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