Ocean in Motion in Whitby

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We took a day off today to celebrate a birthday in Whitby, in the best possible fashion with a meal at the Magpie cafe. The cafe even got a mention in one of the push food reviews recently, and it seemed they liked the food there as much as we do. Which is nice.

The weather was a bit grey, and tide was definitely in. The boat trips around the bay were specially discounted, and seeing just how much the boats were going up and down, it is not actually an experience I’d pay for.

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Hardy Souls only

Zune HD is out, and it Supports XNA

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Today the new Zune platform is released by Microsoft. Called the Zune HD it looks absolutely wonderful. It has solid state storage, an OLED display and a multi-touch user interface.

And, (and this is the wonderful news) it supports XNA. A set of XNA 3.1 Extensions has also been released which you can use to take your games and run them on this fantastic platform. And the extensions even provide access to the accelerometer and the multi-touch input.

If Microsoft get around to putting a phone in there too they will have their first proper iPhone beater.

The only snag is that for now it is a US only release, but with a bit of luck it will make it to us eventually.

Interesting Question

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I was helping someone fill in a form about me recently and they asked the “Where do you work?” question.

“University of Hull”

“..and how long have you been there?” was the next thing they wanted to know.

“Thirty one years” was my reply (and it’s true – scarily enough)

When they said “Oh, do you like it there then?” I wasn’t quite sure what to say next. If I said I hated the place this would mark me down as rather a slow learner.

Clipper Race at Hull

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The Round the World Clipper Race does exactly what it says on the tin. Ten yachts from various countries are setting sail around the world. The different thing about this race though is that the crews are made up of ordinary folk who have signed up, got trained and will join their boats for various stages on the round the world trip.

It starts from Hull tomorrow, but today the boats were in Hull Marina so we went for a look. I took the little camera for some snaps. I had a go at making a panorama shot of the side of the marina.

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It seemed to come out OK.

The atmosphere was great and the weather amazing.

Carcassonne

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While we have been on holiday we have been playing some new games. Number one son got a copy of Carcassonne. We have had some fun with it (and I’m not just saying this because I managed to win a couple of times). The game revolves around a landscape that is built up by players adding tiles and different types of settler to claim as much of the land as they can. It has just the right balance of skill and luck. When I win I can claim skill, but when I lose I can claim that the cards were against me. The games don’t take a long time to play, (which is something else I quite like about them) but they are quite absorbing.

If you like board games it is well worth a look.

Warwick Castle

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Warwick Castle is ace.  Having great weather probably helped, but the place was pretty cool too.

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View from the top

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Castle and Mill

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Ballista power.

The two big round things on each side take a person each, who walk inside them to lift up a four ton weight that is used to propel the payload a heck of a distance. If someone rocks up outside your castle with one of these you should really let them in, because in the end they are coming in whether you like it or not…

Lego and Robots

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We went off to LegoLand today. I really do know how to have fun me. We went on all the rides that make you wet and guess what? We got very wet. I love the models though.

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Not Really Real

I had a rush of blood to the head, and I got a copy of the new Mindstorms 2.0 kit which is awesome and lets you make a walking robot. I’ve starting playing with the software that comes with it, and I think I’ll have a go with the Microsoft Robotics Studio next. Great fun.

Free XNA Curriculum Materials Now Live

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If you have been wondering about what all the “Today I have Been Mostly Writing” posts last month were all about you can find out as the courseware is now available on Microsoft Faculty Connection:

This is a complete programming course which is designed to be taught over 10 weeks at a rate of 6 sessions a week (although you can pull individual sections out and use them if you wish).  There is a course matrix that sets out how to sequence this.

The course teaches programming from first principles, using XNA games as the basis of all the sample code.  There are extensive tutor notes on the slide decks and a sequence of step-through labs for students to follow. There are even revision tests for each section.  It is based on the chapters in my textbook, which is the first link in the above list.

You can download the material without signing in, by selecting the “Skip this Step” option on the download page.

If you are going to use the material in any way I’d love to hear how you got on.

Hull Digital

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I’m really pleased to find out that there is now a Digital Community in Hull:

http://hulldigital.co.uk/

They are organising a live event in October which has some interesting speakers:

http://www.hdlive09.co.uk/

I’ve persuaded my boss to pay for a ticket, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m pleased to find that they do student pricing for the event (which seems to me quite reasonable) and with a bit of luck we can involve some of our students in their events in the future.

One of the most important things about computing is that the field is constantly changing and professional development is something you really need to work at if you want to keep your skills up to date.  Hull Digital looks like it will be a neat way of doing this.

Van Driving Man

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Spent lots of today driving a big van. It was time to move number one daughter to her new pad in London, and so it was up with the lark and off in the big tin box on wheels that I’d hired for the day.

I like van driving. Everything in a van cab has been carefully designed to do a job. There was even a little clip in the dashboard into which you could put your delivery notes and a big area under the windscreen for your copy of “The Sun” and empty MacDonald's boxes. They also have monster (and completely un-burstable) engines and sound systems. And other people get out of your way. I’ve even figured out how to reverse them. Great stuff.

Help your Eyes with Windows 7

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One of the problems with ultra high resolution screens is that they often display text in ultra low sizes. My little Toshiba tablet is a case in point. It has a lovely display with loads of dots that I can't read. If you have a similar problem you might be interested in a Windows 7 feature that is rather nice. In the screen resolution dialogue box there is an option to "Make text and other items larger or smaller". If you select this you can enlarge most of the hard to read things on the screen by 125 and 150 percent.

It doesn't work for everything, programs that insist on rendering their own dialog boxes for no good reason (step forward Adobe Photoshop Elements) will still be hard to read, but it beats the alternative, which was to set the resolution to a value that didn't really fit the display and then have everything slightly blurry.

Batman Arkham Asylum

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Number one son bought a copy of Batman, Arkham Asylum yesterday, and spent the evening playing it while I watched. Very, very good. Batman has managed to recapture the joker after a suspiciously easy chase and accompanies him to the asylum to make sure the joker is properly re-habilitated. And of course it all goes wrong.

The action seems quite linear, in that you have to work your way through a series of challenges to unravel what has happened and rescue everyone, but the thing I really like is the whole setup. The artwork and sound have been beautifully realised to create a very impressive environment in which batman has to make every move really count. I especially like the “detective view” which seems to work just like those “X-Ray” specs you saw advertised on comic books claimed to. Batman himself is nicely gritty and ironic, and very mortal, for all his gadgets.

Great fun, and another example of just how close to film realistic video games are getting.

Windows 7 Media Centre

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We put Windows 7 on the Media PC today. I got hold of a 1 Terabyte hard disk, slapped it in a spare drive bay and left the machine to get on with it while we went out shopping. When we got back the system was pretty much sorted and except for some kerfuffle with the (now very old) TV tuner cards that needed some blast from the past drivers the install went very smoothly.

It works a treat. I was looking forward to some tweaks to the Media Centre and I wasn’t disappointed. It now supports digital Teletext, which is great, and it also has some really neat user interface touches. My favourite is that when you move through a recorded programme you get a little thumbnail of the image at that point in the show.

Windows 7 provides the speedup that I was expecting (which is nice) and the whole thing has given my two and a half year old media PC a new lease of life. I’m actually bringing machines out of retirement so that I can put Windows 7 on them and make them useful again. My old Toshiba Tablet loves Windows 7 and I’ve persuaded the boss to buy me a new battery for it so I can take it on the road again.

There was a tradition that new versions of Windows drove hardware sales, as people upgraded their machines to cope with the demands of the new operating system. Whilst it is always nice to have a new machine (I love shiny boxes) I think this time you won’t have to. In fact the upgrade will feel like a real upgrade (which I guess is how it is supposed to be).

The good news for students is that the Microsoft Academic Alliance version of Windows 7 being given away free is the Professional edition, which includes the Media Centre component.  Previously students were given the Business edition of Vista, which didn’t have media centre support. If you are lucky enough to go to an institution which, like the University of Hull, has joined the alliance then you will be able to get your own free copy of this rather nice operating system.

Project Runway Rocks

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While I was spending my summer mostly writing, number one daughter and me had a little lunchtime diversion called Project Runway. It is a reality TV show for aspiring dress designers. Each week the contestants are given a stupidly short time to make some kind of clothing and then, after a fashion show, the weakest one is kicked out. A bit like “The Apprentice” but with sewing machines. Just the kind of thing I’d expect to hate.

I love it. I like the way that the people taking part really can do stuff. They can draw a design, make the pattern, cut out some cloth and then sew it together, and at the end they have something that looks like what they wanted.  Part (all right, most) of the appeal of “The Apprentice” is discovering just what kind of people have crawled out of the woodwork and been allowed by the producers to take part, and then watching them fail at whatever footling task they have been given.

But the appeal of Project Runway for me is that the people taking part are there because they really want to get into fashion, not just appear on the telly. The big prize is a chance to run their own fashion show and by the end of it you can really see where each of the designers is coming from. Good stuff.