Mike Taulty talks Universal Apps at C4DI

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I've met up with Mike Taulty a few times over the years, at the odd Hackathon or conference. I've also spent a fair while reading his blog. But I've not seen him to a talk before. Until now. 

He came along to a developer event at C4DI (which was packed by the way). He spent almost exactly an hour exploring how to build up a Windows 10 Universal Application to control a Sphero ball. At the start he made the point that Universal Applications are exactly what they say. They run on a Windows 10 platform that is now unified across lots of devices, from Raspberry Pi, through phone, Xbox One, tablet, PC, Surface Hub and even HoloLens. 

The talk served as a great demonstration of this, with the same code running on PC, Pi and phone. Mike also explained how different families of device can expose specific functions, for example a phone platform can provide an inclinometer, but a single application can be written to make use of these abilities in a context that is useful to the user.  He also touched on adaptive layout, where the designer can create display layouts appropriate to the format and size of the screen in use and then have the application automatically select the best one.

Mike also looked at the range of input options available to Windows 10 developers and by the end we had a Sphero that was controlled by speech, handwriting and even switches wired to a Raspberry Pi.

This was a great talk that packed lots into a very short time. I'm very tempted to ask Mike to come along and deliver it as a Rather Useful Seminar. 

Three Thing Game Springs into Action

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Spring Three Thing Game got going today with the "Handing Out of the Things". I did something rather tricsky, which was to give teams exactly the things that they asked for. One team, feeling rather smug about having added the word "moist" to the things, was then rather surprised to find it included in their things. Such fun. I took some pictures of the lucky teams and their things.

Development starts on Friday. Should be fun

Shame on you Uncle Joe

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While we were in Whitby a while back we bought a can of Uncle Joe's Mintballs. They are really really nice. Great to have around when you are writing code. I opened the can today and discovered something a bit naughty. In the "Good Old Days" (tm) you would find a bag of mintballs. Nowadays you have a much smaller number of flashily wrapped, individual mints. The weight of minty goodness you get has gone down from 200 gms to 120 gms. And the price has gone up slightly too. 

Shame on you Uncle Joe. Shame on you. 

Good Food at Harogate

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Last week it was gadgets, this week it is food. Who says I don't lead a cultured existence?

Anyhoo, today we headed off to Harrogate in search of cheese and other comestibles at the Spring BBC Good Food Show. There was lots of great stuff, and much fun was had trying samples. I wondered about taking a selection of disguises next year so that I can go round multiple times, tippling gin and eating cheese off toothpicks. But it is probably easier just to buy the stuff that you like, and so we did. We also went to a cooking demonstration that was very entertaining and very slick. 

Michel Roux Jr. gave the demo that we saw. The trick, apparently, is not to care whether or not your soufflé rises. Then it takes care of itself. Great day, great fun. And some great food.  

Windows 10 Leaky Memory Fix

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For some time my Surface Pro 3 has been grinding when it really shouldn't. And a check of the Task Manager showed that a process called "System and Compressed Memory" was taking up an inordinate amount of processor time. Long story short, I found that this fix worked for me. If your Surface Pro or Surface Book is slowing down you might find it useful to take a look. I've no idea what the fix does (and nothing anywhere tells me) but it has made my machine much more responsive. 

Ho Hum Gadget Show Live

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These speakers are intriguing, but I think they have got left and right the wrong way round. 

These speakers are intriguing, but I think they have got left and right the wrong way round. 

I must admit that the Gadget Show Live this year was a bit disappointing.  It isn't actually the highlight of my year, but I like to think that it is one of them. On a par with Fish Pie at the Magpie in Whitby.  But after this show it has dropped a bit in the rankings, down to perhaps home-cooked sausage and baked potato level. 

Previous shows have had large scale exhibitors such as Sony, Microsoft, Dyson and the like showing off their latest technology. This one had a lot of much smaller stands, but nothing that really stood out.  There were some 3D printers, a chance to queue for a long time to drive a Tesla very slowly a short distance and a huge number of slightly different drones. And some hoverboards. But nothing that really impressed. 

There was some fun to be had and after all, at my age a trip out is a trip out, but I will be checking the list of exhibitors very carefully before I sign up for the next one. 

They did have some BBC Microbits there though

They did have some BBC Microbits there though

Nuget source settings cleared after Visual Studio upgrade

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The title says it all really. I got all excited about the new release of Visual Studio and so I upgraded my copy of Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition immediately. The upgrade has some nice new features (and I want to use it to write Xbox One programs) but it did do one thing that confused me for a little while. It clears the source setting for Nuget.

The result is that all your Nuget fetches fail. However, it is easy to put back again by going to Tools>Nuget Package Manager>Package Manager Settings and setting the checkbox as shown above. 

HTC Vive Hands-On

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When we found out that there were doing live demonstrations of the HTC Vive just down the road from us in Leeds it was only a matter of time before we headed over there. We'd heard tales of how busy the event was, and of queues over the weekend so we got up bright and early and shot down the motorway to get there as close to opening time as we could. 

It was very quiet, which was great. Both number one son and myself had a good go at all the demos. My favourite was the Google painting program which was amazing. On the way down in the car we had discussed all the ways that the experience could be horrible. Poor tracking, slow updates, dodgy display, etc etc.

There was none of that. It just worked. Even over glasses. I could just about make out the individual dots in the display, which surprised me, but once I started moving around in a fully realised 3D environment I completely forgot about that.

It wasn't until after we'd finished that we remembered that there was a complete absence of any queasiness from either of us. The thing just works. The environments that we were in were a bit "cartoony", which is probably because the detail is dialled down a bit to keep the refresh rate up, but they were real. And the sensation of walking around in another world was very well realised.

The experience was quite unlike the Hololens that I tried last year. That device can overlay virtual elements onto your view of the environment. The Vive just makes a completely new one. Both systems have their place, and both work really well. 

Number one son ordered a Vive there and then. Me, I've got to buy a PC first as this kit requires some fairly hairy hardware to drive it. But I'm very tempted.

Go See 10 Cloverfield Lane

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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.