Busy Writing
/Spent today mostly writing stuff, which meant that nothing happened which is worthy of blogging. But I did find a nice picture for the day though.
Rob Miles on the web. Also available in Real Life (tm)
Spent today mostly writing stuff, which meant that nothing happened which is worthy of blogging. But I did find a nice picture for the day though.
While we're on the subject of code improvement (we were the day before yesterday) I reckon these points are all good and well made.
This is an interesting read. I particularly like number 4, I'm going to have to change some notes to accommodate that one.
...Melbourne is nice too....
Just been going through some of the pictures I took last year. I really want to go back to Japan again some time.
For bonus points, can you spot Godzilla?
Kevin and I are just putting the finishing touches to the assignment for Programming 2 for this year. We always set two different scenarios, one a game and the other a line of business app. For the game we are doing "Cross Country Ski Race". For the line of business app we are doing "Cross Country Ski Race Manager". Almost like we have planned it.
For the game, players have to steer their player down an increasingly tortuous ski run, avoiding the deadly, and somewhat improbable, "horizontal avalanche" that seems to have erupted. Fortunately an explosion at a nearby cheese mine has left their path littered with life giving cheese which they can use to recover their strength.
For the manager application they have to track competitors, generate reports and produce a fully tested solution. Should be fun.
Simon and I had a top level meeting today. Well, we were on third floor. We decided that the next Three Thing Game will be over the night of 15-16th of April.
Registrations will open on Monday 4th April at www.threethinggame.com
I think we'll use the "Thingomatic" for this one.....
Oh dear.....
Another hyper-busy open day today. Thank you all so much for coming to see us, hope that it was worth the trip. Everybody left clutching their free copy of the "Bananas" edition of the C# Yellow Book that we are using with the First Year at the moment. On the right you can see an exclusive image of the latest printing of the book, with the hyper-realistic 3D rendered cover art.
One of the fantastic things about this job is the capacity of students to surprise you with the things that they do. Yesterday, in the First Year Labs, Michael asked me if I wanted to have a look at the game he'd been working on for a little while.
It's really nice.
It's a Theme Park simulation written in Scratch. You can have a go here. Quite a few thousand people already have. I told Michael that he must promise to start writing a blog about the game and how he made it, and I really hope he does.
Monday was not a great day. I staggered home after my last lecture and went straight to bed. And stayed there. Mostly. Yesterday I found out that the same thing had happened to number one son. And we'd both eaten at the same burger place on Saturday.
Oh well.
I'm back at work now, which is nice, frantically trying to catch up with two days of this'n'that.
But getting better.
Oh yes.
The first Raspberry Pi was a nice device. At the time it was ground breaking. The Raspberry Pi 3 looks at least as ground breaking. It's faster, of course, but it also has WiFi and Bluetooth built into it, which makes it a ready to roll, fully connected Internet of Things device. Previously you'd have to use a physical network cable and then directly connect your Pi to the device you wanted to talk to. Now you can do it all without wires.
You can get the Windows 10 Insider Preview that works on the Pi 3 from here.
I've ordered mine.
These look useful. Particularly if you happen to want to attach them to a robot so that another robot can see it and charge towards it. As you do.
They might work well for light painting too. I saw them at the Science Museum yesterday in their gift shop. They are a set of battery powered coloured lights that you are supposed to attach to your fingers. You can find them on eBay (search for finger lights) at really stupid prices. I'm tempted to spend a tenner on 40 or so sets and go nuts with them.
I wonder how long the batteries last?
Just go. Go now. It has a little while to run. You can book tickets and find out more here. We went today. It is a breathtaking exhibition. They've got some stunning things to see, including the actual capsule used by the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova. It looks more like a wrecking ball than a spacecraft, covered with insulating material and with a hole where you get in and out.
There are things I wasn't sure were still even around, prototypes of satellites and lunar landers and some completely awesome artwork and drawings. I'm just about old enough to remember some of this when it was happening and I find it amazing that all these years later we can go and see the actual stuff. The only snag (for me) is that you aren't allowed to take pictures. But you'll bring back a whole bunch of great memories.
(and a few postcards and T shirts - which are half price at the moment)
I've been working on some games to go into my programming book. My tiny game engine is coming along nicely and I'm building up a fun l little space shooter This is a screenshot of a work in progress.
It's really hard to draw convincing aliens.
We're selling an old Singer hand cranked sewing machine. I got it out to take some pictures for eBay. t's rather strange to come across a technology from the past which I know nothing about.
I can figure out what the screwdriver and the bobbins are for, but everything else leaves me baffled.
We had our third Careers and Networking Event today. We had six companies presenting and it was standing room only in the lecture theatre during the presentations. I think we'll find a larger venue for next time.
There were lots of interesting tales of local companies doing world beating things, but for me the most impressive thing was that most of the companies that came to see us had hired (and even brought along) ex-Hull graduates who now worked with them.
This was a follow on from our Games event a few weeks ago. We'll be doing it all again in a year's time. If not sooner.
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
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