Whilst scanning the receipt for my MacBook (which I needed to do to validate the purchase date and get the broken battery replaced) the battery in my MacBook Pro failed.
I've just remembered that the first thing I did with my new MacBook when I bought it last year was to lend it to Number One Son because his MacBook Pro was away being mended because, yes, you've guessed it, his battery had given out.
My final session of the trip had me in front of another great audience. Thanks folks. I’ve put the code for all the demonstrations here.
This is my setup for the presentation. If you want to find the other pictures you might be in, you can find them on my Flickr pages.
After the talk it was off to grab a taxi to the station and then on to a very nice train (they have very nice trains in Holland) back to the airport and a plane home.
I like the seafood bar at Schipol airport. Not that raw fish before a flight strikes me as a massively good idea.
I’m going to start blogging things that I find useful, so that I can find them again when I need them. You might find them useful too, with a bit of luck.
Lerp is a new thing in XNA 3.0. It lets you find colours between other colours. You can use it for blending, so that you can create a smooth range of colours from one extreme to another. It is very easy to use:
Color newColor = Color.Lerp( firstColor, secondColor, amount );
You give it the first colour, the second colour and the amount you want to travel between them, in the range 0-1. If the amount is small (close to 0) you will get mostly first colour. If the amount is large (close to 1) you will get mostly second colour.
I use it to make darker versions of a particular colour, so I can create fake lighting effects:
Color shadowColor = Color.Lerp( objectColor, Color.Black, 0.2f );
This produces a darker version of objectColor. To make it even darker, increase the value 0.2 to a larger one.
You can use this to produce tinting effects too.
I took this picture on the way to the conference centre this morning. I’m sure there is a face in those clouds…
Setting up the toys
Did another Geek Night presentation. Things got rather frantic, perhaps the result of trying to put 70 minutes of content into a 30 minute slot. Anyhoo, thanks for being a great audience and keeping up.
Yes, it’s me.
Just done my first session at DevDays 09. Great fun and a lovely audience.
This is the bunch in the middle of the room. the other pictures are on my Flickr account.
If you want to download the software, you can get it here.
I’m going to take over the world. Haha.
I'm sorry about this post. I actually did it live in the middle of "ARC04DC Rule the World with the .NET Micro Framework" at DevDays09. I was showing off how my Blog Post alert system worked, and it did.
I would like to reasssure the population of the world that actually I'm not trying to move into world domination and that any resemblance that I may have to a power crazed tyrant is entirely coincidental.
I’m getting ready for my DevDays session later this week. I’m demonstrating some .NET Micro Framework devices that are a bit small, and so I thought I’d use a webcam to show close-ups of the toys. I was testing it just now and of course I pointed it at the screen.
Cool eh?
If you are going to DevDays then feel free to come along. The Geek Night should be great fun.
I met up today with Craig from Thirteen 1 magazine. They are doing a set of articles on breaking into the games industry, and I’m going to be recording some video podcasts for them about learning XNA.
Don’t worry, the camera won’t be pointed at me. Instead I’m going to capture the steps you need to follow to set up your computer and then write some XNA games. Should be fun.
Apparently the Catholic Church is not very happy with the film “Angels and Demons”, from the Dan Browne novel with the same name. I hadn’t expected the Vatican to have a movie review side to their business, but having seen the film I know what they mean.
I thought the Tomb Raider films had pretty much scraped the barrel on dodgy plotlines, evil blokes in cassocks and thousand year old secret societies. I was wrong. And at least with them we got Lara Croft to look at and some nice jungle scenery every now and then. Here we just got Tom Hanks with his furrowed brow and the inside of some churches. And a lady physicist in high heels who occasionally popped up to translate some Latin or spout some duff physics.
It took all my iron will and resolve to keep from having hysterics when the bad guy, thoroughly nasty all the way to his “straight from central casting” steel rimmed glasses, and having just laid waste to half of the Italian police force, pointed his weapon at our hero and said “I will not shoot you, because you do not carry a gun and I have not been ordered to”. I’m pretty sure that as he turned away I heard him add “..and also because you are Tom Hanks”.
The good news is that I spotted the bad guy right at the start. The better news for me is that I did this without having had to wade through the book first.
And to think I could have gone into the screen next door and watched Star Trek again. What a waste.
Nearly bought a new camera today but talked myself out of it.
Never mind, there is always tomorrow…
Went to a wedding today. Not been to one for a while. This one was splendid. We had super weather, a really great ceremony. 
..and a really great setting.
This is Thrumpton Hall.
.. and looking the other way.
Thanks to Mark and Juliette for inviting us along, and all the best wishes for the future.
Aside from a few niggles with Nero, I must admit that Windows 7 is speeding me up. Moving around windows and getting things done is faster with the new system, and the generally quicker performance (apart from strange delays at certain times, for example importing Raw images into Photoshop) is much appreciated.
In fact, I like it so much that I’m not going to put Vista back on my machine.
if you had a camera that could travel faster than light, could it take a photograph of itself?
First things first. The movie delivers. From exploding planets to starship battles to green women in bed with James T, Kirk. They even had a chap turn up with a forgettable name in a red outfit who joined the mission and then was summarily disposed of. The only thing missing was a self destruct sequence, but then blowing up the brand new Enterprise in the first movie is probably not a plan I suppose.
The elephant in the room is of course that once you open up the possibility of alternative timelines (and Star Trek has been doing this for years – at least in this timeline) then they can do pretty much anything they like with the plots and characters. So they have. And it is great.
The new Captain Kirk works really well. And doesn’t have an actor who. puts. extra. full. stops. in. the. middle. of. his. sentences. However, the new Spock is even better. They seem to have a found cast of folks I’ve never seen before and this is fine too, because you are seeing the character first, which with this kind of baggage is the only way to travel.
Everything works, everything is shiny, and I’m definitely going to see it again.
Let’s hope that that the inevitable sequels are as good.
An eagle eyed student (thanks Scott) has found a picture of me on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_TouchSmart
Fame at last.
Went to Reading today. Spent a bit less time there than I planned, thanks to slow running trains. I was there for a meeting about the Imagine Cup. They had some student teams presenting UK projects and the Microsoft UK academic team, along with Joe Wilson, who heads up the contest.
The students did a couple of presentations and were then subjected to what we call the “Imagine Cup Grilling”. This is where we look at what they have done and suggest ways it could be made better. I was very even handed, in that by the end I think I had managed to offend everybody in the room, at which point I left to catch my train home. Settling down in my seat I was chatting to a lady next to me who was most upset that she had just had to pay 84 pounds just to get back to Nottingham. I responded, rather wittily I thought, by saying that I’d pay that amount just to get out of Nottingham. I’ve really no idea why I said it. I’ve nothing against the place really, and it didn’t go down too well. (actually, I think anyone who knows me can readily imagine me doing this. Oh well. I think I’m too old to change now.)
Anyhoo, the meeting was very interesting. Microsoft’s continuing commitment to the competition is very commendable, particularly in the face of present economic conditions. I think at the bottom line they recognise that the kind of people who enter the Imagine Cup are the future, and engagement with them is a good thing. I told the students that just taking part in the competition and surviving a grilling makes them better professionals and adds a huge amount of value to them as potential employees. I really think this is true, and perhaps the best reason for anyone to enter the competition.
Windows 7 is now installed on my machine. And it wants to bring along all it’s friends. It spent most of the day installing updates. I’ve had a day off the computer though, I’ve even done some tidying up.
Fortunately the weather was too wet for gardening.
Decided to celebrate my completion of everything by putting Windows 7 Release Candidate on my laptop. I did an upgrade, which seems to have worked fine except for my Nero InCd service, which I didn’t even know I had.
The desktop looks much nicer and seems quite a bit snappier than before. The system has even spotted the broken battery and told me that I might need to buy a new one, which is quite clever.
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
