My iPad Beater

A while back I got myself a Packard Bell Butterfly Touch laptop. It reminded me a bit of the Toshiba M200 I used to know and love, with a twisty screen that made it into a tablet or a notebook. I quite liked the machine and found it much more useful to carry round than any device whose name begins with i. A few weeks ago I popped a solid state drive in it (you can get the OCZ Agility 3 120G drives for less than 100 pounds now – excellent value) and loaded it up with Windows 8. Result = happiness. I’m in the process of getting used to Windows 8 (I keep starting up Internet Explorer rather than the Start button) but what I’ve got now is a really useful device with a battery that seems to go on for ever.

I took this machine to Singapore and, although it is a teensy bit underpowered to run Kinect programs, it did everything else I asked of it with aplomb. I did quite literally a whole day’s work at Schipol airport using the device. I really can get 10 hours of useful battery life out of it.  And it can boot faster than my iPad.

Windows 8 on the touch screen works very well, it seems to support the swiping gestures very well, and the fact that I can open it up and start typing into Word, or PowerPoint, or Visual Studio, is just wonderful. I even wrote my first Windows 8 application on the device while I was at the airport, along with my sessions for CampFire.

There are not many “twisty top” laptops out there at the moment, perhaps this will change when Windows 8 gets going. And while I was at CampFire I got a look at Shane’s really nice Samsung Series 7 Slate. But for now this is my weapon of choice for carrying around and doing stuff.

Singapore Rocks

Before I went to Singapore a few people said that I’d like it there. They were right. I’d go back tomorrow if I could. For a Brit it has a weird “Abroad without being abroad” kind of feel. The cars drive on proper side of the road. Lots of the streets have familiar, English sounding names. Even the mains sockets look the same. And yet, unlike the UK, there is a vibrancy about the place that is really rather nice.

They have lots (and I mean lots) of shopping malls. They have Prada and even Mont Blanc shops like other places have Starbucks. And they have Starbucks as well. I’d love to have had more time to take a bit more of a look around, most of what I saw was basically like a tidy, well run city anywhere in the world.

My advice; if you get the chance to go, just go. Even if it means a 30 hour journey.

Heading Home from Singapore

Bangkok airport, although it could really be any one of them.

Of the last five days I’ve spent three of them travelling. Today it was time to go home, which meant another day or so sitting in a metal tube. Kudos to KLM for moving me to a seat which I could actually fit into for the 12 hour flight from Bangkok…

On the way out I thought I’d play a game by posting pictures of departure lounges and getting folks to spot where in the world I was. Of course some of the sharper people out there just went straight for the GPS data that my phone puts in each image and told me, to the nearest foot or so, where I was when the picture was taken. Most impressive, if a bit scary….

Anyhoo, all the flights and connections were on time and worked, and I even got my luggage home too.

Back at work tomorrow.

Singapore Imagine Cup Finals

These are the winners, congratulations to the four team members from NYP-School of IT who are about to get covered in celebration bunting…

I was lucky enough to be invited to help judge the 2012 Singapore Imagine Cup Final presentations today. Yesterday a series of sessions had taken the teams down from 16 to 4 and today we had to pick the winner from these. For the teams in the room it must have been especially nerve wracking because the finalists were announced just before they had to present and had a scant 10 minutes to prepare for their session. Not that it showed.

Every team delivered a very professional result which brought home to me just how much the standard has improved in the competition. All the presentations were what I would call “world standard”, in that they were the equal of ones I have seen at the World Final level.

However, there was a standout winner and so congratulations to Eustace Zheng Xiangwen, Nur Nadiah Binte Zailani, Koh Kai Wei and Mong Xunheng (hope I got your names right) who made up Team AlphaWaves. Their system, the Dementia Assistance and Recall Engine (DARE) provides support to sufferers of one of the nastiest things that can happen to a person. I wish them the best of luck in the world finals in Australia later this year.

If you want to find out more about the competition and get some tips about preparation for the next rounds I’ll be hosting a Live Meeting on Wednesday 18th of April at 16:30 GMT.  You can sign up here for the meeting.

After the finals I had a quick look around Singapore and then we headed off for a really posh meal. Thanks for inviting me folks, it has been great. My only regret is that I’m in town for such a short time.

I’ve not bought many souvenirs, but that’s because I’m definitely coming back some day…

Campfire Fun and Games

A great audience to die in front of…

Did my keynote session today at Campfire. It was great fun, once I’d got over my nerves and lack of sleep.Pretty much everything worked as it should, apart from my “bomb proof” Kinect driver wrappers blowing up. Oh well. I said I’d put some resources up here for you to take a look at:

Slides and (mostly working) code from the presentations today - here
C# Yellow Book, Windows Phone Blue book and other free stuff - here
.NET Micro Framework embedded development - here
Gadgeteer embedded development -  here
Three Thing Game student madness – here
Windows Phone development - here
Dreamspark, free software for students - here
Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio – here
Kinect For Windows SDK – here

I think that is everything, if you remember something I forgot, let me know and I’ll add it. Once the presentations were over I went for a wander round the city. After some fun and games on the transit I managed to get all the way down to the bay. I took loads of pictures which I’ll play with properly when I get home. In the meantime here are just a couple.

Lovely

A boat on a building? And why not.

More tomorrow, I’m off to bed now…

Flying to Singapore–Day 2

A rather expensive sticker...

This was a bit nerve wracking. I was transferring planes in Jokarta (another airport that looks very like all the airports I’ve been to on this journey) and the chap at the desk asked if I’d paid my “airport transfer fee”. ‘No’ I said nervously, ‘How much is it?’. Turns out that the sticker above costs 150,000 rupees. This was seriously scary. I had visions of having to sell the house just so I could get onto a flight to Singapore. ‘How much is that in US dollars?’ I asked eventually. Turns out that it is 20, which I can just about raise without selling anything major. After that things went swimmingly. and I got to my room in the Fairmont Hotel in time to go straight to bed. Session starts at 10:30 tomorrow morning. Can’t wait.

Flying to Singapore–Day 1

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Heading off to Singapore today. Should arrive tomorrow. Had a rather nice sunset at the gate as we were waiting to board.

Campfire Packing

Spent the evening preparing for my trip to Singapore tomorrow to speak at Campfire. Really looking forward to it, in spite of the 29 hour journey to get there.

Time spent to decide which clothes to take and pack them:3 minutes

Time spent to decide which gadgets to take and pack them:: 2 hours and counting….

Windows Phone 7.1.1 Update

This has nothing to do with Windows Phone. It is the charming bird that wakes us up every morning by singing loudly at around 5:00am and then goes back to sleep. Which is more than we do…

If you are a Windows Phone developer you should install the Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 upgrade. This has been out a couple of weeks or so (and I really should have mentioned it earlier). It has some bug fixes, lets you target the new versions of the Windows Phone platform and, perhaps most importantly, it runs under Windows 8. I’m using it on my little portable machine for demos and stuff and it works a treat.

Take the Brain Loser

Having beaten number one son at his game yesterday, today I thought I’d take him on at one of my old games. Take the Brain. This is a game I got many, many, years ago. It is a bit like chess, but your  pieces (numbskulls and ninnies) can only move according to the arrows on the squares they occupy. Very tactical and strategic. Which is probably why I lost.

However, it brought home how useful it is to play games against your kids. If you win you feel good. If you lose you feel good that you have kids clever enough to beat you…

Mage Knight Winner

Over the last two evenings we’ve been playing Mage Knight, a game that number one son brought along. My goodness it’s complicated. Cards, markers, dice, crystals, hexagonal maps, little figures and towers. And a winner. Me. Not sure how I did it but I ended up with more fame than anyone else at the end, which is how they decide who wins. Great fun.

Good Friday at Sewerby Hall

Today, despite the poor weather and the even nastier forecast, we headed of to Sewerby Hall, another of my favourite places in all the world. It has the most amazing gardens, as you can see above. We had a great lunch and then took a walk along the cliff tops.

This picture is probably more in keeping with the weather, which by now had gone back to horrid grey mode after the promise of yesterday.

Merely Hornsea

Now, isn’t this a turn-up for the books? After yesterdays “grey-fest” today has dawned all bright and sunny. Of course, we’ve got to stay at home waiting for a package to be delivered, but once that arrived we headed out to Hornsea Mere, one of my favourite places in all the world. It has a place you can buy cups of tea, and a very old Pike stuck on the wall.

It also has a pitch and putt golf course where I once got a hole in one. Unfortunately it was the wrong hole though. The massive slice I played at hole number 1 somehow ended up in hole number 9. And there are ducks and geese and boats and stuff.

“You lookin’ at my bird?”

Cafe view

If you are lucky enough to be a student at Hull and you are at a loose end later this term, take a trip to the Mere. Just a great place.

A Floor in the Plan

Happy Holidays Rob…

Today could have gone one of two ways:

Good weather -> trip to the seaside
Bad weather –> replace the flooring in the porch

Ho hum, at least the stuff in question didn’t put up too much of a fight. And we do have quite a small porch.

Go see Pirates–Band of Misfits

I’m on holiday this week. So of course I went to see a movie. This one seems to have lots of names, in our listings it was called completely different things in different cinemas. Some of the titles mention scientists, some don’t. Still brilliant though.

Don’t waste time reading my notes on how good it is. Just go see it.

Software Updates at the Humber Bridge

All my own work

One thing which I’m very proud of is that I helped to write the software that manages the toll data from the Humber Bridge. Ian and I wrote the “Instation and Control Room Mimic” system which tracks the traffic over the bridge, makes sure that vehicles are registered correctly by the toll booth operators and totalises all the takings. We wrote the programs around 12 years ago which means that if my code was a child it would now be starting secondary school. Scary stuff. (and probably due for an update)

Some time ago the wonderful Verity Stob introduced me to Meir M "Manny" Lehman's Software Uncertainty Principle. Put simply, it states that at some point in the lifetime of a project certain assumptions that were baked into the solution when it was first built become wrong. Today that happened to me. One of the assumptions that I’d made in the design was that it would never be free to cross the bridge. The program was built to validate the price entry and reject any values which were less than or equal to zero. And then at the weekend the Humber Bridge Tolls were revised downwards (a very nice thing to happen) and it became free for a motorbike to cross the bridge. Thing is, my software didn’t allow for this. And so, for the last day or so the price of a motorbike crossing the bridge has been recorded as a single penny (although of course the money wasn’t collected)

Today I drove round to the Bridge Control Room and did a code update of the bridge software, effectively changing a >0 to a >=0 and now the prices can be set correctly.

April Fools Day–an apology

Last year I did an April Fools joke on the blog that worked rather well. This year I’ve come to the conclusion that recent events have made it completely impossible to come up with anything remotely stupid enough to be believable.

Rob at Campfire

I’ve just got back from Bulgaria and already I’m preparing for the next trip away. The week after next I’ll be heading for Singapore to give some sessions (and be part of the keynote) at Microsoft Campfire. I’ve had a look at the agenda and it looks really interesting. I’ll be doing some Windows Phone and some Kinect stuff (let’s see if we can lay ‘The Curse of the Kinect’ to rest once and for all) and there’s some Imagine Cup action too. Should be great fun.

If you are in the area you can sign up here.

Flying Back from Sofia

Flew back from Sofia today, everything was fine including the 7 hour stay at Schipol airport. The McDonalds there was serving “1955” burgers which are ace.

The Curse of Kinect

A very patient audience, thanks for putting up with me.

Just completed my Kinect session. Having done lots of tests I then got lots of problems during the demos. But everything worked in the end. For those who were there and wondering what the problem was, I think I’ve found the solution. Sometimes the sensor doesn’t wake up before my update thread tries to use it. Which doesn’t end well. I’ll be putting up a nice long blog post (and some useful code) to address this later.

After I’ve had a lie down..