TechEd 2009 Test Firing

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I’m doing a session at TechEd 2009 in Berlin:

DEV08-IS Writing Games and Exploring the Microsoft Zune HD in XNA 3.1

Wed 11/11 | 17:30-18:45 | Interactive Theatre 2 - Orange

I got that information off the TechEd schedule builder. So it must be true.

As part of the preparation I delivered my first pass of the session this afternoon at Hull to a bunch of students and staff who were nice enough to turn up. Thanks for coming along folks. I’ll put the slides and sample code up on my blog after TechEd.

Idiot

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Last week I wanted to take the Tosh tablet home to do some work preparing it for TechEd. But it wouldn’t come off the docking station I keep in my office. The lever kept jamming when I tried to remove the machine.

I cursed this for a while, concocted a theory where something inside had got stuck and put the whole thing, laptop, docking station and all, into a carrier bag and took it all home for repair. I reasoned that I just had to pop the back off, release the offending catch by hand and then all would be well.

The back of the docking station is held on by twelve screws. I undid ten of them and noticed that the back would not come off. So I laboriously refitted all ten and, as I was tightening the last screw, I noticed the remaining two. So I took all the screws out and then discovered that to get the back off the docking station you have to also undo some fittings on the top of it. Which was presently stuck underneath the laptop, which was still securely fixed on.

So I cursed some more and had a cup of tea. As I was taking a sip I noticed a little lever on the side of the docking station that I hadn’t seen before. It had a little padlock drawn next to it.  I moved the lever to the other setting, unlocking the tablet and allowing it to be easily removed.

Idiot.

Another Reality Fault

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I love Windows Media Center. I’ve used it for a couple of years, ever since I got rid of my Sky box.

A couple of weeks back the Freeview system was “upgraded”. I got loads of difficult to remove messages on the TV telling me that I would have to re-scan and find all the channels again. What the message didn’t say was that after the “upgrade” pretty much nothing would work any more. All my TV channels are broken apart from Five.

Now I quite like CSI and Flash Forward, but there are actually other things I fancy watching as well. But I can’t. Kind of ironic really. An upgrade to improve the reception of Five has broken everything else.

Of course all my other digital tellies work fine, it is only the Media PC that is broken. Initially put it down to the TV tuner cards I’m using as they are a bit old.  So I tried playing around a bit. I managed to get the Sony PlayTV that I normally use with to the PS3 to talk to the computer and that duly found all the channels. But it would only show me channel Five. Wah.

This is very, very strange. If it wasn’t for the fact that it was happening I would say it was impossible. There is some muttering on the interwebs about changes to multiplexes and signal strengths, but nobody has reported the same problem I’ve got.

I call this kind of thing a “Reality Fault”, in that everything is working fine, it is just that reality around it is broken. Oh well.  If I can find a cheap enough TV card I’ll put that in and rebuild everything I suppose.

Don’t you just love progress?

Not Intrepid

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We got a letter today. Someone had tried to deliver a package and failed because “our house is not on a road”. Well, I looked outside and the road was still there. True enough, a road near where we live is blocked at the moment while some new flood drains are installed, but we can still get in or out. And the letter managed to get here….

I rang the delivery company and told them that it is actually possible to get to where we live. I guess that as soon as they saw that the way the SatNav was pointing was blocked they must have given up.

What?

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I’m collecting stupid error messages. This is one of my favourites:

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Every time I see it (which is often because our eBridge system has some links to insecure pages in amongst its https) my brain does a double flip as to what it might mean. Show someone that message and ask them which of the buttons is the dangerous one and I’ll bet they’ll look at you as if you were from Mars. Why can’t they just say:

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The “Ultimate Steal” is Back

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If you are a UK student I have some very good news for you. The Ultimate Steal is back. This is a deal from Microsoft that puts its software into your hands at less than video game prices.  You can get Office Ultimate for 39 pounds and Windows 7 Home Premium for 30.

Well worth checking out.

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/education/studentoffer/default.aspx

Rob at TechEd 2009

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I’ve just found out that I’m giving a session at Microsoft TechEd 2009 in Berlin next next month. It is Breakout Session DEV08-IS: Writing Games and Exploring the Microsoft Zune HD in XNA 3.1 and it is in Interactive Theatre 2 – Orange on 11/11/2009 at 17:30-18:45. I’m really pleased about this. I’ve done TechEd sessions before and they are always great fun.

If you are in Berlin and attending TechEd 2009 I’d love to see you there. I’ve even come up with a new joke to use during the session, this alone should make it worth attending…

If you are are in Hull I’ll be “test flying” the session(and the joke) in the department before I go. The presentation will be in Lecture Theatre D in the Robert Blackburn Building at 2:15 pm on Wednesday 28th October.

Uncharted 2: Amongst Thieves video game review

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Uncharted 2 is a follow up to Uncharted: Drakes Fortune, a PS3 platformer in the Tomb Raider mould. It follows the fortunes of Nathan Drake in his ongoing quest to find ancient treasures and stuff like that.

It is very good. Perhaps one of the best looking games that I have seen for a long time. The attention to detail in in the graphics is astonishing. You find yourself wishing you could stop and take a proper look at the scenery as it whizzes past – which would be much easier if you weren’t on top of a moving train with heavies coming towards you and a helicopter gunship hovering above spraying you with lead. Actually, I didn’t play the game as I was watching number one son do all the hard work. I saw myself in more of a supervisory role, saying helpful things like “Try shooting at him” or “Did you really mean to do that?” at appropriate times.

The story is reasonably absorbing, involving the usual mix of temples, treasures and chaps with dodgy accents trying to kill you. And a love triangle. In this episode you are much more likely to have a computer powered character around with you who gives you a good lead on where to go and makes the whole thing more like a proper adventure. There is also a multi-player option (some of the levels look like they have been really designed with this in mind). I’ll be having a go at that once I’ve finished the game itself.

If you are new to Nathan Drake I’d advise that you pick up a copy of the first Uncharted second hand (you should be able to get it for around a tenner as it has been out for a while) and then, having really enjoyed that, you can move onto Uncharted 2 and have even more fun.

Dreamspark Goodies

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Andy pointed me at a feature of Expression Web that does a similar job to the Balsamiq user interface designer:

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Sketchflow_Overview.aspx

I had a quick play and you can make diagrams and design the navigation between the forms in your use interface. However, I found it a bit more complex to use than Balsamiq (although it has to be said that it does an awful lot more, and actually lets you construct the interfaces as well as play with them).

For students the interesting thing is that it is available for free from DreamSpark:

https://www.dreamspark.com

If you are a student on an academic course (and have an Athens username to prove it) then you can get hold of all kinds of goodies here, including operating systems and Visual Studio.  You can even get XNA Creators Club memberships so you can deploy your XNA programs to an Xbox 360. Well worth a look.

Team Fortress Game Afternoon

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Hull University, like most others, reserves Wednesday afternoon for games. So does our department now. Hull Com. Soc. is using one of our labs for Team Fortress 2 sessions every other week. I went along with the camera.

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The event was something of a success…

I would have liked to have had a go, but they had people queuing outside the door, waiting for their turn. Apparently there were also students taking part from off campus too, since we were using the Departmental Games Servers. The next one is in a couple of weeks, I’m going to try and get there early for some multi-player action.

Incidentally, if you are in Hull this weekend there is a FragFest organised for Saturday 17th at the Lawns. You can find out more at the Hull ComSoc web site.

Masters Welcome Party

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We had another party tonight to welcome our Masters level students. Same format, different quiz questions and some different winners.

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First prize

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Second prize (they actually got a higher score, but since the team was all staff and contained Warren, Head of Department, it wasn’t allowed to win.

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Third prize

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We had a wooden spoon (or plastic microphone) prize for the team who made it into last place.

Then it was on to Rock Band, Wii Sports and dance mats for the rest of the evening.

University Open Day

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We had our first University Open Day of the season today. We had a huge number of people turn up, which was great.

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I like a nice audience.

Thanks for coming along folks, I hope the day was useful to you. The links I mentioned are:

www.csharpcourse.com – you can get the C# Yellow Book from here

www.verysillygames.com – there are some XNA C# samples here

www.wherewouldyouthink.com – our admissions site