I've no idea what make of birds they are. But I'm pretty sure that the big one is mummy.
Took number one daughter back to York today. She mentioned that the ducks all over campus were looking quite photogenic. So I took the big camera and proper lens and grabbed a few pictures. There are more on my Flickr site.
Went up town today (no surprises there). But the weather was great and the place had been grassed over. Which is a bit more surprising. It was a BBC thing to do with the start of spring. Which is only a few months late I suppose.
Just found this joke in my old blog. So good that I want to share it with you all again:
Q: What does a magician say when he makes a corpse appear out of nowhere?
A: Abracadaver
I'm in the process of adding a links part to this site. This will include all my writings, going back deep into the past. I've even found some of my very old blog posts (as far back as 2003). No, they aren't very funny either.
Went to see "The DaVinci Code" tonight. I'm the one person left who hasn't read the book, (I did this specially so I could approach the film with an open mind). It is an OK film staring Tom Hanks, his hair (which I think deserves special billing) and Audrey Tatou (who seems to have attended the "Allo Allo" school of acting specially for her part). It was directed by that red headed kid from Happy Days.
I knew something was up when one of the dodgy cardinals turned out to be Dr. Octopus from Spiderman. OK, so he had dropped down to the normal number of limbs but there was no mistaking that leer and wonky accent. Things got even stranger when the symbol of one of the mysterious sects turned out to be the same as is used by the Boy Scouts in the UK. In fact I remember having a woggle with the same emblem on when I was a kid. If only I'd known what I was getting into....
Then we were into a maelstrom of double dealing detectives, secret banks, image processed artworks, strange codes, flights across europe and lots of other staples of the adventure movie. The killer albino monk with a penchant for Mr. Whippy added a certain extra something to the proceedings, although I've been wondering how you fight against someone who enjoys pain as much as he seemed to. Give him a cushion? Perhaps a nice cup of tea? Tricky.
Everything moved at breakneck speed, almost in real time. Nobody paused for breath. I only saw them actually eat once, and that was interrupted by a raid by the french police. These people had the stamina of true academics. Normally there is a lull in the action when you get to know the characters a bit. Not in this film. I don't think that Audrey got to take her coat off at any point.
Even with my lack of foreknowledge spotting the baddie turned out to be even easier than usual. A clue: It isn't Tom. Or Audrey.
There has been a lot of talk in the press about how the underlying tenet of the movie strikes at the very heart of the christian religion. Well, all I can say is that any church that feels under threat from a very implausible story with holes in it through which you could drive a double decker bus with an oil tanker on its roof rack is indeed in trouble.
If you sit through it to the end (and everybody in the packed cinema seemed to manage this) you will find a rather uplifting message concerning the importance of faith above all else. Which only added value to the experience.
I've added a new article to the .NET Micro Framework area of the site. It has a sample program which flashes an LED. On Saturday I bought some switches, so the next step is to write a program which uses a switch to control a light........
Went to the Dalby Forest today. The weather forecast was pretty horrible, it is a Bank Holiday and so we knew we were taking a gamble. But it paid off. Weather was great and it was very quiet when we arrived. We had a walk around the Bridestones. These are lumps of stone which for some reason or other haven't eroded like the rest of the valley. So they stick up out of the ground in a rather impressive way.
By midday we confidently expected to be underneath a lot of rain, but as it turned out we weren't. We even had a chance to walk around Staindale Lake.
There are more pictures on Flickr.
On the way round the walk we bumped into a few people who had also ignored the weather forecast and sallied forth. They always seemed to be chatting about something. We discussed things you culd say to be overheard by someone as they pass you on a country walk:
If you copied someone else's outbreak of the Black Death would you get done for plagueurism?
There is only one game that I will claim to be any good at. Oh, I can play tennis, and squash, and I have even been  known to turn up to (as opposed to play) rugby and cricket. My game of choice is table tennis. I have been known to beat people at that game. And I really, and I mean really, enjoy playing it.
So the XBOX 360 Table Tennis game by Rockstar was of more than passing interest to me. Particularly as it only costs thirty quid. This means of course that I have bought a copy. And I have spent the last couple of hours playing it.  It is very, very, very, very good. Have I mentioned it is good?
The controls are simple, but you can do a lot with them. You have to watch the other player and the way they hit the ball to work out what it  is going to do. Where you are standing affects how much you can do. I've found myself taking part in the game in just the same way as I do in the real one. Â
The presentation is not particularly impressive, but everything is as it should be. The animation of the players is smooth and I like the way that their clothes flap about. The sound is spot on, you can get a feel for what is going on by the noise the ball makes as it hits the table and the bat.
I've won one tournament and it was fun. I've not quite got the hang of the controls yet, I tend to forget to make my player swing his bat, so that he just stands there like a dummy as the ball whizzes past. But I'm pretty sure that I'll get the hang of things quite soon. I've played a couple of XBOX Live games (lost one won one) and the experience was very smooth.
You can have a lot of fun with a simple bat and a ball. What Rockstar have done is taken that fun and put it into a video game. If you have an XBOX and a liking for ball games you should get this game.
I hardy ever put links on my blog. They go out of date and such. And people have usually found them already. But you really must see this. Really.
There is now a new Trip Hazard installment. Enjoy.
I've had this idea for a film about a Country and Western singer who starts out by singing on kitchen floors.
I'm going to call it "Walk the Lino".
In an effort to stop my Archos AV500 from becoming a paperweight in a week or so when all the protected content stops working I today put the pedal to the metal and made it into a paperweight a bit early. The idea was that perhaps a complete formatting might make it work as a Windows Media device. I'd still have to retransfer all my protected content over, but at least I would know where I stood....
Wrong. My Archos just took the formatting in its stride, destroyed all my content and then refused to work anyway. I feel like one of those high priests who have just despatched a couple of virgins to the gods and found that it is still raining. Blarst.
Archos technical support are adamant that it is a hardware problem and are suggesting I take it back to the shop. I think this is because they have a sadistic desire to see me tangle with Dixons customer support. Or perhaps they are rather cunningly inviting me to live with the problem. Not sure what to do now.
This is the technology which powered my wayword Sumo robot. If only I'd calibrated those servos correctly......
Anyhoo, I've set up a resource centre for this lovely new device on these hallowed pages. You can find it here.
My portable media player thingy is misbehaving. It won't let me synchronise with Napster. This is a potentially serious problem, in that if it doesn't get to say Hi to mom every now and then all the protected content on the disk will stop working. This is where the idea of renting access to music rather than actually buying it once and for all starts to come to bits. I've surfed the internet and quite a few people have the same problem as me, but nobody knows how to fix it. I've been in contact with Archos technical support and they asked if the cable was plugged in correctly. Which was rather irritating.
Seems to me that every now and then a progam in the device goes loopy and tromps all over memory, corrupting things. Sometimes the machine will stop for no reason, or the screen will change colour without being asked. I can live with these problems, but if it won't play my music that is another matter. What they need is managed code. This is a layer between the vulnerable system and the program which is running. One of the jobs of a managed code environment is to stop a program from going bananas and writing into random areas of memory. If this happens the managed bit just stops the program from doing any damage, like mum would stop you from putting your hand into the gas fire.
It looks as if I will have to wipe the entire machine and start over. And then live in fear of it happening again with no guarantee that it won't. Or start buying records that I really like and stop renting.
Quite like the pig
Today finds us in full on tourist mode as we visit a glass centre. They make stained glass and all manor of good stuff. Very interesting and skillfull. I buy some earings (but not for me). In the afternoon we try to take in Flamborough North Landing, but the amount of fun you can have (and photographs you can take) is somewhat limited by horizontal rain.
Whitby Harbour Entrance
We went to Whitby today. A lovely place. Even when it rains all the time. Whitby is a good place to visit for fish and chips, an amazing Abbey, bracing air, old style sweetshops. And Dracula. The best time to go is when they are having a Goth festival. They weren't having one today, but we did find some fun goth stuff in some of the shops. My favourite was a sticker which read "Heaven won't have me and Hell is afraid I'll take over". Nearly bought one for the minister.
We went away for the weekend today. Margot lent us her place in a little seaside village and so we packed up our bucket and spades and headed off into the sunset. (actually we went east, but you get the idea).
We used the Gizmondo to find our way to our destination. Sadly the Gizmondo company is no more (someone will have to make a film about what went on there - probably starring Euan McGregor) but the device itself works very well. It can be fitted with a SatNav program which works nicely. But satnav is not perfect. Whilst the system is quite happy to give friendly route advice in a very ladylike voice when it can tell where it is, when the location signal dissappears the device goes eerily silent. I don't like this. It causes you to career wildly off course - working on the basis that "she would have said something if we were going wrong". I'd much prefer it if she said:
"Sorry, but I'm drawing a bit of a blank at the moment, you do what you think is right and I'll get back to you later."
- when the going gets tough. Whilst we are on with improvements, I'd also like her to give me supportive advice as I drive along to the next junction where I have to change direction. Rather than just counting down the distance she should say things like :
"No, don't turn down there. It leads to a farmyard where a bloke in a tractor will laugh at you whilst you fail to perform a three point turn in front of a herd of Fresians. "
- just to keep me happy. And when her battery goes flat she should say something like:
"I'm going out now. I may be some time." before shutting down, rather than falling silent and causing us to go the wrong way round Bridlington.
Anyhoo, we are here now. And the weather forecast is rubbish.
Tiny camera on big tripod. Apparently this is the right way round to do it...
Microsoft came to see us today in the persons of Mark and Kevin. We had some high level discussions (well, we were on the third floor for some of them) and Mark took some video of the Imagine Cup Team for a Channel 9 video he is making. Great fun.
The press is all agog about how there are plans to make that old instant meal, beans on toast, even more instant. There were lots of anguished comment in the papers about how people are now getting so lazy that even opening a tin, emptying the contents into a pan, heating the beans and then adding them to some toast is now beyond them.
So the plan is to make something you whack into the toaster and then just eat. I'm not sure how they can stop the beans from all sliding off the bread into the innards of the toaster, but they must have some kind of super, techno, way that they are dealing with this. I've a horrible feeling it will end up being like a Pop Tart but with beans in. Which is deeply scary.
Everybody seems to be taking a "galloping laziness" view on this one, but I think the truth is different. The thing about the new age beans on toast is that one person can cook enough for themselves, at the time when they personally want to eat.
When we had beans on toast it was as a family. Mum would come home from work and open the tin and make tea whilst dad sat next door reading the paper and making sure he was well versed in world events (the role of fathers everywhere it seemed to me). Then we would all pile into the kitchen and consume the bounty that mother nature and Heinz had provided for us. I would get told off for not wanting my beans actually on the toast (I prefer to eat it separately - OK?) and then mum and I would wash up whilst dad and sister sat next door watching TV and making sure they were well versed in events in Crossroads.
This new version of the food means that you can feed you, yourself, at any time you like. The individual portions mean that there is no need for everyone to sit around the table at the same time. Instead family members can scuttle down into the kitchen in a convenient commercial break, prepare the stuff and then zoom back to their own telly or computer screen. This removes the need for conversations like:
"How was it at school today Rob?"
"Don't ask.."
.. and so on. Sometimes I fear for the future.
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
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