright free game soundtracks....

New Boots

/

Bought some new boots on Saturday. They are proper ones, with heels and soles that can be replaced. I was getting cold feet and so I got myself some thick socks as well to keep my toes toasty warm.

They are great, but very noisy in the corridors at work. If I ever need to sneak up on someone I won't be wearing these boots. I was trying to think of some kind of CSI plot twist, where the murderer invents boot silencers so that he can stalk his victims on the mean street of Las Vegas, but I'm not sure how it would work.

Actually, this is not the daftest thing I ever heard about sneaky boots. In the Sherlock Holmes episode where he  is brought back from his untimely death at the hands of Professor Morriarty the great detective says that he managed to put off his pursuers and leave misleading tracks by simply "Reversing his boots and walking home". I had a quick go at this with my new boots and it is nigh on impossible. Mind you, I'm no Sherlock Holmes. And I wonder which university Professor Morriarty used to work at?

Sock Disasters

/

I've felt that something has been wrong all day. Nothing has seemed right, it was as if I didn't fit correctly into the fabric of the universe (and you know how that can be). This evening, I've found out why.

I've got the wrong day socks on. I mentioned some time back how I had acquired some socks labelled with days of the week, and the torment this caused me when I crossed a time zone wearing them.

Well, today I've been wearing socks emblazoned with "Thursday". And nobody has told me. (actually, I'm rather relieved about this bit, the idea of people paying attention to my ankles is actually somewhat scary).

Anyhoo, it turns out that things have got even worse. Number one son came to stay with us over Christmas and he has the same set of socks. And they got mixed up in the wash. I now have two sets of "Friday" and no "Monday" or "Tuesday". And I think I'm down to one solitary "Sunday" sock. Disaster.

I wonder if anyone makes packs of socks with the label "Today" on them?

.NET Micro Framework Competition Success

/

I'm really pleased. We've made it through to the next round of the Dare To Dream Different competition. This means that once I've sent off the "Affidavit of Eligibility and Release" (posh eh?) myself and the rest of "Team Effort" should get our Micro Framework hardware and can get on with building our project.

We have to build the hardware, make it work and then make a little video of the device working. Should be great fun, I'll keep you posted as to how we get on.

Moderation in All Things

/

I've been marking first year programs for the last couple of days. We had the code demonstrated at the end of last year, and I'm going through all the submissions moderating marks from the various assessors and marking any that we didn't get a chance to see. Some of these folks have only been learning programming for a few weeks and yet they are producing results that hit the spec., which is great.

It is funny how I can see all the mistakes that I made when I was learning to program coming round again. Things like using block copy to repeat code rather than loops or methods. Adding complication when you should really be simplifying the code and fixating on things that aren't actually important but seem to be at the time.

I was going to spend a couple of lectures going through my "perfect solution" to the problem, but then having seen the submissions I've realised that there is no perfect solution (just like real programming) and so I think I'll spend the time putting sensible behaviours into the context of the program they were building.

I'm really looking forward to next semester.