If you are looking for something new to listen to you could do a lot worse than seek out Rilo Kiley. They are an indie rock band operating out of California, but none the worse for that.
Their latest album, Under The BlackLight is good selection of tunes in a variety of different styles. To me they sound a bit like Fleetwood Mac would sound if they were still making records.
It worked for me. Hull ComSoc had a lan party today. They had Halo 3, Quake, Wii Tennis, Guitar Hero, in fact all kinds of games. I took along my copy of Virtua Tennis for the PS/3 and played a few games, which was nice. I kept carefully away from all the games I was less good at (i.e. everything else) and managed to make sure I didn't lose. Wonderful. And you don't have "friendly fire" in tennis. I did take the camera though, and grabbed some snaps.
Halo 3 multiplayer semi final. Tight stuff.
A tense moment in the final
Mission Control
I saw this today up town. "Experience the Magic of Light" eh? All together - "It's just a flashlight".
They don't seem to have sold many.....
Hull Fair is one of the biggest fairs in Europe. Which attractions are there? All of them. We went tonight, and I took the medium sized camera. I conquered my fear of heights and parting with money to buy a seat on one of the two big wheels, and grab some overhead shots of the action.
Just a small part of the fair. You can see the Humber Bridge on the horizon.
More of the fair. We didn't get around to going on the other big wheel you can see in the distance.
My kind of game of chance, a prize every time..
Probably my favourite of the trip, although there are some other ones that I like on Flickr.
I'm very aware of the fact that I've not written another episode of Trip Hazard for ages. He's just shot the mayor, and things are not looking good. I must stress that the reason I've not done any more is not because I've written myself into a corner. Oh no. Does anyone want any more?
Whilst digging around on my hard disk for some files I came across the notes I wrote for my Workstation Technology course in 1995. I thought it might be fun to pdf them and put them on this site. You can find them here. It is interesting to read them and see how much has changed.
And how much hasn't...
And just to prove that I'm still working in the present, I've put up another chapter in the XNA book.
From the TV listings in today's paper:
10:15 BBC 1 Medium Allison is upset to discover that her new friend Debra is to be the serial killer's next victim....
I suppose it completely ruins plans for her next dinner party.
We had our first University Open Day of the new session today. I did my bit, followed by John. We had a great audience, and, as usual, I took a picture...
Thanks for coming, I hope you found it worthwhile
I told my "Favourite Joke In All The World" again. I think I'm starting to wear it out....
The first couple of weeks of a session are always pretty exhausting. Getting to know a new group of students (who are all a great bunch by the way), bedding in new courses and writing new material does seem to take it out of me a bit. Not to mention trips to Grimsby with a robot dog and trying to finish chapter 7.
This evening I sat in the car wondering what this big round hoop of plastic was doing in front of me. Then I remembered that it was the steering wheel, and it was time to drive home.
Just had a great time at a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) careers fair in Grimsby. Somewhat exhausting, as I was presenting continuously from around 6:00 to 8:10 this evening, but great fun. Of course, Digby the robot dog stole the show as usual...
The audiences were all great and I took a few pictures of them.
Click on the pictures for a larger versions on Flickr.
Just discovered this on Ed. Dunill's blog.
http://blogs.msdn.com/edunhill/
Microsoft Office for 39 quid for students! That's less than Halo 3! Get in there people....
I don't use spreadsheets very much, but every year we have to produce a demonstrators timetable, and Excel is how we do it. I've got a very clever spreadsheet that lets you enter things and automatically highlights cells for the demonstrators, counts their loading and all sorts. I'm quite proud of it.
It uses a named range, called Times, which has all the timeslots in it. This year we have added modules and moved things around, and now the named range does not reflect the part of the spreadsheet that I want it to.
And nothing in Excel 97 would seem to let me change this.
The help, like always, tells me in mind numbing detail how to do things which are either too simple for words or too complex for me to ever want to use. I have that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that there is a very easy way to do this (in fact I even remember doing it once many years ago) but I don't know what it is.
Very frustrating.
So, I turn to you, dear reader. You have already shown that you are highly intelligent just by the kind of blogs you read (i.e. this one). So prove this by letting me know how to do this "simple" thing. First answer that works wins a Mars Bar.
I really must be careful posting when I'm cross. I meant Office 2007 rather than 97. And I must thank Andy (and the enigmatic Me) for providing the answer, which turns out to be as simple as I suspected it might be.
today it was the turn of the post grads to have their party. We had another, eerily similar quiz and more games. Great fun.
The winners
Second place
And finally third place.
We had all kinds of fun with the toys again, and everyone went away happy.
Book now for next year.....
Just a few photos I've taken recently.
Down by the Marina. The light-ship used to be off Spurn Point
Hull city centre looking fine
This morning on campus. Go autumn!
Library and sky
I had all kinds of plans for today. I was going to record my lectures using Camtasia and post them on our intranet for an adoring public. Unfortunately fate had other plans.
Even after testing it still turns out that things can break. And then some. Vista shut down the tablet. Three times. Even though I was in the middle of a presentation. Of course, my plugging in the tablet power supply and neglecting to turn it on may have had something to do with this. My remote mouse failed to control Powerpoint, even though it worked with everything else. The presentation recordings were interrupted and out of sync. And to make matters even worse, they had my voice on them. Not good.
I'm going to try again, of course, but I think this serves as a lesson to us all that even if you try to do everything right, it can still all go wrong.
I'm making some musical bread but it is not going very well. I've only got the do so fa.
You will never guess what I'm using to post this...
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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