Go See 10 Cloverfield Lane

/

We went out to see a movie today. We weren't sure what to go and see. Nobody was convinced about "Batman vs Superman". When you know all about the film (and I mean all about the film) from the title there doesn't seem much point in sitting in the dark for several hours. 

Number one son suggested 10 Cloverfield Lane. Good call. Proper scary, story that keeps you guessing, and plenty to talk about when you leave the cinema. Well worth the trip. 

Get the Harry Harrison Megapack

/

Harry Harrison was one of the greatest science fiction writers you've probably never heard of. He wrote a whole bunch of fantastic stories including the Stainless Steel Rat series and my favourite, "The Technicolor Time Machine" (go find it - you'll thank me later). He was particularly good at the science fiction short story. 

If you fancy finding out more about his work there's a really good value pack of his stories available on Amazon. For less than a pound you get a whole bunch of content including two of his Deathworld stories. 

Well worth seeking out.

Once more unto eBay.....

/
... but for how long...

... but for how long...

I'm doing some camera shuffling again using eBay. This means taking pictures, packing boxes and posting things. I hope it all ends well. It seems to have got a lot easier to send things abroad now, one of my cameras is heading off to Spain, but I only have to worry about getting it as far as the eBay transit place, which is really nice. I just hope Manu likes it. 

Computer Science Course in "Actually Useful Shock Horror"

/

James came to see us today, which was rather nice. We got to talking and the subject turned to the gulf between studies and real life, and how to narrow it.

One of the things that we try to do in Hull is to tell people useful stuff that will they can use to get by in life as a developer. A problem that we have is that people think that the only use for the stuff that we are telling them is in exams and assignments to get a good mark.  This is a good thing as far as it goes. And of course you should do this. We have to do the grading thing to ensure that the learning outcomes for our courses have been met.

But we really, really want people to carry those skills into the next (and indeed every) thing that they do going forwards. We're trying to start you building skills that will carry you through your professional career. I don't think you can ever say you've learnt something like programming because, if you do it properly, you are continuously learning. And you should never stop. 

The good news for me is that we do get a few folks who go out into the big wide world, and come back and say "You know, that stuff you taught us turned out to be quite useful".

Who'd have thought?

Anyhoo, James is very keen to come back and do some Rather Useful Seminars on what you can do as a student to build on what you're taught, which is great.  Stay tuned. 

Photomatix Pro and the Mysterious Drive D:

/
Tone mapping bananas....

Tone mapping bananas....

Sometimes I write blog posts to remind myself how to fix problems that I hit. In a couple of years I'll search for this problem and find this post. And then fix the problem again. 

It's happened before. 

I love Photomatix Pro. I use it to make my pictures a bit more interesting, and to create HDR shots. It works very well. Except that for the last week it's been crashing out when I try to save the image. Turns out to be my external plug-in memory card reader. If that is connected it gives what Photomatix thinks is a drive D: that doesn't actually exist. This does not end well, but if I unplug the reader it all just works. Yay. 

Novel Controllers at GDC

/

For the past couple of days John has been at GDC showing off our Disruption game with its novel, pluggable, controller. We've had some reports back that things are going well. We won a place in the Alt.Ctrl.GDC novel controllers exhibit. There's a nice write-up of what we did here.

We've re-engineered the controller for the new event. We've gone for a larger box and nice, chunky cables to replace the thin ones that we used last time. It works rather well, which is nice. 

By all accounts the event is going well. Looking forward to finding out more about how he got on when he gets back next week.