Hello Melbourne

This is the view from the hotel room. Not too shabby.

Today we headed out of Sydney towards Melbourne. People were telling us that “Melbourne is really cold and dismal in winter”. Australians don’t know what winter is. Winter is when water turns solid and you can see your breath. Winter is when it gets dark at four in the afternoon. Winter is properly cold. What Australians have is “Winter Lite”, where it gets dark a bit earlier and sometimes you have to wear a jumper. Or, was we call it in the UK, September.

Really looking forward to spending a bit of time exploring the city tomorrow.

Fishes, Animals, Robotic Personalities. And Spiderman

Today was our last full day in Sydney. So we did everything. In the morning we went round the Sydney Aquarium.

..where they had some sharks...

..some jelly fish..

..some fishy cupcakes..

...and Nemo.

Then we moved on to the small zoo. This is not on the scale of the big zoo we saw on Monday, but you can get a lot closer to the animals and insects.

Butterflies

All together now, Ahhh.....

..and this would be the wombat. In the afternoon we went to the Powerhouse Museum, which is a bit like the Science Museum in the UK, with some fantastic exhibits including a virtual personality on the end of a robot arm.

I asked it a most revealing question.

It particularly likes Camembert apparently..

They also had a Verbot, which I remember playing with many years ago.

We took a ride back on a genuine, bonafide, five car monorail.

This was the view as we were having tea. Very nice. After we had eaten we went to watch the new Spiderman movie. It was good fun, although you have to ask yourself why they made it. And then you remember that you’ve just given somebody a bunch of cash to see it.

Getting Arty in Sydney

We started the day with a trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art which was fascinating. I don’t really understand all the art, but I know what I like, and there was enough of that for me, along with some thought provoking stuff.

From the cafe we got a great view of boats doing a square dance in the dock outside.

After a coffee we went and took a look at the Sydney Harbour bridge close up. Well impressive. Some of the students and judges had been able to do the walk along the top of the bridge over the weekend. You can just see one set of plucky souls doing just that on the left hand part of the bridge at the top. I was sort of keen to do it, except that I suffer a bit from vertigo. And they wouldn’t have allowed me to take a camera….

This is a view of the underneath of the bridge. Solid Stuff.

Exploring Sydney

The Sydney locals call this “The Gear Lever” or something like that. All I know about it is that you can go to the top, and when you get there the views are really, really good.

This is the looking towards Darling Harbour, where the Imagine Cup was based. The bridge in the middle of the picture is lined with Imagine Cup flags 

This is the view of the flags on the bridge, complete with genuine, bonafide, electrified, five car monorail..Once we got down from the tower we walked round to the Sydney Opera Hose.

This is half way around the dock, where they had this chap drawing a really nice picture on the ground.

Once we got round to the Botanical Gardens we waited a while for the sun to set so that we could get ourselves a picture.

Imagine Cup Winners

Today we had the World Final presentations. These are the top three teams. Congratulations to all, very well done. I’m very proud to have played a part in getting you folks to the finish podium. The standard this year was even higher than last year, and that was an amazing year too.

What was interesting to me was that of the six finalists, four of them had designed and built their own hardware. Some teams were creating and building surface mount devices (even etching their own circuit boards). Others had undertaken ambitious mechanical designs builds. Several of the teams had applied for patents based on their entries and all of them had workable business plans. As a judge I often had to pinch myself to remind me that these were student teams, not experienced developers pitching several years of effort.

In the afternoon, before the awards ceremony, I spent two very happy hours walking around the showcase booths where each of the 72 teams was set up and telling everyone all about their entries. Special shout out to the team from Peru with their Kinect based solution for helping children with Down’s Syndrome, one team member had even painted his hand bright red to help with the demonstration on the demo floor. Also I must mention the iQube team from Romania, who had designed and built some astonishing electronics inside something not much larger than a couple of matchboxes.

The Imagine Cup this year completely rocked. The organisation was top notch, with Ali and Jeff putting in sterling efforts to make everything just worked. Australia was a fantastic venue and every contestant has had a life changing experiences, as have the judges.Next year the Imagine Cup moves on to Russia. I really, really hope I can get to go there.

Imagine Cup Finalists

All set for judging

This morning we had our six finalists strut their stuff. We used two ballrooms in the conference centre, and shuttled between them so that the teams had time to set up and we could keep the action flowing. What impressed me was the huge number of students who turned up to see the presentations. The places were packed, which was great. And the presentations delivered, which was excellent too. Once we had seen all the presentations we entered our scores into the judging system and then tomorrow we’ll find out who won at the World Finals. After lunch we headed out on one of the cultural afternoon trips, to the zoo. Which was amazing, with loads of animals and a great view of Sydney.

Harbour view

One of these animal pictures is not as real as the others.

Imagine Cup Second Round Fun

Today we did pretty much what we did yesterday, only this time we took 20 teams down to 6. We also had a new feature for the Imagine Cup 2012, we went down to the Showcase booths and had each team demonstrate their entry. This was great fun. Not having a desk between the judges and the teams made for some great interaction and interesting conversations, at least in the teams that I saw. And then there were six:

• uCHAMPsys, Taiwan
• quadSquad, Ukraine
• Coccolo, Japan
• MobileEye, New Zealand
• i-GO, Portugal
• Symbiosis, Greece

We announced these at 10:00 pm on Sunday night. Finalist presentations tomorrow. Can’t wait.

Imagine Cup First Round Fun

Today we had the First Round presentations in the Imagine Cup World Finals. 72 teams, loads of judges and a whole bunch of presentations to watch and score.Above are some of the teams just before we gave them their competition briefing and sent them off to sell their solutions. Once all the teams had presented we we had to get the scores back in, announce the teams moving forwards to Round 2, summarize their session feedback from the judges and then send it back. All before midnight. And we did. Congratulations to the following 20 teams:

• tethoCloud Australia 
• Xight China
• Level Up Egypt
• Greenway Germany
• Symbiosis  Greece
• DocTek Systems  Ireland
• Coccolo Japan
• Dancing Pillow Jordan
• Etzoockee Kazakhstan
• Let IT Bee Korea
• MobileEye New Zealand
• Grawesome Oman
• wi-GO Portugal
• Technology Lanterns Qatar
• IQube Romania
• AlphaWaves  Singapore
• Osmosis Slovenia 
• uCHAMPsys Taiwan
• cipher256  Uganda
• Quadsquad Ukraine

These are the teams that are going forward to Round 2. They get to present tomorrow, all over again.  The standard this year has been the highest I’ve ever seen, as were the scores, with teams separated by wafer thin amounts. It was hard to draw the line between them, but at the end of of the day we have to do that.

This was the picture just as the results were announced. If you were one of the 52 teams that didn’t make it, please, please, please stay happy. You have a lot to be happy about, more than you know. Just the fact that you have taken part in the competition and reached a point where someone will pay to send you half way round the world to see you strut your stuff is pretty amazing. Sydney is fantastic, the food and drink is free, and you are now on the radar of a lot of very interesting people.

One day one of whom might wake up with a need for someone who is smart, tech savvy and knows how to deliver presentations and products. And your Imagine Cup participation could suddenly change your life in a very big way.

 
Every Saturday night they have a huge firework display here. Which looked very nice indeed.

Imagine Cup 2012 Opening Ceremony

Cutting the ribbon to start things off….

And then firing off a whole bunch of streamers....

Once the briefings were over it was time for the opening ceremony.

I suggested that someone might like to walk over there and press the sign, but nobody did.

The view outside.

Just time for a quick walk around the block, and then an early night. 

Imagine Cup Briefing Day

This was the view from our hotel room this morning. The Imagine cup World Finals are being held in the building on the left of the picture. And no, I didn’t add the rainbow on afterwards.

Today we are setting up the competition and briefing the judges.

This is the judging team for this year’s Software Development Challenge. A great crew of folks. We spent a big chunk of this afternoon making sure that everyone knows what to do, and that the way the judging works is right. I suppose you could call it a meeting, but it was a fun one, if such a thing is possible. Thanks for your help folks.

All the flags around the bay are Imagine Cup branded. Very impressive.

The competition rounds start tomorrow. Really looking forward to it. 

Imagine Cup Australia Flying

This is football on display at Singapore Airport during our stopover

Since I can’t actually tell the difference between yesterday and today, this might as well be the same blog post. Except for this bit of course.

Imagine Cup Australia Flying

This is football on display at Singapore Airport during our stopover

It turns out that Sydney Australia is a very long way from Hull. In fact, to travel further than this you’d probably need a larger planet.

Heading off to the Imagine Cup World Finals

Spent a few hours gadget packing and a also threw a few clothes into a suitcase. We are heading off the the Imagine Cup World Finals in Sydney, so no more 3D printing for a while…

Microsoft MVP for another year

I got an email last night telling me that I’m an MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) for another year. Which is rather nice.

Fixed IP Addresses in Hull

Now, here’s a little known fact that I only found out about a while back. If you are in Hull using Kingston Communications (or KC as they are more trendily known) for your broadband (like you have a choice) and you are stumping up for their “Pro” account, you can have a fixed IP address as part of the package.

This is really useful if you want to run services at home but don’t want to have to fiddle about with dynamic DNS services and stuff like that. I went online and asked them about it and I was fixed up with fixed in no time at all.

Embedded Text Printing using Autodesk 123D and Ultimaker

I’ve already had one go at printing text using the Ultimaker, when I used Autodesk 123D to print out my name. Next I thought I’d try making text that “stuck into” the surface. My theory was that it might look better than stuff that stuck out. And it sort of does, see above.

The biggest problem was persuading Autodesk 123D to let me put the text into a surface. I’ve figured out a way to do it now (and the program itself is growing on me as I’ve also found out how to dimension things after I’ve created them). Anyhoo, if you ever want to embed text into a surface (and so I don’t forget for next time), here is the sequence:

1. Make a new surface that is going to hold the text.
2. Create a sketch on the surface that contains the text you want to embed.
3. Extrude the surface. For some reason the text part doesn’t extrude and so you get an embedded effect.

I’ve no idea if this is a bug or not meant to happen. It actually looks really good in the designer…

You can just export and print as usual. As you can see at the top, it doesn’t look too bad. Each character in the picture is about 1cm high. I’m going to experiment with larger text and different fonts.

More Twitter Printing Fun

South Holderness Technology College came to see us today. Emma organised everything excellently and I was first man in this morning, as I then had to zoom off to Doncaster for an Exam board. I was printing my tweets again, and everything worked splendidly. (This means that I am probably due a session where everything fails in the near future…)

They were a great audience, and I promised some references:

You can find out more about the Gadgeteer here: http://www.netmf.com/gadgeteer/

If you fancy buying some hardware you can get the kits from Cool Components.

If you want to make your own 3D printer like Una you can get a kit from Ultimaker.

Charlotte told me about a competitor to my Twitter printer (or perhaps my Twitter printer is a competitor for it). The LittlePrinter puts things onto paper, and will have a mobile client that you use to configure it. However, everything is pushed from a cloud based server which is supported by the hardware supplier. When they go bust you lose everything, and it is hard to see how they can make money once they have got the profit on the hardware. That has already happened to my Chumby and my Nabaztag rabbit. My plans for my Twitter printer include a web configuration page so that the user can always control the device directly, rather than any kind of on-going requirement for support.

Book News

Two bits of interesting book news today. O’Reilly are having a special offer on all kinds of great books for the next week, up to 5th July. One of them is my XNA book (the one on the left above). Follow this link to get your hands on this, and any other titles that take your fancy (but buy mine first…)

http://oreil.ly/LFXgno

Also, Start Here! Learn the Kinect API! is coming out soon, I think some folk have already managed to buy a copy. One clarification, just as we went to print Microsoft released version 1.5 of the Kinect SDK. The book doesn’t cover any of the new APIs provided in version 1.5, but all of the content will work fine.

Gadgets at St. Bede’s

This is the audience, thanks too much for to the volunteer who helped me build the camera.

Did a school visit today. For the last couple of years we’ve been doing talks at St. Bede’s about computing and good stuff, Today I was showing some of the fun and games that you can have with Gadgeteer and 3D printing.

This is the output from my “Tweet Printer”. It connects to the internet and prints out my tweets. And it works.

These are the working components, a FEZ Spider, WiFi board and custom printer connector, based on the only plug and socket that we had in stores, which is probably a bit big (and would sound really funny if you plugged headphones into it…

Another view, at the bottom you can see the hole for the GHI 7 led display which shows the progress as the device finds a WiFi network, connects to it, sends a web request and then decodes and prints the tweet.

It even works by using my Lumia 900 in Internet sharing mode, which means that I can see my tweets immortalised on paper everywhere I go. If I fancy doing something different, for example a printed weather forecast or shopping list, then I just have to change the software. All I need to do now is print a lid for the box. And find some smaller plugs, and make a new printer box with room for the power supply socket.

If you were at the talk and want the slide deck, you can find it here.

Lonely Windows Phones

I’ve got a couple of Windows Phones in my office that are a bit lonely. They are Nokia Lumia 710 models and rather nice. If you are a continuing Hull Student and have a Windows Phone project in mind, tell me your idea and if I like it I’ll get one posted out to you for you to play with. There are only two rules:

• You must blog the progress that you make over the summer.
• You must put something in the Windows Phone Marketplace before the end of summer.

I’ll send the phones out on Monday next week to the two best ideas.