Zune HD

I’ve just managed to get my hands on a Zune HD. It is a personal music player from Microsoft. The Zune brand has been around for a while. The first players appeared a few years ago and have been developing ever since. They are rather like ipods; but they have one or two nice extra features, including built in WIFI and radio but they have always something of also-rans when compared with the all-conquering Apple product.

However the HD version might change that. It has a superb OLED display and an all new multi-touch user interface. As the name implies, you can put high definition video onto the machine and get video output into an HDMI display.  The whole package is lovely and the hardware is beautifully made and very stylish.

It also runs XNA, so you can take C# games that you have written for the framework and they just run on the device. Your games can even take advantage of the multi-touch interface and the accelerometer inside the Zune. I managed to convert a game to use them in just a few minutes. I’m going to write some posts nest week about porting games over onto the platform, but there won’t be much to say as it is all so easy to use.

The only problem with the Zune is that you can’t get it in the UK yet.

Undergraduate Welcome Party

Today was the day of our welcome party for those new to the department. There was free drinks, free food, silly games and my evil quiz.

This is the team that won. You should have seen this picture before I removed the red-eye…

These folks came in second. The prizes this year were a bit smaller than previously, so we could pay for extra beer…

This is the third placed team, obviously deeply moved by the generosity of the department.

Windows Live Mesh Rocks

I’ve been using Windows Live Mesh now for a while and I must admit I love it. I now no longer have to bother about keeping files on my various machines up to date. I just have a couple of Live Mesh synchronised folders and I lob all the important stuff into there.

Live Mesh gives you on-line storage that is synchronised to the hard disk of one or more computers. Each computer runs the Live Mesh software which makes sure that whenever you change a file on one of the machines the copies on the other devices are automatically updated next time they connect to the network. It even provides a log of your activity, so you can track back what you have been up to.

Now, when I take my portable along to a lecture I don’t have to worry about putting the latest presentations onto it because I know they are already there. If I forgot the machine completely I could even use a web browser to pull the files off the Live Mesh online storage.

You get 5Gbytes of storage for free, and that is more than enough for a year’s worth of lecture notes and other teaching stuff. In fact, the service is so good that I’d pay to have more than that. If there was an annual subscription like I could put all my important stuff out there and I’d be happy to pay for that.

For students I can’t think why you wouldn’t use it. It would mean that you never lost your notes or programs, even if someone made off with your precious laptop.

Find out more at:

https://www.mesh.com/welcome/default.aspx

Making a Fool of Yourself the Rob Miles Way

Turns out to be surprisingly easy. Here is your simple 7 step guide:

1. Stand around talking after a lecture and forget that you are due in another lecture.
2. Remember, panic and run to the lecture room.
3. Note with surprise that your room is already occupied, and that a bunch of students are stood outside not knowing what to do.
4. Assume that the there has been a timetabling error and apologise profusely to the students.
5. Ring the office, and ask if there has been a timetable clash.
6. Find out that you are in fact stood outside the wrong room sympathising with some students who you have never seen before, and that your class is in fact patiently waiting for you in the room across the corridor.
7. Apologise to everyone. Twice.

Oh well. At least the lecture went well in the end.

New Air Album Released

I’ve like Air ever since I heard their stuff on the soundtrack of Lost In Translation. They’ve got a new album out, Love 2, and it is jolly good.

Thank Heavens for Sanity Checks

Just before I drilled a hole in the ceiling to run a cable I did a quick sanity check to make sure that the room above was the one I though it was.

Turns out I was just about to drill a hole up into the bath…

Sometimes the Internet is less useful than you think

Rob (on mobile phone in car, having waited 20 minutes to find a parking space):”So, you haven’t got any left in stock, despite me having specifically reserved one online before coming up town?”

SalesPerson:”No. Sorry about that. You can have the one that has been out in front of the shop if you like…”

Rob: “No thanks.” (sound of muttering and reverse gear being engaged…)

First Lab

Spent the day in the First Year Programming Lab meeting up with our newest students.

What a great bunch.

Useful Computer Science Links

These are the links that I mentioned at my Computer Science introductory lecture.

Departmental Student SharePoint site:

http://intra.net.dcs.hull.ac.uk/student

08101 Module Site

http://intra.net.dcs.hull.ac.uk/student/modules/08101/default.aspx

08128 Module Site

http://intra.net.dcs.hull.ac.uk/student/modules/08128/default.aspx

Departmental Forums

http://intra.net.dcs.hull.ac.uk/student

eBridge

http://ebridge.hull.ac.uk/

Note: You will need to log into these. If the login doesn’t work try putting adir\ in front of your user ID.

Twitter

http://twitter.com/HullCompSci

Yellow Book

http://www.csharpcourse.com/

FreeSide

http://freeside.co.uk/

Hull ComSoc

http://www.hullcomsoc.org.uk/

Girl Geek Dinners

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=44205850218&ref=share

Rob Miles blog

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Girl Geek Dinners at Hull

Girl Geek Dinners started in London some time back. The idea is to give girls who are interested in technology an occasion where they can get together and chat about life, the universe and everything.

The idea has now spread all over the world. We even have them in Hull now. The department is sponsoring the next one which will be in mid-October. If you want to find out more, there is a Facebook group “Hull Girl Geek Dinners” which you can join. If you are at Hull you should also keep an eye out for the posters that will be going up soon.

HullCompSci Twitter Account

For any students at Hull who are interested in keeping up with what we are doing in the department we now have a Twitter feed. Keep up to date with the department at:

http://twitter.com/HullCompSci

Start of Semester

Everyone seems to have come back to Hull, which is nice. We have even had quite good weather today, which makes the whole thing even more pleasant. The corridor has been full of queues as people wait to register.

Being a new student seems to be a succession of standing in a queue to get a piece of paper that tells you to go to another queue and so on. As you go you accumulate lots of more bits of paper until at the end of the day you have a whole bag full. Then you sit through sessions where people tell you stuff that seems important but you probably aren’t taking in because you are concerned about being in the right place now and getting to the right place for the next session. And so on.

Don’t worry. It will all come right in the end.

Crazy Joke Book

While I was tidying up the bookcase I came across this little volume, that I bought a very long time ago:

Fantastic. Just the thing for the occasional blog post. My current favourite is:

WOMAN IN GREENGROCER’S: One pound of mixed nuts and not too many coconuts, please.

Fingerprint Removal for Beginners

I was doing some vacuuming today, as you do. The machine sucked up a couple of ball bearings (no idea where they came from) and proceeded to rattle like mad.

As an engineer, I knew how to fix this. I removed the little cover over the pipe and turned the vacuum upside down so that the bearings would fall out.Unfortunately, while doing this I left the machine plugged in. The biggest design flaw with our Dyson is that it is very easy to catch the power button and start it off. Which is just what I did next, with my finger still stuck inside it.

Apparently my screams were quite impressive. Number one wife even heard me, and she was downstairs on the telephone at the time. She snapped instantly into action “Rob’s just made a really strange noise” she said to the caller, and continued with her conversation.

When I got my digit out the end of the finger was all shiny, just as if it had been polished by thousands of strokes from a rotary brush. Which is not surprising really. It was also very warm. After I held it under the cold tap for a while it started to return to something like normal size and colour, and I think that no real damage has been done. I can still play the piano as badly as before I’m sure, and typing speeds seem unaffected.

The biggest worry is that it is one of the fingers that they check at US airports before letting you into the country. I wonder what they do if they discover that one of your fingers no longer has a print…

Last Day of Freedom

Today is the last day of freedom before the students all arrive. We have a large cohort this year, which is great. I’m presently polishing up all my presentations and working on my jokes.

Be afraid people, be very afraid…

I know what a “finial” is

You definitely learn things when you are decorating. I now know what a “finial” is.  It is that posh bit on the end of a curtain pole.

Not worth much in Scrabble, and really hard to work into everyday conversation (and I have tried).

Updated Yellow Book

I’ve updated the C# Yellow Book ready for the next academic session. The changes are minor, just fixes to mistakes that have bee pointed out over the last year. You can download the new copy from here:

http://www.csharpcourse.com/

Autumn Trees

Some nice looking trees this morning

Getting Set for University

This time next week the university here will be a different place. At the moment the place is quite busy with people feverishly finishing all the building work we have been having done. Next week the place will be packed with students, new and old. And just about everyone will be bringing a computer with them. Here are some tips that you might find useful:

1. Make sure that you have all your updates installed on your system. It doesn’t matter whether it is a Windows PC, a Mac or a Linux netbook. Find out how to check for updates and get everything up to date. At some point you will want to connect your machine up to a campus network of some kind, and if you don’t have all the latest security patches you may be vulnerable to infection.
2. Do something about viruses. At the very least make sure that your Windows PC has Windows Defender installed and running, and that the databases are up to date. If you want to install an anti-virus program don’t feel obliged to spend a lot of money, the AVG free anti-virus program is good and will cost you nothing. Get it from http://free.avg.com/. Please don’t spend huge amounts on some of the more expensive ones. The benefits are dubious and they also have annual renewal charges too.
3. Take a backup of your machine before you come, and leave it somewhere safe (perhaps even at home). Find out how to use the backup software on your machine and take a copy of everything. Use one of these cheap external hard disks that you can pick up for around 35 pounds or so from places like http://www.ebuyer.com/ or Staples, or even Tesco. That way if it all goes horribly wrong when you get to university you can recover your precious music, videos and other stuff. Once you have the backup habit, take one every month or so.
4. Don’t spend huge amounts on other software before you come. Most universities (including ours at Hull) have deals that get you some programs that you need cheaply.  The same goes for books. In the computing field they are rather expensive, and you don’t want to pay a lot for a book and then find out that it is only used for a small part of the course. You can check the books out in the library, and you might also find that there is a second hand book sale on your campus where you can pick up the required volumes from other students quite quickly. You might also want to form a little cartel with fellow students to share books between each other and spread the expense (this is also neat because it can also give you a ready made study group).
5. Get a usb memory stick (at Hull we give them out free to first year students when they arrive). Keep backups of all your work on it. You can also use it to take files into the university to work on. You will get some filespace on the university network, but it will not be an enormous amount, and having your files always with you is useful. Put a file on the drive with your contact details (just your name and phone number) so that if you lose the drive people can find out who to return it to.
6. Get some free on line storage. I like Windows Live Skydrive: http://skydrive.live.com/. This gives you 25 GBytes of space which you can access from anywhere on the web via a browser. The major limitation is that files can’t be more than 50M in size, but this is a perfect place to lob all those important essays and program source files. You’ll need a Windows Live account to use this and the uploading and downloading of files is all via browser which is a bit of a pain but there is a tool called Gladinet: http://www.gladinet.com/ that is supposed make this storage available to your applications although I’ve not used it. You can also use Skydrive to make your files available to other people. The access is controlled via their Windows Live Accounts and you can just email them a link to the download location or folder you want them to have access too. If you have more than one computer and you want to make sure that files are up to date on all of them you can use Windows Live Mesh for that: http://www.mesh.com/. Mesh gives you another 5G of free online storage and you can even synchronise files to Windows Mobile devices.  Anyone who just stores their important files on their laptop hard disk is an idiot. These services are free and mean that you can get at your files from anywhere, and you will not lose them.  If you want even more online space take a look at DropBox at http://www.getdropbox.com/.
7. Make sure you have insurance for all your nice toys before you set off to university. Don’t plan to sort it out when you arrive. It would be terrible if they got stolen or damaged before they were insured. Take a look at cover from student specialists like Endsleigh: http://www.endsleigh.co.uk/student-possessions.html (if anyone knows any cheaper deals feel free to let me know and I’ll update this post)
8. And finally, don’t forget to bring all the mains leads and power supplies for your toys…..

Painting with Radio 7

More painting today. But I had BBC Radio 7 on, which made it much more fun. A fantastic mix of comedy and drama which is the perfect accompaniment to this kind of job. Wonderful stuff.