Rob Miles–Tastes Like Chicken
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Thanks for that Christophe…..
More Self Promotion
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While I was in Berlin last week I recorded an interview with some Microsoft Student Partners. You can find it here:
http://www.msstudentlounge.com/tabid/60/default.aspx?id=1920
Great fun, and some very perceptive questions.
TechEd 2010 Sessions Now Available
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If you want to re-live (or even live) the magic that was my TechEd 2010 sessions in Berlin last week you can find screencasts of them here:
http://www.msteched.com/Speakers/Rob-Miles
Thanks to Jeff for sending the link.
Microsoft Certified Career Conference
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Andy Wigley and I will be giving a Live session at the Microsoft Certified Career Conference later this week. This is a rolling, 24 hour, web based conference with a whole range of sessions that aim to help you get started in the business of computing. There are sessions on workplace survival, how to build the brand that is you and technical preparations for Microsoft MCP exams.
Andy and I are on at 10:15 on Friday 19th November UK time, talking about becoming a Windows Phone Rock Star. Should be fun. And we must remind you that no guitars will be harmed in the production of this session…
Students can get a discount on the registration fee of $55. If you register you can view the presentations on your desktop and chat with speakers and other delegates. Register by going here:
Kinect will make you fit. Or kill you.
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Managed to get some “quality” time with Kinect today. If by quality you mean “playing with it while the rest of the family looks on and laughs”.
Last Friday night I had a quick go with the Dance Central game, which did a very good job of tracking my body and telling me I wasn’t dancing right. This news actually came as no surprise, but the system was able to highlight in red precisely the bits of me that were in the wrong position, which was impressive. Although at one point my whole body lit up red…..
Today we fired up Kinect Sports and had a fun with Table Tennis, Bowling and Field Sports. Table Tennis is very impressive. Not quite as good as PlayStation Move at tracking the precise angle of the bat you are holding but getting everything else right. Playing without something in your hand feels strange at first, but soon you stop thinking about it and just get on with the gameplay which works a treat. Bowling is good too although my opinion of this might be coloured by the fact that I got a strike with my first ball. Maybe this is programmed in… Anyhoo I soon settled down to business as usual, with gutter balls and impossible spares appearing with disturbing regularity.
Field Sports nearly killed me. The Long Jump was particularly scary. Fortunately we have quite high ceilings in our house, although I was also worried about the ceiling in the room below collapsing when I landed. If you are looking for a fun way to keep fit I can strongly recommend it. Especially if you have high ceilings and concrete floors.
So, Kinect works. You can’t use it sitting down, but then again volleyball sat down is never going to be quite as much fun anyway. It does what it says on the tin, in that it seems to know where you are and what you are doing. If you wave your arms your mannequin on the screen waves too. If you throw the discuss into the ground, so does the chap on the screen.
Great fun.
In Praise of Long Focus Lenses
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Went up town today. Took a long lens with me. Quite pleased I did really.
We do seem to be having some nice weather at the moment.
Definitely not delayed
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Headed back today, after a very busy week. When I checked in at the airport the girl at the desk made a few phone calls and then assured me that my flight was not going to be delayed.
I took this as a warning sign.
Turns out the flight was delayed, but fortunately for me I had such a long wait for the next one that I arrived home at the proper time. Bad weather in Holland meant that the landing at Schipol, on the only runway they were using, was a bit more interesting than usual. Suffice it to say that the pilot earned his round of applause at the end.
When I got back we had fish and chips and then shot up town to pick up a Kinect. Had a very quick play. First impressions? It works, amazingly well.
TechEd 2010 Day 4
/Once I’d finished my talk and recovered I went for a wander around the exhibition. Of course I took the camera.
This makes the labs we have back at Hull look rather puny….
They had some Kinect systems out there. Looks like fun. With a bit of luck my system should be waiting for me back in Hull.
In the evening we went out for a meal at a posh restaurant. Thanks to Amina for the invite. Great company and good food.
Whizz Bang Phone Session
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The delegates as they arrived, thanks for being another great audience.
Did my final session of TechEd 2010 today. Fun was had, and everything worked including the demos. I’m going to put Cheese Lander on the Windows Phone Marketplace at the weekend. I just hope nobody beats me to it……
As usual, you can get the code behind everything that you saw from here.
You can find the Farseer Physics engine here:
http://farseerphysics.codeplex.com/
You can get all the Windows Phone stuff here:
Windows Phone Mixer
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Free food and drink? In a brewery? Sign me up…..
After the exertions of the day we went out to the Windows Phone Miser at a really nice little brewery. The place was just nicely full with Windows Phone Developers and folks and we sat around chatting, drinking the excellent cloudy light beer and eating free food, my favourite kind.
The guys at the bar insisted I took this picture.
Then we trundled back to the hotel on all the right trains. Great fun.
TechEd 2010 Day 3
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We finally got some good weather for photographs today. Even the traffic looks good….
…as does the conference centre.
I did my session at 12:00 today, loads of people turned up. I hope you all had a good time. I pointed my camera at the audience as usual…
This is just some of he multitude. Thank you all for coming. It was fun, especially the bit were my demo failed because I had commented one of the statements out……
As I promised, you can download all the demos from here.
If you want to get started you can find links to everything, including the JumpStart videos that Andy and I did, here:
I’m on again tomorrow morning at 9:00 am, bright and early, giving Phone XNA games plenty of Whizz and Bang. Should be fun.
Tech Ed 2010 Day 2
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I wonder if they’ll let me take it home…
When is a phone not a phone? When you get it brand new on Friday and forget to enable international roaming before you go to Berlin on Sunday. Although my shiny new phone does work very well on WiFi and since just about nobody knows my new number it is not as if I’m missing out on many calls.
Anyhoo, spent another day writing today, including 25 multiple choice questions for the second year Software Development course. Such lucky students…..
I also went along for the Tech Check for my sessions tomorrow and Thursday. These are where we plug everything together and see if it works. It all did, which bodes well for the future. The girl who manages one of the rooms said that she was really excited when she found out that one of the speakers was from Hull. Which was very nice, although I did wonder out loud whether she might not think about getting out a bit more. My firsts session is tomorrow at 12:00 in Hall 7.1b, London 2. It is all about Building Windows Phone Games. Should be fun.
TechEd 2010 Day 1
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Where all the cool kids are hanging out. And me.
Number one wife asked me how I was enjoying TechEd. The truth is I love these gigs. It only takes the smell of brand new carpet tiles to get me in the mood for some conference action. Although I seem to have spent most of today in the Speakers Lounge writing stuff.
I got up bright and early and wandered to the station to catch the train from the hotel to the conference centre. The carriage was full of delegates clutching their bags and so I knew I was headed in the right direction. The conference centre is huge. It was big last year, but it seems to have grown a couple of extra wings and a whole new set of routes around. I usually manage to get where I want to go, but I’ve never gone the same way there twice. I wandered into the Speakers Lounge again and met up with a few familiar faces and then settled down to work. Towards the end of the day I headed down to the conference floor and the busiest part, which seemed to be the bit around the Windows Phone stand. HTC were also there demonstrating their extensive range of phones and they all look very nice.
I’ve been lent an HTC HD7 for the demos in my sessions and I must admit to being pretty smitten with the device. It has a huge screen and shiny buttons, plus a really stylish kick stand that lets you stand it on the desk to watch videos. Great stuff. I’ve seen pretty much all the devices on sale now and I reckon there isn’t a bad one amongst them. Just different kinds of lovely.
TechEd 2010 Speaker Lounge in Berlin
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Made it to Berlin for TechEd 2010. They have these letters set up on the wall of the speaker lounge. Just crying out for anagrams. They’ve told me if I come up with any good ones they’ll let me put them up…
Tile Blindness
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These look nice…
Spent some of this morning looking a tiles. I’ve discovered that I can only look at tiles for a certain amount of time before they start to all look the same. Especially if they are all white. The really good news here is that this time I’m just going to choose them. Somebody else is going to stick them on the wall….
Got my own Windows Phone Today
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I must admit I was getting a bit worried. It looked as if I wasn’t going to get my shiny new hardware before going to Berlin next week. Then I got a call from James at the Orange store saying that my chosen device had actually arrived in stock. Apparently there has been quite a run on Windows 7 phones and the one I wanted, the Samsung Omnia 7, was the hardest one to get hold of. I wanted the Samsung mainly because of the lovely screen, and also I’ve always liked things with square corners. I’ve seen pretty much all the WP7 devices now and there isn’t a bad one amongst them, but I like the angular lines of the Samsung best.
The phone is lovely. At last I have phone that is as stylish and well made as an iPhone, but it is not an iPhone. And I much prefer the user interface too. I’ve been using developer versions of Windows Phone for a while and they are OK, but having one in a proper box, and with a proper (sigh) contract makes it that much more official I reckon. I’ve got a month or so left on my iPhone contract and so I’ll be carrying two phones around with me for a while, but I know which one I want to play with. And it runs Cheese Lander a treat…
Tech-Ed Good to Go
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Well, all my slide decks are ready and I’ve made twelve demos (all different) for my TechEd sessions next week. All I have to do now is make sure I have enough pairs of socks for a week away….
Makerbot Thing-o-Matic
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I would really (and I mean really) like one of these. It might be the last gadget I ever buy because, in theory, I could use it to make every other gadget I want for myself. And I could make rabbits as well.
Windows Phone 7 Devices
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Students keep coming by my office and showing me their new Windows Phone devices. A couple have the really nice HTC HP7, with the enormous screen, and today someone dropped by to show me a Samsung Omnia 7 which they were very proud of, and quite right too.
I’ve told them all they should have Marketplace accounts and should be making applications and games. Quite a few already are. When I get back from TechEd I think I’ll set aside an afternoon and help folks refine their programs and test them on real devices so that we can get a few more Hull student products out there. I’ve got some ideas for things that I’ll never have time to make myself, and so I think we’ll see if we can get some development action going on them too.
Cheap Ring Light
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Some time ago I bought a ring light for my camera. This puts a bunch of super bright LEDs around the lens for illumination with no shadows. Works very well and wasn’t that expensive. It is great for taking pictures of small items. I’ve just discovered that you can get something very similar for well under a fiver.
The Wilko Multi-purpose LED light is actually a very good light. We are going to use one to light up our summerhouse in these dark winter nights. However, it also has a hole in the middle where you can put a small camera lens, and so it also makes a rather good ring light. At less than a fiver it is well worth a look.
Worth tracking down, whether you are after lighting up underneath the stairs or taking interesting close-ups.
