Profound Questions in York

I wanted a go in a red boat. But nobody else did. Wah.

We went to York today. There were rumours (nay, legends) that a branch of "The Only Place In The Country Where Rob Can Buy Things That Fit 'Cos He Is Tall (tm)" had reopened in the city. And was having a sale. Wowee.

We turned up at ten past ten to a shop full of "Sale signs" which was locked with an iron gate. The notice on the side said "Open 10:00 on Saturdays". Such is life. After drink at Starbucks and a Rocky Road (which with hindsight was probably a bit risky, given my state of excitement I probably should not have sugar rich cakes) we went back and found that the shop was now open.  Nothing much for sale unfortunately, but I did get a couple of shirts. (it has just occurred to me that there is no reason for me to assume that you have any interest in the fact that I bought two shirts today - but remember that you are hear for the kwality of the riting. Oh yes).

Anyhoo, then we went walkabout around York. Profound questions abounded. The York Psychic museum had a number on the door you could call to arrange a meeting.  Why? Surely they would be expecting you whatever time you turned up. And next to the roadsweeper was one of those things that helps you pick stuff up from the floor. A sort of remote hand thing. But it was lying on the floor. I do hope he has another one he can use to pick it up.

Maybe it's the heat.

Read all about it

Sometimes you come accross something which is so interesting that you just have to tell everyone else about it as soon as you can.  For example PressDisplay. This site has a wonderful interface that lets you read just about any newspaper from around the world. If you sign up for a demo you can get the papers free onto your PC for a week, after that it is around ten dollars a month for up to 31 issues, which is pretty good value if you are after reading the news from around the world. An interesting take on the way that electronic media is going.

Thunder and Lightning

We had something of a storm last night. A few days after I get my shiny new TV aerial on top of the house we have one of the biggest thunderstorms for ages. Most impressive. All the lights and all the sound effects. I couldn't do the old "count the time between the flash and the boom to find out how far away it is" because there were so many flashes and booms that I couldn't pair them up.

I didn't know whether to hide under the bed or go out and take photographs.  In the end I did nothing, which strikes me as a wise choice.

Guitar Hero Quite Literally Rocks

One other birthday present that I was lucky enough to receive was a copy of the PS2 game "Guitar Hero". The first thing you notice about this game is the the controller. It is a plastic guitar, around three quarters the size of a real one, but still plenty big enough for posing.  On the fret board are six colour coded buttons, there is a plastic tag that you "strum" and a "whammy" lever for vibrato.

The basis of the game is the old "press the right button at the right place in the song" routine beloved of dance mats and bongo drums. But this time you are playing in a band and it is up to you to get the important riffs down.  Best of all, if you get the timing wrong there are a variety of "bum note" sounds which come out. Do this too often and the watching crowd gets restless. Do it too much and you get booed off the stage.  As things get more complex you have to play chords. And you get a special "Rock Star" mode where you can hold the guitar upright and really show off.

The game disk has all the rock standards you'd be expecting. Smoke on the water, More than a feeling, Killer Queen, etc etc. Not the originals, but well good enough.

We set it up at the party and it was in pretty much continuous use. Great stuff. You can even get a second guitar controller so that you can duke it out musically with a rival axemeister.

Strongly recommended. Oh yeah.

Broadcasting to a waiting world

I did my last webcast tonight. I've been cranking these out at a rate of one per week for the last few weeks, and today was the last one. It was all about mobile game development using Direct3D on mobile devices.

I'm going to miss doing them, they were fun.  If you came along and took part, good on you and I hope you found them useful. If you missed out, you can download them and enjoy them at your convenience (or some other small room in the house).

You can get hold of the resources, and find links to the recordings, here.

Adobe Updater needs your attention

I got another new toy today. Seems to be the season for deliveries and new toys. It is a Motion tablet PC and it is a tiny wonder. I'm going to use it in the labs for marking assessed work with handwritten comments and then uploading them back to Class Server. This is on the back of a Teaching Fellowship which I was awarded last year. (I'm going to set up a blog section all about it when I get round to it).

Anyhoo, the manuals are all on the machine itself, so I fire it up to read them. Of course they are in PDF format. I hate PDFs. Not because the format is a bad one, but because you have to use the Adobe reader to read the documents. This has one of the most malignant update managers I have ever seen. If it fancies doing an update one of its favourite tricks used to be to hide a dialogue box behind all the other programs asking about this, and then cause Internet Explorer to freeze until you realised what had happened and searched the thing out, or reset the machine out of sheer frustration.

Now it has a new trick. Because my machine is shiny new, the reader has two updates to perform. So it installs the first update, calls for a reset of the machine. And then installs the second update. Which also resets the machine.  People, this is a document reader. Not a security manager, missile launch code keeper, or deadly virus which if given free reign would destroy civilisation. Even windows update is nowadays quite reticent about rebooting your machine. And I'm kind of OK about windows doing reboots. It is an operating system. That's its job. But not a dratted document reader.

The good news is that eventually the updates completed and I was able to actually use the machine to read how the machine works.

Good Service and Fate

Sometimes one can be forgiven for assuming that the universe is actually out to get you. Then, every now and then, just sufficiently often to scotch the "out to get you" theory, things happen as they should do.

The only bad thing that happened on  Sunday was that the Oven Door exploded.  Fortunately it was my birthday, and pretty much nothing upsets me on my birthday, but it still left us with a pile of broken glass where it used to be, and no way of cooking anything much.

So yesterday I rang Cannon and asked about getting a replacement sent through.  This morning a big parcel arrived. Addressed to "Mr Yales", but we'll gloss over that. The good news is that it was exactly what I wanted,  and after a bit of wrangling with my trusty (and a bit rusty) philips screwdriver, we are back in the cooking busines.

And earlier today I needed to send my Jasjar back to Microsoft for some fettling (they are going to give me some new software to play with - which is nice). At ten past ten I rang DHL to arrange the pickup. At ten thirty the man was in the office waiting for the parcel. Apparently he was on campus in the post room and so just ambled over to pick up the box - before I'd even finished putting the label on. Amazing stuff.

There are two possible ways to explain this:

1. The universe actually is out to get me, but is lulling me into a false sense of security for now.
2. The universe is not really out to get me at all, but just doesn't care. I just put whatever interpretation I like on what happens, depending on how things are going at the moment.

I was just putting the finishing touches to this missive, when I found I'd just spilled a whole glass of water all over my desk. Read into that whatever you like. I'm off to get a cloth.

Health Check

Have I mentioned that I'm off to India for the Imagine Cup finals? Not in the last ten minutes Rob....

Anyhoo, I am.  And had my jabs. And apparently anti-malaria tablets are required too. I did some research on the interweb and it seems malaria is a really bad thing. From the description of what goes on when you get it pretty much everything bad happens except for your head exploding. So I need some tablets.

The tablets that look the best bet need a prescription. So off I go to the health centre for assistance.  We have a super health centre at Hull. You can just turn up and usually get seen by a nurse within minutes. So ten minutes after I arrive I go into consulting 1 to sort things out.

When they type my name in to the computer it flashes up red. Apparently I also need a health check. Something to do with my age.  So I tell the nurse my height, get weighed and have my blood pressure taken. Then the nurse asks "What about drinking?".  I saythat it is a bit early for me, but if she wants to have a slug that is fine by me.  She was of course asking about my drinking habits, which are fairly abstemious (although I am off to the pub tonight - pure coincidence). Then we cover smoking (which I get right this time), and finally I get my prescription. 

Today's Lessons

Over the years, as you grow older, you pick up bits of wisdom. Some are handed down by elders and betters, others you find out the hard way, through bitter experience. Today it was learn the hard way time. The lesson -  really cheap coaxial connectors are a really bad idea.

I didn't mean to buy the cheap ones,  it was just that they were the only ones in the shop at the time. And I figured that it wouldn't make much difference. It does. Having got a shiny new aerial on top of my house so I can get my TV into the digital age I found that picture actually got worse. Then better. Then worse again. Then better and worse on a three second cycle. Not good.

Having spent hot and unpleasnant minutes in the loft/sauna twiddling with plugs and sockets I find that chucking away all the cheap plastic connectors and replacing them with proper metal ones improved things no end.  I can now watch around twenty channels of drivel on my telly instead of just four or five. Wonderful.

The other thing I learned today, which was much more rewarding, is that the latest version of Vista makes a really good TV. My little media PC is not really powerful enough, and so I'm kind of surprised that it works at all. But it does, and the picture quality is very good, far better than any digibox I've seen.  I think this is because the LCD TV that I'm using really likes being driven at it's native resolution.  Whatever it is, the results are very good and the user interface is rather pretty too.

Happy Birthday Me

Thanks for the cards people, even the rude ones.

Bill Gates is  a rich bloke. In fact there must be lots of people with more money than me. I've even heard that there are some men who are better looking (never seen one, but you do hear stories).

Well, I hope all these richer and better looking people have birthdays as least half as good as the one I've just had. Perfect weather, family and friends round, BBQ in garden, Apples to Apples to finish off. The best times. Thanks for coming people.

Number one daughter got me this fan you can program to display important messages. And I got a flying saucer.

Amazing Fact

Did you know that every year at least two thousand roadsweepers drown in Venice?

Note - this is one of my favourite jokes. Perhaps say number three or so. Now you can all live in fear of numbers one and two....

Free Drinks Coasters

Free. Once in a lifetime offer. This tasteful set of matching drinks coasters will enliven any party or social occasion. Emblazoned with "MR DVD 8X Write speed" on one side and a spiral motif on the other which ends at EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE on all four disks these precision made coasters are also fitted with a central ventilation hole which provides for smooth airflow around the beverage placed thereon.

This is hopefully a limited offer, although given the performance of my Nero software and new DVD burner it could well the the start of a long production run for these special and decreasingly unique items.

Let me know if you want them.

Panda to your every whim

Some of my friends are a bit mad (well duh?). Others might be.

Rory, well, you be the judge. I've only met him a couple of times and in person he is one of the most level headed, professional and sensible people you could happen across. But put him in charge of a web site and really strange things happen. Really strange. His blog is well written and well weird.  And now he has made this Panda thing, which takes strange to a new level and then adds strangeness. I really have no idea what is going on. But I quite like it.  And you might too. Leave your sensibilities at the door and take a look.

Unhappiness is Green Cubes

Not what I want to see at all...

I've been working on my webcast for next week. (if you want a way to speed up your life try doing a series of weekly webcasts - you'd be amazed how fast each one comes round).

Anyhoo, we are reaching the end, where I want to show my style and put some 3D objects on the screen in front of a funky background. The idea is to make a 3D version of the Snake game where the snake moves around with a constant value of Z in each vertex. I'm calling it "Snake on a Plane" in homage to the upcoming movie staring Samuel Jackson. The "snake" is going to be made of little coloured spinning cubes.  Why? I don't know why. I don't make the rules...

So I get my coloured cubes, put a green grass texture behind them and fire up the program. And all my cubes turn green. Wah. Don't want green cubes. Although they do look rather cool.  Tried lots of things to get rid of them. Everything except the right thing, which is to remember to turn the texture off. Ooops. Thanks to number one son for spotting this. Now I'm going to have to find a way of wiping that smug grin off his face.

If you want to take part in the last webcast and maybe win an imp, then register here.

Webcasts and Free Food

Yes, it really is Hull centre...

I did my third webcast tonight. You can find the gory details here. After that we all went up town for a meal with the Microsoft Imagine Cup team. You would think that living in Hull for 30 odd years would mean that I would find the restaurant easily. No such luck. And proceedings weren't helped by the lady in the SatNav being totally unable to plot a route to our destination. Anyhoo, once we hooked up with the rest of the gang a great time was had by all. And Hull centre looked splendid.

New Computer Game Idea

I've just had an idea for a new video game. In it players take control of some little computer memory chips. They have to guide them through life, make sure they are properly plugged in, and manage their address and data bus connections as the chips  grow old and learn new things. I'm going to call it "The Simms".

Armthorpe Invaders

"Why not try a picture with the glasses on" they cried. Why not indeed.

We had a bunch of sixth formers from Armthorpe come and see us today. They are all either studying computing or thinking about it. Anyway, we set up some activities and took them on a tour around the place. By all accounts a good time was had by all.

Retail Therapy with Rats

Ratty (not an original name - but there you go)

Took a day off work today to go to Leeds to do some shopping. Not got anything special in mind, or any desire to buy any clothes (which is just as well in my case). Anyhoo, we went to "The Only Place In The Country Where Rob Can Buy Things That Fit 'Cos He Is Tall (tm)" shop and took a look at all the stuff that we wouldn't like to buy even if we could afford it.  They even had a jacket with specially shortened sleeves. Clever.

On the way out, having bought nothing, I picked up a catalogue. This had lots of pictures of soulful tall people lounging on a beach, including one chap who was playing the bongos in a dodgy hoody. Nuff said.

So we went to IKEA and bought two rats and a shower curtain. Much more fun. And they do meatballs in the cafe.

Complicated Problems

If a plane carrying a load of black boxes crashed, how on earth would they find out what had happened?

Darren gets married

Darren gets married
Originally uploaded by RobMiles.