Jetlagged Poetry

You can’t beat being busy with jetlag. In between writing deathless prose for lectures, trying to find out why we have no hot water and where on earth that thing is that I put down a second ago I’ve been trying to write some poetry.

I’ve decided to give a lecture in rhyme on Friday as part of Comic Relief. I’ve loads of other things that I should be doing, but I’ve given them over the last twenty years or so, and I feel that the tradition really should continue.

I’m going to be talking about class based design in C#. The tradition is that I have to pick up whatever is in the course at that point and give a proper lecture on that subject, but entirely in rhyme. I did think about making the whole thing up on the day, but that is potentially dangerous, and so it was into Powerpoint and on with the rhyming dictionary…

Advance Jetlag

I seemed to have jetlag in advance today. From trying to scan the passport in the wrong part of the check-in machine, to having a suitcase 3 pounds over weight, to being invisible to all flight attendants on the plane (and the person sat in front, who insisted on trying to tip her seat back even though this is not physically possible if I am sat behind you), to losing my headphones the whole day has not been much fun. Good thing that, thanks to the flight, I seem to have lost 8 hours of it somewhere.

Leaving Seattle

Our flight left early afternoon, which meant there was time for one final Seattle breakfast. It was as if the city was putting on its best show ever in an attempt to get us to stick around. The weather was the best I’ve ever seen in the place, which exposed some superb views.

Market sign

Ferry and mountains

Ferry arriving (as seen in “Grey’s Anatomy”)

To be honest, it won’t take much to persuade me to come back. Then it was off to the airport.

Plane spotting at the airport.

It has been a great summit, here’s to next time…

Seattle Air Museum

Today was our day off. We planned to go to the Seattle Museum of Flight. Being an economical traveller I was going by bus. I had written careful notes describing which bus to take and where to get off. Being an idiot, I of course left these in the hotel room, but remembered enough to get us onto route 174 from tunnel C.

Seattle has this wonderful underground level, in fact the city is built up on previous implementations. You catch the bus in something that looks just like a subway station, except that there are busses instead of trains.  The bus took us through some of the industrial heartland of Seattle, which is pretty heavy engineering, and finally deposited us outside the museum.

We were a bit worried about finding the right stop, but they had parked a handy marker for us.

The museum is amazing, which loads of planes, many of them hanging from their enormous exhibit halls.

We had really come to see Concorde though. We have a familial link with the plane, knowing the one based in Bristol quite well. We thought we’d check out the one in Seattle as well.

Truth is, the one in Bristol is much more of an experience. At Seattle the plane looks rather forlorn, tucked away in one corner of a collection. In Bristol there is much more room to move around the plane and you actually get to sit in the seats as you make your way around it. Here in the souvenir hunter conscious Seattle everything, including seats inside the plane, are hidden under layers of plastic.

Concorde Flight Deck

After a wait for the returning bus we got back to Seattle just in time to go up the Columbia tower. This is the tallest building in downtown area and has an observation deck which gives some of the best views of the city.

You can see the Space Needle in the middle of the picture.

If you ever go to Seattle you should go up this tower. Oh yes. Cheaper than the Space Needle (although that is a great experience) and you can see a lot further.

Then it was out for tea (chicken and chocolate anyone?) and then back to the hotel.

Last day at the MVP Summit

Steve B makes a point.

Say what you like about Steve Balmer (and lots of people do) the guy can work an audience. I’ve seen him speak a few times and he’s not failed to deliver yet. His talk (and the question and answer session at the end) was one of the highlights of the keynotes that we had today. Although the session about Windows 7 from Mike Nash was also very good. I think I’m allowed to say that Windows 7 is looking very promising. For me the only thing bad about it is that you can’t buy it in the shops yet.

Once the keynotes were over that was just about the end of formal proceedings for the summit. It was great to see everyone again, and put some faces to names that I’ve only ever seen on mailing lists in the past. We went out for a wander around Seattle.

In the Seattle Art Gallery they have these cars hanging from the ceiling with lights coming out of them. Not sure why, but it sure looks nice.

Pioneer Square

More Meetings and Science Fiction Frenzy

Today was the second and final time at the Microsoft campus.  More presentations and more good stuff. I took a trip over the the legendary Microsoft Company store which was wonderful. Halo Wars on day of release at 25 dollars? I should think so. Of course I had resolved not to spend much money. Of course I failed.

In the evening it was time for the summit party, which was held at the “Experience Music Project” at the base of the Space Needle. They had Rock Band, karaoke with a live backing group and huge amounts of food and drink.

It was a bit like our Christmas Bash, only slightly bigger.

The venue is also host to a great science fiction museum, with books, props, sets and robots to look at. Great stuff.

This guy was working the lights on the video wall behind the stage. What a cool job.

Meeting the Mobile Team

Today we got all got on busses bright and early and headed off to the Microsoft campus at Redmond. It was quite a nice morning, and on the way we saw a rainbow which seemed to have its roots in the middle of Microsoft, which I thought was interesting. Unfortunately by the time I got my camera out we had driven past it.

The rainbow is about 20 feet to the right of this picture.

We had a bunch of presentations from product team members. I hope they found our comments useful. After that it was time for more mingling, and then a bus back to the hotel.

I remembered my camera this time.

MVP Summit Opens

Toby Richards gets us all fired up.

The MVP summits happen every year or so. Microsoft invites all of the 4,000 or “Most Valuable Professionals” they have recognised for efforts in their field to come to their headquarters and meet with the teams that actually make the products.

It still amazes me that Microsoft organise things like this. It must cost them a fortune, and in these cash-strapped times they might be looking at other things to spend their money on. Quite often, when things get tough the on of the first things to go is events like this, where the benefits are very hard to put directly onto the bottom line.

Each MVP is awarded in a particular specialism. I began in the area of Mobile Devices (search for “Smartphone Cheese”) to find out how I got started. More recently I’ve done work with XNA and the .NET Micro Framework, but I’m still very interested in device development, and so that is what I was here to find out more about.

The summit began with some welcome presentations, starting with Toby Richards who manages the MVP programme. It was rather nice to have someone stand at the front and tell us all how important we are (although I always feel a bit guilty at this point as I’m never quite sure what it is I have done to merit the attention). Then we had a talk from another Microsoft bigwig, as Rich Kaplan told us lots of interesting things about the future that a Non Disclosure Agreement that I’ve signed prevents me from writing much about. Suffice it to say that things are going to be interesting.

Then it was outside for food and mingling. I’m not a great mingler. I tend to stand there like a lampost with a drink, whilst everyone mills around me. But I did meet up with a few people that I hadn’t seen for a while, and I even remembered some names, which is nice.

Then it was back to the hotel and a meal in the lounge right at the top. This has some amazing views. I’ll take the camera next time.

The summit starts proper tomorrow, with meetings with the product teams. Can’t wait.

Seattle Space Needle

This morning it wasn’t raining, which for Seattle is supposed to be surprising. So we went for a walk up to the Space Needle. I took my camera…

Cool Sign

View from the top

Genuine Bonafide Monorail

And So to Seattle

The MVP Summit is next week in Seattle, and lucky old me is going, which is nice. Set off today from Humberside, my favourite airport.

We had a very smooth journey, and I took a few quick pictures on the way.

Obligatory Taxi Shot

Night Traffic. (I just wish the hotel windows were a bit cleaner)

Doncaster Meeting and Programming Puzzle

Went to Doncaster for an exam board today.

The meeting room had this very impressive chandelier, which lent a lot to the proceedings.

Spent some time chatting with Colin, the external examiner, about programming matters. We were talking about good practices, properties and get/set methods and the like, and a question occurred.

“Why do some types in C# have a Length property (for example String and Array) whereas others have a Count method (for example List)? Both of them do the same thing, so it seems to be silly to have different names for them.”

Colin and I think we know the answer. But do you?

Mended

I love a happy ending. The leak has gone. I tracked it down to the pipe in the wall near the inside stop tap. Dave from next door came round and pulled out the offending item.

Now that is what I call a hole. The water was really spurting out once we got the plaster off it. Turns out that sometimes the flux used to solder the pipe connections tends to corrode the pipe itself. Which is not good.

This is what it looks like now. Much better. Thanks Dave.

The only thing that worries me is that I have a house full of this pipe, so I suppose I’m going get this every now and them. Ah well, at least I have one less now.

Must have Thumb Drive Apps

If you carry a memory stick around with you all the time (and who doesn’t - I’ve got one on my keyring) here are some great ideas for applications you can put on it.

http://crazeegeekchick.com/blog/25-must-have-thumb-drive-apps-for-geeks/

Stealthy Leakage

Somewhere in our house, water is escaping. I can hear it. At three in the morning I can detect the tiny whoosh from the pipes when nothing should be moving.

I’ve checked all the obvious places. Replaced a few likely suspects. But the noise remains. Now, normally I don’t have a problem finding out where water is coming from. Ceilings change shape, objects underneath the flow become unexpectedly glossy, or suddenly go mouldy. But this leak is stealthy. There is no evidence at all. Anywhere. Everything is just as it should be, apart from the sound.

At one point I started to doubt myself. However, Dave came round last night and he heard it too. And (and this is the clincher) he heard it stop when I turned the water off.  The prevailing wisdom is that a pipe underneath the floorboards somewhere downstairs is leaking straight down into the ground. In the fullness of time this probably means that we will have our own indoor swimming pool, followed shortly by a moat.

I hate having a problem I don’t know how to solve. If this was a programming fault I’d be bunging breakpoints in, adding debugging code and generally getting to the bottom of things. If it was a piece of hardware I’d be working out where best to hit it. But when a pipe just disappears into a wall it is kind of hard to discover what is going on. I think I might need to engage stronger powers than mine on this one, in other words it might be time to find a plumber…

Hull in 360 Magazine

If you can track down a copy of this months “360” magazine it is worth the effort. They have a lovely article about XNA in it, with some quotes from me and from Tom as well.

You can even win a free copy of my book by entering a contest they are running. There are some other good stories in there too, and the price is very nice at only 2.79.

Windows 7 on the Advent 4211 Netbook

I’ve been using Windows 7 for a while now. I put the beta version on my little tiny Netbook PC, the Advent 4211 which has a little Atom processor and only 1G of ram.

By gum, it works well. I’m getting a better than Vista experience on a machine that just about runs Windows XP. I even took the machine to Portugal last week and used it to run PowerPoint and Visual Studio (at the same time bless it) during the presentation. It worked really well, the only problem was when I accidentally engaged screen magnification at the end and wasn’t able to turn it off. However, that got the biggest laugh of the session, so perhaps it was OK after all.

One thing that is very impressive is the handling of external monitors for presentations. When you plug a display in you get the four options of netbook only, clone, extend onto external display or external only, and you can manage them very easily by using the new Windows+P hotkey. But, better than that, it works in a very clever way. It actually picks sensible resolutions for each device, even if you are cloning the screen. My little netbook is widescreen, unlike most external displays. Windows 7 took this in its stride, giving me a stretched display on the netbook but a good looking display on the projector, which is exactly what it should do.

In fact, there is a whole lot of “exactly what it should do” in this version of Windows. Stuff seems to work the way you would expect and with a minimum of fuss. The operating system has been rock solid for me and I’ve not had any blue screens of badness. Good stuff, roll on release day.

Wheely Funny

The car needed new tyres. The man in the garage was trying to find out what kind to get. He asked me how far I drive each year. “Around 10,000 miles or so” I said. “Oh” he replied. “In that case I’ll get you a set of ‘Middle of the Road’ ones”.

I really liked that.

Open Day

We had our first Saturday Open Day of the season today. Had a great bunch of people to see us (I always say they are great if they laugh at one of my jokes).

Here they are, looking quite happy – although I hadn’t told the joke yet…

As usual, we gave away a PSP to one lucky winner.

Mike did the honours this time.

Portugal DevDays 09 Demo Code and Presentation on SkyDrive

I’m using the fancy new Windows Live SkyDrive to share out my presentation and the demo programs from yesterday:

• You can find the presentation here.
• You can find the demo programs here.

SkyDrive is actually rather neat. You can attach it to your Windows Live account and it gives you 5GBytes of storage which you can use for public or private data storage.

Having Fun By Degrees

Did my one and only degree warmup of this round of ceremonies today. It was for the students from our faculty, which meant that there were people in the audience who I had actually taught something. Perhaps. Everyone played their parts very well and it was a terrific ceremony. I took the camera along, of course.

Artistic shot of one of the maces

Hon. Grad Sir Andrew Clark, Master of the Rolls, giving his speech (very good one by the way).

Looking Left

Looking Right

I took the pictures at the end of the ceremony when everyone is relaxed, including me. My little camera did quite a good job with the shots.If you want to see a much bigger versions (where you can pretty much recognise everyone) click on the images above and follow the links to the versions on my Flickr account. Then click on the (+ All Sizes) button at the top so you can play “Where’s Wally (or Waldo)” properly.