Kung Fu Panda Kicks Ass

Went to see a kids film tonight. We went to the new Vue cinema at the top of Princes Quay in Hull. They use digital projectors and the picture was wonderful.  The film itself wasn't half bad either. I'd heard good things about it and they were all right.

There is a kind of production line for these kind of computer generated films at the moment, and many of them are are kind of "sub-Pixar, straight to DVD" kind of affairs. However, Kung Fu Panda is definitely a cut above any of these, mostly down to the great voicing by Jack Black amongst others. Nice story, some wonderful set pieces and generally lush images make this a film worth getting to see.

I was pleased to find that Vue was nice and busy when we came out of the film. It is a nice place to go to the movies and I hope it does well. In fact we are planning to see the X-Files movie at Vue on Friday...

Bogey Wonderland

I've seem to have caught this kind of cold thing which is not very pleasant. I've not got a runny nose as such, but for some reason bogey production seems to have gone into overdrive. That, or I've been subjected to some ancient gypsy curse and the bogey man is coming every night with a hod (or whatever he carries them in) full of bogeys and emptying them into my head.

It's funny because I don't remember offending any ancient gypsies recently. It has done wonders for tissue sales in our area though.

I want to be a Dragon

I've decided what to be should I ever be allowed my time again on this earth. I want to be a dragon on "Dragon's Den".

Until recently I wanted to be a banker, in that no matter how stupid, greedy or idiotic I was my business was "too big to fail" and therefore my job (and large bonuses) would be secure for ever. But it didn't really give the opportunities for creative nastiness and acclaim that being a dragon on Dragon's Den seems to offer.

If you've not seen the program the format is that hapless entrepreneurs are given a chance to pitch their ideas in front of a bunch of rich people (the dragons) who can either enjoy themselves by mercilessly insulting everything in sight or enjoy themselves by backing the idea with some of their (to them) small change and walking away with a substantial profit if things work out.

I used to quite like the program, in that it seemed to me that it did provide a way that genuinely innovative people could get backing for ideas that otherwise might not see the light of day. But that was before it became big television. One of the laws of physics is that you can't measure something without affecting it in some way. TV shows are like that. Once they become popular they become an end in themselves and their original starting point becomes lost in the mist of ratings.

Nowadays the dragons have figured out that anything on the program has the benefit of a five minute prime time advertisement and is therefore worth backing on that basis. Furthermore, the pitchers have also figured out that appearing on the program (regardless of whether or not you actually make anything worthy) gives you a change to get on TV. Last week the only two ideas that got backing were a fairly indifferent rock band and a company which will provide you with a person dressed as a tree for a large fee. And these days only one of the dragons actually seems to be involved in making anything. The others are involved in things like "retail", "services" and "investment".

This week a fashion designer took full advantage of the platform to promote her (to me) sub-Primark dresses and of course one of the dragons jumped in to back her because even if only a few percent of viewers go for the outfits they are on to a winner. And the "as seen on TV Dragon's Den" label will go a long way. And of course they all  had a bit of fun raining on the parades of other's hopes and dreams and competing with themselves for the most offensive bon-mots that they could heap on the hapless punters.

I quite like the idea of being rich, appearing on TV as some kind of demi-god and being given the chance to be as offensive as I like in front of the cameras. So sign me up.

Everything Changes

I dunno. You go away for a week or so and all kinds of new stuff happens while you are out. I love this business..

The XNA Creators Club has moved on to the next level, in that there is now a way you can start to get money for games that you have created. This is really exciting, in that it means that it is now properly possible to write games in your bedroom (or even downstairs) and then get them out in front of a mass audience. 

If you want to create 3D models for your games you can head over here and get a free copy of Caligari trueSpace 7.6, which is a proper 3D authoring package. It also has some really neat tie-ins with Virtual Earth, so you can create things and have them rove around anywhere in the world.

If you are new to programming and want something to help you learn the principles (and produce some neat flowcharts of your code) you can find the Visual Studio Middle School Power Toy here. I've not played with it yet (just got back from 7 hours driving) but it looks interesting.

Anniversary Bash

My Uncle Tony and Aunty Iris have been married for quite a while. Apparently I was at the wedding, but I cried so much I had to be carried outside. Doesn't sound a bit like me actually, but my recollection of the event is a bit hazy to be honest.

Anyhoo, to celebrate this we were invited down for a do, and as soon as I heard the magic words "Free Food and Drink" it was out with the satnav and into the route planning phase.

The party was held at cousin Lindsay's super house, which has a wonderful view out of the back. And the weather was fantastic. Food was eaten, stories swapped, speeches made and champagne drunk. Fantastic.

I've hidden a clue as to which anniversary it was somewhere in this picture. See if you can use your skill and judgement to work out the answer.

One thing that came out of the do for me was that technology is now everywhere. Digital cameras were being produced and compared, there was talk of email and SMS and Vista and many things technical. I talked quite a bit of "shop" (sorry about that) and it turns out that my cousin Sue is actually an Internet entrepreneur (try saying that after a few glasses of champers).

She runs myblankets.com which sells personalised gifts, baby presents, even stuff for your horse (if you have one). She also does a roaring trade in "taggies" which are cuddly comfort blankets for the very young.

I really liked the colours on this one, but I've been told I'm a bit old for them.

Anyhoo, thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make the party great, and best wishes to Tony and Iris.

Kipling Country

We were down in the south of England for a family "do", but the place we were staying was in walking distance of "Batemans", where Rudyard Kipling lived. So we wandered out into the morning sunshine to seek it out.

I can see why Kipling liked the place so much.

They were having a historical re-enactment thing in the grounds of the house, which meant that there were lots of people in period costume quite literally living in the past for the weekend. We didn't have much time to take a look round, but I did make time for some pictures.

Old style family entertainment.

Then it was time to get suited and booted for the main event.

Robs Travel Tips

Here's a tip. If you are going north to south in the UK it is worth thinking about using the A1 rather than the M1. The M1 is the main motorway up the UK, but it is always busy and often delayed. The A1 is not all motorway, but it is all dual carriageway and it has a certain period charm which the other road lacks.

And if you stop for a coffee you might see one of these in the car park.

We shot down the A1 at the legal speed limit pretty much all the way. The only slight problem was that the road has been "improved" by the removal of a bunch of roundabouts that the satnav thought were still there. I'm sure the machine was impressed by the way that we could find exit 2 at 70 miles an hour.....

Back in Blighty

Today we are making a guest appearance back in Hull, before we zoom off again to a wedding anniversary. We got back first thing this morning and watched the boat dock.

"Well I don't care about that. I'm wearing blue tomorrow because it matches my eyes."

Birthday in Bruges

Busy week this week. Just back from London and now we're in Bruges for my birthday.

Looks good from the river

The Belgian take on strawberry flavoured milk. Very nice.

Lots of controls. But what for?

View from the top.

Bruges is a great place for a visit. Lots of shops selling chocolate, which is always a good thing. Although I enjoyed the boat trip just as much as the city, even though I didn't get the top bunk.

Best Picture Ever?

Today we set sail for Bruges. You can get there really easily from Hull on the ferry that leaves from here. It should be great trip, because the boats are great fun and I've heard good things about the city itself.

We were lucky enough to be leaving in great weather, travelling almost exactly east for a while, with the sunset behind us. I was on the back of the boat taking pictures of the light on the water when the pilot launch appeared and did a little turn in the wake of the ship. And, having the big camera and fat lens I took a few photographs. Like this.

Sometimes you just can't beat being in the right place at the right time.

The Land of Noise Reduction

In spite of the dodgy weather forecasts we decided to spend the first day of our holiday walking round the Dalby Forest. And we were very lucky.

Nice Colours

Flowers

We just managed to find a space to eat our picnic.

Tete-a-Tete at the Tate

Today we left the hotel, walked across the Millennium Bridge and then on to the Tate Modern. Wonderful gallery. I love going there, they usually have some very good free exhibits. Not sure what they all mean, but I always find them interesting.

View from the bridge

View from the Tate

Pop Art

Heading Back

Then it was onto the train for home. Great stuff.

London Birthday Bash

Today we all headed for London and the birthday bash for number on daughter. Lots of treats to come. Including a trip to the Apple store (which was for me).

Racing to London. We beat the car to the next junction.

We arrived in London bang on time, got to the Apple store before it opened and I got myself a docking station or two (the shiny new iPhone doesn't have a docking station supplied like the old one did).

Then we went for lunch at the Rainforest Cafe (excellent food and a thunder storm every twenty minutes) and on to Spamalot. Very well done, and very funny. For it to work it had to have proper music and dancing. And it did. Along with funny jokes and some tunes to sing along to. Heartily recommended.

Then the final treat of the day, a trip on the London Eye. With the big camera and fat lens.

Base of the eye

Looking towards the Telecom Tower

Our seat of "government"

Back on terra firma

Then we wandered out in search of food and taxis.

This is my favourite picture of the whole trip.

Although this runs it close. There are more on Flickr.

Then back to the hotel for a rest. Excellent day. More tomorrow. Can't wait.

Wall-e

Lots of Wall-e is wrong. The premise (the human race renders the earth uninhabitable by rampant consumerism) is rather strange coming from a movie which will be accompanied by the inevitable welter of disposable artifacts that you get with a big budget Hollywood release (actually, I really wanted one of the Wall-e wrist watches they were giving away but didn't get one). The lead character hardly has a line of dialogue, and nobody speaks for the first quarter of the film. Some aspects of the plot are a bit loopy and the people who designed the spaceship had obviously watched '2001 a Space Odyssey' rather a lot.

But the film is brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. We have reached the point where the fact that the whole thing was computer generated is completely incidental (although getting images of this quality and wonder would be impossible any other way). It is all about character and story and that is there in spades, along with a love story thrown in. But don't listen to me any more. Just go and see it.

Schmap Maps on iPhone

If you have an iPhone (or other device with web access) you might like to take a look at Schmap guides. There are guides for lots of cities around the world and they provide useful information behind a nicely designed interface.

And I'm not just saying this because they've used one of my pictures. Oh no.

Dr. Horrible

Number one son commands that you watch this. I do to, it is rather good.

Power Mad

Well, I've gone from no power to two power, thanks to the combined magic of Applecare support and ebay. When my notebook PSU failed on Monday it occurred to me that I didn't want to be in this position again (number one son might not be around to save my bacon next time) and so after I rang in the fault I went onto the ebay and chased down a spare. And it arrived today. Along with the one from Apple.

Of course the next thing to break will be the Macbook itself.....

Update on 2008-07-18 14:18 by Rob

Ha. One of my power supplies has failed already. Good thing I got two....

Graduation Day Fun

Some bits of my job I love. One of them is helping with degree congregations. I do the warm up talk at the start and then get the graduands down from the hall for their moments of glory. Today it was my turn to help run the science and medical ceremonies. I took the big camera.

The flowers on the stage were looking good.

These were the science graduands. Sorry if it is a bit blurred, the lighting was not good. But you might be able to find yourself in there....

These were the medics. Again, hard to take pictures but I did my best.

After the ceremony they took a special picture of all the graduates from the Hull-York Medical School, which has just graduated its first cohort of doctors. This was a truly momentous moment for the university, which we are all very proud of. Hearing them all state their oaths during the ceremony was just fantastic.

It was a great day, but boy was it hot in all my suit and robes.

Good XNA Stuff to Cheer You Up

In the midst of hardware despair it is always nice to reflect on the good things in life. Like what Mike Smith has been doing down at the Prospect School in Reading. He has got some of his Year 10 writing XNA. That's 14 year old students writing and running C# games. Wonderful.  By all accounts he has been having great fun, and even made the papers. You can find out even more from Paolo here. The students are even blogging about their experiences here and here.

When we were in Paris we saw some high school students who had entered the embedded challenge and made it to the world finals. I think those folks were 16 or so, which means that you've got a couple of years start......

I'm all cheered up now. I think I'll go to bed.

I hate it when everything works

When everything seems to just work it usually means that the universe is just toying with you, and lining you up for some kind of unpleasantness. My iPhone 3G is still lovely, but a bit less lovely now that I have discovered that I can't get my university Exchange account to work over the O2 3G network.  I'm kind of impressed that that the system can actually manage to tell the difference between the two different network connections, but this is not a good kind of impressed since it means my main reason for having the thing is now not there. As I write this the phone is in the middle of a complete reset (when they say "It may take a couple of hours" they seem to be right on the money) as a prelude to seeing if I can make it work by re-activating it. This is bound to be the thing they would tell me to do if I rang up, so I'm getting my retaliation in early.

And the power supply for the Macbook has just gone "pop" and eaten a couple of fuses, which means half an hour on the phone to the Apple support guy (who was actually very helpful) and the prospect of a replacement one in the post at some time in the future. In the meantime I hope I get this typed and sent before the battery gives out. And of course I need the laptop to re-enable the phone.....

I've gone from everything apparently working at 09:00 am this morning to lots of things broken at 3:00 pm. Wah.

Update on 2008-07-14 15:01 by Rob

Thanks to number one son (who is a "two power supply" kind of guy) I am now back on the air with the Mac. But the iPhone is still resetting....