How To Break a Cube (and how to mend it)

Nice to see the rev counter above zero…

I did something terrible to my Cube on Tuesday. At the time I never thought, but you never do, do you? I started it up to go to work, and then changed my mind about using the car and turned it off again within a minute or two. Which you should never, ever, do to an engine. Ever.

Of course, I paid for this mistake today. The Cube has a button start, which means that rather than turn a fuddy duddy old key, with the Cube I just press a button and the engine starts. I’ve often wondered what would happen if the engine didn’t start. Today I found out. It spins for around 15 seconds and then stops. So you press the button again and the same thing happens. Stupid me. I knew instantly what was wrong, but I was less sure how to fix it. The car was flooded. This means that the engine was full of petrol and not much air. So no combustion and no working engine.

To understand the problem you have to know what happens when a car engine is first started. To get things going it is best to put in lots, and I mean lots, of petrol. Older cars had a thing called “the choke” that did just that, blocking off the air supply and squirting extra fuel in. You had to pull the choke when the engine was cold otherwise it wouldn’t start. Once the engine had fired up you’d then push the choke back in as the engine got warmer and warmer. Of course modern cars don’t have any of this choke nonsense, they have a clever engine management system that pumps in lots of petrol when the engine is cold and then reduces this as it warms up. On Tuesday morning the engine was still in the middle of doing this when I turned it off, leaving the cylinders full of petrol. Wind forward to this morning and the engine wakes up, pumps in whole bunch more petrol hey presto, flooded. Wah.

In an old car the only thing you could do was close the choke and progressively floor the accelerator while the engine turned over to force lots of air into the engine and hopefully clear out the petrol. In a new car you don’t have this level of control because your pedal is just connected to the engine management system. Fortunately the makers of the Cube have thought of this, and they let you do the same kind of thing to fix it. So I eventually got the car going and drove to work. And all at six degrees below zero. And its been fine since because I haven’t been stupid since.

So, if you start a car in this weather, let it run for at least five minutes before you turn it off again. And if you flood it, i.e. it turns over but nothing is happening, then try pushing the accelerator down gradually as you turn the engine over.

Snow Show

Say what you like about the snowy weather, it does make for some nice photo opportunities. Although it also means I’m presently wearing two pairs of socks, two jumpers and a bright red nose.

Rather Useful Gamejam Briefing

As a way of preparing you for Global Gamejam Hull (you have signed up haven’t you) we’ve got an extra special Rather Useful Game Development Briefing next week.

• Louis Deane will be talking about Unity development.
• Simon Grey will be talking about making 3D spritesheets with dynamic lighting effects by using shaders
• Rob Miles will be talking.

(actually I’ll be talking about creating XNA games for Windows 8 using the Monogame framework)

The briefing session will be on the afternoon of Thursday 24th of January from 1:30pm to 3:30 in Lecture Theatre D, the home of the “Rather Useful” brand. You don’t have to sign up for GlobalGameJam in order to come along, but those who have signed up will be allowed to sit at the front.

Get Into Global Game Jam Hull

Global GameJam Hull is picking up speed. Registrations are coming in thick and fast but we still have room for more. We want to fill Hull Studio School to bursting with folks who are keen to make games and have fun. We were down at the venue making plans today and we’ve got most things sorted out, thanks to some sterling work from Tom, Simon and team. Networks have been tested and upgraded, venues selected and a fantastic poster designed (thanks for that Lewis, love the critic with the scary eyebrows). All we need now is you.  If you aren’t convinced that you need to take part I’ve jotted down fifty reasons why I think you should come along.

1. You will learn stuff.
2. You will make stuff.
3. You will meet interesting people.
4. Including me.
5. And Simon.
6. We will have professional game developers taking part.
7. And game publishers.
8. Taking part will give you something to talk about at job interviews.
9. And to put into your portfolio.
10. There will be Free Food.
11. And Drinks.
12. You might win a big prize.
13. Or a little one.
14. There will be toys to play with.
15. Including networked Xbox Gaming
16. You might get worldwide fame and recognition.
17. Or you might just get your next job.
18. It only costs five pounds to register.
19. You might get to play with crayons.
20. We will let you write on the walls. (at least some of them)
21. You can bring your friends with you.
22. You can make some new friends too.
23. You can forget completely about the outside world for 48 hours.
24. You might become a viral sensation because of your awesome turn on our live webstream.
25. You can make a board game if you like.
26. Or bring one along and play it.
27. You get to see what other people are up to in this area.
28. And maybe even start a company with them.
29. You get to take part in a worldwide event.
30. It will be nice and warm.
31. You can wear what you like (But please wear something).
32. You will get a shiny nametag to wear.
33. There will be movies to see.
34. And some breakout presentations.
35. You can even choose the subjects of the talks.
36. You might meet a childhood hero.
37. Or become one.
38. You can stay the whole 48 hours if you like.
39. Or you can sneak off home for a shower and a power nap.
40. You get to choose your pizza toping (But not too many anchovies, OK?)
41. We will have fizzy drinks and sweeties available (great at 4:00am).
42. You can bring your guitar if you like.
43. There will be nobody there playing the accordion. (Unless you like the accordion, in which case we will try to get someone in. Or your could bring yours at a pinch)
44. You can mention it on Facebook.
45. And maybe even blog about it.
46. And Tweet too.
47. The more people that come along, the more fun it will be.
48. TV on a Saturday night is rubbish now that Strictly has finished.
49. It might just change your life.
50. It is certainly a great way to fill 48 hours of it.

Actually, if you are serious about getting into game development I really think you should come along. When you go for a job, and you are sitting alone on your side of the big desk, they are going to ask you something like “What have you done with your life?”. You could easily spend half an hour talking about the fun you had at GlobalGameJamHull, the people you met, and that silly game you published as a result. As you say those things you will see the interviewers checking things off in their heads “Works well in a team – check”, “Likes making games – check”, “Not afraid to put their ideas out there – check”. And so on.

I can’t guarantee that going to GlobalGameJamHull will change your life. But I can guarantee that if you don’t go, you’ll miss out on the chance that it could.

Sign up at http://globalgamejamhull.com/

Printing LED Enclosures with Ultimaker

Spent some time today doing some 3D printing with the Ultimaker. And by some time I mean quite a while.

Nearly a six hour print, one of my longest so far

I’m making an enclosure for a set of Gadgeteer LED Matrix Modules from GHI. I want to combine four of them to make a 16x16 dot LED display. Once I’ve built it and got them working I’ll figure out what to do with them. I spent a while last week printing out version one of the enclosure. Rather stupidly, I made this exactly the right size, i.e. 120mm wide internally. I figured that since the units were 60mm in size each that would work fine. Not so. It made them just the right size to not fit. It is a testament to the Ultimaker printer that they would not fit either way because they were exactly the same size as the opening in the enclosure. Darn.

So it was out with FreeCad and away to design a new enclosure with an extra mm all round, so that I could actually get the units into it. I also added some support pillars that engage with the Gadgeteer boards behind each display. What I need now are some really slim nuts so that I can bolt the displays in place.

This is the finished print, complete with “sprue” that I’ll have to clean off. It took me ages to prise it off the blue tape. I think I need to adjust the platform a bit to make the top layer a bit smoother although, for this build, you don’t actually see this bit.

Here is the tray with the LED units fitted.

Batman 2: DC Super Heroes for PS Vita

… and you get a free Lex Luthor model too.

I really like my PS Vita. I’ll like it even more when the Pinball Arcade people get the Twilight Zone pinball table onto it. However, that will be for a future blog post. Today I picked up a copy of Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes. I’ve always liked the Lego series of games, with their great characterisations and polished gameplay, and this implementation is just as charming as earlier ones.

They make a point of mentioning that the characters now actually speak, which is nice enough, although I always liked the way that they managed to make gestures and sound effects work so well. The PS Vita experience is remarkably like that on the big screen, although each area seems a little bit smaller than the ones I remember from other games. The emphasis is on teamwork, of course, and your computer controlled buddy is just as keen to help as a real one would be. It looks like you can do two player cooperative mode too , which is how the game should really be played.

The puzzles are mildly taxing, and it is impossible to die or get stuck, something which at my age I find really attractive in a videogame. There is also the attraction of being able to play as Superman later on, which will be fun.

If you have  PS Vita and you like Lego games then you won’t feel short changed by this, I’m enjoying ploughing my way through the levels.

Fun Fact: The original physics routines in the first Lego games were written by a graduate from our game development course at Hull, who saved the company a fortune by removing the need for them to buy an expensive physics engine.

Nokia 920 Wireless Charging

Pad of Power – Pity it isn’t Yellow..

When I bought my Nokia Lumia 920 I was offered a free wireless charging pad. Today it arrived in the post. It is a slim, white, affair with a slightly beefier power supply than the one that came with the phone. You plug it in, place your Lumia on the pad and it charges the phone.

That’s it.

It just works. It takes a bit longer than wired connection and it does work if the phone is in the case, although in this case it seems to take slightly longer and the phone itself gets warm. This is either because there is greater inefficiency if the phone isn’t directly in contact with the charging base, or perhaps the case keeps in the normal charging heat you get when you charge a battery. Either way I rather like it. The only thing I’m less keen on is the charging light, which is an ultra-bright white led. If you have the charger on your beside table you had best point the light away from you as it is super bright in the dark. If you’re like me you’ll have dreams where you are being chased by people wielding powerful torches until you turn it round a bit.

I can now feel the tiniest pang of pity as I watch number one wife plug her iPhone in every night for charging. Nice enough phone, just not keeping up with the times.

Blogging the Rob Miles Way

I’ve been blogging now for over ten years. I’m still not sure why. The best explanation I can come up with is that I’m happier blogging than not. And having done it for so long it would seem silly to stop.

At one time I thought that writing a blog would make my life more interesting, in that I’d start doing interesting things just so I can blog about them. It hasn’t quite worked out that way, but blogging has provided a place where I can jot down things that happen so that I can go back and read them later. It has also vastly improved my writing style and speed, so that I can dash off an article like this in around 15 minutes (I’m timing myself). If you are thinking about starting blogging, here are a few tips from someone with a lot of experience, if nothing else.

Pay for your services: I get my hosting from Squarespace, store my pictures on Flickr and host my domain names at Free Parking. There are lots of free services out there, but I really like the way that if I have a problem I can talk to someone with a financial stake in making me happy again.

Get a domain name: I was lucky enough to be able to get the use of robmiles.com. You might find that your name has gone though. Not a problem. I’m a big fan of running words together to make domain names. For a while I had theresalotofitabout.com but I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Make a name that fits you and then register it. Your blog host will provide a way you can link that domain name to your site (Squarespace make this very easy) so that you don’t have an identity which is tied to any particular service provider.

Blog regularly: You don’t have to blog every day. Only an idiot would try to do that. Just make sure you have a regular heartbeat of a blog every now and then. If you start off blogging every day and then stop for a week it can feel like you have to do seven posts before you can put down that thought you just had. This makes a mountain between you and your next blog post that gets bigger every day. Just blog when you feel like it.

Blog for yourself: If you start blogging thinking that you are going to make a huge name for yourself and will get thousands of worldwide follows then think again. Unless you are very lucky, or very rude, you won’t get much attention. Your mum will read your blog, but there is no guarantee that anyone else will. I started blogging because I enjoyed the challenge, and because I wanted to improve my writing skills. I also thought it would be vaguely useful to be able to point people at my blog if they wanted to find out about things I’ve done. I also use the blog as a way of jotting down things that I’ve discovered and don’t want to have to discover again.

Don’t blog everything: There’s a lot of stuff in my life I don’t blog about. Don’t feel that because you have to blog every day you have to asset strip your private life just to get a post together.

Find a group: At Hull we have hullcompsciblogs.com which acts as an aggregator for blog posts. Posts from lots of our students are brought together there and shared. I have a habit of going on there and finding out what people are up to. Since my blog is on there this also means I have a “ready made” audience for my posts.

Syndicate: When I started blogging I found that people who wanted to comment on a blog post would just put their comment on my blog directly. That doesn’t happen now. Instead people will comment on Twitter or on Facebook. Look at using If This Then That to alert people to your posts, and make sure that you watch the feeds to catch comments and reactions. I use Windows Live Writer to create my posts, that has a plugin that will automatically send a tweet each time I make a blog post.

Track your Traffic: One nice thing about Squarespace is that it gives you very good traffic analysis. I also use Google Analytics to see what is happening on my site. This can be quite depressing, but it does provide a way you can find out if your audience is growing (it should do) and which of your posts were the biggest hits with readers.

Enjoy your blogging: I managed to find a voice, a style and a workflow that works for me. Every now and then I have the “Oh crikey, I have to do a blog post now” moment, but these are fairly few and far between. If blogging becomes a chore or a pain then you should either stop and do something else, perhaps a project website or get involved with a forum. Or write poetry, or a novel. Whatever you do I’d strongly advice keeping writing though, it is a very useful skill to have.

Learning and Teaching Conference

Some of the audience. There is another picture on Flickr, click through to find my photostream. The camera is going through a French Impressionist blurry phase at the moment (or I didn’t hold it still enough). Apologies for that.

Earlier this year I was gobsmacked to find that I had been given a “Inspiring Teacher Award” as part of the Student Led teaching awards at the university. Very nice. As a result I also got invited to do an “Oral Bite” (is there any other kind) about being inspiring at the University Annual Learning and Teaching Conference.

So on Monday I wrote five minutes worth of material and this lunchtime I got to strut my stuff. It went very well and they were a lovely audience, once I found my slide deck. There were also some great sessions on teaching, the future, and where the university is going with all this. It was really nice to meet up with a bunch of folks who teach quite different things, in different ways, but all with the focus on giving the students the best learning experience possible.

There were quite a few questions on blogging and stuff like that. Stay tuned for my post tomorrow, where I’ll be doing a blog post on how I make the publishing legend that is the Rob Miles blog…..

Kinect Augmented Reality Session

Some time last year I went down to London to give a talk about programming the Kinect sensor (and to gratuitously plug my Kinect Book) at an AR in Education Event organised by JISC.  The videos of the sessions have been available for a while and since this is my blog I thought I’d mention them….

Sunken Condos on Vinyl

Not my best record deck, but not bad for 22 year old plastic Panasonic device.

Donald Fagen, half of Steely Dan, has recently released a new album. Since he is the guy that made “The Nightfly”, one of my all time favourite records, I thought I’d celebrate by buying a version on vinyl. It arrived today. A three sided album. The fourth side really is just shiny plastic. I grabbed my little record deck back from Mike’s office, where it has been languishing for a while, took it home and fired it up.

It sounds great. Very much in the same style as later Steely Dan stuff, which is not terribly surprising I suppose. If you like complicated, laid back, jazzy sounds then you’ll like it. Not sure if It sounds better or worse than the CD version to be honest, but it really does sound good. I’m terribly impressed by the way that we managed to get such amazing sound quality from a plastic disk with a wavy line pressed into it.

When you consider the complicated processing power that is used to move music around today, it seems incredible that my stereo reel to reel (which I must get down from the loft some day) made do with 18 transistors. And my first amplifier didn’t have many more.

I’m not sure that I want to go back to the day when skipping tracks meant waving a needle around just above some very easily scratched plastic, and where every twenty minutes you had to get up and change the record, but just this once I reckon it is worth it.

Fun with Dancing on Ice

I was watching “Dancing On Ice” tonight (or at least it was on in the kitchen when we were having tea). I had a great idea. They could give the program a whole new feel by adding a different prefix to the last word each week:

• “Dancing on Rice” – dancing and cooking. Contestants slide around on a bed of rice while preparing a nice chilli con carne to go with it.
• “Dancing on Mice” – not real mice, of course, but computer ones. Contestants have computer mice fitted to their feet and must navigate a Word document and correct spelling errors whilst executing a triple axle (whatever that is).
• “Dancing on Price” – the contestants must find the cheapest ice rink in the country and then dance there using skates they’ve made themselves from trainers and old breadknives held together with second hand gaffer tape.
• “Dancing on Lice” – ugh. An “I’m a Celebrity” jungle feel where they must dance on horrible insects without the aid of hairnets. Extra marks for those moves where they spin round with their head inches above the floor.

Remember, you heard it here first.

Sticking Plugs on Saturday Night

There’s an old saying “Nothing like a sticking washbasin plug to improve a Saturday Night”.

It doesn’t get said very much though. And I don’t think it is true. Our sinks have these new fangled plugs. Rather than a plug they have a “push-down, push-up” design. Unfortunately, one of ours decided to get stuck down tonight. So, rather than watch the bounteous entertainment that is Saturday night TV (irony alert) I was instead dismantling waste pipes and wondering just what was that icky slime that my hands were now covered with.

The good news is that by judicious use of the hammer (i.e. not hitting it that  hard) I managed to free off the offending item and it now works fine. The bad news is that while I was doing this I inflicted a tiny scratch (which only I can see) on the fitting which is going to bug me for a while. A home tip, if you have one of these kinds of plugs, it is best to push them up and down a few times each week, otherwise they’ll do what mine did…

Shockingly Funny

I got this link via Ginny this afternoon, and I’ve been chuckling ever since. The guy has masterful comic timing and the whole thing is just wonderful.

Sticking to the Surface

I don’t care that my most popular photo of late is a grey image that I made in Photoshop for a laugh, I’m still going to keep posting proper ones…

Well, I’ve had my Surface RT for quite a few weeks now and so I thought I’d write down what I think of it so far.

General usefulness: Very high. It has replaced my iPad as my browsing weapon of choice, principally because web sites seem to work better for me. Especially those which have nasty pull down menus that you can’t access via a touch screen. Because I have the touch cover plugged in I can just open them with no problem. I like being able to plug a memory key directly into the device and pull the files straight off it. And the Office/Skydrive/Printer combination (i.e. I can get documents off my Skydrive, edit them and then print them) is a wonderful thing. Great for presentations too, I’ve got the VGA output and that works a treat.

Battery Life: OK but not as great as the iPad. Having said that, it has never let me down. I just have to remember to charge it.

Fun to Own: Getting better. There aren’t as many apps as other platforms, but because the browser is more capable you can do more things on the web, for example BBC iPlayer. Since they added solid implementations of Solitaire and Mah Jong to the store it has got a lot better for me personally. There is now a really good image editor (Fhotoroom) and I don’t feel the lack of much. I’ve got tons of applications on the iPad that I’ve never actually used after the day I downloaded them.

Annoyances: The Mail client is very weak and deeply annoying to use. I really miss Outllook. I was upset to find that there is no Silverlight support. There seem to be more updates that I expected, and the application updater seems to get stuck every now and then. Having said that, every time I turn on my iPad I find that at least four or five applications need updates there too.

Surprises: I was gobsmaked to find that I can actually create and deploy applications on the Surface RT using Visual Studio. Nothing anywhere tells you that this is possible, I was convinced that the only way I could get code onto the device was to put an application in the Windows Store and then buy it. If you want to do this you can find out more here. The really nice thing is that once you have remote debugged an application it remains on the Surface RT for later use from the Start menu. When you install the remote debugging client on the Surface you have to give your developer id but after that it all just works, barring a bit of fun and games configuring remote debugging.

Conclusion: I’m pleased I bought a Surface RT. Having said that though, I’d love to get my hands on a Surface Pro, that could well be my dream computer.

Back to Work

An actual picture of the view outside my window first thing this morning.

How does the weather know when it is time to go back to work? It’s not that I don’t like my job, and it does get me out of the house, but today the weather seemed determined to make the process of getting up and out of the house as unpleasant as possible.

Or perhaps it is just that I got up an hour earlier than I’ve been doing for the last week or so.

Anyhoo, nice to be back at work really, and thanks to the folks at Brno University of Technology whose card has been languishing in my post at the office since well before Christmas.

Update on 2013-01-03 09:29 by Rob

My Grey picture has actually had more views than many of my other pictures on Flickr. Not sure what this says about my photography...

Bright New Year in Hull

Today was another of those strange occasions where it actually gets lighter in the house when you open the curtains. So we went for a walk around Hull Marina, which is looking very spry in the New Year sunshine.

This is a slightly processed image of the inside of the lock gates.

This is Princess Quay looking good.

..and this is where we had lunch.

Here’s hoping for another 364 days of sunshine in 2013.

Gloom is all about Fun

Another game we spent some time playing over the holidays was Gloom. This is a card game where you make bad things happen to bad people and get points for it. You take control of a thoroughly disreputable bunch and inflict pain, torment and ultimately death on them for fun and profit. You can also make nice things happen to your opponents, should you feel that way disposed.

The winner is the one who manages to make the most unhappy bunch of corpses in the cemetery. It probably doesn’t sound very nice, but it is great fun to play. Then after this we all got together to wish each other a Happy New Year.

And a very Happy New Year to all my readers.

Hornsea Mere

Today started off in a very strange manner. There was no water falling from the sky, and a strange golden disk had appeared above us shining brightly from a great height. It turned out that there was also a fifty mile an hour horizontal freezing wind, but we didn’t notice that until we arrived in Hornsea and tried to open the car doors.

Hornsea Mere is one of my favourite places to visit. There is a cafe which serves tea and buns. I wasn’t expecting that to be open though, but I did entertain hopes that we could at least get in and take a walk around.

It was open. I’ve never seen the water so high. All the jetties for the boats were completely submerged and the wind was whipping the water into quite a serious swell. There were lots of birds there who seemed pleased to see us particularly when they found we’d brought some bread to dish out. They were completely fearless. They were not just happy to take the food from your hand, they’d try to take your hand as well.

Afterwards we took a walk along the sea front, and lost some pennies in an arcade.

The beach was very quiet, although there were a few hardy souls taking to the sand.

Last Night on Earth

Got a whole bunch of family round for Christmas. And a bunch of board games to try out. Tonight we fired up Last Night on Earth. This is a zombie game with heroic players battling hordes of incoming zombies. Great fun. I particularly like the characterisations of each of the heroic players, which are drawn in true B-Movie style.

It is a really good game, even though we all got devoured by the walking dead…