Röyksopp Forever

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Every now and then Amazon recommends something I might like. I assume that it does this because it likes me. The recommendations are based on purchases I have made, and since a lot of these were presents through the years and included tapestry design books and DVDs of the film Mama Mia, most of the things it thinks I should get are somewhat wide of the mark. (I’ve noticed that you now have the option to disown some of your dodgier purchases, so that they don’t have any impact on what Amazon thinks you might like – which is a good thing).

Anyhoo, for some time the Amazon algorithm has been recommending I listen to some Röyksopp and so a while back I bought a CD of theirs. I didn’t buy it from Amazon though, I suppose I’ll have to tell them about it….

I like the music though. If you like Air you probably will too (I think this is how Amazon knew to put me on to it). Electronic ambient stuff (although the latest CD, Junior, has a much more electro-pop feel). Good for driving and background music. Some of it sounds like soundtrack music crying out for a film on top, and it has been used quite a lot for albums and films.

Worth a listen.

Rubbish Tip Etiquette

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Made another trip to the tip today. I’m clearing out the loft so that I can put some different junk up there. I’m also adding some flooring, so that I won’t put my foot through the ceiling again. I now know the fundamental principle of installing loft floor panels:

Do not screw the first panel down tightly because then you can’t get any of the others to fit into it.

It has actually been great fun. Even the trips to the tip have been interesting. I’ve been worried that recently the  kind of people you meet at the tip has been declining. Last time I even saw a car there that was the same age as mine. However, this time things were back to normal. Folks were arriving in brand new Audis and Saab convertibles to drop off their stuff. I was sitting in the queue pondering on the etiquette of the tip. Cars look very similar these days, and I wondered what would happen if you accidently went back to the wrong car and started emptying it by mistake. Would the owner get cross  because you are messing with their rubbish?

I finally came to the conclusion that it is OK to empty somebody else’s car, as long as you don’t put the stuff into yours.

Coraline Movie Review

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Went to see Coraline tonight. It was in 3D, which explained the unexpectedly high price and the glasses we had to wear (and they actually let us keep this time).

Coraline is a stop motion film where they used proper models, from the same stable as The Nightmare Before Christmas.  I suspect some computer trickery was involved during some of the sequences, but overall it remained true to its roots in the real world.

The story, about a child who finds a parallel world which seems much nicer than her dreary real one, is well told with some genuinely scary moments (even for a grown up like me). But the real star is the world itself, which looks fantastic.

If you like a scary tale it is worth a trip. If you enjoy good graphic art and design you should definitely go.

Broken Bot Server

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The plan was to add Unreal Bot programming to our Summer Bash. This is a great way to use your C# smarts to control a player in an Unreal Tournament game and try your hand at writing game playing AI.

Unfortunately, fate had heard me thinking this, and so the server promptly broke. It is an aging Dell machine that sits in the corner of my office quietly chuntering to itself. I took it’s lid off, blew out the dust, re-seated the RAM and it still didn’t work. So I had a word with Adam, who came up with a pair of probably compatible memory SIMMs that I put in and it seems to work now, which is nice. It has twice as much memory as it used to have, and so it fair whizzes along now.

I then spent an entire lunch hour writing a Bot that gets itself stuck in corners.

Towards a Healthier Me

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I’ve been trying to use Wii Fit to get myself slightly fitter. I can now use it upstairs, out of sight of everyone, and means I tend to use it more than I did before. It was rather disheartening to get on the machine and have it tell me I hadn’t visited for 300 or so days, but at least my weight had only changed by 4 pounds in that time.

Although it hadn’t gone down.

Anyhoo, I’m now trying to establish a routine which involves a quick 15 minutes or so each day, and I’m getting quite good at the step game. I want to complete the entire thing on perfect, just to see what the program does if you do that.

Summer Bash

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Summer Bash Poster

We are having our biggest ever bash on Thursday 11th June. The department now has a licence for Team Fortress 2, and so we will be using this, along with all the usual attractions and even an Unreal Tournament programming competition.

The arrangements are as usual. Tickets will cost £2.00 and go on sale on Monday 8th of June in the Departmental Office at 10:00 am.

The bash will run from 4:00 to 8:00 pm, in room 312 of the Robert Blackburn Building, among other places....

You can keep track of the details at /events

True Story

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Whilst scanning the receipt for my MacBook (which I needed to do to validate the purchase date and get the broken battery replaced) the battery in my MacBook Pro failed.

XNA at DevDays 09

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My final session of the trip had me in front of another great audience. Thanks folks. I’ve put the code for all the demonstrations here.

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This is my setup for the presentation. If you want to find the other pictures you might be in, you can find them on my Flickr pages.

After the talk it was off to grab a taxi to the station and then on to a very nice train (they have very nice trains in Holland) back to the airport and a plane home.

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I like the seafood bar at Schipol airport. Not that raw fish before a flight strikes me as a massively good idea.

XNA Lerp

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I’m going to start blogging things that I find useful, so that I can find them again when I need them. You might find them useful too, with a bit of luck.

Lerp is a new thing in XNA 3.0. It lets you find colours between other colours. You can use it for blending, so that you can create a smooth range of colours from one extreme to another.  It is very easy to use:

Color newColor = Color.Lerp( firstColor, secondColor, amount );

You give it the first colour, the second colour and the amount you want to travel between them, in the range 0-1. If the amount is small (close to 0) you will get mostly first colour. If the amount is large (close to 1) you will get mostly second colour.

I use it to make darker versions of a particular colour, so I can create fake lighting effects:

Color shadowColor = Color.Lerp( objectColor, Color.Black, 0.2f );

This produces a darker version of objectColor. To make it even darker, increase the value 0.2 to a larger one.

You can use this to produce tinting effects too.

World Domination

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I’m going to take over the world. Haha.

Point the Camera at the Screen

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I’m getting ready for my DevDays session later this week. I’m demonstrating some .NET Micro Framework devices that are a bit small, and so I thought I’d use a webcam to show close-ups of the toys. I was testing it just now and of course I pointed it at the screen.

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Cool eh?

If you are going to DevDays then feel free to come along. The Geek Night should be great fun.

Breaking in With Thirteen One Magazine

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I met up today with Craig from Thirteen 1 magazine. They are doing a set of articles on breaking into the games industry, and I’m going to be recording some video podcasts for them about learning XNA.

Don’t worry, the camera won’t be pointed at me. Instead I’m going to capture the steps you need to follow to set up your computer and then write some XNA games. Should be fun.