Happy Anniversary Don and Jessie

Today we were invited to Don and Jessie’s fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration. I met up with a bunch of folks I hadn’t seen for a while and a good time was had by all. Thanks very much for inviting us.

Day 7: The Voyage Home

I’m going to miss this place. We’ve only been here a couple of days but I really want to come back. Today we caught a train, then a bus, then a plane and finally drove the rest of the way back home. Well worth it.

Day 6: What a difference a day makes

They were right about the view over the valley. It is amazing on the right day. As if to make amends for yesterday, today dawned bright and clear and we headed straight back up the railway to the top, caught the bus and then off again to the Faro lighthouse to see it properly. This is another monument to Volta. And you can climb it. I went all the way to the top and took the photograph above. It is a slightly stitched panorama which I’m rather pleased with.

This is the lighthouse, it looks much nicer when you can see it. We had another coffee in celebration, this time we sat outside and looked across the valley rather than cowering inside. Then we went back down and found ourselves a boat.

For around six euros you can get a “round trip” ticket which takes you to some of the nearer locations. The nice thing about this is that you can hop on and off the boat wherever you fancy. So off we went.

This is Torno, a village around half an hour on the boat from Como. I really envy the people who live here. We had a great lunch and then headed back. And we got to sit at the sharp end of the boat.

I’ve noticed that in Italy cameras are definitely used as fashion accessories. This year the trend is definitely for “big and black”. Anyone who was anyone had an enormous Canon or Nikon SLR round their neck or, more fashionably, grasped in one hand with the strap tied around their wrist.  I only had a small, shiny camera. Perhaps these will be fashion next year.

Day 5: Damp

Today we were bright and early. Even if the weather wasn’t. The forecast said there was a 90% chance of rain. I didn’t like those odds. If you go to Como you must (and I mean must) go up the funicular railway. The terminal was very close to our hotel and so we set off, bought return tickets (good value at less than 10 euros for both of us) and went up the mountain. The views from the top are awesome. I knew this because they had thoughtfully placed some pictures up there that showed the view when you could see it. For us it was nothing but cloud and rain.

So we took a bus along the top to the Faro lighthouse. At one point the bus stopped for us to get out and take pictures of the wonderful view that may, or may not, have been there.  We just sat inside steaming in our waterproofs and watching raindrops race down the outside of the windows. All I needed was a thermos of coffee and some warm cheese sandwiches and I would have been right back to my holidays as a child.

The good news was that we found an inviting little cafe at the top and had a quick drink before bussing back to the railway and down to ground level. The rest of the day centered around places we could go that had an indoors. Like for example Como Cathedral.

This has some lovely stained glass windows and tapestries. They also let you take photographs inside, which is nice. The next stop was the city museum, which was interesting, and then we went along to the Volta Temple, on the shores of the lake.

Allessandro Volta didn’t invent electricity, any more that Newton invented gravity. But he did explain how it worked and did a huge amount of work to make it useful. His work is commemorated in a temple in Como which contains some of his experimental batteries and other equipment.

After a good look round we headed back to our room to freshen up and then out for tea.

Como is a town at the end of a lake surrounded by hills. The weather can change in heartbeat. Just after I took the picture above it rained so much that we were trapped in a bar (a truly terrible experience) by some of the heaviest rain I’ve ever seen. And I’m from England. We managed to make our drinks last a couple of hours before the rain abated and we were able to head home. The only people we saw on the streets were selling umbrellas. 

Day 4 – Travelling to Como

Today it was time to change location. We got up bright and early and caught the train to Milan. There we changed onto another train and headed off to Como in the Italian Lakes. Como has two stations. One right next to our hotel, and the other one a cab ride away. Of course, trains from Milan Centrale (note the proper spelling with the e on the end) go to the distant station. For us that was the one with S.G. in the name. This stands for “San Giovanni” which might be either the name of a famous railway station builder or Italian for “Long way from Rob’s Hotel”. Either way, after our cab ride we ended up at the hotel.

My travel tip for trains in Italy is don’t use the ticket machines. They tend to confuse you about your route (for example arriving in one Milan station and then leaving from another) and then fail to accept your credit card.  But the folks on the ticket sales desk were unfailingly helpful and pleasant, and left me with a good feeling about where we were going.

We had a third floor room in our hotel of choice, the In Riva Al Lago.  As there was no lift this did mean a bit of a heft with the cases, but the view from our window was worth it.

Although the grey skies didn’t auger well. After unpacking (or more accurately - pushing our cases into a corner of the room) we went out for tea.

These folks to good grub at reasonable prices.

..and they have really cool sugar wrappers too.

Cafe culture by the lake. I could get used to this.

Day 3 – Arts and Crafts

Today was our second day in Venice. We had the air of seasoned travellers as we got our tickets from the correct place and even found a train that had seats available.  We took in a couple of galleries, because I have always wanted to acquire more culture. And it looked like it might rain.

The first was the Accademia. This has some stunning pictures in it. You have to keep reminding yourself that these were made by people slapping on coloured paint using brushes. Very impressive. Then we went on to the Peggy Guggenheim gallery for some more modern stuff.

This sculpture hadn’t been bolted down. I don’t think they are too worried about it moving in the wind.

View from the gallery over the the river

They had this neat sign on the wall. Inspired by all the artistry around me I bought a 5 euro plastic lens from the souvenir shop and held it in front of the camera.

Great fun

Artistic boats

And then, it was time to head back to the train and our tiny room for well earned sleep. We are heading for the Lakes tomorrow.

Day 2 – Introducing Venice

To get from Venice Mestre to Venice you have to take a 10 minute train ride. Don’t try and buy a ticket from the ticket machine in the station though. This just means that you get to wait in a queue for 20 minutes to get a chance to read a tiny notice on the machine that tells you these tickets are available from a little office with the words “Venice Tickets” written outside on a big sign. Which of course we hadn’t seen. Oh, and get your tickets validated before you get on the train,  or the ride might be more exciting than you really want.

Venice is like nothing on earth. Except Venice. Someone must have said “What if we had canals rather than roads?” and a bunch of other people must have gone along with this. The thing that I loved was the way that people actually live here. Going to work on a boat and treating all the fantastic architecture and stuff around them as part of the furniture.  Some bits are rather annoying though. There is nowhere to sit apart from at cafes. And when you do you are very aware that a clock has started ticking, and at some point a bill will have to be paid. It is expensive, but we managed to eat for reasonable prices.

What you get if you ask for “the fish”.

We didn’t go on a boat. It looked a bit expensive and I don’t believe in spending good money just to be made to feel queasy. 

You could buy silly hats. Although it wasn’t compulsory.  They also had a lot of masks.

Since I, perhaps rather surprisingly, don’t have much need for a mask I didn’t get one.

At the end of the day we staggered onto the train and rumbled back to our tiny room. I’m not sure if I’ve got much more culture, but I did take loads of photographs.

Day 1 – Heading for Venice

..in which our hero has a go at travel journalism for no good reason.

Today marks the first day of my proper holiday. We are heading off to a couple of places we’ve never been to before, Venice and one of the Italian Lakes. We flew out of East Midlands airport this afternoon courtesy of Ryanair. We fly with them because we quite like the colour of the seat backs in the plane (a particularly garish yellow) and because they are by far the cheapest way to travel. There are no other reasons to fly this way. Having said that, and ignoring the scrum to get the seats with legroomthe cabin crew were pleasant and the plane arrived on time.

My travel tip for Ryanair: Have the “double drink and chocolate muffin” deal”. This only costs 10 euros for two of you and almost represents good value.  Oh, and don’t buy the lottery tickets. You are almost as likely to win these as you are to be involved in an air crash. And you shouldn’t tempt fate to go for the double whammy. Imagine how fed up you’d feel fingering your winning scratch card as the plane plummeted towards the earth.

Once we arrived at the airport (which is almost, but not quite, near to Venice) we grabbed a coach to the hotel. Another tip. Make sure you have a 10 euro note (preferably a newish one) to buy a couple of coach tickets. Get them from the machine while you wait for your luggage to turn up.

Staying in Venice is very expensive. So we didn’t. We found a hotel in Venice Mestre (I think Mestre is Italian for suburb). This place is only around 10 minutes or so from Venice proper.  We stayed in Hotel Aaaron.  This is both a hotel and an experiment in capsule living. Our bedroom was exactly that. A room just big enough to hold a bed, a tiny desk and bathroom. But everything was shiny new, the staff were great, the WIFI worked and the breakfasts were lovely. And since you don’t go on holiday to sit in a hotel room, it is perfect. Tomorrow we head for Venice proper.

Windows Phone 7 Goes Gold

Windows Phone 7 has “gone gold”. The term comes from the old, CD-ROM, days when software manufacturers would send a "gold” master CD to the duplication plant. In the case of Windows Phone it means that the phone manufacturers have been given the final version of the product to put into their handsets.

I’ve been using Windows Phone 7 for a while now and I love it. Going back to the iphone turns out to be hard work. Windows Phone is one of those clever interfaces that grows on you. The more you use it the more of these little touches that you notice, like the way that icons rotate when you change the screen orientation. And moving between programs using the back button is really easy. Microsoft have a really big mountain to climb with this new platform. But they have also made something rather special. With a bit of luck the phones themselves should not be long coming as well.

The whole Windows Phone team deserves immense respect for what they have achieved in such a short time. Kudos folks.

Rob Miles is not on Kindle Yet

Who, me?

I got my new Kindle from Amazon today .  Of course, the first thing I did was search for myself in the Kindle store. Imagine my surprise when I found that I’d put three books on there and was charging over seven pounds each for them (that’s more than they are asking for Tony Blair’s memoirs – so they got that bit right). Either I’ve uploaded them and set the price in my sleep, or there is something strange going on here. I’ve asked Amazon to find out what is going on.

As for the Kindle  itself. It is a perfectly formed device that is going to spell the death knell for a lot of paper books. I got a Sony E-Reader some time back and quite liked it, but loading books was  a pain and the display was useless for anything interactive.

The Kindle fixes both these problems. You can even use it to browse to my blog and the pictures look strangely wonderful in grey scale. As a paperback replacement it is fantastic. It is ultra-portable (at the moment I’m using an A5 envelope as a case) and the screen is really easy to read. The integration with Amazon is impressive to the point of scary. I got the one with the built in 3G phone and stuff just arrives as though by magic. It also has WiFi which works fine at home but not on the university campus. This is because the Kindle doesn’t support the WPA2 Enterprise security that we use at Hull.

It is a bit glib to say that the Kindle will do for books what the ipod did for music. But I don’t think that it is far from the truth.

One reason for getting the Kindle was to experiment with page layouts that work best on the small screen. I’ll be putting properly a formatted version of the Yellow Book on the Kindle store soon.

But the ones there are the moment are not from me.

Live Writer Twitter Notify and Oauth

If you use Live Writer to write your blog posts (and you should) you probably use the Twitter Notify plugin to send your follows a tweet when you make a new post.  Today Twitter changed their authentication to use the Oauth protocol (which makes the authentication process much more secure). Unfortunately it also breaks programs that used the old authentication method, including the previous version of Twitter Notify. However, an updated version is now available from here.

Pricey Filter

Just found this on Amazon. You’d better hurry, they’ve only got one left….

Whitby Photos

Today was a Bank Holiday. Which means that we get the day off. We went to Whitby. The weather forecast was a good one, although the day did have a rather cloudy start. I took the big camera and a collection of lenses which was amply sufficient to really annoy number one wife as I kept changing them over every ten minutes.

I think this will do for the desktop.

I’ve been trying to get a decent picture of these beach huts for ages.

This is the walkway out to the harbour entrance. I quite like the colours.

Click on the images for bigger versions on Flickr.

Hull Classic Car Show

Went off this afternoon to a Classic Car show in Hull East Park. The park is a fantastic place. Beautifully landscaped gardens, wide open spaces and, today only, a lot of very shiny cars.

A nice shade of purple

I used to drive a Mini. But it was never as shiny as this.

Now, that’s what I call an engine.

Ring Light Fun and Games

The ring light does give your pictures a strange set of shadows I quite like.

A ring flash is a flash gun that fits around the lens of your camera. It is noted for taking photographs that contain no shadows (since the light source is around the lens) and being very expensive.

A ring light on the other hand is a ring of LED lights which fit around the lens and is much cheaper than a flash. It is a steady light, which means you can use it for movies as well as stills. The major disadvantage is that it is not as bright as a flash. As far as I’m concerned this is not a huge problem, since I really want to use the light for close ups.

If you want something for your SLR that will give your pictures a bit of extra pop, and is great for portraits (no shadows means no wrinkles) then I’d recommend that you take a look.

Never Ignore the SatNav

Nice view from the new flat though. Very suburban.

Drove down to London today to do some heavy lifting for number one daughter, who is moving flat. On the way down I did something that turned out to be very dangerous.

I ignored the SatNav.

She said A1. I went M1. At the time I thought nothing of it, and she didn’t say anything. But I’m sure that she started plotting….

Next route she sent us on involved a lot more “off the beaten track” than earlier ones. Twice we got sent towards roads that had six foot six wide gaps on them which the van couldn’t get through.  After a couple of hilarious (I’m being ironic here) U-turns backwards into traffic we started ignoring any suggested routes that didn’t send us towards dual carriageways.  And I’m sure we got sent through the same set of traffic lights at least three times.

Then, on my final route home there were loads of right hand turns onto busy roads with no gaps in the traffic, a long drive along twisty roads and finally, against my better judgement, I ended up on the A1 after all.

So, never ignore the SatNav.

Cube Mania and Web Development

I think I may be getting too far into this Nissan cube thing

I really like my Cube. I went out last night to a Hull Digital Developer group meetup. There ware two good talks, one by John Polling from “The League of Extraordinary Developers” (great name) about SASS and Compass and CSS and another by James Greenwood from Strawberry about HTML5.  Both speakers knew their stuff and the content was interesting (although I’m not really a web developer type person myself).  But I must admit that my thoughts kept going back to my little tin box outside and the drive home in it…Next time I’ll be more focused. 

Oh, and don’t forget if you are from Hull that you need to register for Hull Digital real soon. Looks to be a good one.

The Misleading World of Atari Box Art

These are really funny. And these.

Windows Phone Screen Stealing Status Bar

I got some very useful comments on my post about how to make XNA games use the full screen of the Windows Phone. The thing that I didn’t make clear was that in an XNA game you will lose screen space even if the bar is not displaying anything. The best way to view the effect of this is to go into the settings of the phone (or emulator) and change the Background to light (Phone>Settings>theme).  Above shows what you get. The status bar is drawn white and the game screen area is scaled down by that lovely hardware in the phone itself. As you can see, your game is losing out on screen space.

If you want to make full use of all the screen you just need to add this line into the constructor for your game:

graphics.IsFullScreen = true;

Much better.

Windows Phone 7 Games

I hate this sign

I had a student come to see me today. One of our soon to be second years. He had spent some time working on a Windows Phone game and wanted to try it on a real device. He was using the accelerometer and not sure he was using it correctly.

Worked first time.

He had a touch controlled configuration menu and everything. Excellent stuff.

If you are on the Hull campus and want to try a Windows Phone app on a real device give me a yell and drop round some time.