08101 Battleships Tutorial Podcast

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tyre tracks

Another day of stuck at home. Not that I’ve spent all my time here. I also managed to find time to walk through a snowstorm and then queue for 45 minutes in the Post Office. What joy.

Anyhoo, since it is looking unlikely that I’ll be able to make my tutorial tomorrow I’ve recorded another podcast for those on the 08101 module who are just getting started with the coding.

http://cid-a4ce6a659fd80c02.office.live.com/self.aspx/University%20Videos/08101%20Battleships%20Tutorial%201.wmv

I’ll have another one tomorrow for the next stage.

University Closed

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Hull Centre

Hull city centre. One of the many places I can’t get to today.

The university is closed today. Never known this before in all my years working at the place. We’ve closed early on occasion so that people can get home before the worst of the weather, but even in the floods a few years back the Hull campus stayed open.

But today it is shut. I was all togged up for a brisk walk in the snow to the office but the message came on the radio that there was no point.

My 12:15 lecture (which was going to be all about the magic of creating control behaviours in software) is now postponed and will now take place next week.

Weather permitting.

Gran Turismo 5 is Hard Work

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cube lights

Don’t cars have nice headlights these days..

I hesitate to say that I grew up playing Gran Turismo, because that would imply that I’ve actually grown up. But I do remember first playing it on the PS 1 and my amazement in how it looked and handled. And the cars had reflections. I’ve been through all the versions since then and even invested in a force feedback steering wheel that added a lot to the PS2 version.

So it was with some excitement that I fired up the PS3 version this weekend.  The intro video is very impressive and after watching that I was looking forward to going racing. And then it got really tricky – at least for me. GT 5 has a mode where you can pick a driver and then manage them through a racing season. In fact for me that seems to be the only way I can play some parts of the game. This was somewhat depressing. I didn’t get my steering wheel down from the loft just so that I could watch some other bloke drive round a track.

I took all the licence tests (I’d forgotten how boring these are) and still ended up watching Mr. Fernandez drive around in a car I’d just bought.  And the program kept asking me to sign in to the Playstation network even though I already was signed in. This sign-in kept failing, which was also a bit annoying.

In the end I switched to arcade mode and did some rally driving. The good news is that my old steering wheel works fine with the game. The bad news is that the whole thing seems just too much like hard work. I’m sure that for a dedicated petrol head who can obsess about cam belts and marvel at the accuracy of the car images and their handling models GT 5 is great news, but for me I ended up lobbing a copy of Split Second into the drive and driving in a completely unrealistic way through exploding landscapes. Much more fun.

Unstoppable Movie Review

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Bar lights

The new Windows Phone takes really good pictures. I guess it helps if you hold it straight though.

Tonight we went out to see “Unstoppable”. My first movie where the bad guy is a train. And no, “Starlight Express” does not count here. Neither does “Thomas the Tank Engine”. And anyway, Thomas was a “Really Useful Engine".  But I digress.

Unstoppable is a darned good film. At the start it says “Inspired by true events”.Indeed. Although I’m sure I would have seen something in the papers if what happened in the film did actually happen.

Real life not withstanding it is very well made, well acted and looks terrific. The kind of film that you need a big screen and loud sound for. Don’t let anything stop you seeing it.

Preston Foster Rides Again

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Cottingham Light

Last night we went out and stood in the rain while they turned the Cottingham Lights on then we went for a walk and I took some photographs. I’ll have some more later when I figure out how to use the new lens properly.

Tonight we went out for a beer for the first time in ages. We have not had a meeting of the “Preston Foster Appreciation Society” (long story) for quite a while.  Apparently they had heard we were coming, because the pub was shut. But that didn’t stop us. Where we live you are never more than a stone’s throw from a pub. Although the police turn up and tell you off if you start doing that. We not only managed to have a quorate meeting of the society, but Nick managed to work out which “reserve pub” we had switched to and join us as well.

Film Ideas

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Berlin Trees

I’ve been working on some film ideas:

The year is 2054. Brunettes have taken power. Anyone daring to be different is ruthlessly hunted down by the state. This is the story of a band of freedom fighters who, armed only with hair colouring and bleach, take a stand against oppression.  Working title: “Illegally Blonde”

In a world where outrageous has become the normal, this film tells the story of one man’s fight for the right to be boring. Working title: “Legally Bland”.

This hard hitting documentary tells the story of the only officially licenced, Ian Fleming approved 007 impersonator. Working title: “Legally Bond”.

Super Sleuth

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Mousetrap

Achieved one of my minor ambitions today. Got to see “The Mousetrap”. This is the longest running show in the world, and likely to stay that way looking at the size of the audience today. It is a good, honest, country house murder mystery that manages to be both completely of its time and also timeless. It is well worth seeing. And I’m not just saying that because I managed to guess “whodunnit”.

Microsoft Certified Career Conference

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image

Andy and I did our Windows Phone 60 Minute Rock Star show today. Andy is actually in a rock band and played a proper concert last night. I have a copy of Rock Band and like the Lego version best….

Anhoo, all went well – apart from my laptop freezing and falling off the network, forcing me to spend a nervous five minutes rebooting the thing and getting back into the Live Meeting. Fortunately this happened just at the point where Andy was showing off his Silverlight skills and I was able to drop back in on cue and show some live Cheese Lander action in XNA.

If you were along for the ride this morning, thanks for the perceptive questions at the end, I hope what we did was useful to you. I said I’d put some links in the blog and here they are:

To get started and download the development tools:

http://create.msdn.com

To get a copy of Cheese Lander, plus lots of other XNA examples:

https://static.squarespace.com/static/5019271be4b0807297e8f404/52c5bcfce4b0c4bcc9121347/52c5bd05e4b0c4bcc9123daa/1289470629837/Demos.zip