Just Nice Desserts
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The Union Shop on the university campus now has a couple of "International" aisles. I found these desserts and picked some up for tea. Rather nice.
Bluetooth Manager for Windows 10 Universal Apps now on Nuget
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I've been playing with nuget.
It's awesome.
It is fantastically easy to package up an assembly and make it available for just anyone to use in their applications. It is beautifully integrated into Visual Studio and I reckon it is actually easier to download a package from the other side of the world and make it part of your solution than it is to add one that you have written yourself on your own machine.
To practice I've packaged up my Bluetooth Manager library. This is a little wrapper class that makes it really easy to use Bluetooth on Windows 10 applications. I've not tried it on Windows 10 on Raspberry Pi (but I've tried it on lots of other systems and it works fine). You can find out a bit more about it here. I use it so that I can print message on my little home made Bluetooth printer, but you can use it anywhere you want to talk over a Bluetooth serial connection.
Oh, and in case you are wondering why it is version 1.0.1 and not version 1.0.0 I found an interesting quirk in nuget. If your library class doesn't have a public constructor the package will fail to work because Visual Studio will complain that the class is "Inaccessible due to its protection level.". That's what happens when you try to use version 1.0.0
Sending Money the Scary Way
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Mobile banking is wonderful. The way that you can send money to a distant account by just tapping a button is really nice (once you've done the shenanigans with the card reader thingy and set up the account first of course).
However, I always fret that one wayward digit might result in me sending the plumber's payment to some other lucky person. I wonder what the legal situation is if this happens?
Anyhoo, no worries, and all is paid for. I am now the certified owner of a properly shiny boiler.
A Couple of Good Books
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This is a great book if you like Japanese food, or if you want to find out if you will like Japanese food (you will). There are lots things that are quick and easy to prepare, with some nice looking cakes. Some of the ingredients might take a bit of searching out, but my experiences in Japan make me think it will be worth the effort.
This is a great book if you like well drawn and imaginative comic strips.
And yes, I've just figured out how to add Amazon links to my blog. Go me.
City Spaceship?
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Doesn't this make you want to go and find out what might be inside? Even though it might be a Starbucks....
Back to Normal
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Well, the blog's back up and the heating is working. I never thought I'd be so pleased to be back where I was eight days ago....
Blogging about a Broken Blog
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It's one of those existential questions on a par with "How do you throw away an old dustbin?". My blog has been a bit broken over the last few days and I'm not sure how to write about it.
Having given this some consideration I think the answer to the question "How do you blog about a broken blog?" is that you do it afterwards.....
Anther Big Exam
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Another big exam today. Another two or so hours walking back and forth looking stern. I suppose it's quite good exercise though...
Going bananas with passwords
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We had our big First Year exam this morning. Around 250 students took the exam at the same time. Thanks to Septa, Amadou, Kevin, Nicholas, Xinhui and David for helping to run the affair.
Before the exam I carefully wrote a briefing document and made sure that everyone knew the username and password to unlock the test. Bearing in mind the Yellow Book theme this year I thought a username of "bananas" and a password of "custard" would work well.
Thing is, that's not what I typed in the briefing document. I missed the s off bananas, and so people were tying to start the exam with a single banana. Which didn't work. Fortunately I'd also put my phone number in the briefing document, so as soon as the exam started my phone lit up with folks ringing through from the exam locations around camps. We sorted out the problem in double quick time and everyone was able to get on and answer the 50 questions.
Amazing Everything Meter
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Amazing, even with the odd spelling mistake..
James thinks I should get one of these. It is a kind of "everything meter". The idea is that you can just connect an electronic device and it will tell you what kind of device it is. It can detect and measure resistors, capacitors, coils, diodes and a few different types of transistor. For around fourteen pounds I reckon it is a bit of a steal. Very tempting. If you've not already got yourself a multimeter I reckon one of these would be at least as useful.
Central eating tips
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Home hints for the handyman: What to do if your central heating breaks.
Go out somewhere nice and warm for lunch. Stay there as long as possible.
It worked for us.
Boiler Busted
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Pretty much all of these parts are worn out in our boiler
What is it with gas boilers? You buy one and then, twenty years later, you have to buy one again. The plumber who was kind enough to turn out today took one look at the bits of bent metal stuck on the wall of our garage and, after a sharp intake of breath (always an expensive sound in my experience) told us that it was pretty much worn out. We could replace the bit that might be broken and then find that it either works for a while or something else, that can't be replaced, is also broken. It looks like it might be new boiler time. This could put on hold any camera upgrades for a while.
Cold Home
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Came back to a cold home tonight. No heating. At the moment the only difference between our house and a fridge is that with a fridge a light comes on when you open the door.
Mobile Phone Holograms
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I've not tried viewing any of these holograms yet, but I'm definitely going to have a try. Find out more here.
Hull at alt.ctrl.gdc
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Game Developers Conference, or GDC, is probably the biggest gathering of game developers in the world. I've been lucky enough to go a couple of times and it is a fantastic conference.
One of the attractions of the conference is the side-exhibitions that they organise. One is called alt.ctrl.gdc and it is a showcase for wacky game controllers and games with novel gameplay.
It just so happens that a couple of years ago I was part of the Spooky Elephant - Beard Bandit team taking part in Global GameJam and we created a novel game with wacky game controllers. As you do.
I've not got particularly fond memories of the actual competition to be honest. I was the single point of failure who's dodgy hardware design caused the project to falter. However, we did win an award for Most Ambitious Failure.
But we are not ones to give up. Simon and Jon continued to work on the software and I did some modifications to the hardware, ending up with a working configurable joystick and a game to go with it.
The great news is that last year Simon submitted the game and the joystick to the GDC organisers and the game has been selected for showcasing at GDC 2016. This of course means that someone from Hull has the chore of going to San Francisco and showing it off, but Jon has manfully stepped up to the mark and will be taking the hardware and the game to show off. You can find out a bit more about the game here.
Things To Remember not to Forget
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Don't forget there are a couple of things coming up soon....
Global Gamejam and Platform Expo: The next Global GameJam is at the end of this month. Sign up at the registration site. This is a great way to get experience coding and is also part of the Platform Expo running in Hull.
FameLab: Famelab is a chance to get noticed, and also a chance to practice speaking in front of an audience. The pitches are very short - what could go wrong in Five Minutes? Find out more here.
For Hull students we've had a meeting today (I do love meetings) to sort out the Seminar plans for the next semester. There's some interesting things coming down the tracks....
First Day Back at Work
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Back to work today. The sky first thing was especially dark, just to celebrate....
Adventures in 3D Printing #4: Pen Holder
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I'm quite impressed by my Robot Drawing arm, but the pen mounting could be better. The problem is that the pen is held in place by a single bolt which doesn't stop it from wobbling when the arm changes direction. One of the great things about having a 3D printer is that I can solve these problems by designing and making a better one. You can see the design for mark 1 above. It has a thicker ring which will grip the pen over more of its length. I've got a plan to fit "rings" on the pens so that I can easily swap them in and out without having to worry about alignment. I'm also going to experiment with tiny magnets to see if I can use them to hold things in place. Such fun.
Get get-iplayer
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To be brutally honest, I don't think it's been a vintage year for Christmas telly. But there have been one or two things worth seeing. If you want to add a bit more flexibility to your TV viewing experience I can recommend get-iplayer. I first found out about this nifty command-line powered program in a Raspberry Pi magazine. You can use the program to download and transcode BBC TV programs from iPlayer on your Pi, but there are also versions for Windows 10 and and Mac.
It works really well, once you've got your head around the command line interface.
Update: You can get a free copy of that Raspberry Pi magazine here.
Happy New Year at the C4DI
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What with today having really quite nice weather we went out for a walk. I took number one son to show him the new C4DI headquarters down at the waterfront. I think it is a stunning looking building, and a great visual compliment for "The Deep" which is just across the river. I'd like to think of this as a metaphor for all the great things which are happening in Hull just at the moment, with a burgeoning local software scene and some fascinating trajectories for developers who want to live and work in lovely Hull.
Oh, and I'd like to wish all my readers a happy and prosperous New Year. I hope you have a happy, healthy, fun-filled and prosperous 2016.
