Being Judged and Doing Well

Judgement Day. The time that Team Random, made up of (in no particular order) Phil Price, Will Johnson, Andrew Sterland and David Waby, get to strut their stuff. To say that they were first years they put on a hugely impressive show. It was great to watch them moving from "I can't do this" to "Hey, I just did this" to "Lets do that again" in the course of the presentations. By the end of the day they really had everything nailed. They only had to do things three times, which I reckon was optimal. By a fourth presentation they might have been tempted to extemporise or start to get bored at which point they may have gone off the boil a bit. Or perhaps that is just me.

I had to try quite hard not to explode with pride whilst they were doing their stuff. They were just so darned good. And all around all the other teams were doing just the same. I've got nothing but utmost respect for all the contestants. By gum they were good.

And so to the competition dinner which was held in this converted monastery in the middle of Barcelona. Apparently, when the monastery was built all those years ago, they didn't put in air conditioning, but this time it was fine because the ceiling was much higher and they gave us all fans (I kept mine - it is going to Majorca with my daughter for beach use.) Great food, fine wines and good conversation (except when I was speaking of course).

And then to the judging. I had been pondering for some time how to handle the fact that there was a good chance we would not make the top four. We had decided that in that situation we had lost nothing, since we were all winners anyway. However, there was still some trepidation as the names were announced, in alphabetical order of institution. When they got past H we kind of figured we were out of the running. We were just in the process of "well, it has been great and we put in a good shot" when the man said "University of Hull". Which is our proper name. And we were in the final.

I'm kind of ashamed about how pleased I was, and how much I showed it. I'm thinking now about the ones that didn't make it; on the slimmest of margins. What they don't realise is that the experience and what they have achieved is now going to change the course of their lives and they have already won big time. They now know that they can beat the world at this business, right down to the last fifteen, and that is going to change the way they do things for ever. In five or so years they will look back at how things have changed since their experience in Barcelona, but at that moment all they would be thinking is that they had not made it to the last four. And some tall idiot involved with a team that has is dancing around and looking please with himself.

Ah well, sorry folks.

Of course, the sting in the tail is now that we have to come back again and wait for another round of results. But that is another day.

Judgement day

This is the time for Team Random, made up of (in no particular order) Phil Price, Will Johnson, Andrew Sterland and David Waby to strut their stuff. To say that they were first years they put on a hugely impressive show. It was great to watch them moving from "I can't do this" to "Hey, I just did this" to "Lets do that again" in the course of the presentations. By the end of the day they really had everything nailed. They only had to do things three times, which I reckon was optimal. By a fourth presentation they might have been tempted to extemporise or start to get bored at which point they may have gone off the boil a bit. Or perhaps that is just me.

I had to try quite hard not to explode with pride whilst they were doing their stuff. They were just so darned good. And all around all the other teams were doing just the same. I've got nothing but utmost respect for all the contestants. By gum they were good.

And so to the competition dinner which was held in this converted monastery in the middle of Barcelona. Apparently, when the monastery was built all those years ago, they didn't put in air conditioning, but this time it was fine because the ceiling was much higher and they gave us all fans (I kept mine - it is going to Majorca with my daughter for beach use.) Great food, fine wines and good conversation (except when I was speaking of course).

And then to the judging. I had been pondering for some time how to handle the fact that there was a good chance we would not make the top four. We had decided that in that situation we had lost nothing, since we were all winners anyway. However, there was still some trepidation as the names were announced, in alphabetical order of institution. When they got past H we kind of figured we were out of the running. We were just in the process of "well, it has been great and we put in a good shot" when the man said "University of Hull". Which is our proper name. And we were in the final.

I'm kind of ashamed about how pleased I was, and how much I showed it. I'm thinking now about the ones that didn't make it; on the slimmest of margins. What they don't realise is that the experience and what they have achieved is now going to change the course of their lives and they have already won big time. They now know that they can beat the world at this business, right down to the last fifteen, and that is going to change the way they do things for ever. In five or so years they will look back at how things have changed since their experience in Barcelona, but at that moment all they would be thinking is that they had not made it to the last four. And some tall idiot involved with a team that has is dancing around and looking please with himself. Ah well, sorry folks.

Of course, the sting in the tail is now that we have to come back again and wait for another round of results. But that is another day.

Not Wearing Shorts

Set up day. The venue is really nice, but on the setup days they don't turn on the air conditioning. In a very public spirited gesture I was not wearing shorts (anyone who has actually seen me in shorts will agree that this was a pretty public spirited thing to do) but it did mean that I got rather warm.

The setup followed the usual pattern of moving from "How on earth are we going to fill six hours?" to "Oh my goodness, how are we going to get everything done?". David Grey did a sterling job of finding little bugs and glitches and the team did a sterling job of putting them right. We had some lovely customer/developer conversations, where the team tried to argue that a some of the behaviours were "features" not "bugs". If nothing else, this competition has certainly improved their debating skills.

Once we had got the software polished we moved on to the presentation. I don't think that the team thought they needed a rehearsal. Until they tried one. And then they kind of saw the light. There is a pretty good Mark Twain quote about the huge amount of time it takes to prepare a spontaneous talk and it applies in spades. We worked until we were fairly sure that we could work no more (always a good trick - otherwise you start to go backwards) and then we all went out for tea.

The food was interesting in a "you can see where all the bits came from" kind of way, but the parts that I dared to eat tasted very nice. In something of a recurring theme the aircon in the restaurant was turned off as well, which meant that by the end of the evening you could have made the coffee on our heads. The coolest part, if not in a temperature kind of way, was the fact that as we walked out on to the balcony we could hear Rolling Stones music. Being played by the Rolling Stones. They were giving a concert next door. I took a picture of the wall of the stadium and hoped that my imagination would do the rest. You wonder what motivates them to go out there and strut their stuff after all those years but if they enjoy it, and audience enjoys it (and it certainly sounded like that) then what the hey. And anyway I guess you can always use another private jet/villa in Gran Canaria etc.

If Only I'd Had Mercury

Is it OK to write retrospective blogs?

Is that what we call a diary?

While you wrestle with those profound statements I'll just put down for the record that today I flew to Barcelona but I am writing this on Wednesday 2nd of July. That will help.
Why fly to Barcelona? Well, a Hull team of students is taking part in Microsoft Imagine Cup competition. They have created (in eight weeks and for the Pocket PC) an application which is designed to be useful if you, for example, find yourself stuck in an airport at half past ten at night, not speaking a word of the local language and having no idea where anything is or where to go.

Which is kind of ironic, because at half past ten tonight I was......

If I had Mercury (and a WIFI connection) I could have entered my problems in English and had my Pocket PC speak the text in Spanish. I could have found my hotel in the database and obtained a map and directions.... At this point I'm sounding like a salesman and should just direct you here.

Anyhoo, got hooked up with the rest of the gang and we decided to hit the town centre
I'm presently assembling my (retrospective again) Barcelona Diary which has pictures of the trip.

Suffice it to say that I am now ensconced in Barcelona, waiting nervously for the tomorrow and hoping that we can get our application set up and looking good for the judges on Monday

Treading The Boards

The talk seemed to go OK. There were around 40 of them and they laughed in all of the right places. The talk was at my old school. They've painted it a different colour, but I suppose you must expect some changes after nearly thirty years... Kept close to the door and actually used the ice breaker joke (don't ask).

Only problem was that someone there knows one of the Imagine Cup team and heard me say nice things about the team and the project. The word is out that I said something nice about a bunch of students. This will probably ruin my cred. in the department....

Presently packing for Barcelona (it's a tough life...). I've checked the internet for weather information and I'm taking warm pullover, thick socks, water proof, gloves etc. I think there may be something wrong with my farenhieght to centigrade conversion, but you can't be too careful... I'm also taking the camera so there will be a tiny travel web site when I get there.

Away With Research

Spent the day at a Research Away Day where we are planning how/what we do in the department in terms of research. Gave the shortest presentation, which was well regarded for that reason at least...

Some very good ideas, and some interesting research going on. Nice to have a day when you can just talk about one thing and we seem to have made some quite good decisions.

Giving a talk at a school tomorrow about the joys of engineering and stuff like that. I'm going to write some C# live in front of an audience. Creating computer programs in front of a whole bunch of people is always good for a laugh. It is most rewarding when people who have never written code before go; "Huh. Is that all there is to programming - I thought it was really difficult". I'll let you know how I got on tomorrow...

I'm just wondering what would happen if I filled in tomorrows blog today? Would it come true? Is there scope for a Twilight Zone type of story where everything I write about actually happens? I'm tempted to fill it in, but a little scared of the consequences....

The Seven Signs of Aging

Still thinking about "the seven signs of aging". Wonder if there is one for every deadly sin. Cut to the "Sin/Aging Mapping Meeting of the International Standards Organisation":

First Drone: "Well, gluttony to fat is easy enough"

Second Drone: "Yes, but what about fat babies? You have to think about the potential for litigation"

First Drone: "Yeah, but babies aren't old."

Chairman: "OK, Fat to Gluttony. Now, moving on to green skin for envy....."

In between writing a press release for the Imagine Cup entry from Hull I've been playing with another new toy/idea. It is a really neat way to create Shockwave Flash files and it is free (for 15 days anyway) from Swish.

It lets you create some really impressive text animations and other effects. I'm using it to implement a little promotional idea which I had some time ago. It probably breaks lots of university house style guidelines but I quite like it. Take a look here to see
what I mean. I might expand it some, if time permits.

Another Day, Another Dollar

Start with a Staff Meeting (ugh) then do some programming (yay) and then compose some legal letters (don't ask). Round off with some more programming (yay) and then watch some telly and go to bed. It's a plan, but perhaps not a life plan.

Still grappling with the PIC to get the ADC to work with the interrupts. With great power comes great responsibility. Or, to put it another way, if you get it a bit wrong it just sits there and grins at you. To go from a world of breakpoints, single stepping and watching variables to debugging with a flashing LED is a bit of a pain, but at least all the problems are of my own making. I've got it to almost work, which means that there is a nasty timing issue which cause the program to run fine for a few seconds and then go bananas. Ongoing....

Got Sky on in the background. You can buy some cream or other which "combats the seven signs of aging". Hmmm. Seven signs. I think that one of the signs is you can't remember what the seven signs are. In that case they can solve the problem just by printing the list on the box. I'm going to have a look next time I'm in Superdrug and see how many I've got.

Hah. Found the problem. The program was fine (as if I could doubt it). However, if the PIC programmer is plugged in it causes bad things to happen. Things along the lines of memory corruption and other bad karma. Unplug the programmer before running the program and viola (if you like string music).

Moral of story: It isn't always Rob's fault (although this makes a good starting point)

Back From Nowhere

And so, after a long absence, I'm back with more ramblings.

I'm probably going to re-host the blog if I can figure out how a rather spiffy .NET blog program works (this never happened).

As I said to someone earlier today; I'm trying to make my life more interesting by starting a blog so that I can do interesting things and then write about them.

Perhaps I'll do that tomorrow. For now I'm just sitting here wondering why it is called "Victoria Sponge" cake.

Oh, and I'm updating my C for Pics CD-ROM. This has been selling steadily (a college in Finland has just bought a site licence) and so we are updating it. This means that I'm writing embedded assembler and C for a machine with 4K of program memory and around 300 (yes - count them) bytes of memory. And loving every minute of it. If you've never written code like this then you really should have at least one go at it. There is something very liberating about being in total control of the hardware, with nothing between you and the thing what does the doing.

More tomorrow, when I've figured out how the ADC works under interrupts