Printing a Microsoft Band Stand

One of the nice things about having a 3D printer is that you can, er, print things with it. And so when I wanted a stand for my Microsoft Band I was able to find a design on Thingiverse and then make one.

This is actually the second attempt. The first printed fine but unfortunately because of "squeezage" (something that happens that makes holes smaller because of the way the printing takes place) the slot for the cable was far too tight. I scaled up the design by 1.15 and this has given me a lot more slack. Perhaps 1.12 or so would be perfect.

Anyhoo, I'm very pleased with the result, which means I can just drop the Band on the stand at night and have it freshly charged in the morning. The Band actually has a sleep tracking function, but I've not tried that yet.

Microsoft Band First Impressions

So last week, after a lot of pondering, I decided to take the plunge and get myself a Microsoft Band. I paid an excruciatingly large amount to get one specially imported and it arrived on Thursday. Then, today Microsoft go and announce that the bands are going on sale in the UK next month, at considerably less than I paid to get mine. Wah. Order yours here.

The good news is that I really like the Band. It just works. All day. In fact I reckon I could easily get a second day out of the device if I forget to charge it. I paired it with my Lovely Lumia 1520 and, apart from a hiccup that meant I had to set the region of the phone to US to get the app, I had the program working in no time.

It does pretty much everything that the Android wear devices I've been using do. I get notifications to my wrist, I can do voice searches using Cortana and it tracks my heart rate and activity quite handily. It's very light and pretty comfortable. It exerts a slight grip on my wrist, as if it is taking my pulse all the time, which is actually what it is doing I suppose.  I've not tried any of the scripted workouts that are available, but the companion app does a good job of presenting the data that is captured and I can also view it via the web.

I can preview incoming emails and texts and there is a "quick read" view that shows each word of a message in sequence on the screen. I can also create and send canned responses to calls and texts and even enter messages using a tiny keyboard (although this is bit fiddly).

Last night I took a quick look at the SDK and it looks easy to use. A program can get all the information from the band sensors into the phone including accelerometer, gyro, heart rate, skin temperature, UV levels and even skin resistance. And the app can push back tile designs and bind these to actions.

The Microsoft Band is not really a direct competitor to the Apple watch, but then again it is less than half the price. However, I think it does enough to make it worth considering. And it really does last all day.

Bye Bye Android - Hello Again Windows Phone

Yesterday I waved bye bye to my Android phone and officially ended my experiment with the platform. One of the Android wear watches went with it (I've still got a Moto 360 if anyone is interested). The good news is that it went to a very happy recipient who I know will get a lot out of it. The better news is that I'm back on Windows Phone. I've learned quite a lot in the few months I've been using an Android phone and an Android Wear watch.

1. It doesn't really matter that much which kind of phone you have. They all work well and they all do the fundamentals. When I moved to Android I had this vision of all the new and exciting apps that I could run now I had the most popular mobile platform. True, I did download a few of these and play with them a while. But then I went back to doing the same things I've always done, which my Lovely Lumia supported very well indeed.
2. Android has some great bits (the way that you can bind actions to events is really, really nice) and some really clunky bits. For me the most irritating aspect of the design was the way that huge chunks of the screen were given over to things that didn't add any value and just took up space. And the mail and calendar applications seemed much more confusing and harder to use than their Windows Phone counterparts. The address book and phone user interface I found fiddly too. These comments only mean that I had these issues, they don't mean that you will of course.
3. Having notifications on your wrist is very, very nice. You might get a bit tired of the email ones, but knowing that you aren't going to miss a phone call or a text is rather pleasing and occasionally really useful.
4. The battery life of the current crop of Android wear devices is nowhere near good enough. Much as I loved the user experience and screen of the Moto 360 watch the fact that it conked out at around 5:00 pm made it pretty much useless. You can blame me for having the "ambient" mode turned on to force the screen to hang around longer, but I like using a watch as a watch I can look at and get the time instantly. When I'm giving lectures I like to glance at my watch to see how much time I've got left, with the Moto I couldn't do this (even in ambient mode it struggled), and with the Sony watch the screen was a bit hard to use in this situation. I should have had a look at the LG watch which has a lower power screen I suppose, but I really didn't like the styling of that one.

So, I'm now back on my Lovely Lumia 1520, running the Denim update and coupled to a Microsoft Band. The Band tells the time all the time and at the end of 18 hours of heavy use has around 60% of the battery left. Splendid.

Red Nose Day MonoGame Video Now Online - with Tutu Action

"Because the world definitely needs a man dressed in a tutu explaining how to create video games....."

After a bit of time learning how to use Adobe Premiere again (I learn to use it every time I have to make a video - at six month intervals) I have now got the recording of the Red Nose Day lecture ready for the waiting world.

You can choose to regard it as either a "Poetic masterpiece combining rhyme and technical achievement in a single, flawless whole" or "Twenty minutes of my life I won't get back". Whatever.

But if you do get anything out of it, please throw some money my way by visiting here:

http://my.rednoseday.com/sponsor/robmiles

Three Thing Game Finals

Hardy survivors...

We had our Three Thing Game competition over this weekend. Just in case I wasn't busy enough writing poetry and whatnot. Anyhoo, great fun was had. A team of stalwart judges, including developers from Smashed Crab Studios, went through the final 17 teams and found us 6 finalists. As is the way of the competition, we had each team present their game at the aptly named finalist presentations. And here they are in no particular order.

Team: "I hope my friends don't bail on me"

Team "I hope my Friends don't bail on me", AKA Jason Powney, showed off the mayhem he had created from "chainsaw", "penguin" and "water". "Penguin Chainsaw Massacre" had tons of bloodthirsty action, with underwater mine hazards and even a sunken wreck. A very polished production.

Team: //TODO

Team //TODO, aka Daniel Masterson, had started of with "ASCII art", "sanctuary" and "error" and built, to our amazement, a 3D rendered graphical game displayed in a console window using text graphics. Something of an awesome technical achievement we reckoned. And the game looked fun to play too.

TEAM: aNOTHER BAD IDEA

Team "Another Bad Idea", aka Robert Chisholm and Adam Thornes had crafted a very neat top down fighting game from "Toilet Plunger", "Small Mammals" and, not surprisingly, "fighting". The game had frantic one on one action as the players acted out the eternal struggle between fox and rabbit using toilet plunger weapons.

Team: You Will Lose

Team "You will Lose", aka Joseph Edwards and Tomasz Kope,c had turned up the particle generators to the max and produced an atmospheric game based on "square", "random" and "shooter". Some nice coloured effects and randomly generated play areas made for good looking gameplay.

Team: One Musketeer

 Team "Four Musketeers" was down to one musketeer by Saturday lunchtime, but that didn't stop them producing a very neat four player shooter game from "Scrapper", "Wombat" and "Hull". The action was fast and smooth, with multiple weapons and you could even use the gun to jump. Can you spot how the thing "Hull" was used?

Team: Bad Computer Pun

Another technical tour-de-force from team "Bad Computer Pun, aka Nick Ross. We advise our students to use Three Thing Game as a place to test out hew game engines and Nick had certainly done that. Matlab is a serious mathematical package designed for serious mathematical stuff. Not for writing games. But the power of Three Thing Game compelled Nick to go against this and craft what is probably the first ever computer game written in Matlab. It is definitely the first ever Matlab game that involves "ostrich", "oasis" and "escape". And it looked pretty good too.

I didn't envy the judges their job as they went out to pick the winners. Thanks go to Warren Viant, Derek Wills, Lindsay West, Jon Purdy, David Parker and the Smashed Crab crew for giving up a Saturday afternoon to help out. Anyhoo, after much detailed discussion they come up with a first and second places, plus a technical achievement award.

First place went to "I hope my friends don't bail on me". The game was commended for the high quality of gameplay, completeness and the way it had stuck very well to the three things.

In second place we had"Another Bad Idea". Their game was singled out for the fun multi-player action and great looking graphics.

The award for Technical Achievement goes to //TODO. You just don't expect people to use shaders in ASCII art games. Awesome stuff.

I'm going to be chasing the teams for videos of their games and I'll update this post with more details when I get them.

Thanks to all the judges, to Lee Stott from Microsoft and Simon Jackson from MonoGame for dropping by and taking a look. And thanks to David Glover for making the Fenner Lab work so well and allowing us all in.

The next step for the teams is to get their game published. I'm going to be running some sessions about game publishing, keep an eye out for them.

Red Nose Day Lecture, with Tutu pictures

Well, there goes any level of credibility that I might once have had. The lecture in Rhyme went well, but at the start I was overcome with guilt about reneging on my Tutu promise for two years in a row. I hadn't met my, admittedly very ambitious target, but over 800 quid is not to be sniffed at. Thanks for your generosity folks.

Anyhoo, I took pity on the audience (is that the right way to put it) and tutuified myself as you can see on the right.

After that it was pretty much an anti-climax I guess. The audience were great and laughed at nearly all the jokes.

Eventually.

A video was taken and I'll have it onto the Internets as soon as I can. Because the world definitely needs a man in a tutu explaining how to create video games.

My favourite bit though was when I was doing a tutorial session this afternoon and someone said they were a bit upset to find that I'd changed back into my normal outfit. So I said, "You mean you want a tutu-tutorial?". I live for moments like those.....

Got a Microsoft Band

On the way down to London on Tuesday I had a weak moment, went onto eBay and bought one of these. It's arrived this afternoon.

I've paired it with my Lovely Lumia and so far it works a treat.  Very excited.  

Trains, Taxis and Open Days

Today we travelled back to Hull. Things were a bit time critical as it turned out. The train arrived in Hull around 50 minutes before I was due to give an open day talk. But thanks to the magic of taxis I got up to the university in time and it all went swimmingly. Sorry if I bored you with tales of who I'd been mixing with the night before.

The talk went great, thanks for being a lovely audience.

Rob at 10 Downing Street

Well, that was fun. Some time back I had some correspondence with the Red Nose Day folks about my efforts with the charity over the years. Turns out I've been doing lectures in rhyme for nigh on thirty years. Which is scary. (actually my plan is to keep on doing them until I get one right...)

Anyhoo, the result of this was an invite from Samantha Cameron, wife of the Prime Minister, to a reception at Number 10 Downing street. Along with a stern injunction not to make a fuss until after the event was over, for security reasons.

The good news is that now I can tell folks about it. The great news is that the event was amazing. We turned up with a mix of fund raisers and Red Nose Day partners and spent a while in this posh reception room drinking free drinks and eating free food.

Samantha Cameron gave a lovely speech about the work of the Red Nose Day folks and then David Walliams, of Little Britain and Channel Swimming fame, turned up and read his Comic Relief book "The Queens Orang-utan" . Finally there was a speech from the Comic Relief head honcho, who's name I've sadly forgotten. Apparently they expect the charity to break the one billion pounds raised barrier on Friday, which would be completely amazing.

Another  David, David Tennant, turned up to mingle. Sadly he moved on before I managed to have a chat or grab an autograph, but I did manage to get an autographed copy of David Walliam's book, which was wonderful. After that we had more mingling, drinks and nibbles. Turns out all the folk involved with Comic Relief are all splendid people. Who'd have thought?

Then, on the way out we all queued patiently to take our pictures on the hallowed threshold of the home of the Prime Minister. There was a strict embargo on the use of phones and cameras during the event, but it was nice to get one "I was there" image.

I do the lectures because they are an interesting challenge to write and great fun to deliver. Plus they bring in a bit of cash. It was really nice to be recognised for the work. The next lecture is on Friday 13th of March at 12:15 in the Robert Blackburn Building on the University of Hull campus.

You are welcome to come along. Free to get in, but expensive to get out....

If I hit my target, I'm wearing a tutu to deliver the lecture. You can sponsor me, and bring me one step closer to total embarrassment, here.

Red Nose Day Tags Now Available

If you have discovered that what is missing from your life is a small, 3D printed piece of plastic with a unique arrangement of disks and squares on it, in a variety of colours, then I have just the thing for you. A Red Nose Day tag.

They are on sale in aid of Red Nose Day from our Departmental Office in Computer Science. They look great on a key-ring or as novelty ear-rings. Every one is unique and we will be using them in the lecture on Friday for some fun and games. They only cost a pound each. Bargain.

And don't forget that you can sponsor me, and maybe get me into that tutu, here.

Three Thing Game Auction List

If you are looking for the things we are going to auction tomorrow, you can find them here. Enjoy.

Chainsaws, Bottle, Kitchen, sphere, Leonard Nimoy, Hot dates, Bouncing, random, Crew, Chasing, Circuit Diagrams, Small Mammal, Turret, Friendly Fire, Hack, Zombie, Water, The End, Cornflower Blue, Road, Penguins, Dancing, custard, Rail Grinding, Shifty, A sweater that once had sleeves but now does not., Toilet Plunger, Sanctuary, Chess, Parody, Ferrero Rocher, Ninja, Soaring, Skeletor, Base, The King, Castle, Collision, Spooky Skeletons, BiPolarBear, Why-Wolves, Giant Spiders, Errors, Soldier, Chivas, Three Things, fighting, Yeast, Crippling debt, cloak, Rollercoaster, Captain, evolution, growing, Touch, Laser, Fruit, chicken, Something, Euphoria, Scout Salute, Penguin, Fire, Screenshake, , Cardgame, Railway, 2D, Doge, Oasis, Scratch, Badgers, Triangles, Tycoon, Communism, A man standing on a chair yelling wildly about marsupials., Joke, War, snakes, Beards, Platform, Disembodied Beards that Kill People, Alchemical Horrors and Fun, monkey, Bubble, Space, Sea, Baddie, Flying, The Fanta Gang, Colour, Pinball, Cat girls, A Bitcoin-Based Serial Killer, Queue, Spanking, The One Ring, ManBearPig, LegendFace, Uncommented Code, Balls, Ostrich, Beer, cooking, Escape, boomerang, Gore, Nerd, lasers n stuff, Mechanical Gears, shooter, 404 Error, dragon, Skeletons, spacehopper, Road, Solar Eclipse, Bandit, Obama, cactus, pixel, Fox, Shark, Cars, Ice, Arcade, Sword, Cool, N/A, Dragons, Horror, Jam, square, Grey, Wildcard, Burger King, Power-ups, 400 Tiny Bears, ASCII art graphics, Chairs, Fish, nothing, Dog the Bounty Hunter, Pirate, Robot, Cue, log stove, pies, Magic, Black hole, Defense, copious amounts of food, XNA, Death, Hull, Scrapper, Wombat, Bees, Badminton, Clouds

Making a Three Thing Game Auction Timer Unversal App

We are having the Three Thing Game thing auction next Monday. This is always a giggle. Teams bid "Bank of Thingland" money for things that they want to add to their games. This year all the things are student suggestions. What could possibly go wrong?

Anyhoo, one problem with the auction is that we need to get through over 120 lots in around half an hour, so the auction rate has to be frenetic. Last year I thought I'd solved the problem by fixing the auction length at 15 seconds and creating a countdown timer. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, the result of this was that everyone sat waiting until the timer counted down and then tried to snipe with bids at the last minute.

So this time I'm trying something new. A random countdown timer that runs for between five and 15 seconds. Teams won't know when the auction is going to end, so they'd better get their bids in as soon as they can.

Of course this means I'll need a timer. I wrote one this evening and it took around half an hour. And for that I've got Windows Phone and Windows desktop versions.

These are the variables in the program. I use a DispatcherTimer to generate interrupts. I keep a flag to say whether or not the timer is ticking and I have a counter and a limit value which are used to manage the time outs.

This code sets up the timer. It ticks every second. The timer_Tick method is called each time the timer ticks. I also make a copy of the Foreground colour of the text so that I can put the timer digits back to the original colour when the timer is restarted.

This code sets the timer ticking. If the timer is already ticking the method returns straight away. Otherwise the timer is set up, the screen colour put back to normal, a random timeout between 5 and 15 seconds selected and the timer starts.

This is the third method. It runs each time the timer goes tick. If the timer is active we increment the counter and then display it. Next we check to see if we have hit our limit. If we have a sound effect is played and the counter text block is turned red. Then we stop the timer.

All this code is shared between the Windows Phone and Windows Desktop versions and it works a treat. Great stuff.

Seventy Degrees Print Bed for Perfect Prints

I've been doing a lot of 3D printing lately. For some reason I've got it into my head that it might be neat to sell little 3D tags as part of the Red Nose Day event. Which means I have to print them. Una, my lovely 3D printer has been misbehaving a bit of late, prints have not been adhering to the print bed very well and their undersides have been a bit rough.

Last night at C4DI I was talking to Robert and he reckoned the way to get perfect prints was to print with no adhesive on the bed and whack the printing bed temperature up to 70 degrees (which is actually rather hot for my tastes).

Anyhoo, I tried it today and it works a treat. The PLA sticks to the clean glass surface and then when everything cools down the prints just pop off the print bed with no problems. And each print has a lovely glassy smooth finish on the bottom.

I'm kind of annoyed that I didn't try this earlier. Why would I have a heated bed on the printer if I didn't actually make it properly warm? Anyhoo, I'm now turning out lovely tags. They'll be on sale next week.

Free Red Nose Day Games

If you have a Windows 8 or more PC, or a Windows Phone 7 or more phone, you can sample my wonderful Robs Red Nose Game.

• Windows Phone version here.
• Windows PC version here.

Once you've played it for a while you can then go and sponsor me here.

Pro tips for the game:

• When it asks you to touch all the noses, it means at the same time. I promise there won't ever be more noses than fingers.
• When it asks you to turn the nose upside down, turn your phone or tablet face down. According to Peter this works really well with docked Surface machines. Or something.
• It gets really hard in the later levels, when the noses start falling off the screen.

Rather Useful Seminar - What to do when you are stuck

The final slide....

Today David Grey and me gave a Rather Useful Seminar all about "what to do when you are stuck". I think everyone who was there got something out of it. You can find the slide deck here. If you want a quick summary, here goes:

• Remember that everyone gets stuck on things every now and then (including me). The important thing is what you do when you get stuck - it's all about coping strategies.
• The first step is owning the problem. You need to attack it. It will not solve itself, it will just end up owning you.
• One way to own problems is to write them down. Rather than sitting trying to count how many things you've got to do, write down a list and then you can start dealing with each in turn.
• Once you've written down the problem, decide whether you need to seek help. It is surprising how many students are shy of asking staff for help because they are concerned that we might think less of them, judge them for being stupid, or whatnot. We simply don't have time for this. What we want is as many students as possible to do really well. This is not because we might get paid a bonus. It's because that way we feel like we are doing something useful with our lives.
• When you ask for help, rather than saying "I've no idea what to do, help me!", as for help with a plan. This can be as simple as getting a copy of the assignment highlighting the terms you're having the most bother with and getting them explained. Or it can be identifying a couple of next steps and asking which is the best one.
• Break a problem down into chunks. Nobody does anything all at once. So you should find out what the intermediate steps are and then work on each in turn.
• Give yourself time to fail. Start on work as soon as you get it. That way you can afford to walk away from a problem for an afternoon and then go back and solve it. If you are under time pressure you can't do this.
• If you hit a problem coding, try to explain it to somebody else (or even the cat). If that doesn't work, take a break for a while and go back to it.
• And finally, do what it says on the slide at the top.

Coding Conundrums

We've been running the "Wrestling with Python" sessions again. Each Tuesday we get together with some local teachers and continue the process of getting up to speed with the Python language. We've reached the point where we are having a go at programming puzzles. And it is proving quite fun.

I've put the "Coding Conundrums" up on the Python site so anybody can have a go. You don't have to use Python, in fact I'm sending the same puzzles around our department to give folks some programming puzzles to get their teeth into. I reckon that programming is something that you have to work at continuously if you want to get (and stay) good at it. Bit like learning a musical instrument.

I'm also starting to properly like Python. Most of my Python programming takes place in the forbidding environment of the FreeCad graphic design program. I've got no debugger, scant error messages and Python programs can be terribly "brittle", in that a small mistake can cause them to shatter into a million pieces. But I must admit I'm really liking it.

To See More of this Picture - Sponsor Me

Last time I did a Red Nose Day Lecture in Rhyme I offered to wear a tutu if I hit my target on the sponsorship page. Rather sadly we missed by only 16 pounds.

This year the offer still stands, and to show my faith in my sponsors I've actually bought the tutu.

So, if you want to see me make a complete fool of myself, as opposed to the incomplete version that is normally on show,  you can sponsor me here.

3D Printed Red Nose Day Tags

Tags Ready for printing

Red Nose Day is a UK charitable appeal. I do Lectures in Rhyme for it and all kinds of silly fun stuff. If you want to sponsor me for the next one you can do so here:

http://my.rednoseday.com/sponsor/robmiles

Last time we had a Red Nose Day I had some RFID tags that I used as the basis of a raffle. The holder of the winning tag won a rather nice Gadgeteer kit.

This year I thought I'd try something different. I thought I'd 3D print some tags and sell those instead. Each tag is completely unique thanks to a Python program that I've written that creates a combination of square and round layers of different sizes on the top of each one. Above you can see how this works. Each tag has five layers on top, of which two are square, the rest round. The square layers are rotated a random amount too so that there is plenty of variation.

I'm going to print only one of each tag design, except for the winners, where I'll print a "golden" tag as well.  We'll draw out the golden tag at the lecture on Friday 13th and find the winner. 

Printed tags. I'm going to do lots of different colours.

I'm quite intrigued by the idea of using software to produce 3D printed objects which are unique. This lets me explore the field in a good cause. 

The tags will go on sale later this week at a two pounds each. You can do what you like with them, they'll come with a keyring attachment, but you could use them as unique earrings if you were so inclined. And the more you buy, the more chance you have of winning our top secret big prize.

Note: Sharp eyed readers might have noticed that some of the red tags above have more than two square layers. These are test ones that I produced while tweaking the code. 

Home Repair Hints: How to fix a broken router

Lunch at Thieving Harry's at the marina. Great stuff.

I've noticed for a while that our broadband at home has been a bit poor. Today I did a speedtest and found I was getting around a third of what I should have, data rate wise. So we did some more testing and were on the cusp of deciding that it was a problem with the line when I remembered that I might have a spare router up in the loft. 

Turns out I did. We plugged it in and instantly the speed was restored to something that is very nearly good enough to watch 4K video. In fact we were able to view some of the rather good Harry Bosh series from Amazon in quite sparkly detail.

Oh, and how to fix a broken router? You just need two things. A new router. And a dustbin.

Pick Up the Crew is Go

I published the First Year programming coursework today. If students fancy writing a game they can create a version of "Pick Up the Crew", an action packed game where the captain has to search the cruel sea for overboard crew members, all the while avoiding hungry sharks.

Above is my highly abstract test version written in XNA. I'm a great believer in "placeholder graphics", as you can see. 

I'm expecting great things from the students this year. I've even bought "pickupthecrew.com" and I'll sign it over to the student who produces the best looking game at the end of the semester. As long as they publish the game of course.