Five Things to Know About Me

I've never been "tagged" before. But all that has changed. Alfred from Microsoft has tagged me. The idea is that I have to write five things about myself that you probably don't know. And then tag other bloggers to get them to do the same. A bit like a chain letter. Without the chain. Or the letter. So, here goes:

1. I once had a whole page of poetry published in "The Indepedent", a UK national daily newspaper. It was illustrated by Heath, a famous cartoonist. It was in 1987 and was fallout from my first ever lecture in rhyme. I have a copy of the paper in my office, one of my most treasured possessions. It is getting a bit yellow now, I must scan it sometime.
2. I used to present on Hospital Radio. My show was called "Better by Miles" as I remember. After the wonderfullness of the title it was all downhill from there.... I made my own jingle machine using eight track tapes and still have some recordings in the loft. And they are staying there.
3. I wrote the software which puts datestamps on bottles of Budweiser beer (I'm very proud of this). It controls a special disk drive which puts metal masks in the way of a very powerful laser which blasts ink off bottle labels as they fly past. I do Asahi Beer as well, in addition to Cadburys Roses, Wheetabix and a bunch of other stuff.
4. I teach Sunday School. I've been going to our local methodist church religiously every week for years. I'm not particularly evangelical, it is just that for me a universe with a god in it makes more sense than one without.
5. I own a pinball machine. Oh yes. It is a Twilight Zone from 1993, one of the best machines ever made and great fun to carry up flights of stairs.

And now I have to pass the tag on to other people. I'm going to tag Jay Wakefield, Matt Jones, Carrie Francis, Geoff MacDonald and David Grey.

Travels with a GPS Logger

I'm writing some software which works with GPS. It is for the .NET Micro Framework book and will let you use a Micro Framework based device to log and display location information (assuming I can find a copyright free source of aerial maps).

Anyhoo, it occurred to me that I'm going to need some test data for the system so today, as we drove about East Yorkshire dropping people off and getting free food of friends and family, we took the Samsung Q1 with the Microsoft GPS sensor and a little program to capture the data stream. If you want to relive last night's epic journey from Howden to York you will soon be able to do this. Oh yes.

Your Brain and How To Use It?

The Sunday Times has been advertising a new feature aimed at improving the mental prowess of the nation. On Sunday you will get a free DVD which will let you measure your brain power. Whoopee.

I hate things like this. I hate IQ tests, I think they are silly. If you get a low score you get upset because you think you are thick. If you get a high score in one of these tests you get upset because you are not running the country (not that this is necessarily an advert for cleverness).

Of course the real reason that I hate the tests is because I get very confused/irritated by them. When confronted by a "pick the right answer/odd one out/next in sequence" kind of question I can usually think of a whole bunch of reasons why any one of them could be the correct one, depending on the whim of the person setting the test. So what I'm really finding out is if my interpretation of the situation is the same as someone else. Who presumably has a "gold standard" of cleverness in their office.

You might find it strange that someone who often has to measure how good people are at something by setting exams and exercises dislikes IQ tests so much. I think the thing is that what I try to assess is how useful somebody would be. Given a bunch of learning outcomes (which is what courses have these days) I'm going to set questions that will try to find out how useful you can be with the knowledge that you are supposed to have.

I'll start by asking a few things which will determine whether or not you have taken the trouble to learn the fundamentals of the subject and then give you a bunch of situations where you can demonstrate that you can use this understanding to achieve things. Finally, I'm going to try and get you into a place where you can say "There are no right answers here, just different compromises which reflect different priorities" and then tell me all about these.

Of course not everything can be nailed down like this, and I'm also going to want to see how well you can present your understanding (which is why we get the first year students to demonstrate their programs), but it is a good start.

I've nothing against doing stuff which keeps your brain agile (I love the little brain power games for the Nintendo DS). But I am strongly against dodgy pseudo-scientific tests which don't really prove anything useful.

Leeds Bargain Hunter

Leeds future sky

Went to Leeds today to look out for cheap clothes in the "Shop for strangely shaped people that cares not for style, quality or its customers". A tip, oh managers of such shops. Bearing in mind that the aim of a retail establishment is to entice shoppers inside to part with funds for goods, do not put something eerily tasteless in orange and brown directly inside the front door. Things did not improve much once we got further inside. A duffle coat that looked good in a picture turned out to be made of fuzzy felt and one of the buttons fell off as I tried it on.

However, we did manage to find a couple of tasteful items worthy of investment (thank heavens for Ben Sherman shirts) and so the trip was not a complete waste. And we did get to to go Ikea for meatballs.

In Praise of Insomnia

I've started waking up in the night every now and then (last night it was easy because number one son and daughter got up at some ungodly hour to go to London). Quite often I find it hard to get back to sleep, but this is sometimes a bonus because I do have some of my better ideas at that time (or perhaps it is because my critical faculties are asleep at that time as well).

Anyhoo, last night I had a neat idea for the "Flashlight for the Fiftieth Century" (US version) or "Posh Torch" (UK version) that I'm developing as a worked example for the .NET Micro Framework book I'm presently writing. Yesterday I got a GPS interface sort of working. As I was lying in bed it occurred to me that it would be nice to add some mapping features to the software. So now I'm going to download some map images so that the device can have a "you are here" kind of display for certain areas. 

Mouse Waggling

Many years ago I got hold of the first version of Windows NT (Version 3.1 for some strange, marketing related, reason). This was the beginning of "proper" 32 bit operating systems underneath Windows, a trend which has continued all the way to Windows XP and finally Vista.

However, as it was based on an Intel 486 chip with only 64 MBytes of memory the operating system used to struggle a bit. We used to have a game called "mouse waggling", where you would fire up the performance counter and see how much CPU load you could create just by moving the mouse pointer around the screen. Sad but fun (particularly on somebody else's computer). A good player could get up to 50 or 60%.

I tried the game today on Vista (it has some really nice performance displays in the sidebar). Except this time I was dragging a window, complete with contents, over a large and complex desktop.  The needle does move, but nothing like as far as it used to. I guess this is down to the use of the graphics hardware to underpin the display system, either way it is impressive.

Boomerang Settings

I've just about got Vista how I want it. Every now and then I do something which means I have to load or configure another program I used to use, but most of the time I can putter along and get things done. And I rather like my new workplace. Except for one thing.

Settings that I've changed keep reverting back to their previous values. I'm using a network storage device which is based on a Linux processor and uses SAMBA, so I have to modify a Local Security Policy to make it work. I can make the change fine, and the drive works fine for a while. Then the setting flips back to the original value. Similarly, to get Outlook to log on to our Exchange server I've had to add a registry key. Which keeps vanishing.

The only thing I can think of is that the system thinks it is under attack, and puts things back to their safe values. I've had a cursory dig around but nothing out there tells me how to fix it. Very strange.

Recipe for Pain

1. Take one Toshiba M400 laptop running Windows XP Service Pack 2.
2. Carefully image the M400 disk using Paragon Drive Backup 6.0 onto two separate external disks.
3. Carefully copy all the document files onto further external disks, so that you have plenty of copies of all the important stuff.
4. Install Windows Vista onto Toshiba M400, wiping hard disk in process.
5. Remember some crucial files that are not in the document directories you copied onto external drives, but hey, I've got a drive image backup so no problem.
6. Fail to find the Paragon Drive Image program CD.

New Year at Hornsea

First, a happy new year to both my readers. At Chateau Miles, we have been know to celebrate the arrival of a new calendar by heading off to the seaside at Hornsea. Today the weather looked reasonable, and so we set out. On the way there it seemed like a bad idea, in that we drove along underneath some very nasty looking clouds and the odd smattering of rain.

But when we got to the coast it was wonderful. It was very blustery, but this really seemed to blow out the cobwebs at the start of the year. It was also pretty busy, and one or two valiant souls had actually gone for a paddle. I'd taken the big camera, and so I took a bunch of snaps.

New Year seaside

Arcadia

Lights

Viva Pinata

I am weak. Very weak. Show me a sale with two XBOX 360 video games for 60 quid and I'm pretty much bound to buy a couple. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, I can resist pretty much anything but temptation. I ended up buying Test Drive Unlimited, a game which lets you tear up and down great chunks of Hawaii in a fast car, and Viva Pinata, a gardening game. Number one wife noted wryly that the only time that I will actually do any gardening is inside a computer, and this seems to be the case.

In the game you create a nice garden in the hope that wandering pinata will come and live there, breed, eat each other, and form a living ecosystem. Pinata are animated versions of those things that kids at posh birthday parties in Mexican restaurants smash open to get out toys and sweets and there seem to be an unlimited number of these which can crawl, burrow, fly, swim and so on.

The game is aimed firmly at children, so I reckoned I would be able to cope. And so it seemed when I started. A friendly girl with a voice able to convey more enthusiasm than a very enthusiastic thing tells you what to do in awed terms, and introduces you to your toolkit noting that "If you hit your pinata with the shovel they may become ill". So let's play nicely out there kids.

Anyhoo, a lot happens in a very short time. Within an hour I had my version of a green and pleasant land running nicely and a few different varieties of pinata living side by side, eating, breeding and throwing fireballs at each other. And it looks very pretty. The clock spins in accelerated real time and the sun and moon wax and wane very effectively.

And I realised one more thing that differentiates me from youngsters (and probably lots of grown ups as well). I think that, once they have picked up the control system, kids would now have the patience and determination to try making different pinata, plant different seeds, build new types of garden, put their own drawings on their own breeds and do all the other things which make the game so much fun. But I couldn't be bothered. I turned the joypad over to number one son, who has more of an appetite for this kind of thing and wandered off to do some proper work. In a trice he had added a whole bunch of trees and species that would have taken me ages to sort out.

I think the snag is that at my age if I'm going to spend any amount of time in a learning curve I like to think that I'm going to get something concrete out of it at the end, and a pretty new pinata just doesn't cut it for me. For me the game is just too much like gardening, in that it requires effort and thought, and I'd rather put those into something else, like messing around with computers (which is probably how I really enjoy myself).

However, if you are looking for a game to play with your kids which is bright, colourful and creates a living environment with genuine causes and effects and unlimited scope for experimentation and cooperation, then you should take a look.

A Dangerous Obsession

If you think about it, you really shouldn't let people with an obsessive nature anywhere near computers. When I was much younger I knew a chap called John. Actually, now I am older I still know a chap called John, but it is a different John, and not important right now. Anyhoo, John had one of the first microcomputers, a Nascom. It had a 25 lines of 40 characters display. And 8 KBytes of RAM. And he could write Basic programs on it and store them on a cassette tape. What power. I was dead jealous. One Monday he came in to work looking even more haggard and disheveled than ever, which for John was saying something. We asked him if he had enjoyed a pleasant weekend.

 "Not really" he replied "I wanted to see the robots feet and it took ages to get it to work".

Turns out that the Nascom had a display character set which contained graphical images, including little robots. Snag was that these were not displayed completely, because the screen hardware skipped some lines when it drew the raster. The feet were missed off. For John this was a bad thing. So he spent an entire weekend rewiring the hardware so that all the scan lines were drawn. And he could see his robots feet. We thought this was silly, and could hardly see the difference extra pixels made.

I was reminded of this during my attempts to get Vista Aero Glass to work on my Toshiba M200 this weekend. For those that don't know, Glass gives you a funky effect around each window, so you can sort of see through to the one beneath it. This adds very little to the usability of your computer, but it is very cute, particularly if you understand how fiendishly hard it is to draw this kind of thing. And my rather elderly Tosh machine can just about do it. But only if you download a special driver, customise the initialisation file and then throw in a registry hack. And it only sort of works, in that every now and then it runs out of display memory and drops back to boring old opaque window edges.

But getting glass on my desktop became very important to me, and I spent far too much time trying and failing to make it work. Finally I had a glass display running and I showed number one wife the finished result.

"I can't see the difference" she said.

Vistafied

Some things are guaranteed to put me into a mild sweat. Finding we have no milk in the house, filling in my Tax Return. And changing my computer operating system.

Today I've done all three. The milkman seems to have vanished. We gave him a bottle of wine for christmas, told him we didn't want any milk for a few days and we've not seen him since. I have this awful vision of an upturned milk float half submerged in a ditch with a white clad body spreadeagled alongside, a half empty wine bottle still clutched in its dead hand. Or he might just have forgotten us. Anyhoo, I was nearly condemned to black tea until number one daughter mentioned that there were shops in the village which also sell milk. Phew.

Then I had to do my tax return, seeing as it is due tomorrow. I don't earn much money (most things I do for love - obviously) but I did get paid for some stuff I wrote some time back, so I have to declare it and pay the man. So there was a quick scrabble for forms, typing of numbers and pressing of submit buttons.

Then we came to my new operating system. I'm going to move to Vista. Part of me wants to, the other part has a great affinity for the status quo. However, some software I want to use only works with Vista, so I'm kind of forced into this. I'm not actually moving completely just yet. I thought I'd install the system on another computer first so that I have an escape clause. So far things have gone quite well. I've got Vista running on my old Toshiba M200 and it seems to work OK so far.

Micro Framework Sample Chapters

You may not know I'm writing a book (there must be some people left on the planet that I've not told yet). Anyhoo, I am. Writing a book. (makes a change from colouring them in I suppose)

The book is about embedded development using the .NET Micro Framework. This is something I'm very excited to be involved with. I reckon the framework could do wonderful things for the process of writing code for very small processors (the kind you find in remote controls and other small computer controlled devices). It makes embedded code more reliable and easier to write. Wonderful stuff.

If you want to read bits of the book before it gets printed, and even pass comment on them, you can take a look here.

Best Christmas Present Ever?

Well?

More Wii Magic

The more I play with the Nintendo Wii the more I like it. In fact, just watching other people play with it is fun enough. We went to see more folks today, and I unpacked the Wii and turned it loose. There were conversations like:

"How do I use this then?"
"Just hit the ball"
"So, which buttons do I press?"
"You don't, just hit the ball with it"

And so they did. Watching four people play tennis together is very amusing, and some of the rallys went on for a fair time. I reckon that we will soon outgrow the simple games that come with the device. I just hope that they produce some "proper" sports games to go with it.

Happy Christmas

Happy christmas to all (or perhaps both) my readers. I hope you got as many and as good presents as I did. And I hope you have a happy and prosperous new year.

A Very Open Road

The roads were lovely and quiet today for our drive out to the rest of the family. We had a tight schedule and we managed to hit it perfectly (I think we were even early for one visit - which for me is pretty amazing)

Live to Shop

We went up town this morning shopping. So did everyone else. We didn't have a huge amount to buy, which was just as well, it is just that I'm addicted to the almond croissants that they serve in Costa Coffee and number one wife likes the tiramisu coffee (we are becoming terribly cultured).

Anyhoo, it was hell. We went to Marks and Spencer's to get some food and joined "The Longest and Slowest Moving Queue in the World"(tm). At one point I said out loud "This isn't just queuing, this is Marks and Spencer queuing" in what I thought was a clever parody of the current advertisement campaign they are running in the UK. I don't think this went down too well. 

Eventually we made it back home via a few present drop-offs and I'm just about to begin the wrapping up process. And yes, I have bought some sticky tape. But somebody has made off with my scissors.....

Previously on Veronica Mars

I've started watching season 2 of Veronica Mars. If you haven't seen it, oooh you are in for a treat. In the UK they show it on one of the minor satellite channels which is a crying shame. It has all the snappy dialogue of Buffy alongside neat whodunit stories and well constructed story arcs.  Strongly recommended. Number one daughter has been watching Gilmore Girls, which looks pretty darned good too.

Men In White Coats

Number one daughter has bought a some white lab coats for her practical work. Apparently they were a very good price. I think I might start wearing one to answer the door when people come round over christmas. I could offer them funny coloured drinks and ask then questions about their brains....