Free Windows Phone Developer Event Next Week

Coming to a cinema near you. Probably.

Hot on the heels of the Windows Phone 7 Live training that we did last week in Bellevue,  Andy and myself will be presenting at a Developer, Developer Developer (DDD) event in Manchester next week on Thursday 7th October (seems appropriate).

If you want to find out how to get started with Windows Phone then come along to the free day’s worth of training. I’ll be doing two sessions on XNA for Windows Phone. I’ll also be telling the jokes that I wasn’t able to use in the Live Broadcasts…. Should be fun.

You can sign up here.

Home at Last

I think I’d rather like to live near here though.

Made it home this lunchtime. Luggage got here in time for tea (not that we wanted to eat it).

The journey nearly managed a final twist though. On the way down to land the pilot said, in a rather whimsically Dutch way, “The cloud ceiling is only around 100 meters above the ground, so we might have problems seeing the runway. Anyhoo, we are going to have a go and see how we get on…”.

The alternative to landing at Hull was not actually piling into landscape at speed but an all expenses paid trip to Doncaster airport. I’ve used this line before – nice enough place but no great desire to go there just right now. Fortunately the ground came up to hit is in just the right way.

It wasn’t a fun trip, but it was considerably funner (if that is a word) thanks to the folks that I met up with along the way. With my terrible memory for names I’ve forgotten what you are all called, but I do remember that you were great company at a time when a few laughs was probably the best we could hope for. Hope you all got to your destinations OK.  And your luggage too.

Breakfast of Heroes

At least the breakfast at the Renton Clarion is colourful….

Flight into Danger (well, almost)

Not a bad place, just not where I want to be.

In a perfect world I’d be posting this from home, not the Renton Clarion Hotel  “Conveniently situated just minutes from Seattle Sea-Tac airport”. But there you are, and here I am.

Twenty minutes into our flight out we had a “passenger incident” which resulted in us returning to Seattle and the plane filling with burly men wearing Tasers and striking action poses. Most exiting. Less exciting was the “slow reveal” of the fact that we would not be flying out on Saturday, but on Sunday. I feel very sorry for the staff on the plane and those at the airport who had to deal with a nasty logistical problem not of their making. I feel even more sorry for anyone who fell asleep just after takeoff and then woke up fifteen minutes later thinking they’d just had the shortest and smoothest transatlantic flight ever.

Still, the system worked and I’m sitting here with my “Delta Airlines Meal Voucher” and wondering what kind of breakfast blowout you can get for six bucks.

We are taking off again at noon today. Then I get to enjoy a seven hour stopover in Schipol airport before catching my flight to Humberside a day late.  Good oh.

A Walk Round Bellevue

Balloons in the park.

It was a beautiful day today. Flight didn’t leave until late afternoon, so I had time for a wander around and breakfast in Bellevue old town. Anything in the US can be called old if it was built before 1975 apparently.  But it did look nice.

On the way  back to the hotel.

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.