Christmas Lights Dilemma

I was out washing the car this morning. Aileen next door shouted over "Already this year?" - so I offered to hold her ladder while she fell of it. The neighbours are putting up christmas lights. Both sides now have pretty, flickering displays. The only lights we have are the ones which show through when the curtains aren't closed properly.

Anyhoo, the question is do I join the throng and add to the light pollution, or do I maintain my lofty disdain for such frippery - a stance which has been described as "humbug". A couple of years ago I managed a very poor display of old stock, which totally failed to set the neighbourhood alight, and so I'm nervous about making the same mistake again. Perhaps I'll see if anyone at the university has any spare lasers....

Open Day 360

We had our first open day of the admissions season today. I took my shiny new XBOX 360 (acquired yesterday after only standing for an hour in the rain) to show the folks that turned up. Well, we do run a games programming course.

Easy Mode

I was playing "Everybody's Golf" on the PSP when it suddenly said (in so many words)

"If you like, I can change to Easy mode. This will not affect your scores, but will make it easier to play"

Basically the game had decided I was not very good at it and offered to make things easier for me. At first I was annoyed but it did make it easier to play the game after that. However, I've since decided that I like the idea. In fact I like it so much that I want one for real life.

Perhaps one morning I could hear a ghostly voice which says "You don't seem to be doing too well. Do you want me to change to easy mode". After I have said yes the phone rings and it is Charlotte Church wanting help wth her new video and a envelope with my premium bonds winnings drops through the letter box onto the mat. I could live with that.

J'accuse

As part of the New Year Celebrations this year we invited a bunch of folks round to take part in a murder mystery game thing this evening. The whole thing had a vampire theme and I was the sinister butler of the "old master". Great fun.

The whole thing was run off the internet, you slap them some money using Paypal and then you get to manage a web site for the party, email invitations and instructions and get access to all the customised player instructions for download and print. You can find out more here.

University Dean in Tabloid Magazine Shock Horror

Went to see the dean today. I was waiting outside his office when my eyes fell on the magazines arrayed for his appointments to peruse prior to being ushered into his presence.

I suppose he gets it so that he can make sure he isn't being featured that week. Mind you, it was the one with Jordan's wedding in....

A Special Place in Hell

They should have a special place in hell for people who drive close behind you. The dammed should be followed at all times by a specially chosen demon with hot bad breath who has been trained to stay exactly one inch behind them and crash into them whenever they stop walking.

I was driving along today on a surface that I wasn't entirely sure of, in my shiny new car. And a buffoon comes up behind me in a BMW and decides to see if they can actually see themselves in my rear view mirror. If I had needed to brake I'm sure we would have had an unpleasant and expensive "two become one" moment. Fool.

In the Good Old Days (tm) we had a Ford Cortina which had a towing bracket on the back made of angle iron. Think the kind of stuff they use to hold up the girders in buildings. In this situation we were without fear. When somebody drove into to the back there would be an enormous crash and a cloud of steam from their shattered radiator. We'd get out and notice a tiny scratch on the ironwork. They'd have to buy a whole new car front. And quite right too.

Exciting Life

Some people find excitement by climbing mountains, driving at high speed, and sailing across oceans (although probably not all on the same day).

I can get to maximum excitement levels by simply forgetting to put the wheely bin out the night before the dustmen are due. Then I have the thrill of leaping out of bed, sprinting downstairs, skidding over ice covered tarmac dragging a large plastic container full of the week's refuse and then the breath taking wait to find out whether or not the lorry has been yet. And all the time with the nerve tingling threat of painful sanctions from number one wife if it turns out that I've failed to get the rubbish out on time.

Fortunately all is well, and the bin is empty again. I wonder if I can build a robot to do this for me?

Forbidden Cake

Tis nearly the season to be jolly, and in keeping with the festive season forward planning policy implemented by number one wife, it is the season to be making christmas cake. In fact, three cakes are to be provided for various grateful parts of the family, which means that at this time of year the house is full of the glorious smell of cake baking. And I can't eat any of them. This is so unfair. I've made arguments along the lines of quality control "We need to make sure that they are as good as last years" and been rebuffed. I've also been told that any evidence of cake tampering will be severely dealt with.

Never mind, only four more weeks.

Why does this work?

We don't get very good radio reception in our kitchen. If we want to listen to Radio 2 and actually hear the programmes we have to open the dishwasher door.

I've no idea why this is the case, but it is. And no, we don't keep the radio on the dishwasher.

Trader Rob Goes Karting

Traded in a couple of naff Nintendo DS games today and swapped them for a peach. Game trading is quite a nice way to get hold of things without parting with large sums of cash. I was surprised how much I got for the two that I handed over (I'm too embarrassed to tell you what they were). The good news was that Mario Kart DS ended up costing me only eight quid.

And what a game it is. Colourful and smooth graphics. Great kart handling and devious weapons. And I can actually do this one - unlike the dratted TOCA Racing for the PSP which nearly drove me up the wall. The only snag at the moment is that I can't get the much touted WIFI ability of the game to work at the moment, but this might be down to my naughty Access Point. Pity that, I was looking forward to taking on somebody from the other side of the world - even though they will almost certainly beat me hollow.

Update: I've got the thing going now. All I had to do was replace the Wireless Access Point with one that actually works. And I did manage to join a game. And they did beat me hollow. I'm not sure if this is an advance or not..

Make every mistake exactly once

Woa. Spent just about all day marking. We gave some useful feedback, and I saw some very neat code. But a whole day of it is a bit heavy going, and I feel sorry for the students who had to wait around to get stuff dealt with.

Last year, for some reason, it seemed to go more quickly. I think we had more to talk about with this lab, which is a good thing.

One of the things that I have learnt in this life is that it is probably OK to get things wrong in some way once, but if you do it twice you are an idiot (and I may be a bit crazy - but I am not quite an idiot)

Last time our marking worked by just getting around people. This year, because we took longer to mark it did not work this way. Next time I will have a timetable for the students with slots to fill in and proper appointments. It may take a bit of setting up, but it will stop the waste of time.

And with that I'm off for a lie down....

Is Marking Fun?

Spent a big chunk of the day marking. And loving it. I was going around looking at student code and I really like doing this. Some of the ideas that I saw were well clever, one or two I reckoned were models of simplicity and good design. In fact, in every one that I got to take a look at, there was real evidence that the person who wrote it has learned something from our programming course. I reckon I've marked around 30 or so today, on a one to one basis, and it has left me kind of zonked. But I'll be back doing it again tomorrow, and I should think I'll have just as much fun again.

Carried away

We had another bit of fun today. This time we got together and wrote programs which played against each other in a little game. You can read all about it here, so there is no need for me to repeat it.

Sadly, I probably got a bit carried away. You see the program that I wrote was, more by luck than judgement, slightly better than the ones that some other people had made. Which meant that it tended to win a bit. In fact a lot. In fact it rocked. And I was well pleased with this at the time. So, if you were offended by me going "In your face, in your face!" as my bit of code scored a couple more points than your bit of code, I apologise.

But it did rock though.

Ho for Harrogate

Off in a bus today to Harrogate. And I'm driving.

These fourteen souls have placed their lives in my hands. Very brave of them. Especially as I then tried to cut the top of the minibus by the rather cunning use of an underground carpark.

Fortunately I noticed in time, and thanks to the very helpful parking people at Harrogate Conference Centre, we got parked up and in with minimal fuss. The conference was very good (for a more considered appraisal take a look at my Spoke blog, which is where the techie stuff lives).

I love it when a gadget comes good. Today two of my little machines did the business. Firstly the Gizmondo used its satellite navigation feature to take us right to the doors of the conference center with no fus, and then direct us back again. And my Imate Jasjar let me check my email and even update software on my office machine by a cunning use of WIFI and Remote Desktop.

And then back to Hull, where Andy, Tom, David and I took Tesco by storm in search for drinks and nibbles for our software challenge event tomorrow.....

Cottingham Lights 2005

We went out to look at the lights tonight. Our village is kind of known for the quality of the lights that it puts up, and so they have a big switch on - which this year was tonight. Jolly cold out there, but for the benefit of my blog readers (yes - both of you) I went out and took a couple of photographs...

Conventional Version

Unconventional Version

(as usual you can get larger versions of these pictures by clicking on them)

Yo Len!

Met up with Len today. He asked me what a "blog" is. I told him, and he doesn't believe that I write a bit every day. I said I'd mention him so "Yo Len!".

I am not a number

Went over to York today to visit number one daughter. We had a trawl around the shops and, by jiminey if I didn't come across a complete set of "The Prisoner", a sixties TV series of some renown, which I remember watching in short trousers many years ago. Priced very well as it was second hand, and so I couldn't resist.

Also bought a copy of a magazine called The Chap. I think I'm probably too young to take all of this to heart. But I do find it very funny.

Oh, and I took the camera along and the weather was kind to us.

Goodbye to Rich

Just said goodbye to Rich. He was a student I interviewed when he applied to the department (he reminded me of this - I'd completely forgotten). He came here, got a first class degree in Computer Science, won a departmental prize, did one of the best MSc by research projects that I've ever seen.

And now he is leaving to work at Southampton, right at the sharp end of his chosen field.

I'm going to miss him coming into my office and asking me questions I don't know the answer to.

Good luck sir, and keep in touch.

Shiny Car and Food

Finally got my new car today. It is ever so shiny. They put it in the showroom for me to admire before collection, and so I did. It has taken four weeks from buying it to actually getting it, and bearing in mind that I only get a new car every eight years or so, this was quite an emptional experience.

We took it out for a meal (that is we did the eating - the car does not run well on Chicken in mushroom sauce) and had a very nice time. A tip for readers, the Fergusen Fawcett in Walkington does excellent pub grub at really good prices and, although it can get very busy at weekends, on a Thursday night it seems fairly quiet (at least it did tonight).

Nanny MacPhee - warts and all

Crazy Rob as film reviewer....

Went to see Nanny MacPhee tonight. Not actually my kind of film, but seeing that number one wife has accompanied me to a large number of space opera type stuff over the years (and actually managed to sleep through most of the battle scenes) I thought it only fair.

It is a childrens film. Nothing wrong with that, so is "The Best Film that Rob Has Ever Seen" (tm) - Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were Rabbit since you asked.

However it has children in it, which can be a problem. Furthermore, whilst number one wife had the charms of Colin Firth to admire, all I had was the warty visage of the Nanny hersef. Except right at the end, where her wart all drop off, she loses ten stone, has her teeth fixed and wanders off into the sunset. (I found this very hard to understand - if by some quirk of fate I ever become good looking the last thing I'm going to do is leave town)

It has to be said that everyone plays their parts with gusto and that there is a lot of visual flair to the scenery and costumes. But it was a bit too worthy for me, and the children changed from evil imps into little angels a little too readily to match with my experience. If you like kids films (or are a kid yourself) you could well love it - after all it has the word "fart" in it a few times - once even said by a baby - but even so I can only give it six or so out of ten.

Oh and I have just had a wonderful idea for a film where a warty old women comes to your house, sorts out your kids and then clears your computer of virus infection. Book now for seats at Nanny McAfee.