Oncemore to Doncaster

Went to Doncaster again. This time I was giving a talk to new students about how to manage final year projects. Did a huge number on the importance of proofreading your report before you hand it in. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on the submitted work.....

Then out for a meal. A little Indian restaurant in Cottingham; the Alishaan. Very good stuff. I had a Korma because I am a wimp where strong seasonings are concerned. One of our party (no names, no pack drill but you know who you are..) had a rather advanced cooked at the table job (I think it was a Khulnar). This was most impressive. The cooking process seemed to use copious quantities of brandy, producing an intense conflagration and a huge pillar of smoke which virtually filled the room. I nabbed a piece once the smoke had cleared and we could see each other again and the process certainly works. It was delicious. If you need a good place to eat out at reasonable prices I can strongly recommend the place. They do takeaways too.

Big Risk. Big Reward

Highlight of the day. Topped 400,000,000 on the Twilight Zone pinball machine. Number one son has topped out at 394,000,000. He is trying to beat my record as we speak. Documentary evidence will be added to back up this claim when I can get the picture off my camera.... Nobody in our family has ever made it "into the zone". When we do; expect a really jubilant post. If you are not sure what I'm talking about, take a look here.

Oh, and I know that such scores are pretty paltry amongst proper pinball wizards. It is just that we've only had the table around six months and I'm still learning...

Literature of Sorts

Super Abridged Classics Dept.

Shopkeeper: "Good morning Mr. Potter sir, and how may I help you"
Harry: "I'd like to reserve one of those birds which rise from the ashes"
Shopkeeper: "Certainly. It will be here in two weeks"

From the book "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"

More later, if you are not lucky.

Open Day and Flying Fun

University Open Day today. Very good turn out which is nice. And the weather was kind to us; which is even nicer. Had a good attendance at the introduction talk and the tour and quite a few people in the audience had not been to Hull before. I hope they were impressed. Everything seemed to go smoothly, although my Tablet PC (which with I am slowly moving into a love/hate relationship) went in to "jerk-o-vision" when showing the film sequence (and this is a reference to the update speed on the screen - not the fact that I am in the video).

I think it is a video driver/player issue and I hope I can sort it out before the admissions afternoons start in November. Perhaps if I start now....

Anyway, if anyone reading this actually attended; thanks for coming and maybe I'll see you again some time.

And then up to Beverly for some early evening flying with the toy plane. Found the perfect place for flying and it all went swimmingly. Had the odd crash, but nothing we couldn't fix with gaffer tape. Note for anyone getting into this business; when you buy the plane - buy a big reel of tape as well. The percentage of the plane which is tape is increasing with every flight..... Number one son is now getting the hang of the plane and we had some really nice landings. And we were also blessed with a nice sunset to fly into:

Little Things and Little Minds

It is the little things in life that bring the greatest pleasure. I heard on the news this morning that they have just published a report on an incident where a trawler crashed into a gas collection platform in the North Sea. According to the report "..the collision occurred when the trawler changed position suddenly". Priceless.

Good news dept. Got season 2 of Babylon 5 from Amazon today. Only got a couple of episodes of season 1 left to watch, so we are talking just in time here... I used the free delivery service for the order, rather than the more expensive overnight option. I've a suspicion (but then I'm a suspicious type) that the "slow" free delivery is achieved by Amazon sitting on your order for a while before shipping it. This reminds me of the introduction of the second class, slow, post. The Post Office had to figure out how to slow mail down so that they could have a second class service...

The Power of Magic

Been thinking about debugging (as one does). Debugging is what you do when the program doesn't work. Or works but does the wrong thing (nearly the same problem). The thoughts were prompted by a magic show on telly a few days ago. They showed the 50 best magic tricks (for which the number one was David Copperfield being chopped in half). Debugging a program is a bit like figuring out how a magic trick works. When I watch a magician setting up a trick I always want to jump up and go "No! That padlock is fake. There's an open link in the chain, you're hanging from a wire and that solid case you're going on about has got a trap door at the bottom. Oh, and what's that up your sleeve? And how come your assistant is twins?"

You get the picture... If everything the magician tells you is true, the trick must be impossible. This means that at some point he is telling you whoppers.

Broken programs are just the same. Something somewhere is not how it should be. Some part of the system is lying to you. This means that you debug the same way that you find out from a magician how a trick works; asking "Is the chain real?" etc etc.

Saying "It should work, I dunno why it doesn't" is tantamount to saying that you believe in magic. What you must do therefore is test all the things that you are assuming are true. "I know that this contains the customer number..." Really? How do you know? Did it start off with that number and change? Did the system that delivered the number send something else? Is the range of the numbers what you are expecting? And so on.

The worst thing that can happen is that you can end up convincing yourself that everything is OK. In that case you have what I call a "reality fault". And you start to believe in magic. At this point you have to resort to desperate measures:

• First thing you do is walk away from the problem for a couple of hours. Often you will think of the answer; how the trick was performed. If that doesn't work, explain the trick to someone else. Two times out of ten you'll think of the answer during the explanation. One other time out of ten the someone else will tell you how the trick is done, or ask a question which changes how you view the problem: "Do you think he might have a fork lift truck in there somewhere?" or "What if the guy from the audience is in on it?".

• Next thing you do is fiddle with the system in stupid ways. This is like asking the magician to perform the same trick, but using an elephant rather than his assistant. You might spot something this time. Send in completely invalid data. Send in lots of it. Send in lots of the same thing. This quite often gets you some behaviour which lets you track down the problem.

• Then get the magician to do the trick in slow motion and freeze frame. Step through the code. Put in print statements. At some point you may well spot where your program does something it is not supposed to - and there you are at the solution.

• Finally, run the trick backwards. The great advantage that a magician has is he knows how the trick will end. The audience doesn't. You can often figure out how it was done if you start from the result and try to figure out how to end up there. It is the same with debugging. Try to think how it could have ended up with that result.

• OK. If you've done all that and it still fails you are in the one time out of a thousand where magic might actually exist. In this case you change the documentation and abracadabra! Your bug is now a feature! Failing that it is probably time to re-write the code.....

Imagine that Cup

Did something that I've not done before. Got my timings fouled up and failed to attend a lecture. This would not be huge problem except for the fact that I was giving it. And I had to duck out after five minutes to talk to a lady on the radio about Microsoft chat rooms being closed down. Sorry folks.

To make matters worse I was alerted to this fact just after I had my phone ring in the coffee lounge and everyone had enjoyed a good laugh at my ring tone. Well I like it and that's that. On the subject of groovy ring tones David from Microsoft had managed to track down an absolutely amazing ring tone from an Australian cartoon series. It is basically the whole theme tune and sounds incredible. And it goes on for ever. That's the nice thing about the Microsoft Smartphone; any CD or sound sample is up for grabs...

And then it was Imagine Cup presentation time. Gavin and David had come all the way from Microsoft with goodies to distribute and stories to tell. Team Random came out of retirement to tread the boards "one last time" and do the sales pitch. The Vice Chancellor came along and made a speech at the end.

And it all went rather well. Except for my tablet PC. Lovely device, all tablety and everything. But it seems to like to try and mess up my big important presentations. This time the video player (which worked fine right up until the day itself) decided to generate lots of amusing errors and refuse to play the nice Imagine Cup Video Diary. Right in the middle of the presentation. You don't want too many moments like these in your life. Fortunately I had a spare copy that I'd transcoded just in case of a problem like that. But it was still a bit scary until I remembered that bit....

Some muttering in the forum that "free gifts" didn't mean free things for everyone who turned up. As if. But the whole thing passed off in a good natured fashion.

Had a very enjoyable lunch with the Microsoft guys and Nick from Leeds. When you get a bunch of programming guys together the conversation can get a little on the strange side. I opined that the word doppelganger sounds a bit like a German arms manufacturer:

Bond reached into his holster and pulled out his Doppelganger semi-automatic. Goldfinger yawned. "Your gun looks just like mine...." he drawled

Sorry. But I thought it was funny.

Pays to increase your word power dept:

dopplerganger: something which looks like you and changes pitch as it goes past

Bad Languages

Did something last week I'm not particularly proud of (OK, OK, I did lots of things last week I'm not proud of - this happens to be the one that I'm prepared to write about here....) In search of a cheap laugh in the first year programming lecture I cast aspersions on the Visual Basic programming language. I seem to have left the impression that I hate it. This is actually not true. When you get to my advanced years you tend to avoid wasting energy on hating things like programming languages....

The good news is that this has sparked a rather good debate on the departmental forum, with people pitching in and making points for and against the language. If you want my actual position on this one I can quote it if you like:

I've written the odd VB app in the past. It is a very nice place to work. You can make something which looks good very quickly. However, the way that you tend to construct programs (user interface first) does work against good designs. You get tempted to put the actual guts of the program into the actions behind events triggered by the buttons on the screen and this is a very bad idea since your program logic is now spread all over the place.

However, you can write well structured applications in VB in the same way that you can create badly structured ones in Java. In VB I'd advise:

Design the screens, but put nothing behind the buttons. Work out what each screen does and show it to the customer so that he/she is happy with what it is supposed to do.

Back off from the screens and decide what the data structures in your program are and what properties they have. Design the data objects and give them actions which allow them to perform the required tasks.

Create a "method" file which contains all the actions, which are implemented as sequences of method calls in the data objects.

Bind the method calls to the events produced by the buttons.

Keep a very close eye on state, and make sure that events can't occur in a sequence which will upset your program. Turn buttons on and off as required to achieve this and make appropriate use of modal dialogues.

And there you are.

If you don't like me quoting this - then I'm sorry...

Teaching Frenzy

Monday would seem to be my busiest teaching day. I have a couple of hours with the .NET crew (hello folks) followed by a lecture with the first year (yo! dudes!) and then back with .NET for a lab. At the end of all that my voice is usually in need of a rest. The material seemed to go down OK though, although I'm trying to keep the jokes down a bit and concentrate on content. On the other hand, there will come a point where I tell the "orange for a head joke" - so don't give up hope just yet...

Too Windy to Fly

Went out and bought a new wing for our little plane (along with a roll of sticky tape to mend the old one). Then we set off again to fly it. We go up to Beverly Westwood, which is a nice area of open ground. The perfect area was once again full of smug looking people flying large and expensive machines very well indeed. Actually, I'm being a bit unfair since they probably aren't smug at all - we never went close enough to find out. Instead we sought out our little corner where we broke the plane last time. Unfortunately it turned out to be just too windy to fly. Note, if there are lots of kites up in the air this indicates a reasonable breeze is blowing.... We are still learning to fly our little craft and we reasoned that discretion is the better part of valour, and so we came home with everything still intact.

Next I had another go at Midtown Madness on the XBOX. I've found quite a neat trick. On the levels where you race against opponents, pick the bus as your vehicle. Then all your opponents drive busses as well - but yours is slightly faster. You get ample warning of corners and it is dead easy to win.... And six busses all fighting through a little street in Paris is very funny to watch...

Shopping, Flying and Posh Nosh

Went shopping. Had snack.

Bought airplane. Went home. Flew airplane. Broke wing. Went out. Posh nosh. Mr Chu.

Or, in the long form. Went up town and, after a small repast at Marks and Sparks we bought a little remote controlled airplane for a bit of fun. Number one son and I went shares on it, and Dad came along for the first flight to commit everything to video. Which he duly did (although rather unfortunately he missed the bit where number one son tripped and rolled over a cowpat). The fact that he only needed to use seven minutes of tape is due to a combination of wind and the ground coming up and hitting our shiny new plane very hard indeed. The one piece wing is now two pieces. It was great fun, if rather short lived in our case. However, for a first attempt it went very well - right up to the last five seconds... The plane we bought has an ultrasonic thingy which lets you have dogfights. We are now after other owners so that we can set this up. If you are interested, let me know. If you want to fight me, make sure you are not on channel 6...

Then we went out for a birthday celebration to Mr Chu. This is frequented by notable celebrities and does superb crispy aromatic duck. If you are a Hull student it is a good place to take mum and dad - if they are paying.

Daring Deeds in Doncaster

I have it on good authority that the lab was ready for action first thing, with 85 seats and counting. Good stuff and kudos to the guys who finished off the wiring. I'm getting a bit old for this "just in time delivery" stuff..

Went to Doncaster for two exam boards and a Joint Board of Studies. That's three meetings. I'm going for a lie down now. I did however have one moment of glory in the car park:

The new lab is coming along. With a bit of extra overtime we should have everything in place for the first students tomorrow. Rather unfortunately (or something) I'm in Doncaster attending an exam board tomorrow, so I shan't be around when the lab comes to life. A pity, but there you are.

Got the final version of the video back from Microsoft today. Very good, even though I'm in it. Of course, if you want to see the production you'll have to come along to Hull on Wednesday next week, but take it from me it is worth the trip.....

And so to the first programming lecture. Dunno why, but I love teaching programming. And the first year seem a really great bunch (although I suppose I must be careful what I say because some of them might read this). We started by considering what an algorithm is and isn't. (Clue - it is a recipe but it is not a shopping list). Then we tried to make an algorithm to stack a bunch of coloured plastic barrels in order of size, largest first. It is something that anyone would do without thinking, but for a robot or computer you have to do the thinking for it. And since you don't know what you did when you did the task...I'm awarding a prize for the best english version of the algorithm. By best I mean the most idiot proof. If you want to have a go, the tower looks like this:

Note: This is the first ever picture in my Blog. More later....

Nice Place for a Fire

What a day. Started with a fire in the fire alarm panel. Which I find really funny. Then another, but unrelated, incident which has taken out all the telephones in the surrounding area, including the university. So presently we have no fire alarm and no telephones. Which apparently means we can go home early.

Spent the day unpacking machines for the brand new lab. Not a thing I do very often, but it is important to lead from the front when your back is against the wall and a deadline is looming. I got quite good at it by the end. The new lab is going to be super duper. It will be the biggest lab on campus with over 130 seats. And if it doesn't work, or isn't ready on time it will all be my fault. Ho hum.

Speeding Terms

Another busy day. Is the semester only two days old? Met up with some of the students on the .NET masters today at the introductory lunch. They are really keen, which is great. Next week the course gets up to full speed and the real fun begins.

Found out something "interesting" about my Microsoft Smartphone today. Smartphones are mostly wonderful - based on Windows Pocket PC and fitted with a slot for MMC devices. I got a nice big memory card, filled it up with choice tracks and I've been happily listening to high quality music using Media Player on the phone. Then I, rather stupidly unplugged the phone from the cradle whilst I had the memory card open in explorer on the PC desktop. And lost the lot. I've tried to reproduce the fault, but of course it works fine every time now. But once is enough. I'm going to keep backups of the cards from now on..

Went to see "Calendar Girls". Not my choice particularly, but enjoyable all the same. Simple enough plot - bunch of WI (that is Women's Institute) ladies decide to make a nude calendar to raise money for a good cause - but I get the impression that the unseen hand of the producer had decided to complicate things and add bits to make the film more "marketable" and last longer. Some of the scenes seemed rather contrived and straight out of the "plucky little team taking on fusty institution and then learning to handle success and fame" book. Or perhaps I'm just too jaded and cynical. Anyhoo, some wonderful moments and it is nice to see a film with a proper happy ending, even if there weren't any car chases or spaceship battles.

Well Planned Sunday

Spent a lot of the day grappling with remote systems management and Windows 2003 Web server for an article I'm writing for a magazine. Still found time for some KOTOR and Babylon 5 though.

Film Star

Welcome to any students new to Hull who may be reading this. I'm going to be updating it with course related stuff as we go, which you may or may not find useful. If you are not from Hull, feel free to read along and join in with the chorus. To find out more about me, follow the About Me link.

Today has been mega-busy. On top of all the usual start of semester stuff we also had a film crew turn up. They are shooting some stuff for a video diary about our Imagine Cup team. They wanted to film in my office; which suddenly and mysteriously became very tidy (just don't look in the cupboard..).

Then they went on to a student house to film the bits with the team. By all accounts a good time has been had by all and the footage is, well, "interesting". The video is being premiered at the Imagine Cup presentation in Hull on September 24th. If you are able to, I'd strongly suggest that you drop round to the Basil Reckitt Lecture Theatre in the Ferens Building on the Hull University campus at 14:30 on that day. There will be presentations and free stuff from Microsoft, who will be coming along to give us a launch preview of the new competition.

Nice guys can finish nice (we hope)

Knights of the Old Republic. Sounds good to me. I'm not really one for this kind of game - not got the patience you know. However, number one son is. So we agreed to share a copy. Star Wars games are usually horrid or wonderful, with not much in between. KOTOR (as people seem to want to call it) is wonderful.

It is very like being in a Star Wars movie. For once all the text has been spoken by proper actors, which slows things down a bit, but adds immensely to the gaming experience. They must have spent hours in their studio recording scripts, because there sure is a lot of spoken stuff in there. The characters interact with each other, and you with them. We have just escaped from one planet (which was blown up just after we left in a fit of Dark Side pique) and are being trained up as a Jedi. We are playing everything as "Mr Nice Guy" at the moment, but we are looking forward to doing the whole thing again in totally evil mode.

An excellent game, if you have an XBOX you should invest in a copy.

Larger than life Lara

Somewhat busy today. Have a whole bunch of things that needed to be completed yesterday. And my office needs to be tidy in case we want to film anything in it. Keep finding things whilst I'm tidying up though - 3D Tomb Raider poster (with glasses) anyone?

Another world beating idea....

Hmmm. More fame. The October issue of Everyday Practical Electronics has a nice feature on the Imagine Cup team, along with a colour picture. I've told the student team members about this. What with the upcoming presentation and video diary they are going to have difficulty getting their heads through the door.

Ideas Incorporated: I always get into a kerfuffle when my mobile rings (perhaps this is because it happens so rarely, but there you are). The problem is that I have to press a button to answer it, and I sometimes press the wrong one. My Nokia 7650 (retired) had a lovely design flaw which meant that you could actually turn it of whilst getting it out of your pocket to answer. The power button had been carefully position to make this not just possible - but downright easy. My SPV (the present phone of choice) doesn't have that flaw, but it does have a power button which is remarkably coy about actually switching the phone on. Anyhoo, back to the plot. Why don't phones have some kind of inertial sensor in them that can detect them being moved up to your ear? That way the phone could answer without you doing anything. All it has to do is detect a change in orientation over time as the phone rings. Note, if anyone out there makes a fortune out of this one I will expect a cut of the royalties....

Makeup!

Another day of hard graft (boo) followed by a trip to the Bradford Photographic Museum IMAX cinema to see "The Matrix Reloaded" on the very big screen (yay). If you have not seen an IMAX film they are very impressive. You sit about twenty feet from a screen the size of a five storey building. The images are projected using special film which is so large (each frame of the film is around the size of a postcard, rather than the usual postage stamp negatives in ordinary films) that it has to be flipped through the projector rather than pulled. There are a whole bunch of speakers inside the screen to give you a really powerful sound and the total effect is amazing. Up until now they have used IMAX for specially shot films but now some Hollywood blockbusters have been given the treatment. It is kind of expensive apparently, with all kinds of digital trickery being needed to make the images fit on the screen and retain quality, but the effect is well worth it.

The only real problem is that the screen is so big, and fills so much of your field of view, that you can't easily take in the very fast moving action. Also, the somewhat pockmarked face of Morpheus in extreme close up comes out looking like the surface of the moon. If nothing else this film shows the wonderful job that the makeup department did. And the chase scene is absolutely amazing.

Busy Busy Busy

Busy busy busy. Writing stuff for the new course. Sorting out last minute details for the new lab. Organising our Imagine Cup presentation. Forgetting to go to the Staff Meeting (oops).

Then going home to watch another two hours of 24 season two. Question: How can someone as clever, resourceful, determined etc etc as Jack Baur have such a daft daughter?

Webs Wonders

Got a lot of stuff done today. I like going home feeling that I've made a difference. The new lab is looking really sweet, and it looks as if it will be ready in time. It is so posh that we've decided to call it a "Computer Suite" rather than a lab! It has been a bit nerve wracking getting it all sorted, but everyone pulled together and it looks like we are heading for a happy ending.

To help manage the project I did something which has worked quite well. I built a private web site for all the people who were involved in the development. I then posted all the contact details, notes of the meetings, plans of the lab and timetables on this site so that everyone involved is able to quickly find out the status of the project. I didn't use anything particularly clever, just IIS on my office machine and the Frontpage project web site wizard, but I think that it helped quite a bit. As we added new people to the project I just gave them the password to the site and they could quickly bring themselves up to speed on things. I'll have to go thorough the site logs to find out just how many people used the pages, but if nothing else it helped me a lot! The only thing that was rather quiet was the forum part where people could raise issues, but I think that this is because we had regular meetings and there was no need to use forums to discuss things.

Microsoft reckon that the next big push is on group working, and that their new Office tools are geared to making this all easier. I'm very inclined to agree - and the next big project I'm involved with I'll definitely do the same again.

Day of rest eh?

Ah Sunday. Day of rest. So I shall.

Then I decided to dismantle the PA system for my Dolby Digital setup. I bought it cheap (never can resist a bargain) and it works fine, except that it hums along with the soundtrack at around 50 Hz. The way I see it, there are four reasons why amplifiers hum (other than the fact that they don't know the words - ho ho), either the inputs are not properly earthed, the device itself is not properly earthed, the power supply is not properly smoothed or the box is picking up hum from inside.

Of course the answer to these complex technical problems is to "take the back off and poke around a bit". By the way, don't try this yourself. In the UK we have 240 volts coursing down the mains cable and this can seriously damage your lifestyle (and even end it). I read some advice (which may be bogus) which is that when messing with things which might be live you should keep your left hand in your pocket. This is the hand which is (allegedly) wired through your nervous system directly to your heart. Mains up this hand will go through your heart and probably stop it. Apparently the right hand is wired differently (and somewhat less life threatening). This is a bit of a pain for any southpaws out there and it may not even be true, but I always do this now...

Anyhoo, got the back off my nice little subwoofer revealing the true horror which lies within. And found out why it is so cheap. The standard of construction was horrid. And it had all been covered in glue. And the designer had located the mains transformer (a device which works by pumping out a magnetic field) right next to the input connectors (which are designed to transfer tiny signals). Of the four possible causes of humming, I've got three of them. I hate bad design. I see is as a form of cheating. By simply turning the board the other way up, and putting the speaker connectors near the transformer the idiot designer could have removed most of the problem. By putting bigger capacitors on the power supply he could have removed just about all the rest. And then by adding an earth wire we would have had a squeaky clean signal. Instead the whole thing was around ten pence cheaper to make and didn't work very well. Hmmm. I think this will be a case where we have to use a dustbin to solve the problem. Should have saved up and bought the Sony one....

..and now in colour

One of the problems of writing a blog is that it brings home to you the repetitive and empty nature of your existence. Anyhoo, went shopping and bought a bunch of inkjet cartridges and paper. Despite my tirade against them, I still quite like inkjet printers for getting good quality marks on paper. I've been using a venerable old Deskjet 840C for quite a while to get pictures out and with the right paper (I favour Ilford Photo Printasia) you can get some really nice results. I've been meaning to print out a bunch of pictures and today seemed as good a day as any.

I've just recovered from an interesting foible on the part of the printer, in that if I connect via the USB port it gives up half (or a quarter or two thirds or sometime) way through the output. It seems to choose to play this particular trick when I'm producing quality output on expensive paper with lots of ink. It took me around six sheets of the stuff to discover that if I went back to the parallel port all would be well. If you've had a similar problem I'd advise you to try this one. I think the parallel port is probably a bit faster as well.

In the evening we watched "Grosse Pointe Blank" which was mildly diverting but not quite as good as I was expecting. The idea (Assassin returns to High School reunion) was neat but I think it could have been taken a bit further. It seemed a bit slow moving to me. Perhaps my attention span is starting to contract...

Debugging with a Sledgehammer (or Google)

A debugging tip. Doesn't always work, but when it does it pays dividends. If you get an error in a program paste the whole error message into Google and do a search on it. I've done this a few times with various strange messages which the software manufacturer's site knows nothing about and it has come up trumps more often than not. If you are lucky you end up at a forum somewhere and find that someone else has had your problem and it has been sorted out. It has even been known to work with compilation errors, although I'm not sure I should suggest it to my first year Java class....

The Art of Course Writing

Back at work. Writing stuff for the .NET course. We actually have a class of students signed up and so now it is time for us to deliver on our side of the bargain. I always plan to have everything ready well before the students arrive - and I always fail to do this. I think that I need the pressure of the timescale to actually get myself together. Anyhoo, I know exactly what I'm going to say in the lectures, it is just a case of getting down to writing it up. I've just got hold of a noise cancelling microphone/headset and so I might try some dictation to the Tablet. My mate Ian reckons that it works OK but I always find it terribly embarrassing to do. It took all my willpower to get through the training phase. I'll let you know how I get on.

Whitby Jetting

Took a day off and went to Whitby today. Whitby is a seaside town just north of Scarborough on the east cost of england. Famous for Whitby Jet (black stuff they make jewelry out of) and Dracula, who is supposed to be buried in the churchyard. Super little place, with a wonderful drive there over the hills to get there. Also has its own ISP. If you have never been I urge you to go. The seafood is super, the beach is a good one and you get a lovely seaside town atmosphere. Also, if you are lucky and you get the mist rolling in off the sea etc. the place becomes dead eerie in a supernatural kind of way. And you can really imagine that the count is out stalking the little winding streets with an urge for blood...

For some reason Whitby also has a whole heap of sweet shops selling all those things which you thought had gone away years ago, including gobstoppers and a wide range of tooth threatening materials. You can also get Uncle Joes Mint Balls, which number one son is addicted to. The tins are nice as well.

Real World Works

Did some reviews of student year in industry reports today. These are from students who have spent a year of their course working for a company. They have to report back on what they have been doing, and we mark it up as part of their programme. One of the students has been working on the construction of a simulator intended for use in a nuclear power station. He has been decoding how the existing system works (which is apparently easier than reading the documentation) and then writing a system to work against it. This is scary, real world, stuff and kudos to the chap doing the work. Goes to show what second year students can get up to...

Notebooks and Graphics and Holes in the Ground

Something of a breakthrough today. Number one son has been happily using his shiny new notebook for all kinds of things, but has noticed that some games behave very badly. Today we got a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator (or Simulatore as the billing sheet rather fetchingly described it) 2004. This worked fine, except that the instrument panel was just a brown shape on the screen. Apparently there are a number of switches and dials in the front of the plane which are kind of important to your average pilot.

Nobody seemed to know the answer to this one, until I spoke to Derek. He has been using a laptop for all his university work for a while and was well versed with the problem. It seems that laptop manufacturers change the internal references for the graphics hardware so that standard drivers don't configure themselves correctly. Result, all kinds of random behaviour in graphics mode. He provided the solution in the form of links to a couple of sites: http://www.warp2search.net and http://www.geocities.com/Madtoast/. The latter provides a neat program which will build an inf file which makes the drivers happy, and now all is well. Take a look at these sites if you want to get the best out of your notebook's graphics hardware

Oh, and FS 2004 is great fun. You even get to try and fly the Wright Brother's first plane. This would be quite a good party game, in that it is great fun watching people try to stay in the air for more than three or so seconds...