Christmas Cheer

/

4222707204

Had a great Christmas. Got my Chumby, which even as I write is cycling through a bunch of widgets. I’m going to have a go at writing some widgets of my own when I get back to Hull.

I also got some eggs with surprises in, some books, slippers and of course socks. But nice ones.  I hope you all got what you wanted as well.

4222703152

We went for a walk after lunch. Number one son took the best picture.

Driving Off for Christmas

/

4206555249

Today we drove the length of the country (or a substantial part of it) to meet up for our Christmas celebrations. The weather has been dodgy to say the least, and last night the radio waves were full of dire warnings about dangerous roads, sheet ice and fog. There was no mention of a plague of locusts, but they were forecasting pretty much everything else.

We set off anyway. The direction we were going was away from the bad stuff, and things are supposed to be warming up. And so it turned out. The drive was actually quite boring and we arrived (with all our presents) in good time.

Semi-Colons in Tweet War

/

4207304606

Never done this before, but Alfred2 made a post on Twitter that mentioned the way that Visual Basic programmers can eschew semi-colons that other languages seem to need to find the end of statements.

I responded that I quite like semi-colons, as they help me lay my programs out how I want. We then exchanged a couple more tweets about compiler design and there the matter rested. I think this was my first “Tweet War”

I quite like discussions like this. Of course there is no right answer in these situations (it is a bit like the the brace wars of way back where programmers debated the best way to lay out source code) but during the discourse you can pick up useful snippets of information and any experience in pitching arguments and defending your position is a good idea – as long as you approach it in the right frame of mind.

Years ago we had a debating society at the university and I ended up proposing the motion “Software Engineering is not Engineering”. I would have won the debate too, if I had taken the trouble to make sure that all my posse turned up – something my opponent had done first…

Christmas Meal Out

/

It was our staff Christmas “do” today. We had a really nice (and I mean really nice) meal at The Boar’s Nest in Hull. This being a gathering of Computer Scientists the conversation was of course highly cerebral, with the principle focus of discussions being on the role of the Software Engineer in modern society and how best to prepare ourselves for further changes that Information Technology will bring in the future.

Along with who had the biggest plate.

I was very proud of the way that I braved the slippery streets of Hull and walked both to and from the restaurant.

4207302564

This year you have been watching…..

Battle Star Galactica Board Game Review

/
p1

A tense moment in the game. Can you spot the Cylon sleeper agent?

Hmm. Two reviews in two posts.  I think I’m turning into Which magazine. Anyhoo, number one son and I spent the afternoon trying to get our heads around the Battlestar Galactica board game which I got as a Christmas present and seem to have opened early. But only so I could review it for you people of course.

The TV series is ace. From a fairly hack premise (robot slaves turn on their human masters) they created one of the best and most thoughtful dramas on telly. One thing that made the TV program so gripping was the way that any of the characters could in fact be a Cylon baddy; the robots being able to create versions of themselves that closely mimic humans. This twist both cuts down the cost of makeup and costumes and keeps the viewers on their toes as anyone could turn out nasty in the next episode.

The game has a tough act to follow and I reckon it makes it work. You don’t play to win as an individual, you play to make sure either the humans escape or the Cylons win. That means teamwork from the start, except of course for those players who are nominated as Cylon sleepers, who must do all they can to disrupt the human effort without being discovered.

The gameplay is pretty complicated, just like the TV show, with a lot of different kinds of crisis to deal with, battles to fight, Quorum card to play and all sorts of stuff. But by the end of a couple of hours we had figured out how the play works, and started to appreciate the cleverness of the design, which threads the events of episodes into a larger story arc. We are looking forward to having a proper go over the Christmas season.

Oh, and in our game William Adama was a Cylon sleeper and, not surprisingly, the humans lost.

Eye-Fi Review

/
p1

Every now and then you come across something that must be powered by magic (or perhaps pixies), since there is obviously no other way you could make it work. Such a thing is the Eye-Fi SD memory card that also contains a WiFi adapter and a microcontroller. What it does is rather nice; it lets you transfer your pictures directly from your memory card into your computer without the tedious business of either plugging the camera into the computer or removing the card and reading it.

The Eye-Fi card looks like an ordinary 4G SD memory card and to the camera that is just what it is. However, when new photographs are taken and stored the card will wake up and try to send them over WiFi to a computer running the receiving software. I found that it just worked. There is an installation phase you have to go through where you plug the card (via a reader that is included) into your computer and tell it the name of your network and any security keys but once you have done that the pictures just appear on you computer as though by magic. Or pixies.

I don’t think the WiFi range is quite as good as a “proper” adapter, but it worked fine around our house. You also have to be careful not to turn the camera off (or let the camera turn itself off) before the card has finished sending pictures, but apart from that it works a treat. You can set up multiple WiFi networks and you can also configure it to only transfer pictures that you have marked as protected, so that you can use the camera to select which pictures get sent. It worked fine in both cameras I tried. It will definitely have an effect on battery life, but I didn’t notice anything untoward when I was playing with it.

I got the cheapest version, at 49 pounds, which just lets me transfer pictures to a waiting computer. More advanced (and expensive) versions of the card have a feature which lets you upload your snaps directly to Flickr, Facebook, Picassa or other photo sharing sites. This should be possible with the cheaper one, if you pay a ten dollars a year subscription, but at the moment this only works if you are US or Canada based.  There is also an option to have your pictures Geotagged as you upload them. This uses the location of the WiFi access point to transfer them. For a moment I thought they had managed to shoehorn a GPS system into the card, now that would have been very impressive...

Of course the device isn’t really magic. You can even take a look inside if you want to see how it does its stuff. However, it is very useful. Proper, professional, cameras can be fitted with WiFi adapters, but these cost an awful lot of money. I’m very tempted to splash out on the professional version of the card which also lets you transfer raw files as well as jpegs from your camera, which would be very nice. Maybe next year. As far as the card itself is concerned, I strongly recommend it.

Imagine Cup Entries Powered by Uncle Joes Mint Balls

/
p2

We sent off our our Imagine Cup Software Development competition entries today. Last day of the submissions, just before the deadline. Well, this is a student competition…. We haven’t sent in any Game Development entries yet, mainly because the deadline isn’t until next year.

We had a meeting earlier this week to finalise the entries and get things sorted. As a motivational aid I brought along a tin of Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls. There are a fantastic mint powered confection that have a great flavour and a wonderful inconsistency. Some are just sweet, some have just a hint of mint and some have loads. Very nice, and you can now get them at local stores (previously we used to go to Whitby to buy them). We even noticed last week in London that they had them in Harvey Nichols food hall. Very posh.

Anyhoo, I’m not sure if we are going to make the UK finals again this year (the list of finalists comes out early next year)  but you never know.

Xmas Bash

/

Another Xmas Bash today. Pizza, pop, sweeties, Lego Rock Band, Buzz Quiz, Band Hero and Wii stuff.

4188819576

You set up all these attractions and all people want to do is the word search…

4188840816

4188843112418808383741888484484188851516

Mind you, there were some good prizes…

4188018499

…some very intensive Team Fortress 2 sessions..

4188857140

.. with some Lego Rock Band..

4188825366

..and sweeties.

Thanks to everyone who came. It was a real blast. There are some more pictures on Flick, click on any image to find your way to my account. If you have any pictures of your own tag them HullXmasBash2009.

Project Working

/

4179141391

We had some of our project presentations today. For the last few weeks teams of students have been working for a fussy and uncommunicative customer (me) making a rather complicated solution.

I didn’t get to see all the presentations, but it was very nice to see people standing up and describing their designs, along with how they had worked together to produce working solutions.  Well done folks.

Marking Minesweeper

/

4173607315

Spent pretty much all of today playing MineSweeper. Around 23 times. All of the first year get 15 minutes each to show off their programs and so Mike, Simon and myself were looking at how well they had done implementing this classic game.

It never ceases to amaze me how different people find their own way to write a program to solve the same problem. Some worse than mine, some better than mine. And just about all of them working.

In fact, some of them should make an appearance on Xbox Live at some point. They really were that good.

Hull Digital Event

/

4174364090

We had the first Hull Digital event at the university today. People found their way to the department OK, because (or perhaps in spite of) the arrows that I stuck on the wall using borrowed blu-tack.

Anyhoo, we had two speakers and both were excellent.

Andrew Chalkley, from Cake Solutions  showed just how powerful Ruby on Rails is. He did this by creating a complete blog site, with comments and user authentication, in around fifteen minutes. The fusion of language and tools that you get with this framework looks very powerful, and well worth a look I reckon.

Then Craig Albeck took to the floor. Craig works for the Hull based company behind Omerta (a text based Mafia game) and ThirteenOne (a free on-line video gaming magazine which actually features some stuff by me). In a very interesting talk Craig spoke of his experiences in the market place and how to get out there and build a brand of your own. 

Great stuff. I’m looking forward to the next event.

Minesweeper Fun and Games

/

4168884344

The first year course is busy working on the Minesweeper programming problem that is the second piece of assessed coursework. This is proving to be a nice problem to solve, with a good mix of simple behaviours to play the game itself, and some more complex parts for those who want to get their teeth into something more challenging.

The marking starts on Thursday, I’m looking forward to seeing what folks have come up with.