No More Nissan Cubes

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Bye Bye Cube

Even on the Nissan website it is driving away from us….

Looks like my Nissan Cube is going to be even more special than I thought.  Nissan have stopped importing them from Japan, blaming a fall in the value of the pound against the yen which made the profit margins too thin.  I’ve had my Cube for a while now and I love it. Even the reviewers are deciding they quite like it.

Apparently there are still a few to be had at Nissan dealers, so if you really want to drive round in a conservatory then you might be able to snap one up if you are quick.

…and you may now start writing

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Exam prep

Before the fun starts….

Did my turn in the exam hall today. Something to do with micro-Biology. I’m glad I didn’t have to answer the questions, although the students there seemed to find plenty to write about. One candidate was very careful about erasing things that they thought were wrong. They must have gone through about a pen’s worth of ink crossing things out. A tip, never do this. Just put a single line through the text so that it is still readable. I’ve been known to give marks for crossed out stuff as long as it leaves me with the impression that the candidate knows something about the subject. If I can’t read what you have put then you have no chance of getting any credit for it.

I had this plan to turn up with a bunch of examiners, one dressed as an American  Indian, another as a construction worker, a third as a motorbike cop and so on… When someone asked who we were I could have said “Oh, we’re the ‘Invigilation People’”.

Anyone for Bletchley Park?

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Bletchley Park

We still have some places available for the trip to Bletchley Park. If the price seems a bit steep remember that it includes all transport and also entry to the park itself.  Bletchley Park is pretty much the birthplace of the computer and also housed the code-breaking work that allowed us to win the Second World War. All in all, well worth a visit. I’m looking forward to going.

They also have a card punch machine just like the one I wrote my first programs on. (wipes away a manly tear).

Hello Bulgaria

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I’m giving a couple of sessions at MSDays in Sofia in Bulgaria at the end of March. You can find out more and even book your place at the conference (assuming you are Bulgarian) here:

http://www.msbgregistration.com/

There is also a Facebook group:

http://www.facebook.com/MSDays

I’ve even had a write up in couple of Tech News web sites in Bulgaria:

http://technews.bg/article-20532.html

http://news.expert.bg/n331344/

This is part of one of them…..

Специален гост в сесията за разработка на игри ще е и Роб Майлс, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). Той е лектор в Hull University във Великобритания. Преподава програмиране, софтуерен инженеринг и вградени системи. На „Дни на Майкрософт” ще говори за Windows Phone и платформата за разработка на игри XNA.

If anyone can read this, I’d love to know what it says. I hope it is nice. It looks like Rob Miles in Bulgarian is Роб Майлс. Whatever. I’m very impressed that I could just cut and paste the text off the web site and into the blog and it all just works. You’ve gotta love UNICODE.

Anyway, I’m really looking forward to travelling out to Sofia and giving a couple of sessions, one on Windows Phone development and another on the .NET Microframework.  Should be fun.

Platform Expos 2011 is coming

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A date for your diaries folks. Sunday the 27th March 2011. That’s the day that Platform Expos 2011 is running. We had a meeting today about what we are going to do as part of the expo and it looks like it is going to be a really good gig. With 8 platforms on show, from Business through Culture to Education, there is a whole lot happening. We are going to be running another 24 hour mad game development to coincide with the event, and I’m going to be giving a session on Windows Phone game development. We will also be showing off the latest developments on Microsoft Kinect and home 3D technology.

You can find out more here:

http://platformexpos.com/index.html

The meeting was down at the World Trade Centre in Hull,  which has a fantastic view of the Humber Estuary and The Deep just outside.

Deep Panorama 

The weather was a bit grey, but I did my best.

SyncToy and Drive Letter Setting Fun

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At the end of the year I have to go through my marathon photo tidying up session. I keep all my writings and other important stuff on SkyDrive, Live Mesh and DropBox but there is just not room in the cloud for all the pictures that I take. And so this is the time when I go through the pictures directories of all my various machines and pull them all together to make a final, definitive set of all my photos that I can copy across a bunch of hard disks.

And when I’m doing this I find SyncToy very useful. I can use it to bring together files from lots of different disks and also make sure that two disks hold exactly the same set of files. It doesn’t seem to mind being pointed at directories that hold many gigglebytes of files and I can just leave it to get on with the work.

Oh, and when I’m using external drives I find it very useful to be able to make sure that when I plug the drive in it gets exactly the same drive letter each time. You can do this using the Disk Management tool. Open up Control Panel and then for “Disk Management” Then open the scary “Create and format hard disk partitions” option to bring up the Disk Manager tool:

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Select the drive that you want in the list of volumes and right click it. Then select “Change Drive Letter and Paths..” to bring up the Change dialog box.

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Then click Change and nominate the letter that you want to use in the combo box on the right:

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Once you have done this you just click OK down all the menus and, presto, your drive has the letter you chose. And even better, the letter is remembered for next time you plug the drive in. Great stuff.

Boggle Flash Game Review

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Found this today on sale cheap and just had to buy a copy (although I prefer the phrase “invest in” rather than “buy”.

Very clever hardware has been shoehorned into five little battery powered boxes. Each shows a particular letter and when you put them in a row that makes a valid word you hear a beep and the game gives you some points. There must be a bunch of little radio serial ports and some RFID devices inside that let the blocks work out where they are, along with quite a reasonable sized dictionary.

Of course number one wife cares little about how it works, but she does enjoy playing the game, as do I. Well worth the investment. Comes with a nice little box you can carry the letters round in, along with some rather good party play modes.

Running Ruby on Windows Phone

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Ruby on Windows Phone

If you are interested in modern languages you have got to get this for your Windows Phone.  For a mere two pounds you get a Ruby runtime and editor which lets you create and run programs on the device itself. Let me be clear about this; it means you can create brand new programs and store and run them on your phone, without using a PC or anything else. Astonishing.

The installation comes with a bunch of programs including a Twitter client and a passable Tetris clone.

I’ve not played with Ruby much, but I’m always fancied having a go,  and now I have the perfect platform. You can find out more at http://www.iron7.com/

Wonderful Adobe Reader

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Does anyone know why Adobe Reader still does this? And why it takes so long? And why the document looks rubbish when it has finished? And why the message is wrong, even though it has been been wrong for the last few versions of the stupid program? (all of which have a stupidly laborious upgrade procedure)

There. I feel much better now…. Oh, hang on, the reader has just crashed..