Holiday Hereford

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I like being on holiday. We have a special bolt hole that we retreat to for a week or so. We've been coming here for quite a few years and it is always nice.

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They always have some flowers in the cottage

Today we went off to Hereford, a market down a few miles down (or is it up) the road. They were having an art exhibition in the library (I'm a sucker for these). There was some stuff by local artists, including a lass called Jane Eccles. For some reason I really liked her stuff. One day when I am rich (but not necessarily famous) I'll get one of her paintings.

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Hereford has a cathedral

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When we got back the countryside was kind enough to give us a super sunset. 

Getting Lively

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I've launched another section of the site. This is concerned with my Teaching Fellowship Award. The University of Hull very generously gave me a fellowship award last year and I've been preparing materials on this for some time. We have now reached the stage where I can take some of the wrappers off and start making parts of the project available for other people to play with.

You can find out more here.

Oh, and I need a logo. Any ideas people?

Lively Learning Introduction

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Welcome to the Lively Learning part of the site. This is where I'm going to post information about the Lively Learning resources which I'm producing as the output of my University of Hull Teaching Fellowship award.

I'm presently half way through the award period, and have developed the first phase of the work. You can find out what it is all about here.

This journal will document project progress.

I will soon be releasing a kind of Technology Preview of the Marking Assistant program for anyone with a Tablet PC to download and play with. Download releases will be announced in this journal and posted here. There is also a discussion forum here.

RSS feeds for Lively Learning can be found here.

Introduction

This document sets out the reasoning behind the “Lively Learning Materials” project and the state presently reached in the development. If you have any questions on the project, or wish to get involved, you can send me an email or add a post to the discussion.

Motivation

The motivation for the project came with the realisation of the usefulness of E-Learning systems, and the frustration of trying to use them in our teaching situation. Whilst it is easy to create and deploy resources and assessments the material itself is rather inflexible once delivered, and the marking process involves sitting at a system and processing submitted work.

In the Department of Computer Science we are changing the way that we perform assignment marking. Rather than work through submitted material “off line” we now spend time with each student discussing their submission and explaining the reasons behind the mark that is ultimately awarded.

We have found that students gain a lot from this process, but it has not been very easy to integrate it into the use of an E-Learning system to distribute and manage coursework. Also, we have found that the learning materials that are deployed are hard for the students to customise for their own use.

As Information Technology practitioners we have also noticed the arrival of mobile devices, notably the Tablet PC and Ultra Mobile PC which show considerable potential in this area, so the initial aim of this work is to build a test d to determine how useful such devices will be for performing marking assessment.

Later this project will consider how such devices can be used by students to customise the resources that they receive.

Approach

When considering the approach to be taken, a number of ground rules were set out. These were intended to ensure that what is produced is useful in the widest possible range of contexts. Any systems that are created must be capable of operating in a small scale, individual, manner, but they must also be scaleable to large installations. Whilst it must be possible to integrate with existing E-Learning systems they must not be tied to any particular system. This has led to a “pluggable” software design and data storage based on the XML file format.

Current Status

The underlying framework for the learning resources has been designed and deployed as part of the Marking Assistant program. This is a Tablet PC/Ultra Mobile PC application which is specifically designed for us in laboratory systems, where work is being assessed with the student. It has a number of features which make it especially suitable for pen driven use. The application will be used for student assessment in the first year programming course in the Department of Computer Science.

The XBOX 360 as a Media Center Extender

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Number one son has been playing with an XBOX 360 as a Media Centre extender. He's also been using the latest version of Vista. Lucky fellow.

Anyhoo, turns out that an XBOX makes a very good extender. And it worked with Vista right out of the box. The experience is pretty much as if you were sat at the real computer, picking music, looking at pictures and watching live or recorded TV.

The network lights up like a christmas tree when you use it (although we are using a slow old style yellow wire one for some bits) but the pictures that come out of the other end are pretty darned good.

However, this is not helping my case to get a Media PC downstairs in the living room.....

Oblivion with Cars

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One of the wonderful things about the XBOX 360 is the way that you can download demos of games. Actually, this is probably not wonderful, more like expensive. I've already bought a couple of games on the back of this "feature". Darn it.

In the old days I had to wait until a magazine with a coverdisk came out. Nowadays I just leave the machine chugging for a couple of hours whilst the next potential wallet buster comes down the wires.

And so, I downloaded the demo of Test Drive Unlimited. This is a driving game. Actually, game is probably a bit of an understatement. It is more like a better version of life. You start off with a massive house in Hawii and a few cars in the garage. You look a lot cooler than you really do (at least in my case), and you seem to have a lot more spare time.

So you go for a drive. You can drive anywhere on the island. Happen you'll meet up with another driver, who may or may not be a real person. Happen you'll have a race. Happen you'll go the wrong way round the track, get hopelessly lost and embarras yourself. Or you might be more lucky than me. Anyway, if you win, money changes hands and you can save up for a new, even shinier car.

And so it goes on. The weather changes, the time of day changes. The road goes on, seemingly for ever. There are no loading screens. There is no slowdown. You can use your GPS to find things of interest and you can also meet up with your chums for races. When you sit in the car, you sit in the car. You can even make the windows go up and down.  

The car handling is realistic enough to be annoying. You can crash into things and do damage to them, but not apparently to yourself. If you are sufficiently naughty the police might want to take you to task. If you are feeling brave you can get on a motorbike instead.

When I first played Oblivion, the massive XBOX 360 roleplaying game, I was impressed by the way that the world was totally believable, and massive. Test Drive Unlimited is like that, but with cars and no loading delays at all. Folks, this is proper next generation gaming. Not a flashier version of an existing game, but a whole new immersive experience. If you have an XBOX 360 you should at least get hold of the demo of this game. Then, like me, you can start saving for the real thing...

Prepare for Icon Attack!

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I've been playing with the new XNA Express stuff which lets you write games using XNA. Great fun. I'm presently creating a little 2D shooting game which is provisionally titled "Icon Attack", where you fly "My Computer" into battle against massed hordes of Windows Icons, running in fear from the "Recycle Bin of Doom".

I've just got the first bit working, which is the moving icon starfield that will provide the backdrop. I'll keep you posted (quite literally) about how the development goes. Eventually I'll put the source up for you to marvel at.....

What a company!

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I bought a CD from a web based store yesterday. Today I got the shipping note. I'm reproducing it here because I think it is wonderful.

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over
the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money
can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party
marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of
Portland waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in
our private CD Baby jet on this day, Wednesday, August 30th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did.
Your picture is on our wall as 'Customer of the Year'. We're all
exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

I'm very tempted to buy something else, just to see if I get a different message.

Live Writer Flickr Inkifier now available

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I've finished writing the code for the latest Live Writer plugin. It lets you grab images from Flickr, annotate them with ink and then post them back. It also has a few image processing feature, including a "wild" thing which is quite fun. You can find out more here.

Partycrasher

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Ever held one of those parties where folks turn up uninvited, drink all your booze, trash the place and then stay around for months afterwards 'cos they figure you want them around?

Well, I haven't, but they sound terrible.

I had something similar though when I installed my new camera software. Normally I avoid installing programs that come with things like cameras. I've got my own image processing software (Microsoft Digital Imaging Suite since you asked) and it works fine thank you very much. Normally a camera is recognised by Windows as a storage device, and I've found that things go pretty smoothly even if you ignore the draconian "Install software before placing camera within a 1000 metre radius of the USB socket on your computer" warnings that they come with.

However, the new camera that I've bought has a RAW mode, where it captures the image information directly off the sensor and passes it to the computer for processing. This is great if you want the ultimate in quality, but it means that you need software to unpick the picture when it arrives. This is usually tied to a particular camera range. So I figure I have to install the software.

Which does the digital equivalent of drinking all my booze, trashing the place and then refusing to leave. It installs yet another icon in my full to bursting system tray. It gets in the way of any other cameras that I might dare to plug in. And when I remove the darned thing, it stops the system automatically recognising other USB devices.

Pesky driver software.

I've heard that Windows Vista is a lot less accommodating to newly arrived drivers from hell. I hope so.