Microsoft Tag

Microsoft Tag is a new way you can put out links to web sites or whatever. The links are printed as patterns a bit like bar codes which you can read with your mobile phone camera. They use a cunning colour technology which means that even when they are snapped out of focus they can still be resolved into a readable address.

The tag for this blog.

The tags are linked through the Microsoft Tag site, which means that you can put expiry dates in them and the use of your tags is automatically logged so you can get reports on how much they are being used.

There are reader programs for most Smartphones including Windows Mobile, J2ME, iPhone, Blackberry and Symbian S60 devices. To work the phone needs a camera and of course internet access.

I'm thinking that when paired with a Polaroid PoGo printer, which prints sticky coloured prints just the right size for some text and a tag, this would be a very neat solution. I'm thinking about having a Tag treasure hunt at the next departmental bash. You can find out more about Microsoft Tag here.

Remembered the Camera

I remembered the camera this time.  The light wasn't quite as good, but I still managed one shot worth bothering with.

Hull Marina

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.

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.

Update on 2009-01-23 14:57 by Rob

I've just discovered that to get the Zigbee board to work on the PC you need to have USB drivers for the carrier boards as supplied. You can find them here: http://www.digi.com/support/kbase/kbaseresultdetl.jsp?id=2138

Update on 2009-01-23 19:59 by Rob

I've done some more playing. Some notes you might find useful if you are building something for this competition:

Don't try and build a Console application for the Tahoe board, for some reason it won't work.

The PC connection for the Zigbee board simulates a COM port (in my case it was COM17). This should be configured at 9600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit. You will need a USB cable with the big connector on the back to power up the interface.

The Zigbee board on the Tahoe board is connected to COM2. When creating the SerialPort instance to talk to the Zigbee device you can just use the simplest version of the constructor, which just takes the name of the port to open.

I've made a couple of really simple programs that should get you started:

XBeeTest is a program for the PC that creates a COM port and implements a tiny terminal that will talk to a Zigbee board on the USB port. You can use Device Manager on your machine to find out which serial port the board is connected to (the program is set up to use COM17). The one button sends the AT command +++ to start a remote session. If all is well you should see OK appear in the TextBox. If you select the TextBox and type commands these will be sent to the Zigbee device and the responses will appear in the TextBox. This does not perform the actual network connection. You have to use the protocol described in the manual here.

MicroXBee is a program for the Tahoe board that connects to the Zigbee device and resets it. When you press the Select button in the middle of the keys the program creates a SerialPort and sends the +++ command and then displays the "OK" message that comes back. Again, it doesn't tell you how to do the comms, but it will get you started sending and receiving them. It assumes that you have installed the drivers for the board.

Marking Humour

I've spent the entire day marking First Year exams. It does funny things to your brain. Next time I'm in charge of an exam I'm going to make sure that one of us turns up dressed as a Red Indian, one of us as a construction worker, one as a motorcycle cop, one as a cowboy and so on. When we are asked what we are doing I'll just say...

"Oh, we're the Invigilation People"

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".

Update on 2009-01-21 11:14 by Rob

Thanks to Adam for a link to this, a fantastic PhotoSynth picture of the inauguration.

http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2009/44.president/inauguration/themoment/

V V Brown, Crying Blood

Here is a challenge. Put this on and try and keep still. Excellent stuff.

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.

Cottingham Church

Always Take Your Camera With You

Went up town today. The light was lovely. A low sun shining through gaps in the clouds. Great conditions for awesome photographs.

Of course, I'd not taken my camera.

Here Come "Team Building"

Ian, number one son and myself have managed to get through the first round of the "Dare to Dream Different" contest. We should be getting our hardware fairly soon and beginning work on our top secret device.

We have decided to call ourselves "Team Building" and this is our team picture, with a bit of help from http://simpsonizeme.com/#

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....

Free Software: PasteMaster 3

If you want to create reports out of lots of small passages that you would like to combine together (say if you were doing some marking of student reports) then PasteMaster is for you. It has been around for a while, and is now up to version 3.0 which adds message save and load and a host of other features. Find out more, and download the program, here.

Watch This

Amazing.

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?

Car Washing

Washed the cars today. I was kind of shamed into it by the awful state of them. Last time I did this one of our  neighbours asked me why I was doing this, what with the way that they would become dirty again really quickly.

"Well," I replied, "At least they'll be clean underneath the dirt"

Little Boots

You might have heard of Little Boots. She might be the next musical sensation. I quite like the sound of the free track you can download from iTunes at the moment.

Light Fantastic

What you do with your Christmas lights before you put them back up in the loft.

Great fun.

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.