Windows Phone MVP Pub Crawl

Fancy a drink?

Tonight Desiree took the Windows Phone MVPs out for a pub crawl. And it was superb. We went to three places in all, starting at the Elysian Brewery Company where we got started with some great food and drink.

After that we headed to Tavern Law, which had the most amazing “Speakeasy” vibe and more great food.

Finally it was on to Unicorn for more drinks, and, joy of joys, pinball and video game action.

Nothing improves a bar like a moose head. Or two.

Pinball Wizardry

Desiree’s sister, who came along as part of her birthday celebrations (and was rewarded with a Geek Chorus singing “Happy Birthday”), told me that Desiree has got venues planned for the next 5 MVP pub crawls. I’m sure she has, and I hope I get to go to some of them too. Splendid stuff.

Early Start with Donuts

Not a bad sky for an early morning. Almost worth getting up for..

Microsoft campus looking good

“An early start is fine as long as there are donuts.”

Travel Tips from Rob

As a much travelled person I feel that now I can reveal a couple of my top travel tips.

Don’t wear brand new clothes to travel

I had this theory that my nice new deep indigo jeans would be both comfortable and stylish and send a message of quiet sophistication to the others at the summit. They sent a message alright, but not the one I wanted. I’d forgotten that some brand new clothes are apt to shed their colours on the wearer. When I washed my hands on the plane I noticed that my fingers had acquired a grimy tinge that was quite hard to remove. At each handshake with people I subsequently met I noticed that they were recoiling slightly as they discovered that I seemed to be suffering from what can only be described as “Blue Hand Disease”. Oh well.

Make sure you know what the switches in your hotel room do

My hotel room is splendid. Everything I need, comfortable bed and nice and quiet once I’d turned off the enormous fan heater in the corner. The bathroom is interesting though. It has two light switches. One makes a light come on. The other turns on a massively powerful heating lamp and also starts the bathroom extractor fan which makes a most impressive roar. When you are wandering around in a jet-lagged stupor at three in the morning it is best that you know which is which. Otherwise you will flick a switch and then immediately think you are in the middle of an alien abduction, which is quite invigorating in its own way, but does make it hard to get back to sleep again.

Out and about in Seattle

Yes, they have painted the trees blue. No. I have no idea why…

After a sumptuous breakfast (thank you Siler Cloud Inn) I headed for the bus station and a ride into Seattle. The busses to Seattle travel through these amazing tunnels underneath the middle of the city and it has been my ambition to get some pictures of the drive through them. So I sat carefully at the front and took a whole bunch of blurred, unusable shots. Oh well. At least I have an excuse to try again some time.

The weather was a bit grey, but I managed to make my way to Pike Place market without getting rained on too much, which was nice. I bought a bunch of things at the comic book store there, had a browse around the craft stalls and generally had a really great time.

Nice Lights

Anyone for fish?

Flowers

After spending a good long time in Barnes and Noble looking at stuff and trying very hard not to buy anything, and then dropping in to the Japanese store I caught the bus back to Bellevue and wrote some exam questions. Well, a chap can’t have too much fun in one day.

After I’d written the questions I headed over to the MVP showcase, where 20 MVPs had been selected to show off what they have been up to. Lots of good stuff and a chance to meet up with folks I’ve not seen in ages. And there was beer.

I managed to stay up to 8:30 tonight, which I think is something of an achievement.

Flying Out to a Surface Pro

There is nothing quite like getting up at 3:30 am to catch a 6:20 am flight. Nothing. Still, the good news is that I am flying out to Seattle, one of my favourite places in all the world (another one is Cottingham, which is just as well really). First stop on the itinerary was Amsterdam, where I met up with Tom, Boss, Joost and a whole bunch of other MVPs who were all taking the same flight over to America. I wondered aloud if Microsoft actually had a rule about the maximum number of MVPs allowed to fly on one plane. If they do, we must have been close to the limit. The best bit of the flight for me was when the entertainment system on the plane rebooted, filling every video screen with a Linux penguin and boot sequence. The roar from the assembled passengers was quite impressive.

One of the benefits of being crammed into a window seat with no legroom is that you do get to take pictures of the view outside. The lady at the gate was very sorry that she couldn’t find me a seat with a bit more space. But I doubt she was as sorry as I was. Anyhoo, the flight was smooth and speedy and I got to watch some movies, which was nice.

This is a slightly more interesting view, once we had arrived. Richard and Steve from Black Marble were kind enough to give me a lift to the hotel (thanks guys). We went via a shopping mall, so we could dive head first into the American Experience as quickly as possible. Then it was back to the hotel. I unpacked then headed out for a walk.

The rain over here is proper rain. And they seem to have an inexhaustible supply of it. I went out for a walk in the stuff and managed to stay mostly dry. Note to self, buy an umbrella at some point.

The Microsoft Store in the Bellevue Mall was packed. I actually got to handle a Surface Pro, which was very interesting. Having completely convinced myself that I had no need of such a device I have discovered, having handled one, that I actually want one rather a lot. I was expecting something much heavier and thicker than the Surface RT, but it is actually rather svelte and doesn’t feel too bulky for a tablet to me. The screen is to die for (although perhaps not literally) and the whole thing works very well.

There were only two issues for me. Well three if you count the fact I really shouldn’t get one. Firstly they only had the smaller 64G devices in stock, and secondly the pen, while it works well and seems very responsive, feels cheap and flimsy to me. Having seen the lovely engineering that has gone into the Surface and the Touch Keyboard I was expecting the pen to be of a similar quality. Unfortunately it is more Bic Biro than Mont Blanc, which rather lets the side down.

The helpful girl in the Microsoft Store said they might be getting some of the larger Surface Pro devices in early next week. So I’ve got a day or so to talk myself into, or out of, buying one.

Then it was time for a quick McDonalds meal. I always have a Big Mac wherever I go, just to make sure that they taste the same worldwide. They do. After that I headed home and was in bed for 6:00 pm. My plan is 6 hours sleep, wake up, do some work, four more hours sleep and then off to Seattle for a wander round. On the way back to the hotel I, of course, took some more pictures.

The food in Maggiano’s is lovely.

I’ve always liked the idea of putting light in trees.

Hmmm. Imax. I wonder what’s on?

Packing for Seattle

Well, it’s that time of year again. Microsoft very kindly invite us out MVPs to Redmond for a chat, and I’m flying out tomorrow. So it is the usual two hours choosing and packing the gadgets and power supplies and around 90 seconds packing clothes and we’ll be all set to go. Really looking forward to meeting up with some folks I’ve not seen for a while.

Sugar Sugar Sweets

I’ve taken to going for a walk at lunchtime. Usually up and down Newland Ave, which is near the university. I walk past Sugar Sugar Sweets, and today I went in and bought some. If you’ve never had Pink Percy Pig chocolate sweets you haven’t lived.

And on Wednesday they do "three for the price of two”. Ace.

Assassins Creed for Windows Phone

Assassins Creed and Earthworm Jim were free for Windows Phone owners today. (I did tweet about it, perhaps you heard). They are kind of fun. I prefer Assassins Creed as there is a bit more going on, although as you can see above I’m not very good with the controls yet….

Farseer Physics in MonoGame

I really like MonoGame. I also like physics. Particularly the Farseer engine, which works very well with XNA and lets you make things bounce around very nicely. I’ve had some success putting Farseer on Windows Phone, so today I thought I’d see if I could get Farseer to work with MonoGame. So I opened up my venerable old Destruction Golf demo from ages ago and just copied across the Farseer library and the code.

And it worked. Pretty much first time. Took me fifteen minutes in total. Amazing. The only problem was with the sound effect that plays when the ball hits the house. This wouldn’t play for some reason. But everything else seemed to move very realistically. If you want to add a bit of physics to your XNA then it is well worth a look. It is the older version of Farseer, but I kind of prefer that.

You can find the sample code for MonoGame Windows 8 here. You can find my video presentation about how the code works here.

Update on 2013-02-14 08:48 by Rob

Thanks to SieNcE for pointing out that you can actually get the latest version of Farseer physics, which work with lots of other platforms, from here:

https://github.com/SiENcE/Farseer-Physics

Don’t Make the Recipe Static

Today it was time to talk about static class members in the first year programming course. I always have problems with static. If you are not careful you start thinking that static means “doesn’t change much”. This is reasonable in real life, but not in C# programming. In C# programming static means “always present, part of a class and not of an instance”. At this point I thought an example would serve well, so we started talking about contexts where static would make sense.

Consider that you are implementing a system for a fast food store. You have a class called “Dish” and the system stores an instance of Dish for each of the items in the menu. A Dish instance holds the list of ingredients for the dish, the sale price, and the name of the dish. For example, there might be a dish called “Chicken and Chips” which held two ingredients (chicken and chips) and a price value (perhaps four pounds 50 pence). I asked everyone for some suggestions for static class members for the Dish class. Someone suggested that recipe would be a good candidate for a static member.

Not so. The idea of a static member is one that exists as part of the class. Which means that recipe could only be static if every dish was cooked in the same way (i.e. the recipe exists once for the entire class). Each dish needs its own recipe, so this must be a non-static member of the Dish class. However some things, for example the maximum and minimum price of dishes, the maximum number of ingredients that a dish can have all make sense as static members of the Dish class.

Simon has a sign on his office wall, “Consider the context”. When trying to work out what makes sense as static and what doesn’t, this is very good advice. And a good starting point is that “a recipe should not be static”.

Voice Music Upgrade

The slightly upgraded (i.e. more of it works than before) version of Voice Music is now in the Windows Phone marketplace. It now has improved help and full random play.  If you already have a copy you will get an upgrade soon. If you have a Windows 8 device and fancy selecting your music by spoken commands (works a treat over Bluetooth) then you can find the program here.

Appalling Software

I have had countless updates to Adobe PDF Reader over the years (usually requiring a reboot to install what is essentially a document reader) and yet it still does this when it sees a large file. Prepared for what? We may never know.

Ugh.

Open Day and Procrastination

First audience of 2013 – hope you enjoyed it

We had our first department open day of the season today. Great fun. We were talking at lunch about my latest Windows Phone project, soon to be in Marketplace. The great thing about Windows Phone is that I can describe an idea at 12:30 and have it running in the phone at 1:00 pm (even if it is a rather silly idea). I think it is fair to say that the audience were mildly impressed by the gameplay, I’ll let you know when it is available in the Marketplace.

Platform Initiative at Grimsby

Mid-meeting

Today I went to the Grimsby Institute for the first time. We were having a Platform Initiative meeting, so Simon, Louis and I all boarded the Cube Express and headed over the Humber Bridge. It’s a great location. We had the meeting in a brand new building that even has an "atrium” in the middle. I didn’t embarrass myself by asking where the “btrium” was, but it was close….

Anyhoo, the meeting was really good, lots of constructive comments and plans for the future. Everyone was really pleased with how well Global GameJam Hull went (thanks to Tom and Simon) and they all want to have another one (and don’t worry, we will).

It is great working with these folks. It is like “pushing on an open door” in that everyone is keen to contribute and move things forward. We’ve got some great things we are going to be doing in the future. Can’t wait.

Latest Camera Test

My new camera has a “sweep panorama” mode. I thought I’d try it today, and it came up with this.

PEGI Game Ratings

If you’ve ever bought a video game from a shop then you will have already seen PEGI in action. This is the organisation that makes sure that you know what you are getting when you buy that copy of “Rabid Chainsaw Massacre III with Flame Thrower” for your six year old nephew (although with a title like that you should probably have a shrewd idea what you are getting, and it might not be a wise choice…)

PEGI implements a European wide ratings system for games which lets the buyer know what kind of content the game will have and also provides age ratings for purchasers. The big games publishers all use the PEGI ratings on their products and submit them for rating as part of the development process.

If you are making video games it is important to know how the ratings are applied. If you are making a kids game you might find it useful to have a PEGI rating, so that parents would be more inclined to buy it.

Today Ian and Gianni came over from PEGI to describe how the ratings process works and what you can do (and not do) to make sure that your content hits the audience you intended. It was a great talk with lots of “what would you do?” moments where the audience was invited to comment on the impact of game design choices. Good stuff.

Hull University on a Lumia 920

Take a look at the original sized image on Flickr. And then reflect that I took this with a phone camera.

Favourite Error Message of the Day

Now lets all give a round of applause the University Room Booking System….

Update on 2013-02-05 12:45 by Rob

I've been racking my brains as to why you would have a need for such a message. And I think I've found it.

Suppose that you were only allowed to book a particular number of rooms each year. And each time you cancelled a room booking it was taken off your tally for the year. One neat trick would be to cancel the bookings that you have made in the past to reduce your tally and become able to book more rooms than other folks who weren't quite as cunning as you....

If anyone has any better ideas I'd love to hear them.

Rather Useful Seminar on PEGI Game Ratings

We will be having the first in the Semester 2 series of Rather Useful Seminars on Wednesday 6th of February in the usual place (LTD in the Robert Blackburn Building) at the usual time (1:15 pm)

The subject will be of interest to anyone who is distributing creating games that they have made. PEGI (Pan European Game Information) will be here to talk about game ratings and how they are derived. If you are putting games out there for people to play then you should know what content fits into what rating category, and this session will show you how the process works.

3D Printing on Sunday

Peter is building a  3D printer.He fancies a Rostock configuration. He has been doing some design work using OpenScad. Today he brought some designs round and we had a go at printing them. Lessons learnt, rounded corners are hard work. The printer builds objects layer by layer and if the edges are curved it seemed to make it harder to just print the outer layers. Peter was able to rearrange the drawing really easily and we had a go at printing again. The output looks like it might prove the basis of a print head. The next thing to do is print some of the side struts and the carriages that go up and down the pillars.