Fun and Games at the Black Marble Event

Some of the audience. And some of my toys...

Black Marble are a great company. The do lots of splendid free events for software professionals. And, since they've booked a venue and sorted out all the logistics, they run sessions for schools and colleges at the same time. They get a bunch of speakers and we talk about technical and professional issues. I've been lucky enough to be invited to present a few times, in the past I've taken Una my 3D printer along, amongst other toys. 

Today I didn't really do a technical talk. Although we had some technology of course. I was more concerned with the business of making a name for yourself. My line on this is that advancing technology is replacing many of the jobs that we used to do. It seems to me that in the future you'll have to get used to changing what you do as machines get better and better at doing things that people do at the moment. This means that the only thing that will be constant during your career will be the brand that is you. I've gave lots of tips about building your brand; you can find the slide deck here.

During the talk I also touched on fun things that you can do including playing with the Arduino embeded device. I said I'd put some links to resources. The Arduino I'd recommend is a kit from Sintron which you can get from eBay. Just search for Arduino Sintron. It's around 25 pounds and really good value:

There are loads of resources on-line, once you've got the kit they send you a link to lots of them. There are some Arduino tutorials here that I wrote a while back.  You can get my C# Yellow Book here. 

I did my session twice, but I only remembered to take picture of one small part of the audience. Sorry about that. Anyhoo, thanks to Linda and Boss for setting up such a great event. Great fun.

I promised a panorama of the entire second sitting audience, here they are

If you are looking for Open Source projects to engage with you can take a look here

You can find Charlotte's Twitter feed here.

Christmas Bash is Coming

'nuff said. 

Super Smash Christmas Bash

Today we had our Christmas Bash. This is usually a fairly quiet and select gathering, what with a lot of coursework being due and folks going home for Christmas. But we still found enough people to get through 128 pounds worth of pizza, which is a success of sorts....

Thanks to Adam and his advance purchasing power this event had a strong Super Smash Bros theme. He had managed to get a complete set of amiibos as prizes (including the much sought after Villager amiibo) and set up a tournament for folks to win them. We also had the lovely folks from Platform Expos with their network of Xbox One consoles playing Titanfall. Lob in Halo collection, Super Mario Kart and a wordsearch and you get a pretty good night's worth of entertainment. 

A tense moment in Titanfall

If you have any fears about the survival of Nintendo or the future of their Wii U console I really don't think you have much to worry about. From the reaction to the 8 player action (and the fun I had playing it too) I reckon they are going to be fine. One hard core PC gamer left with a newly acquired amiibo and a plan to try and get a console for Christmas. Great stuff

The winners with their prizes

Of course we had a wordsearch. Of course some people came along, sat down with it and spent all their time finding words. And one of them won a prize.

A worthy winner, but still some words left to find...

We were having so much fun that we forgot about the timings and the event ran on for quite a while after the finish time. And we will definitely be having another Super Smash Bros session next year. There are more pictures of the event on Flickr. You can find them here. 

Christmas Bash is Coming

The Christmas Bash for 2014 is coming and it is going to be a corker. We are going to have Wii U Smash Bros 8 player, with amiibo prizes, Team Fortress 2, Xbox One, Playstation 4, board games, word searches, pizza, mince pies and a super bumper hyper mega wordsearch which might include the words super, bumper,hyper and mega.

Tickets will be on sale in the Departmental Office on the Third Floor of the Robert Blackburn Building from 2:30 pm on Monday 8th December. Numbers are strictly limited.

Dates for your Diaries

There are lots of really interesting things happening in Hull over the next few weeks. Here's a selection.

SendGrid move an awful lot of the world's email for a lots of really big customers. Visit their roadshow at C4DI on 22nd October to find out what they can do for you. With free beer and goodies. Sign up here. 

Platform Expos brings together console makers, developers, artists and gamers for a festival of gaming from 14th - 15th of November in Hull. Find out what is going on and get tickets from here. 

This is a day long hacking event on 21st November at The Kingswood Academy 

You can find out more, and sign up here. 

This is an evening event where you get together with friends and family and work at solving technical challenges. Lots of fun.  On the 21st of November at The Kingswood Academy.

You can find out more and sign up here. 

Spend a full day (21st November) at Kingswood Academy finding out more about the wonderful Raspberry Pi computer and what you can do with it. 

You can find out more and sign up here. 

Dates for your Diaries

I've been sorting out dates and stuff for the next few weeks. Here are a couple highlights of the things coming up soon:

Rather Useful Seminars

Rather Useful Seminars start this week with a session about the Arduino device, and why you should buy at least one. You can find details of the seminar program at www.ratherusefulseminars.com

Anyone at Hull can come along, they are always at 1:15 on a Wednesday afternoon in Lecture Theatre A on the ground floor of the Robert Blackburn Building. If you fancy giving all, or part of a seminar on something you find interesting and other folk might like to know about, get in touch with me.

Three Thing Game

The date and time for the next Three Thing Game has been set as overnight on Halloween, from 31st of October to 1st November. Microsoft and MonoGame will be coming along to take part and MonoGame will be doing a special, spooky, session about the new features they have added to the framework. You can get extra prizes by using these in the games that you make during the competition.

The itinerary for Three Thing Game is at www.threethinggame.com

Registration for the competition will open next week. 

Manchester //publish event

Nice sendoff at Hull Paragon station. What you see here is famous poet (Philip Larkin) and ex-Hull University librarian bedecked in Hull Tigers colours in honour of our appearance in the FA Cup Final tomorrow.

I spent today at //publish in Manchester. The idea is that like minded folks get together and get around to publishing applications and games they've been working on for a while. I have an agenda of sorts. I wanted to get some traction on my Windows 8.1 versions of Cheese Lander and Robs Red Nose Game. But mainly I wanted to talk to Peter about Bluetooth with a view to getting my Wedding Light controller working on Windows 8.1.

There were a bunch of folks there when I arrived at MadLab. They were all working away and I settled down, exchanged a few remarks about cheese (as you do) and then got cracking too. Peter took a look at my Bluetooth code and made some suggestions which resulted in it all suddenly working. So I can now control my wedding lights from my Lovely Lumia 1520 and also my Lovely Surface Pro 2.

Next step is to make a "unified" app (one that runs on both Windows Phone and Windows 8.1) and make it available to anyone who want to control their lights (or anything else) from these devices. I've got until the 1st of June to finish it off and get it in the store if I want to stand a chance of winning a prize. Hint: You can claim a prize too if you get your application submitted before this date.  There's still time to register here. 

At the end of the day we had presentations of the applications that had been published during the day and winners were picked. Apologies for not noting any names, but you know who you are and a picture is worth a thousand words. Right?

And a butterfly collector (is that lapidopteral?) app earned the writer a Lumia 1520 (it's almost as if It is being pulled from Peter's hands....)

A really impressive 3D Tetris game won the a Dell tablet

Thanks so much to Microsoft for organising //publish, Peter and Pete (they are different people) for setting up the Manchester event and the folks at MadLab for making us so welcome (and putting on such delicious food at half time). 

And I even managed to sneak out at lunchtime and buy a pair of trousers..... Great stuff. 

Windows Phone Jump Start This Week

Windows Phone Jump Start is a wonderful kind of free lunch. For the price of nothing you get a whole ton of high quality teaching and content with the aim of getting you started in Windows Phone development. 

The latest one, which coves all the lovely, shiny, stuff in Windows Phone 8.1, starts this week. You can sign up here.

Publish and be Great

Most developers have them. Things that they have made, probably pretty much finished, but then other stuff came up and they never got around to shipping them.  And all it would take is a bit of effort just to get the thing out of the door and into the store. 

Publish is for these projects.  It's a worldwide event for Windows Store developers to get together and head for the finish line. It runs over the 16-17th of May and I'm nipping over to the event in Manchester to join fellow MVPs and developers in getting stuff finished. 

From my experience with Three Thing Game, Global GameJam and Hacked I know that it is amazing just how much you can get done in a short time if you just focus on a single task. Of course it also helps if you are surrounded by folks all doing the same thing, and that you get pizza and fizzy drinks (the fuel of champion developers the world over).

If you want to join us in Manchester you can sign up here. There are events planned all over the world, you can find a local event and take part here. You can even set up your own local event if you want, or just take part from the comfort and security of your own desk. 

I'm really looking forward to it. Perhaps that Windows 8 version of Cheese Lander might actually see the light of day.........

Careers and Networking Event Fun and Games

Warning: This picture contains images of some students in suits...

We had our first ever Student Careers and Internships Networking Event today. I don't think it will be our last one. Before today I was only really worried about three things: No employers would turn up, no students would turn up or nobody would enjoy the event. Turned out that things went really well on all fronts though. We had plenty of folks and they all seemed to have fun. 

The audience makes ready for the start..

We started with presentations from six companies based in the area. I think the students who had come along were extremely surprised and impressed by just how much goes on around here. And the employers seemed to be very impressed by our students. Which was nice too.

Of course I took some pictures..

Get your business cards and delegate packs here

Swag

Busy

I ran a tiny "Mug Survey" at the end (fill in a little evaluation questionnaire and swap it for a departmental mug) and the results were very positive. And everyone thought we should run the event again next year. So we will. And one of my worries for next time will probably be "Is the venue big enough...."

All set for the Careers and Internships Event

Well, I've sent off the business cards to the printers. We've got a whole bunch of mugs on order and employers lined up to exhibit. Now we just have to hope that it all goes well on the day.  The fun starts on Wednesday at 12:30 or so. You can still come along if you haven't registered.

Wearable Technology Workshop

I wonder what the Guides will be able to do with this?

A student in our department, Charlotte, is based in Bristol for the year and doing great things to engage folks with technology.

She has set up a crowd funded event with a local Guide Pack, which is a really good idea. But she needs a bit of help funding the event. You can find out more here. 

Micro-Talks and Mega-Bash. And Werewolves

We tried a few new things this year for the Christmas Bash. Firstly we had some micro-talks (thanks to Microsoft for the prizes – above)  from students and staff about things they are working on. Danny Brown started with a talk about contributing to Open Source software, then we had talks about app development for Vulcan Bombers, augmented reality that puts meaning into the countryside and why you should all sign up for Hull Global Gamejam next year. I did an abridged version of my talk about hardware for C4DI which seemed to go OK. At least, the hardware worked….

Then we played Werewolf. Which I’d never done before. With a group of over 30 villagers. And four werewolves. In Lecture Theatre C. It was hilarious. I was the moderator.

I discovered two things very quickly. First thing: I found out who the werewolves were at the start of the game. Second thing: being a moderator is surprisingly hard work. Especially if you keep mistaking werewolves for vampires and asking people who had just been killed by the werewolves if they were a werewolf or not. As if.

I’d taken what I thought was the sensible decision of simplifying the game for the first run by removing some of the character cards. Turns out this was a really bad move, because it made it much harder for the villagers to discover what was going on and react to the nightly attacks. By the end we were down to one villager and one werewolf, with the inevitable and, for the villagers, unhappy outcome.

But a lot of fun was had along the way, with a break for pizza and mince pies in the middle.

There are at least two werewolves in this picture. Can you spot them? (and yes, they do show up on pictures. You are thinking of vampires, which is what I was doing a lot as well…)

Of course we had the bumper wordsearch. Once Adam reminded me to go and get it One of my abiding memories of the event is watching people put down their controllers for the latest generation games console and pick up pens to have a go searching through the letters. (You can have a go here too if you like.)

We even had a winner who wasn’t Simon. so we asked him to present the prize.

There was much boasting with “Braggart”, although I didn’t quite manage to win.

Folks really seemed to appreciate the paper based stuff. I think next semester we will supplement the Team Fortress games afternoons with Werewolf sessions and board games.

Robotics Talk on Monday 16th

Don’t forget that on Monday 16th at 6:00 Prof. Ping Jiang is giving his inaugural lecture in the Middleton Hall at the University. It is on the subject of robotics and intelligence. Looks like fun, there might even be some robots in attendance…

Micro-Talks and Mega-Bash

We’ve got big plans for the Christmas Bash this year.

We thought it might be fun to do something more than just eat pizza, drink cola and play video games. So we have having some Micro-Talks. Then we are going to eat pizza, drink cola and play video games.

If you have done something shiny recently, contributed to a cool project, met someone influential or found a really neat thing everyone should know about then come and tell us all about it. Each speaker will be allowed 5 minutes, and a maximum of 4 PowerPoint slides, to talk about something or other. After this people can ask questions. The idea is to keep things short, sweet and interesting!

Struggling to think of something to talk about? Why not talk about:

• An open source project you helped
• A cool programming language or paradigm you’ve discovered
• A game you’ve made
• Anything tech related!

If you’re interested in speaking then please fill out this form telling us your subject:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NTJGG3T

The fun begins on  Tuesday 17^th December at 5:15 in Robert Blackburn Lecture Theatre C (RB-LTC). Thanks to Danny Brown for setting the talks up and getting hold of the bumper haul of swag we are giving away as prizes.

Once the talking is over, the pizza will arrive at around 6:30 and we can eat and head off to play games. We will have all the attractions on the poster above and of course the mega-wordsearch with big prizes that are big.

Tickets go on sale at 2:00 pm on Wednesday 11th December in the Departmental Office.