New Years Damage

Another attempt for Humanclock. It snowed a bit last night. Use your powers of deduction to work out what time the picture was taken…

I’ve hurt my “mouseing” finger. The index finger of my right hand. The one I click with. I did it by removing some cable trunking covers. It is a rule (at least in my house) that the TV with the worst low signal performance is on the end of the longest aerial cable. This means that it can’t receive some channels, in particular the new “Quest” channel (38) which was showing a marathon of Mythbusters today. So we removed a bunch of wires in an attempt to find out where all the signal was going. The results were inconclusive, but I did carve a nice chunk out of the side of my finger, which counts as progress I suppose, but not necessarily in a desirable direction.

Update on 2010-01-04 09:10 by Rob

Both my pictures are now on Human Clock. Wahay!

Happy New Year’s Eve

Had a great time this evening. Amongst other things we had a go at Bohnanza.  This is a card based training game that is a bit like a cross between Happy Families and Pit. You collect and plant sets of bean seeds in fields in an attempt to harvest them and get the most gold coins. It has a lot of trading and negotiation, which was the bit I enjoyed the most.   We got so engrossed in playing that we nearly forgot to celebrate the New Year itself.

The card game was a gift from the folks at Black Marble, who have an eye for a good game it seems. Thanks folks.

I’d like to wish all my readers (gosh, this sounds like I have readers) a very happy new year and all the best for 2010 (which doesn’t sound like a year to me – more like an eye test result….)

Evil Inkjet Prices

I ran out of yellow ink today. I thought I’d been rather cunning by getting a printer with separate ink tanks for each colour, so that I don’t have to replace an entire expensive cartridge just because one colour runs out. Unfortunately it seems I’ve actually been a bit silly, in that the price of a single colour refill seems to be about the same as my old “expensive” all in one option. Ho hum.

The good news for me though is that I can get a complete set of compatible refills for much less than the cost of a single authentic one. Usually I try to get the proper ink, because this does seem to produce better printouts, but with a price difference like this I’m feeling that I would be daft to go full price.

Human Clock

The Human Clock project is a really neat idea.  The creator is taking pictures from all over the world which contain the time and then using them to make a clock from all the different images. You can submit your own images on their web site, and if the author approves you can get a tiny slice of sort-of immortality. I’ve just sent the picture above. I’ve no idea how busy the 3:10 pm slot is (you can find out how many photos they have for each time) but you never know…

Digital Fun

Since I’ve been on holiday for a while I’m starting to get the urge to actually do stuff and mend things. Today I thought I’d start small by sorting out the aerial wire to a TV that, since the digital TV signal was “upgraded”, fails to play half the channels it used to. I attempted to solve this by improving the signal a bit. This turns out to be a multi-step process:

1. Replace nearly working connection with disconnected wire. Discover that there is now no picture at all.
2. Connect input to disconnected wire. But there is still no picture.
3. Search for and install antenna amplifier that has been lying around for a while and insert into signal chain to provide much needed boost.
4. Find that there is still no picture.
5. Discover that output is now being sent down wrong wire.
6. Connect to right wire and note that picture returns and mostly works. But not as well as before we started.
7. Discover that antenna amplifier is not actually plugged in. Plug it all the way into the socket. Now the picture is watchable, and we are just about back to where we were six months ago.

While I was up in the loft I got down an old computer from way back, just to see if it still works. It does, and so we recorded some old music files from it. Some of them go back to 1991. This was a ground breaking machine at the time, and it does boot fast from its 80MB disk. Any ideas which machine?

Sale Hunting

Went out today to get some things in the sale. Note to self, if you need to use a pound coin to get a trolley to fetch stuff from the store it is best if you actually have such a coin with you. Otherwise you can’t get what you want.

Actually, I could have solved this problem quite easily, but I reasoned that if I bought anything I’d have to carry it home and fit it (we were in a DIY store) and so this worked out quite well. Did manage to get a 10 metre rope light for only 10 pounds though, which struck me as good value. No idea what I’ll use it for, but it looks nice even coiled up.

Back in Hull

Drove back to Hull today. Again the roads were very friendly and the journey was smooth.

Christmas Cheer

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.

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

Driving Off for Christmas

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

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…

Snow in Hull

We don’t get much snow in Hull, it is certainly very rare that it sticks around this long, and looks as good as this after three days or so.

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.

This year you have been watching…..

Battle Star Galactica Board Game Review

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

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

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.

Another night out

Went out for a meal tonight. Good food down at Fudge.

Bumper Christmas Wordsearch

If you fancy having a go at the Christmas Bash 2009 wordsearch, and find out what all the fuss was about last night, you can find the file here. I'm sorry, but there will be no prizes...

Xmas Bash

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

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

Mind you, there were some good prizes…

…some very intensive Team Fortress 2 sessions..

.. with some Lego Rock Band..

..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

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.

Lofty Ambitions

This is not where I bought the chipboard.

Most of our loft now has chipboard on the floor. I should have done this years ago before I, ahem, put my foot through the ceiling. (Dave next door came round and helped me sort it out – he was a bit late getting over to our house because it too him 20 minutes to stop laughing.)