Roman Holiday

Last week I bought a new camera. I really shouldn't have. But this was a real bargain and so I liquidated all my ebay assets and sallied forth to Currys to make the purchase. I wanted the camera because it has a very long zoom lens.

So today we went off to Sewerby Park, where they were doing some Roman re-enactments. And out came the camera...

Sewerby House looking good

A local parrot

They do have some superb gardens here.

Bridlington Bay

And looking the other way..

Apparently it is rather hard to shoot an arrow from horseback.

Testing the troops

The Flick Inkifier Lives!

Groovy!

This is the first post from the new Flickr Inkifier Live Writer plugin. I've added ink annotation and a smidgeon of image processing. Oh, and local file upload.

Just got the setup project to write now......

It's always the social issues that get you...

I've been playing more with my Flickr inkifier and it is now nearly ready for release into the wild. By that I mean that I've solved all the technical problems, but now I have to deal with the "social" ones.

These are the ones which give you the most grief as a developer because there are no hard and fast answers. When I wanted to add my plugin to Live Writer this was easy. Copy the example, read the documentation and away you go. But now I have to deal with users.

To post a picture to Flickr you have to login to the service. Fair enough. There is a lovely mechanism for this in Flickr which means that once a user has authorised my plugin with them they never have to do it again. But the plugin also has to remember some stuff about the login. So questions start to arise; "Where to I store the information?", "What do I store?", "How will the user interact with it?", "Do I store the data on a per user basis?". Ugh.  

 So, wrestling with all these issues has slowed me down a bit. That and marking all the programming resit exams and coursework. Double ugh.

Flickr Plugin Source Available

The hotel in Agra. Nice eh?

I've popped my source up in my downloads area. It is very basic, but it does work. Which with software is always nice.

Inky Posts

I really shouldn't be doing this. I have much more important things to get on with. Then again, I never take all my holiday and this is a form of recreation. Anyhoo, I'm in the process of improving my Flickr plugin so that you can annotate your pictures with ink.

When you pull the picture out of Flickr you are given the option to "inkify" it and then it stores a new version of the picture back up on Flickr with the ink on top. Above is the first ever inkified picture.

You can see how useful this is going to be.....

Update on 2006-08-30 11:23 by Rob

The plugin is now available here.  You need a Tablet PC (of course) and there is no installer yet. But it does work....

Spider Bite Confusion

I was reading the paper over breakfast this morning and there was a rather amusing article about all the horrible things that there are around the world which can make bad things happen to unwary travelers. Just the thing to read when you are safely back home from  a trip away.

In amongst descriptions of various ticks, snakes and jellyfish was an item about the Australian Black Funnel Web Spider. This is a truly nasty piece of work which has no fear of humans (but then why should it) and really poisonous venom. If you get bitten by this baby you can look forward to turning blue, foaming at the mouth, your hair standing on end and, mysteriously, depression.

I'm a bit unsure as to why they added depression to the list. It implies that of all the bad things on the page that could happen to you, a bite from the spider is the only one that would make you unhappy. Or that there are are spiders which make you happy when they bite you.

I'm confused.

Imagine that Live Writer Plugin

I've just made a plugin for Windows Live Writer which lets me easily post my Flickr pictures. There is a proper plugin available as well as mine, but mine does exactly what I want, which is quickly find the images and then add them to the post in the correct size. And anyway, I wanted to write my own to see how easy it is. So there.

One thing that I have learnt from the exercise is just how darned easy it is to string things together these days. Figuring out how to write the plugin wasn't too hard, and writing a .NET program to pull pictures off Flickr turned out to be much easier than I expected. So, without further ado, lets import some snaps:

 
This is one of the dancers at the Imagine Cup party in Agra

This is outside the hotel lobby. I just love those white cars

And this is your room, after the room tidying faries have been round..

Update on 2006-08-23 16:12 by Rob

I've put the files for the plugin into the Downloads area of this site. I'll post the source later, once I've tidied it up a bit.

Update on 2006-08-25 08:56 by Rob

The source is now available too. Enjoy.

Update on 2006-08-30 11:23 by Rob

The new ink enabled plugin is now available here.  You need a Tablet PC (of course) and there is no installer yet. But it does work....

My First Post from Live Writer

This is my first post using Windows Live Writer Beta. It is a program which lets you prepare blog entries off line and then submit them from your computer. I might use it a bit because it is somewhat easier to use than the interface on my usual provider, and it lets me write stuff when I'm not connected to the internet. It found the settings of my slightly non-standard blogging service straight off the bat, and so far I'm impressed. Although I've not actually pressed the publish button yet.

There is also an API which lets you develop blogging applications

Of course, what I really want is a version of this program which runs on my Pocket PC. Perhaps later...

Woksoever Forever

Had a wedding anniversary today.  Twenty four years of wedded bliss(tm). I bought my wife a romantic novel. She bought me a copy of the ACME Catalogue. We know each other pretty well by now.

As part of the celebrations we went out for a meal. We went to a place in Cottingham called WokSoEver.  You can see a video of it here. As the name implies, it is chinese, and they use a wok for cooking. The first thing we noticed when we walked through the door was the large proportion of chinese guests chowing down. We reckoned that this, and the fact that the place was pretty busy on a Monday night, was a good omen.

And so it turned out. The food was wonderful. We had the set banquet for two (there was actually enough for three) and everything was great. I always have difficulty putting names to any kind of dish more complicated than burger and chips, so I've no idea what some of the stuff was called.  But the ribs were great, the chicken things on sticks were great and the prawn toast was the best I've ever tasted.

The service was attentive and polite, the food was presented with style, and if you get there before half past seven they are presently doing a special deal which gets you a wonderful meal for less than ten quid a head.

If you live in this area and you like chinese food (or even if you don't) you should go there. Great place for students to take mum and dad when they visit. They have a lunch time menu too. And they'e won awards.

I suppose I'd better tell everyone

Every now and then you get a juicy bit of news which is of great advantage to those hearing of it. I've just got one of these and the urge to be a nice person and share it has got the better of me. If you are into teaching and computer science and stuff (and therefore in kind of competition with us at Hull I guess) you really should go and have a look here.

I reckon that it is a wonderful development that any computer science department should grab with both hands and run with.  We are soooo going to try and do just that...

Running Shoes

Note: This post is vaguely disgusting. Sorry, but it is.

When we signed up for the India trip I mentioned to Margot that I would need to take anti-malaria pills.

"They'll make you ill" she said

How right she was.  I've just stopped taking them and by jove I feel better.  In the list of side effects for the particular tablets I was using was a complaint which might give rise to a need for the items mentioned in the title of this post (not to put too fine a point on it). I got that all right. Fortunately, amongst the armoury of medications I had taken with me was a preparation which was intended to resolve this issue.

Imodium Plus. What a wonderful marketing name. Im from Immobilise, od from commode, and ium to make it sound vaguely scientific. Then add a plus to emphasise the power of the stuff.  Didn't do anything for me though (or perhaps it did - and the consequences of not taking it would have been much worse). One thing I found mildly amusing was an entry on the list of side-effects for Imodium. Apparently it can cause constipation. If only.

The rehydration stuff was wonderful though.  If you are going abroad you must take some. Only problem was that I got the "multi-flavour" pack, which included banana flavoured salty water. This is an experience you want to be only once in a lifetime.

The good news is that my affliction didn't actually stop me from doing anything,  and now that I've stopped taking the tablets I can feel things returning to normal.  The other good news is that all the time I was abroad I didn't get bitten by a single mosquito. Mind you, I was wearing the ultra strong repellent which also managed to dissolve my watch strap. I found this rather encouraging. If it can do that to plastic, it must do even more horrible things to insects.

Actually, thinking about it, I reckon I got off rather lightly. Even with all the fun and games with chemicals, it was still well worth it. And I would go again (but I might try a different malaria pill).

Quick Dry

I'm not sure if there is a Guiness Book of World Records category for tumble drier purchase, but if there is I want to submit an entry.

Our tumble drier broke last night. We've had it 21 years and it goes and fails on us.  Actually the drier itself is fine, but the bit which makes it stop was broken. We found this out after it had tumbled a bunch of clothes for three hours. Ooops.

Anyhoo, having been told in a couple of shops that they didn't have what we wanted (I reckon the bigger the store the less chance of it actually having the thing you went in for) we found a place that did. So we swooped. Into the shop, pick it up, take it to the till, pay for it, less than five minutes.

And it works. And it stops. Wonderful.

Pinball

We were driving back up to Hull today and I was listening to BBC Radio 2 (not a thing I do lightly - unless Terry Wogan is on). They have this feature where people get to pick their favourite tracks. This week it has been Harry Shearer, who is one of the voices of The Simpsons (he does Mr. Burns, Smithers and a whole bunch of others).

And one of the tracks that he picked was Pinball by Brian Protheroe. One of my all time favourites.  Got the single in the loft. What are the chances?

Of course as soon as I got home and on line it was time to try and track down the track. Google and Ebay have provided me with links to his new home page and a cheap copy of his greatest hits. And Napster now have one of his albums on there as well. Amazing.

(Oh, and you really must hear his track "Never Join the Fire Brigade" as well - wonderful stuff)

Good Weather for Ducks

On holiday today. Went to Slimbridge, a duck sanctury. On the way there it rained. And I mean really rained. We were driving through flooded roads and everything. Real frontier stuff. I was almost wishing I had one of those horrid 4x4 type cars that some people think are cool.  Almost, but not quite.

When we got there the place was pretty packed. Lots of little kids in shiny (but not for long) wellies. Lots of parents looking out of the restaurant window at the driving rain and wondering what on earth to do for the next three hours. As we walked in they announced our arrival with a fire alarm. Which was nice, and did make the queue for the food a lot shorter.

Fortunately, and for reasons that I can't fully explain, the weather brightened as I ate my baked potato with cheese (and very nice cheese too) so after our meal we were able to go out and take some pictures of the birds. I was trying a new "down and dirty" technique with the photographs which involves holding the camera very close to the ground. Makes the snaps a little more interesting.

Some birds (no idea of the names)

Some Flamingos (pretty sure on this one)

Probably ducks, and pretty big ones too

New fave shirt logo

New fave shirt logo
Originally uploaded by RobMiles.

Goodbye Mark

A few weeks ago Mark Johnston of Microsoft told us he was moving on from the Academic beat and going into to something to do with development. Very sad. Microsoft people do move around within the company rather a lot, it is just the way they do things.

We have worked with Mark for quite a while, definitely one of the good guys, and it will be quite a wrench to see him move on. Anyhoo, best wishes for the future Mark.

As a mark of respect I have sent him a set of "24 Top Trumps" cards.  There is no higher honour.

Carrying the Q1 UMPC

My Samsung Q1 is presently my bestest mate (this might change quickly, I'm very fickle). Wtih it's dinky keyboard and tiny size I keep getting it out and saying to myself  "Complete PC here you know, even running XP Professional". Now I've added extra memory it will let me do just about all the things I want it to. Lovely.

I got the little case and keyboard, but carrying it around was a problem, in that I wanted a bag for it. I got one but it was not quite right, so I've gone and got a Crumpler "McBaines Baby -M" which is a perfect (if rather snug) fit.

If you've not come across Crumpler bags they are worth investigating. I got one for number one daughter over a year ago when she got her first portable computer, and it has stood up amazingly well. She now uses it as her "everything" bag, just throwing in all the stuff she needs for lectures (including the PC) before she rushes out of her room.

Crumpler bags are tough, well made and have the most amazing things written on the labels. If you are after a nice bag for your shiny UMPC you could do a lot worse.

UMPC on the road

I said earlier that I was taking a Samsung Q1 Ultra Mobile PC to India, in place of my tablet PC. I also said that I would let folks know how I got on with it.

The answers is, very well. When using it the biggest problem is the small screen. This is a major irritation and, although it doesn't actually stop you from doing anything, it does slow you down a bit and make it a bit harder to get things done. However, I don't really think that this is a problem. The whole point of the UMPC is that you would have it with you in situations where you would not want to have to carry a laptop, so in reality it is competing with nothing, not a notebook.

As a general computing device it is absolutely fine. Rock solid. More than responsive enough for general work and watching films. The little fan turns on every now and then to keep things cool, and from a hardware point of view it is absolutely top notch.  I bought the case and keyboard with goes with it, which makes using it in the field a lot easier. The keyboard has one of those pointing things in the middle which you can use as a mouse, and this works very well. I've not had one of these before, but I'm kind of a convert now. The only problem was that for the first hour or so I kept hitting the mouse buttons below the space bar, but I learned not to after a while.

I was able to use mains for most of the trip, but when I couldn't I was easily getting 2 hours of battery life out of the machine. That was whilst using WIFI and with no particular powersaving options set.

One the way back I was forced to put the device into my suitcase rather than carry it onto the plane. I was much more relaxed about doing this with the Q1; the device weighs so little it would not really be able to damage itself if it moved around in the case. As it turned out I was right, no trouble at all.

I really like the Q1 very much. When I got back to the UK the RAM upgrade that I had ordered was in the pile of post and I have now upgraded it to 1GB of memory. This is very easy to do and makes a huge difference to performance. I would be quite happy to have this as my main computer. I have monitors and keyboards at work and home and carrying the Q1 between the two is much easier than transporting the tablet I usually lug around. Only the slightly small 40GB disk makes this a bit tricky, but at present I'm considering how I'm going to manage all the PCs I seem to own, and put into place some kind of file sharing/sycnchronisation technology to address storage anyway.

One thing I have not done much, but will in the future, is use the UMPC as a lifestyle type device. I've put the Slingplayer software on it, so I can use it to watch TV as a client to my Slingbox (this works a treat) and I'm loading it up with some videos and music.  I'm also going to try out the tablet nature of the device and play with the touch keyboard. Great stuf.

Miles Roberts?

Today is the day we go home. We started early, very early, having heard terrible stories of delays at the airport. Our flight was delayed a bit, but fortunately not by much. The bad news for me was that lots of my precious toys had been placed in my unreliable suitcase, the one that likes to travel the world by itself. I was pretty much convinced that it would decide to visit some more interesting parts of the world and take all my stuff with it.

Anyhoo, you do what the safety instructions tell you. Or perhaps you don't. Having been given dire warnings of the consequences of taking any kind of hand baggage onto the plane, with just my passport, wallet and a paperback in my possession,  I was more than miffed to see people boarding the plane with rucksacks, laptop bags, you name it. 

So we settled down in our seats and waited as the plane pulled back from its stand and made ready for takeoff. And then it stopped for a minute. Then five minutes. Then the captain came on the intercom.

"I'm afraid we have to return to the stand and open up the hold. There is a problem with some of the luggage"

Drat. Triple drat. What kind of an idiot is causing delays? What kind of fool is holding everyone up? If I find out who it is I'll..... The intercom crackled again.

"Is there a Miles Roberts on the plane? Would Miles Roberts please make himself known to the cabin staff?"

Blarst. Could they mean me? I raised my hand. Turned out that the system had spotted three bags in the hold belonging to "Miles Roberts". Somewhere along the line my name and initials had got scrambled to make another person, who was not on the plane but who had his baggage in the hold.  I gave the purser my passport with the luggage numbers on it, which sorted that out and we were able to get airborne. Curse that suitcase.

The rest of the journey was uneventful, if you except the one hour wait at Heathrow for a place to disembark, and I was able to catch the tube to Kings Cross and then walk straight onto a wonderful Hull Trains locomotive for a very pleasant three hour ride up to Hull and home.

...and the winners are...

Today was the ground announcement of the winners of the software deveopment competition.  In the end the team from Norway came third, Brazil was second and Italy came first.  Well done folks, and good look with your applications in the future.

Joe Wilson and the winning teams

After that there was the grand Imagine Cup party, but unfortunatly I was feeling a little too fragile and anyway we needed to be on the road at 3:00 the following morning, so I thought I'd stay in the hotel room and sample a little Delhi hospitality. So I ordered a burger from room service. After 20 minutes there was a knock at the door. An immaculately dressed waiter with white gloves handed me his business card and then deployed what I can only descibe as the best presented burger I have ever seen. It arrived on a trolley, with four different kinds of mustard, proper HP sauce and all the trimmings. And coke. Talk about a morale booster.

Delhi for burger

It was delicious.  So, after packing all my precious electronic goodies into my suitcase (there is a security alert on at the moment and I won't be able to take any toys into the plane) I was able to turn in feeling extremely well fed.