First, Update the Firmware

Did some work on our Micro Framework project today which will be our entry into the Dare To Dream Different competition. We are creating an “Anything Bad” alarm system with nifty remote sensors. The sensors are based on the XBee ones that we got supplied with the competition hardware, and they work a treat.

Eventually.

First thing we did was build some test remote sensors:

This turned out to be easy enough, although I did solder 20 pins rather than four, which took a bit longer than it needed to…

Anyhoo, the next thing to do was configure the XBee devices. This was harder, in that nothing seemed to work. We were giving the correct commands and everything, but the device was complaining every time. A bit of searching got us the answer. We found a blog post with the revealing message “To get the devices to work you must upgrade the firmware”. I’m not sure why a company would ship a product which doesn’t work out of the box, but then again, welcome to the world of hardware development.

After the upgrade things went swimmingly. We reached a point where I could press a button on the device above and have a program on another machine notice this. Wonderful.

Feeling Better

Managed to make it to work today and give my lecture. I now have a mini-tower of packets of tissues on my desk. I hate it when I have a full nose and nowhere to put it. No fun.

Not Well

Really not well today. Actually had to go home and have a lie down, which is most unusual for me. I’m hoping for better things tomorrow.

Open Day Sniffles

We had another Open Day today. I’m nursing a bit of a cold at the moment (it is doing very well, thanks) and so I tried to stay as far downwind from our visitors as possible. I think a good time was had by all, it was certainly great weather to walk around the campus, and thanks to everyone who came to see us.

The holder of ticket number 20 gets his prize from Warren.

Mad March Bash

After the roaring success of the Xmas Bash I am organising a follow up, the Mad March Bash, for Wed. 25th of March, starting at 4:00 pm in Room 312 of the Robert Blackburn Building and finishing at 8:00 pm.

There will be Half Life 2 Deathmatch, Zombie Panic, Wii Sports, Dance Mats, Rock Band and an all-new feature, the Tag Treasure Hunt.

Pizza, pop and sweeties will be provided.

Entrance to the event is by ticket only. Tickets will be on sale in the Departmental Office, priced at 2 pounds each, from 2:00 pm on 19th March. As last time, numbers are limited, so make sure that you get yours early.

/Events

Steely Dan are Touring the UK

Number one daughter put me on to the fact that Steely Dan (best band in world, ever) are doing some shows in the UK later this year.

That’s the good news. Bad news is that tickets are 50 quid and there aren’t any for sale at the moment. Never mind, perhaps they’ll add some more dates.

Imagine Cup 2009 Judging

I’m really pleased. Microsoft have picked me as one of the Captains of the Software Design Competition in the Imagine Cup. I love this competition, and what it does for the students that take part. This means that I get to go to Egypt later this year, and see what all the students from around the world have been up to. Wonderful.

Find out more here.

Saturday Open Day

We had our biggest open day of the year today. Perhaps the biggest we have ever had. Thanks to everyone who came along, it was great to see you all. As usual I took a snap of the assembled multitude:

Funny how people always sit at the back in lecture theatres…

I gave my talk as usual, and I must apologise for the jokes. But, of course, I will be using them again…

We gave away a PSP to one lucky winner, ticket number 65 as I remember.

Warren, using his specially big hand to give the prize away. Note cunning product placement of C# Yellow Book (you can get yours at http://www.csharpcourse.com/)

I went outside with the big camera and ran straight into a rather nice photo-op.

I just love skies like these.

Anyway, thanks very much for coming and I hope you all have a good journey home.

Red Nose Day

Well, I did my lecture. Thanks to everyone who came along, it was fun. I’ll post the video tonight, once I’ve got it off my little camera. If you have any pictures or video of the fun and games, please get in touch and I’ll set up a group somewhere to share the magic…

We did rather well on the day:

..what it is all about. I’ll take it down to the bank later today. If you want to add to the pile, just drop by my office or sponsor me at:

http://www.myrednoseday.com/LectureInRhymeWithRob

I hit my target, and so I’ve moved it up a bit.

Update

on 2009-03-13 20:51 by Rob

We've counted all the money, and it turns out that the bucket had two hundred and fifty eight pounds 11 pence in it. All through the afternoon people were dropping by who couldn't make it to the lecture and they were dropping more cash in. Thanks to all the staff and students who were so generous. We are going to take the cash down to the bank tomorrow and this should bring the total earnings to well over 500 quid, which is ace!

I've put the lecture slides up here.

Average Clocks Conundrum

All the clocks in my house are slightly wrong, but if I take the average of them all I get the right time. Except sometimes. Why?

Polaroid Pogo Printer and Microsoft Tag

I fondly remember Polaroid cameras. I even had one for a while. You forgave them their dodgy colours and blurry nature because they were so instant. They are pretty much gone now, but the desire for instant printed gratification hasn’t, so Polaroid are still making portable devices that let you print tiny pictures. Of course, the colours are still a bit dodgy, and there is a bit of blur, but they actually look pretty darned good.

The thing I’m talking about is the Polaroid Pogo. This is a device around the size of a portable hard drive, which will print out onto 2x3 inch prints, that can be made into stickers. You send the prints either from your camera using the usb PictBridge interface or via Bluetooth from any device that can transfer files that way (which includes most mobile phones but unfortunately not the iPhone for some reason).

I nearly bought one a while back, but reckoned they were a bit expensive at around 90 pounds. For some reason the price seems to have halved recently, which is either good (we’ve sold so many that we can drop the price) or bad (we’ve not sold any, and so we need to get rid of them). Either way, it worked for me and so I got one from Amazon.

It works a treat. It is particularly good at printing Microsoft Tags. These are the things that you can scan with your mobile phone to direct you to a web site, or business card or something. I can fit a couple of them onto a single 2x3 output and then stick them around the place.

Pogo and printout. You can even follow the tag from the image above, which is pretty amazing.

I can see this being a huge hit down the pub, where you might want to take lots of pictures and then let folks take a copy home. The paper is a tad pricy, working out at around 30 pence per print, but I guess that is the price that you pay for immediacy.

We are going to have a Tag Treasure Hunt in the department at the Mad March Bash (coming soon…) and now I have the perfect device for printing the tags.

Immersion Therapy

What did you do this lunchtime? I bought and fitted an immersion heater switch. Turned the power off and everything (it seemed best to do it that way).

Hot showers tonight for everyone..

Lecture in Rhyme for Red Nose Day

I will be giving a Red Nose Day Lecture in Rhyme at 11:15 on Friday 13th of March in the Foss Building Lecture Theatre 1. An older boy told me to do it.

The lecture is part of the 08120 Programming 2 course and will be on the subject of class design in C#.

Students who turn up in fancy dress will get out half price.

If you want to sponsor me (and you do, really you do) then you can visit:

http://www.myrednoseday.com/LectureInRhymeWithRob

Jetlagged Poetry

You can’t beat being busy with jetlag. In between writing deathless prose for lectures, trying to find out why we have no hot water and where on earth that thing is that I put down a second ago I’ve been trying to write some poetry.

I’ve decided to give a lecture in rhyme on Friday as part of Comic Relief. I’ve loads of other things that I should be doing, but I’ve given them over the last twenty years or so, and I feel that the tradition really should continue.

I’m going to be talking about class based design in C#. The tradition is that I have to pick up whatever is in the course at that point and give a proper lecture on that subject, but entirely in rhyme. I did think about making the whole thing up on the day, but that is potentially dangerous, and so it was into Powerpoint and on with the rhyming dictionary…

Advance Jetlag

I seemed to have jetlag in advance today. From trying to scan the passport in the wrong part of the check-in machine, to having a suitcase 3 pounds over weight, to being invisible to all flight attendants on the plane (and the person sat in front, who insisted on trying to tip her seat back even though this is not physically possible if I am sat behind you), to losing my headphones the whole day has not been much fun. Good thing that, thanks to the flight, I seem to have lost 8 hours of it somewhere.

Leaving Seattle

Our flight left early afternoon, which meant there was time for one final Seattle breakfast. It was as if the city was putting on its best show ever in an attempt to get us to stick around. The weather was the best I’ve ever seen in the place, which exposed some superb views.

Market sign

Ferry and mountains

Ferry arriving (as seen in “Grey’s Anatomy”)

To be honest, it won’t take much to persuade me to come back. Then it was off to the airport.

Plane spotting at the airport.

It has been a great summit, here’s to next time…

Seattle Air Museum

Today was our day off. We planned to go to the Seattle Museum of Flight. Being an economical traveller I was going by bus. I had written careful notes describing which bus to take and where to get off. Being an idiot, I of course left these in the hotel room, but remembered enough to get us onto route 174 from tunnel C.

Seattle has this wonderful underground level, in fact the city is built up on previous implementations. You catch the bus in something that looks just like a subway station, except that there are busses instead of trains.  The bus took us through some of the industrial heartland of Seattle, which is pretty heavy engineering, and finally deposited us outside the museum.

We were a bit worried about finding the right stop, but they had parked a handy marker for us.

The museum is amazing, which loads of planes, many of them hanging from their enormous exhibit halls.

We had really come to see Concorde though. We have a familial link with the plane, knowing the one based in Bristol quite well. We thought we’d check out the one in Seattle as well.

Truth is, the one in Bristol is much more of an experience. At Seattle the plane looks rather forlorn, tucked away in one corner of a collection. In Bristol there is much more room to move around the plane and you actually get to sit in the seats as you make your way around it. Here in the souvenir hunter conscious Seattle everything, including seats inside the plane, are hidden under layers of plastic.

Concorde Flight Deck

After a wait for the returning bus we got back to Seattle just in time to go up the Columbia tower. This is the tallest building in downtown area and has an observation deck which gives some of the best views of the city.

You can see the Space Needle in the middle of the picture.

If you ever go to Seattle you should go up this tower. Oh yes. Cheaper than the Space Needle (although that is a great experience) and you can see a lot further.

Then it was out for tea (chicken and chocolate anyone?) and then back to the hotel.

Last day at the MVP Summit

Steve B makes a point.

Say what you like about Steve Balmer (and lots of people do) the guy can work an audience. I’ve seen him speak a few times and he’s not failed to deliver yet. His talk (and the question and answer session at the end) was one of the highlights of the keynotes that we had today. Although the session about Windows 7 from Mike Nash was also very good. I think I’m allowed to say that Windows 7 is looking very promising. For me the only thing bad about it is that you can’t buy it in the shops yet.

Once the keynotes were over that was just about the end of formal proceedings for the summit. It was great to see everyone again, and put some faces to names that I’ve only ever seen on mailing lists in the past. We went out for a wander around Seattle.

In the Seattle Art Gallery they have these cars hanging from the ceiling with lights coming out of them. Not sure why, but it sure looks nice.

Pioneer Square

More Meetings and Science Fiction Frenzy

Today was the second and final time at the Microsoft campus.  More presentations and more good stuff. I took a trip over the the legendary Microsoft Company store which was wonderful. Halo Wars on day of release at 25 dollars? I should think so. Of course I had resolved not to spend much money. Of course I failed.

In the evening it was time for the summit party, which was held at the “Experience Music Project” at the base of the Space Needle. They had Rock Band, karaoke with a live backing group and huge amounts of food and drink.

It was a bit like our Christmas Bash, only slightly bigger.

The venue is also host to a great science fiction museum, with books, props, sets and robots to look at. Great stuff.

This guy was working the lights on the video wall behind the stage. What a cool job.

Meeting the Mobile Team

Today we got all got on busses bright and early and headed off to the Microsoft campus at Redmond. It was quite a nice morning, and on the way we saw a rainbow which seemed to have its roots in the middle of Microsoft, which I thought was interesting. Unfortunately by the time I got my camera out we had driven past it.

The rainbow is about 20 feet to the right of this picture.

We had a bunch of presentations from product team members. I hope they found our comments useful. After that it was time for more mingling, and then a bus back to the hotel.

I remembered my camera this time.