Last day in the studio

They have this interesting, illuminated wall thing in the Microsoft reception area.

Today was the last day of recording. We got everything sorted out by lunch time and I caught a bus up to Seattle and did a bit of sight seeing. I really love this city, particularly Pike Place Market and the amazing Science Fiction store down there. And the coffee. And the views. And the people. And I’m flying back tomorrow. Wah.

No matter, went for one last meal out before packing.

This picture is for you, Jeff.

Telescoping Spoon

We spent the day today recording video material for the updated Windows Phone courses. Then we went out for a wander just before tea and happened upon a very posh camping store. This had everything you might want for the wilderness, and then some. Including a telescopic spoon.

Now, those of you who know me well have often heard me saying that the one thing I need to make my life complete is a telescoping spoon. I have this fear of someone looking me in the eye and saying “We’d like to take your spoon Rob, but there’s no way it will fit. If only it was telescopic.”

So, I bought one, and it works too. It goes from quite small to fairly small in one simple, sliding movement. And I can use it to stir my cocoa at night. Wonderful.

Slide Writing

We spent today updating the slide decks of our Windows 7 content in readiness for a couple of days of recording. The plan is to have all the Jump Start material bang up to date and compatible with the final release of the phone SDK last week.  The videos will be available soon.

When we had knocked things into shape we wandered down to Bellevue Mall and tea. I took my camera.

I could photograph this building all day.

Bellevue Nails

Jump Start Advanced Phone Training

Windows Phone SMEs (Subject Matter Experts). I wish I could put names to the faces, but if you are a Windows Phone developer you will have read material from at least one of these folks and used software they have written.

Today Andy and I did another day of Windows Live training. Hundreds of viewers on the other end of the line waiting to find out more about developing for the platform. And it was great fun. Andy covered the new Silverlight controls, Bing maps and performance. I did some XNA stuff and we had a couple of Expression Blend experts along to add even more value.

Then at the end we had the best bit (at least for me). A whole bunch of Windows Phone developers turned up to answer questions live for the last hour. Great questions, great answers and a good time afterwards, when the free beer turned up. Afterwards we went in search of a Best Buy store, and gadgets. On the way we passed a Nissan dealer….

A Mighty Cube

Didn’t actually buy anything, which is a first for me I think. Then we wandered back to the hotel.

All the material from yesterday was recorded, and will serve as a nice continuation of the existing content. Andy and I will be spending the rest of the week here in Bellevue re-recording the existing stuff and bringing it up to date.

Working in Hotel Rooms

One of the pictures on the wall seems almost appropriate.

They say that when J.K. Rowling wanted to get some writing done she would check into a hotel and work there, free from distraction. Apparently as a result of this the final Harry Potter book was nearly called “Harry Potter and the Room Service of Doom”. But I digress.

I’ve spent quite a while in my hotel room working over the last day or so. Usually at three in the morning. I’ve found that I can plug the hotel room TV into my laptop, leading to the rather impressive dual monitor setup you can see above. And I have got quite a lot done. At the moment we are putting the starting touches to the sessions we are doing tomorrow, at the Windows Phone  Jump Start. I’m also digging out some of my favourite jokes. Should be fun. You can sign up here.

Scary music from beyond the grave

Just writing some stuff about Windows Phone development and what happens when an application is removed from memory. Then my music player (on random play) came up with Track 11 of Nine Objects of Desire by Suzanne Vega.  Now, that’s what I call scary.

Jump Start to Bellevue

My first meal in America. Of course.

Jumped (well, walked actually) onto a plane today to head off to Seattle for the next set of Jump Start sessions. Andy and I will be doing some more live magic next week on Tuesday, when we are going to present a bunch of advanced Windows Phone topics. I’m doing a session on more advanced XNA, including how to  make your games “Marketplace Ready”. You can sign up here. As soon as I arrived I shot off to the mall to take a look round and on the way back I got well and truly drenched by some traditional Seattle rain. It is nice to be here again.

Playstation Move Fun and Games

Of course I got a Playstation Move. I shot up down on the way back from work and had a quick play with the system before packing for Seattle tomorrow.(It is very annoying to be going away just as I get a new toy. I’ve just found out that the Xbox Kinect is released when I’m away in Berlin at TechEd 2010 too. Oh well.)

The controllers themselves are very well made, and feel great in the hand. They use internal rechargeable batteries and you need to have a bunch of mini-usb cables to charge them all up. The ball on the end which lights up is all squidgy, which doesn’t affect the gameplay much, but does make it less painful if you happen to hit anyone with that bit. Each controller is supplied with a sturdy looking wrist strap which you are strongly advised to use.

I happened to already have a Playstation Eye webcam which I plugged in and then spent a while getting lined up correctly. First thing I noticed was that you need quite a big room to play this properly. They say you should stand around 8 feet from the screen, which might be a problem in some bedrooms.

Then I had a go at the table tennis game, which I regard as the benchmark application for this kind of technology. Having lined up camera I got started. It really is impressive. The bat on the screen matched exactly how I was holding the controller. I could twist my wrist and move forward and back and the bat followed me exactly. Better yet, the things I did when hitting the ball (applying top spin and back spin etc) translated exactly onto what happens in the game. I was actually able to leverage my existing table tennis skills and use them to beat one of the computer opponents. I can see myself spending a lot of time with this game. Given the amount of jumping about that I ended up doing  it might even be good for me.

Finally there was just time to have a quick go with the party game. This is a bunch of deeply silly mini-games which are quite engaging for a single player and would probably be a riot for a bunch of people. Again, the on screen rendition of whatever I was holding (my favourite was the mole whacking mallet) was exactly fitted into the picture of my hand on the screen.

Final impressions, very good. It has the controller abilities of the Wii hooked up to the greater rendering power of a PS3. It is a bit expensive though, to get a webcam, two controllers and a couple of games you are nudging up to the price of a complete Wii system. The games that are presently available are OK, but a bit slight. It will be really interesting when some of the more hard core games get the Playstation Move makeover.

Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Released

(the Windows Phone user is the one in the speedboat)

The final version of the Windows Phone developer tools have now been released. These are the ones that you can use to create applications for the Windows Phone Marketplace. They are also of interest to XNA developers because this SDK is also the one used to create XNA 4.0 games for Xbox and Windows PC. They are a free download from here. If you want an ISO image to use for an offline install of the SDK you can find that here.

Oh, and if you want to find out more you really should sign up for our advanced sessions on Windows Phone Development. Andy and I will be reprising our double act (and giving away another private jet) on Tuesday next week. You can sign up here.

Geek Power

I was in the Union Shop today and noticed that they were selling a Top Trumps style game called “Geek Power”. Fortunately the card at the top of the deck looks nothing like me. Nothing at all.

C# Fun with Pexforfun

pexforfun is fun. Especially if you like writing code. It gives you a mental workout, teaches you programming smarts and has a lovely test driven, puzzle powered approach based on “Code Duels”.

You are set the task of writing a program that behaves in the same way as some “mystery code”. You type your code into the browser (you get intellisense support and everything) and then hit the “Ask Pex!” button. Pex then compiles your program and runs it against the test cases for that mystery code. If your program works you get bragging rights and then move on to the next puzzle. If your program fails you get to see which tests failed, so that you can refine your code for next time.  You can log into the system so that you can track your progress through the puzzles or you can just turn up and have a go, like I did.

I’ve just done one puzzle and really enjoyed it. I think we will be using pex during our first year programming labs at Hull, it really is a nice way to sharpen your C# skills. Find out more here:

http://www.pexforfun.com/

Travels with a Kindle

I took my Kindle on holiday with me last week. Turned out to be a good decision. I loaded it up with a few books (and it also took a few PDF files, including the manual for the camera) and off we went. The Kindle I’ve got has the Whispernet feature, which means that it connects over the 3G phone network and fetches content that way. It also has an experimental web browser. While waiting for a train in Milan last week I fired it up, just to see what would happen.

It worked fine. It looked to me like I was getting free web access abroad (which is usually very expensive). I then bought a travel guide from the Amazon store and this downloaded fine as well. It looks like a Kindle gives you a way of surfing the web for free anywhere in europe, which is interesting. Then again, when the feature stops being experimental it might start being expensive.

As for the travel guide, what I’ve learnt is that for books that you just read straight through a Kindle is great. For things that you want to refer to and flip between pages, like a travel guide, not so great. It made a reasonable job of the pictures and some of the material was useful, but for pure ease of use a real book wins in this situation.

Xbox Game: Angry Robot Rampage

Tom has been busy writing a game over summer. Angry Robot Rampage is the result. He has a blog post all about it here and you can find it on Xbox indie games here.

Great stuff. Now Tom, I want a Windows Phone version…..

Update on 2010-09-13 15:46 by Rob

There is a fan page too:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Angry-Robot-Rampage/112880442102923?v=page_getting_started

Happy Anniversary Don and Jessie

Today we were invited to Don and Jessie’s fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration. I met up with a bunch of folks I hadn’t seen for a while and a good time was had by all. Thanks very much for inviting us.

Day 7: The Voyage Home

I’m going to miss this place. We’ve only been here a couple of days but I really want to come back. Today we caught a train, then a bus, then a plane and finally drove the rest of the way back home. Well worth it.

Day 6: What a difference a day makes

They were right about the view over the valley. It is amazing on the right day. As if to make amends for yesterday, today dawned bright and clear and we headed straight back up the railway to the top, caught the bus and then off again to the Faro lighthouse to see it properly. This is another monument to Volta. And you can climb it. I went all the way to the top and took the photograph above. It is a slightly stitched panorama which I’m rather pleased with.

This is the lighthouse, it looks much nicer when you can see it. We had another coffee in celebration, this time we sat outside and looked across the valley rather than cowering inside. Then we went back down and found ourselves a boat.

For around six euros you can get a “round trip” ticket which takes you to some of the nearer locations. The nice thing about this is that you can hop on and off the boat wherever you fancy. So off we went.

This is Torno, a village around half an hour on the boat from Como. I really envy the people who live here. We had a great lunch and then headed back. And we got to sit at the sharp end of the boat.

I’ve noticed that in Italy cameras are definitely used as fashion accessories. This year the trend is definitely for “big and black”. Anyone who was anyone had an enormous Canon or Nikon SLR round their neck or, more fashionably, grasped in one hand with the strap tied around their wrist.  I only had a small, shiny camera. Perhaps these will be fashion next year.

Day 5: Damp

Today we were bright and early. Even if the weather wasn’t. The forecast said there was a 90% chance of rain. I didn’t like those odds. If you go to Como you must (and I mean must) go up the funicular railway. The terminal was very close to our hotel and so we set off, bought return tickets (good value at less than 10 euros for both of us) and went up the mountain. The views from the top are awesome. I knew this because they had thoughtfully placed some pictures up there that showed the view when you could see it. For us it was nothing but cloud and rain.

So we took a bus along the top to the Faro lighthouse. At one point the bus stopped for us to get out and take pictures of the wonderful view that may, or may not, have been there.  We just sat inside steaming in our waterproofs and watching raindrops race down the outside of the windows. All I needed was a thermos of coffee and some warm cheese sandwiches and I would have been right back to my holidays as a child.

The good news was that we found an inviting little cafe at the top and had a quick drink before bussing back to the railway and down to ground level. The rest of the day centered around places we could go that had an indoors. Like for example Como Cathedral.

This has some lovely stained glass windows and tapestries. They also let you take photographs inside, which is nice. The next stop was the city museum, which was interesting, and then we went along to the Volta Temple, on the shores of the lake.

Allessandro Volta didn’t invent electricity, any more that Newton invented gravity. But he did explain how it worked and did a huge amount of work to make it useful. His work is commemorated in a temple in Como which contains some of his experimental batteries and other equipment.

After a good look round we headed back to our room to freshen up and then out for tea.

Como is a town at the end of a lake surrounded by hills. The weather can change in heartbeat. Just after I took the picture above it rained so much that we were trapped in a bar (a truly terrible experience) by some of the heaviest rain I’ve ever seen. And I’m from England. We managed to make our drinks last a couple of hours before the rain abated and we were able to head home. The only people we saw on the streets were selling umbrellas. 

Day 4 – Travelling to Como

Today it was time to change location. We got up bright and early and caught the train to Milan. There we changed onto another train and headed off to Como in the Italian Lakes. Como has two stations. One right next to our hotel, and the other one a cab ride away. Of course, trains from Milan Centrale (note the proper spelling with the e on the end) go to the distant station. For us that was the one with S.G. in the name. This stands for “San Giovanni” which might be either the name of a famous railway station builder or Italian for “Long way from Rob’s Hotel”. Either way, after our cab ride we ended up at the hotel.

My travel tip for trains in Italy is don’t use the ticket machines. They tend to confuse you about your route (for example arriving in one Milan station and then leaving from another) and then fail to accept your credit card.  But the folks on the ticket sales desk were unfailingly helpful and pleasant, and left me with a good feeling about where we were going.

We had a third floor room in our hotel of choice, the In Riva Al Lago.  As there was no lift this did mean a bit of a heft with the cases, but the view from our window was worth it.

Although the grey skies didn’t auger well. After unpacking (or more accurately - pushing our cases into a corner of the room) we went out for tea.

These folks to good grub at reasonable prices.

..and they have really cool sugar wrappers too.

Cafe culture by the lake. I could get used to this.

Day 3 – Arts and Crafts

Today was our second day in Venice. We had the air of seasoned travellers as we got our tickets from the correct place and even found a train that had seats available.  We took in a couple of galleries, because I have always wanted to acquire more culture. And it looked like it might rain.

The first was the Accademia. This has some stunning pictures in it. You have to keep reminding yourself that these were made by people slapping on coloured paint using brushes. Very impressive. Then we went on to the Peggy Guggenheim gallery for some more modern stuff.

This sculpture hadn’t been bolted down. I don’t think they are too worried about it moving in the wind.

View from the gallery over the the river

They had this neat sign on the wall. Inspired by all the artistry around me I bought a 5 euro plastic lens from the souvenir shop and held it in front of the camera.

Great fun

Artistic boats

And then, it was time to head back to the train and our tiny room for well earned sleep. We are heading for the Lakes tomorrow.

Day 2 – Introducing Venice

To get from Venice Mestre to Venice you have to take a 10 minute train ride. Don’t try and buy a ticket from the ticket machine in the station though. This just means that you get to wait in a queue for 20 minutes to get a chance to read a tiny notice on the machine that tells you these tickets are available from a little office with the words “Venice Tickets” written outside on a big sign. Which of course we hadn’t seen. Oh, and get your tickets validated before you get on the train,  or the ride might be more exciting than you really want.

Venice is like nothing on earth. Except Venice. Someone must have said “What if we had canals rather than roads?” and a bunch of other people must have gone along with this. The thing that I loved was the way that people actually live here. Going to work on a boat and treating all the fantastic architecture and stuff around them as part of the furniture.  Some bits are rather annoying though. There is nowhere to sit apart from at cafes. And when you do you are very aware that a clock has started ticking, and at some point a bill will have to be paid. It is expensive, but we managed to eat for reasonable prices.

What you get if you ask for “the fish”.

We didn’t go on a boat. It looked a bit expensive and I don’t believe in spending good money just to be made to feel queasy. 

You could buy silly hats. Although it wasn’t compulsory.  They also had a lot of masks.

Since I, perhaps rather surprisingly, don’t have much need for a mask I didn’t get one.

At the end of the day we staggered onto the train and rumbled back to our tiny room. I’m not sure if I’ve got much more culture, but I did take loads of photographs.