New Boots

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Bought some new boots on Saturday. They are proper ones, with heels and soles that can be replaced. I was getting cold feet and so I got myself some thick socks as well to keep my toes toasty warm.

They are great, but very noisy in the corridors at work. If I ever need to sneak up on someone I won't be wearing these boots. I was trying to think of some kind of CSI plot twist, where the murderer invents boot silencers so that he can stalk his victims on the mean street of Las Vegas, but I'm not sure how it would work.

Actually, this is not the daftest thing I ever heard about sneaky boots. In the Sherlock Holmes episode where he  is brought back from his untimely death at the hands of Professor Morriarty the great detective says that he managed to put off his pursuers and leave misleading tracks by simply "Reversing his boots and walking home". I had a quick go at this with my new boots and it is nigh on impossible. Mind you, I'm no Sherlock Holmes. And I wonder which university Professor Morriarty used to work at?

Sock Disasters

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I've felt that something has been wrong all day. Nothing has seemed right, it was as if I didn't fit correctly into the fabric of the universe (and you know how that can be). This evening, I've found out why.

I've got the wrong day socks on. I mentioned some time back how I had acquired some socks labelled with days of the week, and the torment this caused me when I crossed a time zone wearing them.

Well, today I've been wearing socks emblazoned with "Thursday". And nobody has told me. (actually, I'm rather relieved about this bit, the idea of people paying attention to my ankles is actually somewhat scary).

Anyhoo, it turns out that things have got even worse. Number one son came to stay with us over Christmas and he has the same set of socks. And they got mixed up in the wash. I now have two sets of "Friday" and no "Monday" or "Tuesday". And I think I'm down to one solitary "Sunday" sock. Disaster.

I wonder if anyone makes packs of socks with the label "Today" on them?

.NET Micro Framework Competition Success

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I'm really pleased. We've made it through to the next round of the Dare To Dream Different competition. This means that once I've sent off the "Affidavit of Eligibility and Release" (posh eh?) myself and the rest of "Team Effort" should get our Micro Framework hardware and can get on with building our project.

We have to build the hardware, make it work and then make a little video of the device working. Should be great fun, I'll keep you posted as to how we get on.

Moderation in All Things

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I've been marking first year programs for the last couple of days. We had the code demonstrated at the end of last year, and I'm going through all the submissions moderating marks from the various assessors and marking any that we didn't get a chance to see. Some of these folks have only been learning programming for a few weeks and yet they are producing results that hit the spec., which is great.

It is funny how I can see all the mistakes that I made when I was learning to program coming round again. Things like using block copy to repeat code rather than loops or methods. Adding complication when you should really be simplifying the code and fixating on things that aren't actually important but seem to be at the time.

I was going to spend a couple of lectures going through my "perfect solution" to the problem, but then having seen the submissions I've realised that there is no perfect solution (just like real programming) and so I think I'll spend the time putting sensible behaviours into the context of the program they were building.

I'm really looking forward to next semester.

Micro Framework on Sunday

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Ian came round this afternoon with his new toys (well, it is just after Christmas). He is thinking of doing some work using the .NET Micro Framework and has got hold of one of the new boards from GHI. This has a huuuge LCD touch screen which looks amazing. He also had one of the tiny GHI master units which he had managed to solder down onto their carrier boards so that we can play with it properly. This does seem a very easy way to get into embedded development. The price of the hardware is starting to get sensible and you can now create Micro Framework applications with the free version of Visual Studio 2008 Express. 

The ease with which you can get proper C# running on a tiny target board and start controlling hardware is very impressive. If you have an idea for a hardware based device but have previously been put off by the difficulty of writing the code I suggest you take a look at the platform.

Party Buzz

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We had a few folks round tonight for a "Late New Years Eve Party" kind of thing. I got out the Buzz game that I bought for the Departmental Christmas Bash (and then forgot the disk) and we had a go. It was very successful. There are four wireless remotes with selector buttons which are used by the players to answer questions on a range of subjects in a well presented quiz show format.Great fun.

Apparently the voice of Buzz is Jason Donovan, which is interesting (well, it interested me for a second or so anyway). If you want to keep a bunch of folks amused for an hour or so it works well. The in game characters you can select are great fun and the format, although a bit repetitive after a while, works well. I think you can create your own questions as well. Anyone fancy a C# version?

Of course the best ever computer quiz game was "You Don't Know Jack" which was absolutely hilarious...

Farcry 2 is Wonderful

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Number one son picked up a copy of Farcry 2 earlier this week. Anyone who doubts the ability of computer games to create a believable world should take a look at this game. Just about everything works as it should and the appearance of the game world is amazing.

I went to a session at GDC earlier this year where they were talking about how they "grew" the scenery programmatically.  Rather than having artists who placed each tree and blade of grass they actually wrote code that simulated the way that that everything grows from its starting point. Very impressive.

A Foolish Consistency

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Alfred Thompson had a good post on his blog about the way that programmers persist in using single character identifiers (i, j and k etc) for counters in loops.

I posted a comment on the post in which I put one of my favourite quotes - "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" from Emerson.

I'm presently going through back filling all my blog posts so that I don't have any gaps in the days.

Go figure.

Logitech Harmony One Remote Control Review

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Hmmm. What kind of fool spends the thick end of 100 quid on a remote control?

I think we both know the answer to that question.

It was one of my (many) Christmas presents to myself. I can remember when the only remote control that was available for your telly was a brick, and you could only use it once to turn the TV off.....But now we have five or so remotes floating around the living room and changing from one device to another means pressing buttons on most of them. So I thought that a programmable remote that supports multiple devices would be a good plan. And I had just got paid.....

Turns out that it works rather well. Setting it up is something you have to work at though. You run the program supplied on a disk with the device and then it goes on line and forces you to register so that you can then tell it all the devices that you own. It then downloads the control codes from the Internet and you plug the remote into a USB port so these can be squirted into it. You now have a single controller that you can use to control everything. If you have a device that it doesn't know about it has a learn function that you can use with the existing remote. I'm wondering if I could teach it to control my helicopter....

Anyhoo, once you have got all your devices identified the fun really begins. You can now create "Activities" which perform a sequence of actions across them. So, to watch TV mine now turns on the amplifier, selects the correct input, turns on the TV, selects the correct input on that and then tells the Media PC to output Live TV. When I switch to something else it makes the appropriate changes to the settings and so on. When I press the power button it turns off all the devices that it knows are turned on. You have a lot of control over precisely what each activity involves and the keys that are exposed to the user and what they do when they are pressed.

The hardware itself is very swish, and it comes with a docking cradle which also serves to charge up the built in battery. You even get a cleaning cloth (which works great on spectacles as well).

For someone like me, who quite enjoys fiddling around with things to make them work, it is wonderful. You can even make it display pictures on the tiny colour touch screen on the top. If you expect it to solve all your problems right out of the box you are in for a tough time though. 

Helicopter Sales

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Went up town to the sales today and bought a helicopter. It is a twin bladed Chinook type thing, which was knocked down to fifteen quid in Red5. Number one son has shown quite a talent for flying the thing, which seems a lot more controllable than the single rotor ones that we had bouncing off the furniture earlier this week. He can actually make it hover in one place and it has this fancy way of tipping the front rotor to make very controlled turns.

I think these will sell out real quick, but if you get the chance to buy one I'd recommend you do.