Stolen Time

Not sure what happened to Friday. Lost a big chunk due to time zone readjustment and the rest seemed to go on sleep.

Hero Worship and big time queuing

In the morning they had a talk by the guys who made the Common Language Runtime. This is the thing which underpins the way that programs work in Microsoft .NET. Kind of important stuff. But the wonderful thing was that the creators came over as just regular guys who really knew how to do this stuff. These are they:



When we went to the exhibition floor it had gone! The stands closed yesterday and, less than 24 hours later the whole place had been stripped.



So, back to the hotel for one last time and some photographs. Apparently our hotel actually features in The Matrix Reloaded, right at the end. We're going to search out the scene in the DVD.



Then a quick stroll down the "walk of fame" on Hollywood Boulevard. Which is a bit like Blackpool but without the charm and imagination. And just who on earth is he?



Actually, "The Preston Foster Appreciation Society" is now the name of our drinking club. You can find out more here.

Tempting, but don't think I'll bother...



At the end of the day we had to catch our plane home. Which was not fun. Los Angeles is the second largest city in the USA. It has a large airport. With two security screen lines. Which translates to "rather than having a nice sit down while you wait for your plane you have to queue for three hours". The good news was that the flight back was very smooth and quick. And I had lots of loverly legroom 'cos they moved me into Business Class owing to my superior stature..

Some good stuff - and some bad

Went to the keynote presentation by Microsoft Research today. They are doing some very interesting stuff on how computers are used. We saw some neat graphics stuff, followed by a very interesting presentation about how the computer can manage your relationships and information about each other.

And then we saw a video about the use of Tablet PCs in education. The video starts with a black and white sequence of a lecturer giving a class about Public Key Encryption of messages (this is how information can transferred secretly moved around networks). The material was being presented in a very boring way and the students were doing the usual student type things in this situation, reading, fidgeting, digging tunnels etc. Then, with a burst of colour, we are in a new Tablet PC enabled world. Same teacher, same material (but with Powerpoint slides rather than a squeaky overhead projector) and every student messaging and discussing as the class goes on.

The thing which irritated me beyond belief was that the content and presentation of the information being conveyed was still boring as far as I could tell. With all the interactivity, pretty colours, and bouncy music the subject matter was still as dull as dishwater. Perhaps I was missing the point (I'm famous for doing this) but the message I took away from the video was that a whole bunch of Tablet PCs, network connectivity and messaging can compensate slightly for boring stuff.

I've been teaching for a while and pride myself on being quite good at it. I'd back myself and a chalkboard against anybody working with all that that machinery. However, and this is the interesting bit - if you added a bit of teaching imagination and that technology the things you could achieve would be truly amazing. The only snag is that I've no idea how you'd do it and it would probably take me five years to figure it out. Best to let our kids tell us how to use the technology - as usual.

There was some other neat stuff with Tablet PCs to follow, including one demonstration where handwritten diagrams came alive according to equations that had been sketched down next to them. Again, impressive, but I'm not sure how you would make it useful in a teaching context as described.

Then we went for a mooch round the exhibition floor. Had some interesting chats with some of the people behind the Longhorn filing system (which looks rather nice) and the Longhorn positioning system (which looks very nice and treads heavily on the toes of one of my Final Year Projects - but Microsoft weren't to know...)

In the evening we went on to a party at Universal Studios Theme Park which was very nice. Free food and beer, no queues, wonderful stuff. Went on the Terminator ride and the Shrek 4D one. Both great fun.



Where do you want to go today?

More Good Stuff - but beware the jetlag

I managed to make it to three presentations today. The first was about data synchronization with Longhorn. It looks very nice. There is continuing evidence that the key consideration of the design is "how do people want it to work" rather than "how can we make it work" and this seems to be underpinning all of the Longhorn stuff. The idea that stuff just arrives at the right place at the time that you need it is very compelling.

Then we had another presentation from Don Box on the Indigo part of Longhorn. This emphasised how much the design of the interactions is under pinned by a service based approach, and showed how easy it is to construct connections between programs using this technology.

Finally I went to a talk about the upcoming location based services that Microsoft is releasing. These will let you use a variety of technologies to find out where people are, put them on a map and then offer them services relevant to that location. Good to see that a lot of attention has been paid to the privacy part of the system. You can get a message each time someone tries to find out where you are. There's another presentation on this tomorrow which will be worth a look. Interesting that people are now attaching mobile phones to valuable pieces of equipment so that they can track them around the country!

And then I went home to bed. I find that I get the jetlag around three days into a trip. The first couple of days I can run on adrenalin and reserves, but at day three all I want to do is sleep. Staggered back to the hotel in the middle of the afternoon and got a couple of hours of shut-eye prior to going out to a very posh restaurant (Campanile, 624 S La Brea Av, Los Angeles) which Fabien found on Google. Good on you Google. The menu was astonishing. I understood every other word on it - just about. In that situation you go for tried and trusted solutions and so I had the steak. Which was enormous. And delicious. I didn't eat it all unfortunately (I'd like to meet the the person who can and shake them by the hand - or perhaps not..) but what I did have was excellent. They had a bottle of wine which cost 3,300 dollars.



A clue, I don't think it is the bottle of "Thunderbird". Then a cab back to the hotel and wonderful sleep.

Good book alert. Found a really good book on C#. At first glance it is not particularly good value. I know the first quarter of the material anyway and most of the pages have loads of blank space on them. But it is wonderful because it just tells you how to do stuff. Previously my weapon of first resort was the Nutshell book on C# (which is still a good buy). However, this just gives you all the api stuff and don't cover all the neat things you can do with C#. This book just tells you how to do all that, from ASP to Web Services to Office Automation. Not an enormous amount of material on each, but enough to get started. It also has coverage of the new features in version 2.0 of C#.Take a look at C# Programming Handbook by Gregory S MacBeth from Apress.

Bill Speaks - and Longhorn is good

After the profundity of yesterday, back to the pictures and captions... Got on the bus at 6:30 am for an interesting ride to the convention centre. We've never been the same way twice..



On the way there we went past a theatre showing some very funny stuff...



And so to the convention. And Mr. Gates struts his stuff:



Now, as anyone will tell you I'm not easily impressed. New whiz bang things come along and I go "Yeah, but what does it do for me? - I'm still using the same 5% of the features of Word which I've been using for the last ten years." (I suppose this is not quite true, I'm a bit of a sucker for the latest gadget - but stay with me on this). Longhorn has stuff which really makes me go "I could really use that". Loads of stuff. I went round the Getty museum yesterday. It looks fantastic from the outside. Everything around it has been put there for a good reason. And there is some really neat stuff inside. That's Longhorn. I'm pleased to have been here at the start of something this big. Because it will be big.

After Bill started things off there was a kind of double act which presented features and showed how easy it will be to use them from software. After yesterdays musing on the nature of Computer Science this threw me a bit. There are issues about design, complexity and knowing what happens underneath, but now I'm not sure just what you need to know to use this stuff. And what is the relevance of hardware knowledge to all this? I've no idea just at the moment, my only feeling just right now is that we need to expose our students to this stuff.

The hardware question was kind of answered in a superb talk by a chap who has been implementing Microsoft Spot devices. These are a bit like "super pagers" in that they subscribe to services and receive messages from FM transmitters around the country. They are based on a couple of chips, rather fetchingly called "Stan" and "Ollie". Stan does all the radio stuff whilst Ollie is an ARM chip who runs the programs.

They are using the .NET framework to make this go, in a system with only a few hundred K of memory (around a thousandth of the memory in your PC). It was very refreshing to hear a chap talking about memory limitations, processor speed issues, battery life and interference. Then at the end he put the icing on the cake by announcing that the devices would be available as tiny controllers for use in teaching. Dude! I'm not convinced of the business case for the Spot devices - my Smartphone can do the same kind of thing with SMS messages - but Microsoft now have a .NET embedded device which you can program at a high level and put into just about anything. This could be as big as Longhorn, but perhaps over a slightly longer term.

Rounded the day off with a talk about the Indigo part of Longhorn. Indigo is the bit that links systems together in Longhorn. You send a message to another system to make it do something for you. Very persuasive talker this chap. Some good one liners. Everything in the future will be service based. This is good stuff. I've spent enough time grappling with objects to know that this is the way to go. And it is all going into our Software Engineering course....

Got back to the room and then out for a pizza. Make mine a tall and frosty one (obviously)



And finally, walking around outside the hotel we come across some motivational paving.



I feel sorry for the agent. More techno babble tomorrow...

Too Posh for Me - and some profound thoughts

This has to be the poshest hotel I've ever been in. The minibar has its own checkout counter (no - not really) and the room has a cordless phone. I'm going to see how far away I can get before it stops working. I wonder if it would work in Hull?

I've signed up for an internet connection from the room (obviously) but the deal comes with free local and national USA phone calls. If only I knew someone in the USA to actually ring up.

The minibar is amazing. In a sprit of enquiry and starvation I purchased a small bag of nuts. The system can detect when the bag is removed and gives you 30 seconds to replace it. If you don't it bills your room automatically. I've no idea how the sensor works. Think I might challenge David to a game of "Minibar Chardonnay (price 12 dollars ) Chicken" - once I've worked out the rules, This is the obligatory view from my room shot:



That little white blob just above top centre is the Hollywood sign....

After breakfast (I'm starting to like yoghurt - which is scary) we went up to the Getty museum. This entailed a cab ride (everything in LA seems to involve using the road) and a trip up a little tram to get there. We were blessed with amazing weather and the place is, amazing. Anyone who knows me well will know that words don't fail me often. Well they do here. Outside amazing architecture and views. Inside fantastic paintings and sculptures. Blimey.



This is just one view of the place. I have another fifty or so, equally as good. After lunch (I had some Microbrewed Soda from here) we went to place called Fry's. This is a huge electronics shop. And I mean huge. The outside had a spaceship crashed into it.



The motif continued inside (where you weren't allowed to take photographs) and had a whole bunch of set pieces. And I was so impressed I didn't buy anything.

Later in the evening we went to a discussion panel about teaching programming. Due to the LA traffic we arrived too late to hear the bulk of the session, but what we heard was very interesting. The lecturers there were preoccupied with the same issues that we grapple with at Hull. The field of computing changes so fast that teaching it is very tricky. You have to decide whether or not to teach the latest stuff. If you do, you run the risk of missing out on important fundamentals. If you don't you may not be equipping your students for the future. I kind of take the middle ground here, you have to deliver some core skills, and work on giving people the ability to pick up new skills as they go through their careers. And you have to inform people of the fact that they will have to do this.

I learnt to program using punched cards (no - really). We got three runs a day of our programs; four if we were lucky. You got quite keen on "right first time" because for a two week project you probably only had around fifty or so attempts to get it working. I think these days many programmers use that many goes in a singe session! I've lost count of the number of operating systems and application programmer interfaces that I've had to work with over the years. And of course now we have objects and stuff which plain weren't around when I started. And yet I seem to do OK, as do most of our graduates.

There was some discussion about how much low level stuff to teach (sorry if this is boring you folks - but it is what I do for a living..). The question is interesting and scary. Does a programmer need to know how a computer actually works? Does a driver need to know the precise details of the workings of the internal combustion engine? I have a problem here, in that for various sad reasons I like knowing how things work. The interval between acquiring a new toy and taking the back off to see how it works is usually pretty short in my case. And I kind of worry about programmers who don't have that interest. It's probably not fair for me to do this, but there you are. We teach hardware at Hull and keep trying new and inventive methods to make it more interesting. I think at the end of the day you'll find that the most successful racing drivers are those who know how their cars work and can discuss them with their mechanics...

One other thing that was interesting was that the man from Microsoft told us their solution to this problem. They try to hire smart people. They have figured out that their business moves at such a rate that these folks have the best chance to keep up. Go for a Microsoft job and you will be confronted by a whole bunch of puzzles and brainteasers apparently. And the really cunning thing is (hope I'm not giving too much away here folks) is that they are not massively interested in whether you solve the problem. They are interested in the approach that you take, and how you try to prove that your solution is valid. I think their priorities are "Can we work with this person?", "Are they smart?","Are they focussed?" and "Do they have useful skills?". In that order. Any Microsoft bods reading this feel free to contact me to put me right, but I know that if I was hiring - that is the order I'd go for as well...

There goes my body clock...

And so early to breakfast. Considerably (and rudely) awakened by the twelve pounds fifty price tag for a bowl of Alpen, a cup of tea and two slices of toast. I don't particularly like a big breakfast - but if it costs that amount of cash I'm going for everything if I ever eat there again. We are staying in the same hotel on the way back but I think it is unlikely we'll avail ourselves of breakfast since we spotted a McDonalds nearby.

Gatwick airport is an airport. There. I've now said everything that I can say about the place, If you have been to any airport you now know exactly what Gatwick is like. The same crowds of people with cases, hard to hear tannoy and valiant (but ultimately doomed) attempts to give the place some kind of soul with themed bars and murals. The good news is that we got to go in one of the posh lounges with a free drinks counter and comfy chairs.

The plane was a 747 which was nice. We also flew straight through to LA which was even nicer. And they gave us some of this:



On the way into LA we flew over the forest fires which are raging at the moment. You can just see the line of flames:



OK. So my body thinks it is three in the morning. The clock on the wall says early evening. This is not a recipe for happy living. They had a nice reception around the hotel pool when we arrived but I'm afraid that the good food and good company was a bit wasted on me because I was, well, a bit wasted myself. But I did spot the corporate logo on the bottom of the pool (though I resisted the urge to jump in and look more closely..):



And I did manage to snatch one or two other photographs. You mean your hotel doesn't have stone elephants outside? Shame on you.



I had to go out at 4:00 am to get my credit card swiped so that I could sign up for internet access. Whilst I was down there I met up with a fellow traveler who was after some Asprin. "Have you got a headache?" I asked. Thanks for not replying "No, I collect remedies from all round the world and I thought I'd get started in Los Angeles as soon as possible".

More tomorrow. Or today. Or whenever..

Leaving on a jet plane, but not yet

I've been blog moving and generally packing because I'm going on my travels again. This time it is to Los Angeles and the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference. The plane leaves tomorrow, but we need an early start from Gatwick and so we are driving down today (that is, David is driving, I'm going to sit in the back and say "Are we there yet" at regular intervals).

Tip for long car journeys - Bill Bryson. Get a copy of the audio version of "Notes from a Small Island", read by the master - Kerry Shale. Very good to listen to and makes the journey shorter. If you have a journey with kids over about 11 in age or so get hold of some of the X-Files audio tapes which are also read by Mr. Shale. The one with Eugene Victor Tombs is brilliant!

Got to Gatwick without incident and clocked into a hotel so memorable that I've forgotten the name already. The fact that the hotel is hard to remember is a good thing, in that you do seem to recall the bad things about a place, but if everything just works and the service is good you file it under OK and forget.

Anyhoo, on to a Jumbo tomorrow and away to LA

Dalek Ignorance

It has come to my attention that some of you folks out there don't know what a Dalek is. And after showing your ignorance with the Jolly Green Giant last week as well. Daleks were the most popular adversary of Dr. Who of BBC TV Science Fiction fame. You can find out more here
Their design meant that it was impossible for them to climb stairs, and there was a kind of running joke that all the Doctor had to do was climb up a couple of flights and they couldn't catch up with him (this was memorably addressed in a later edition of the program where a Dalek was seen to levitate up a staircase - a deeply scary moment).

Armed with that knowledge you can now feel free to find the item highly amusing....

Just Testing

I'm moving my Blog from my office machine to the Tablet PC. This should let me blog from anywhere in the world. And by jove it works! Now all I have sort out is image upload and I am a well happy bunny.



Whoa! I think that counts as a win!

Tuesday in the pub

Went out for a drink tonight. It is strange how some things become amusing after a few beers. Although the Orange for a head joke was received with stony silence. I think I told it a little too early. However, did find the idea of Dalek Architects very funny:

Gold Dalek: "Bring forth the plans for the new Dalek Control Centre."
Dalek Architect:"I hear and I obey. This is where we will hold and torture alien races who must be destroyed. Over here is the death ray construction lab. And on the second level we will have our control room...."
Gold Dalek: "What is this thing called a level?"
Dalek Architect:"It is a part of a building, built on top of an existing building. It will allow us to maximise our use of the Skaro planet surface and improve our efficiency so that one day Daleks will rule over the entire universe."
Gold Dalek: "And how do we get to this - level?"
Dalek Architect: "We use a series of small steps, each of which is arranged in sequence in a device called a staircase......"
(Gold Dalek fires laser and destroys Dalek Architect)
Gold Dalek: "And let that be a lesson to all of you..."

Welcome to Monday

Thought for Today: If you are not finding molluscs relaxing you may have bought "The Little Book of Clam" by mistake.

Slightly more relaxing now that David has taken over his part of the .NET course. Still had the First Year Java to do though, which was quite fun. We are just starting objects (which can be scary) but so far things are going quite well. We actually created an object live in the lecture (which sounds a lot more exciting than it is) or maybe it doesn't even sound that....

I've just created an identify for me on Project Hurricane, a rather spiffy .NET based portal (any Portal in a storm I say..). The neat thing about this one is that you can download all the source and make your own changes. You can extend your Portal, adding a couple of bay windows and an outside toilet if you like. Find out more here. I'm going to get my own version running on a server in my office when I get round to it.

Giant Clarifications

It has come to my attention that some of you out there are a bit behind the (or ahead of my) times with respect to popular culture and are not aware of the Jolly Green Giant I mentioned yesterday. Rest assured that he does exist, and even has his own web site. So there.

I'd love to have been at the meeting where he was dreamed up:

First Marketing Drone: "Well, we've come up with the Purple Pleased Giant, the Blue Giant of Bonhomie, the Satisfied Yellow Giant and the Orange Giant of Happiness."
Second Marketing Drone: "Yep, but none of them have that snappy, corn on the cob, quality that we are after."
Tea Lady: "How about the Jolly Green Giant?"
Second Marketing Drone: "By Jove, she's got it!!!"
Start of musical number....

Canned Philosophy

So I'm in Morrisons helping with the weekly shop. I'm standing next to the tinned vegetables and it occurs to me that it is a good job that the Green Giant was jolly. If he had turned out out to be a nasty piece of work he could have caused a lot of trouble, what with being very tall and all that. And I bet the sweetcorn wouldn't have tasted as nice.

Had some stupid sports thing on the telly this evening. "..and this athlete has a heart twice the size of an average woman". Wow. I make an average woman around 5 feet six tall. That's some heart....

Not as good as my favourite though: "The new Vauxhall Vectra is now available with a choice of sixteen engines". I bet that it goes fast. But the fuel economy is probably rubbish.

Getting Better All the Time

Still ill, of course. But at least most of my brain is coming back on line now. Actually wrote some nice code today. And had some meetings with project students. It is starting to dawn on them that they have a lot to do. And April 2004 is not that far away....

A loyal reader (Hi Simon) has sent me a recipe for a cold cure:

heat some grapefruit juice, lemon juice, with some honey, then mix in a shot or 2 of whiskey. Drink it all in 1 then sleep and you should feel much better by morning.

Thanks for that, I like the sound of it. It has whiskey in....

Back on Form - so far..

Hah. Fifteen minutes of sorting out and everything in the program is fine again. And now I'm going to make a big backup onto a CD-ROM.....

Still got a cold though. But thanks to my superhuman strength I'm managing to keep on going almost as usual.

First year Java. Love it. Did methods today. Explained my views on defensive programming: "Always make sure that the sh*t falls on the other person's head". Explored this in terms of a method which adds an amount to the bar bill of a hotel customer when they pay for a drink:

boolean AddToBarBill ( int Amount ) {
// what do you put here to make sure that nobody can
// corrupt your bar bill...
}

Some nice problems: Consider the fact that a member of the bar staff and a guest might decide to attack your method and try and break it. If you let your users add negative numbers this means that naughty people could make their bill smaller. In an extreme case they could end up being paid for using the bar! So, stop them from adding negative numbers.

But then you have a problem with very big positive amounts. Because of the way that values are stored in computers a number can "wrap round" a bit like a car mileometer. So by adding carefully chosen positive values a naughty person could still make their bar bill smaller.

So, what you really do is ask the customer what the price range for drinks is, and then only allow prices amounts in this range to be added:

boolean AddToBarBill ( int Amount ) {
if ( ( Amount > MaxDrinkPrice ) ( Amount < MinDrinkPrice) )
{
return false;
}
else {
CustomerBill = CustomerBill + Amount;
return true;
}
}

This has two nice effects - it makes sure that your program always does the right thing and it makes it clear to the customer (i.e. the person who owns the hotel and is paying you to write the program) that it is their job to make sure that people in the bar enter the right prices - and that your program is doing the best it can to behave sensibly. The scary thing is that if you don't take these steps you may end up in court with your hotel customer (who has gone bankrupt) trying to take away all your money. It is interesting to see how a technical problem (stop someone from breaking my program) is really a specification problem (what do we mean by broken - and who has responsibility for breaking it).

Don't Code with a Cold

Don't like being ill. It's just not healthy. Tried to add some stuff to the "program which cannot be named" and did OK for the first few hours. Then at 13:30 decided to make a small (hah!) change. Unfortunately my mental faculties had shut down for the day due to illness and so everything went wrong at this point and I now have a big pile of compilation errors to deal with. It will be much better when I've finished, but with hindsight I'd really rather not have started it just right now. Told number one son about this. "Never mind" he said "Just get the backup copy". I laid him out with a swift right hook followed by a left to the side of the head. I take a backup every day, but not half way through. There is probably a moral to this story, but unless it has to do with cocky kids I'd rather not hear it.

Have thought of a way to deal with organised crime though. Just take away all their diaries, personal digital assistants and filing cabinets

Help - a virus

Spent a big chunk of Sunday dealing with a computer virus (not on my machine fortunately) and now have one of my own. Only it is called a cold. Have taken to shuffling round and suffering in near silence, as men are wont to do. I'm working on just the right rendition of "Oh, I'm OK really" to elicit the appropriate level of sympathy and support from my family. Unfortunately, since I'm the last person to come down with this dratted thing, and everybody else has already suffered it, sympathy is a bit thin on the ground. Especially in the light of the kind of responses that I was producing last week: "That's OK love, you go and have a nice lie down - as soon as you've brought the coal in and made my tea..." Ho hum. Early night and Lemsip for me I think.

To make matters worse number one son has comprehensively thrashed my record on the Pinball machine and I'm not really up to beating him at the moment. Of course, when I'm fully fit (if you ever can be fully fit at my age) I'll deal with him appropriately...

Up With Down With Love

And so to Monday. They are making a CD-ROM to show what life is really like at university and for some reason this involves taking videos of me giving a tutorial and lecturing. Many thanks to those who allowed themselves to be filmed as part of this. A lot of the footage was what I would call "reaction shots" of students which, considering what goes on in the lectures, could have gone either way. Thanks for looking happy folks. The cheque is in the post (and likely to stay there for some time...)

Went out and watched the film "Down With Love". Quite enjoyed it. It is a 21st century remake of one of those comedies from the sixties which used to star Doris Day and Rock Hudson. Very well done and some really funny moments.

Sunday Wisdom

Things I Know: 002 of 800 If someone appears to have a really hairy, featureless, face they probably have their back to you

Hot Driving

Did the usual things on Saturday. Went up town and bought a video game. Quite a good one though. I enjoyed Burnout for the XBOX and so when I had the chance for a cheap copy of Burnout 2 I jumped at it. I suppose it is more of the same, but the more is very good. The graphics of the tracks is now nigh on perfect and the cars still have that unrealistic controllability which means that you can get away with massive powerslides really easily. I spent a very happy afternoon battling my way through the leagues. It is one of the few games which actually makes me flinch when cars are coming towards me at speed. I always use the in car view - only wimps use the one which lets you see the whole car on the road - and the impression of speed and the impressive nature of the crashes makes the whole thing great fun. There is also a rather non PC "make the biggest crash you can" version of the game which has you speeding towards a junction intent on causing maximum damage. I enjoyed this immensely and now the kids are scared to let me drive them anywhere, which is a result of sorts.

Unfortunately all this hard driving meant that I didn't make it to the university open day, but it went very well by all accounts.

Found my picture in the Hull Daily Mail as a result of the University Challenge thing last week. Fame at last! Bought a couple of extra copies of the paper but I'm not sure what to do with them.

Yay for Projects and Celebrations

The student projects are coming along a pace. This includes the ones where we meet up on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, as well as the marathon Friday session. I'm now getting people coming back and telling me better ways to implement things, and finding and plugging holes in the specification. Lovely stuff. I'm going to have to find a way to showcase our project stuff when they are finished.

If you are in Hull, and at a loose end tomorrow (Saturday), we are having a 75th Anniversary Celebration on the University Campus. There will be all kinds of fun stuff going on (so I'm told) and a funfair on the university site. We are going to have our Hive visualization suite open for demonstrations which will be fun. The action kicks off at 14:00. Here's hoping for good weather. I'm going to try and pop along and take some photos.

It's Scary and it's Orange

"Screwed my courage to the sticking place" as Shakespeare puts it and told the First Year Java course the "Orange for a Head" joke. As I said at the time "You can divide your life into two portions - the part where you have not heard the joke and the part where you have....". The reaction was as expected, but I got to the door first.. And in case you are wondering what the joke is; you'll have to sign up on one of our courses to find out. It is only ever revealed during my lectures. Or you could ask a first year I suppose. Note - I've just typed "Orange for a head joke" into Google and got around ten versions of the joke. Mine is the best of course...

Things I Know: 001 of 800 Pepper is not the inverse of salt. The fact that the two always appear together does not indicate that the addition of one can be used to compensate for too much of the other. This is one of the first things that I learned when I was attempting to acquire culinary skills. I've never been able to understand how the two teamed up in the first place. Note: Kevin informs me that although this is not the case with Salt and Pepper it does work with Salt and Vinegar. However, this information is to be filed under the category "things that I have been told but don't particularly fancy trying.."

Things I Know

Wednesday passed off without incident. We had another meeting about the Computer Suite and managed to sort out the timetabling in around 15 minutes. Everybody concerned is walking around in a daze wondering why it was so easy and just what we have forgotten to include....

I'm becoming slightly concerned about this "800 things I know" issue. I'm wondering if I should try to prove/disprove this once and for all by actually writing down 800 things that I definitely know (as opposed to things which other people have told me). I'll let you know how I get on, and maybe post them on the web.

The Price of Being Right

A wellwisher has just told me that I've had the apostrophe in my site name in the wrong place for ages, making me appear stupid and illiterate. He is presently being hunted down with dogs and will be dealt with in a suitable manner. I think that accordion lessons would probably be appropriate. (as in "Welcome to Heaven - here is your harp" and "Welcome to Hell - here is your accordion")

Note that I don't really mean this of course - but what's that barking noise in the distance....

And so to the "University Challenge". As part of the 75th Anniversary Celebrations for the University it was deemed a nice idea for a bunch of students and staff to engage in mental combat in the same manner as the celebrated quiz show. For some reason I ended up on the staff team (it is a long time since I could pass as a student). The event took place tonight. The chairman told me he had prepared 800 questions. I told him that I didn't think I actually knew as many things as that, so the situation looked a bit rocky at that point. Fortunately the other three members of the team (hi to Vanessa, Eric and Robert) seemed to know a lot more than 800 things, and so by the half way mark we were only 5 points behind. And thanks to a magnificent spurt just after the break, where we were able to show that we knew quite a lot about the 1960's (kind of an unfair advantage having been alive in that era when the competition wasn't I suppose) we managed to run out the winners by 25 points. Quite relieved about this, it occurred to me afterwards that we had a lot more to lose than the students. Anyway, a magnificent victory and ginger pops all round.

Fun Monday

And so, after the early risings and big drivings of Sunday it is back in harness for Monday. Lots of lectures and labs, just the way to start the week. The first year lectures are going well. It is funny how each time you do a lecture about the same material you can come up with something new. We are doing blocks and I came up with something to you could do with the word blocks and the addition of an extra vowel. I'm not saying I come up with something good each time. Just something new....

And I've just discovered/decided that the Spoonerism for .NET (dot net) is not debt. Which is as good as any reason for using it I suppose.

Been hammering the pinball machine in search of new records. Very difficult. It seems the difference between total success and total failure is very small. I dread to think how many goes I've spent on the thing, but at least it keeps it exercised...

Hobbit Hunting

We went hobbit hunting today. This involves getting up at 5:15 am and driving down to Milton Keynes (an invented place near London) to attend CollectorMania 4. Although I am a gadget person (oops - nearly put freak there..) I've never been one for so-called "collectable's".These seem to be things designed and made simply to deprive you of your hard earned cash. Like children - only shinier. And as for autographed items from the stars themselves, pah, most of these are signed in a machine which was probably made in Milton Keynes. I only really went because number one daughter had an urge for hobbit signatures, and how can I deny this.

The event itself was held in a shopping centre in Milton Keynes. I've no idea whether this actually was in the centre of the city/town, in that the place doesn't seem to have a centre at all, just a bunch of roundabouts and gridded roads which lead you in a different direction from the last one whilst looking exactly the same. However, I suppose the name "thecentre:MK" might be a clue here. Which is a bit of a shame....

So we end up in "thecentre:MK" looking for a bunch of characters from Middle Earth. Seems appropriate. Just us and several thousand other people who got there earlier and have pre-booked all the places. You had to queue to get a ticket which let you go and queue again, only later. If you were unlucky - like us, you ended up queuing for tickets for queues which might not actually exist if our hobbit got bored of the signings and went home early.

Anyhoo, we were lucky in that we did get to meet up with Gollum, or at least Andy Serkis, the man who brought him to life. We queued for tickets to queue for him, and found we were actually queuing for him (if you see what I mean). And so we got autographed pictures. And shook hands with Andy (I feel I can call him that now) who is a really nice chap. And I, to my eternal shame, asked him to say "My Precioussss" into the camera. Something which, to his eternal credit, he did with aplomb. Meantime daughter goes off and by a combination of deviousness, luck and good contacts manages to get the pictures she wanted.

The only snag was that we had to do a lot of waiting around. In a shopping centre. The bigger problem was that they had loads of stalls there selling bits and bobs which were rather nice. They had a whole shed full of stuff that I would have really liked (perhaps I am one for collectables after all). The Robbie the Robot they had was priced a bit on the high side, but I did manage to talk myself into getting a remote controlled Dalek. It is now standing in our front room guarding the fireplace. I'm not actually counting the days to the next event; but if they have one - I'll be there.

Just half an hour earlier....

Literature Out Of Sorts

Super Abridged Classics Dept. continued

(Effects - castle door slamming)
Aragorn: "Hi Honey, I'm back!"

From the book "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King"

Even more later, whether you are lucky or not..

Project Power

One of the perks of my job is the student projects. It is like having your own research and development team! I've got some very nice projects running this year, a lot of them based on Pocket PC and Smartphone which should be fun. The downside is that I have most of my project meetings on Friday morning, around five in a row. This means that by Friday lunchtime I have virtually no brain left....

Just had a first year student get in touch asking for more labs. Apparently he wants to work on his programming over the weekend and he wants the next lab. We tend to set the labs on a week by week basis, depending on the overall progress of the class - but it is always nice to find keen people. I've pointed him at one of our "extra nasty" problems to keep him busy. Well, he did ask.

In between watching Babylon 5 and 24 we've been watching series 1 of the X-Files. Number one son hasn't seen them, and they are always worth a viewing. I reckon that the X-Files thing peaked around the end of series three, and so we have a few more to go at. I think I've now reached the point where I watch more DVDs than real telly. I might ask for a refund of part of the licence....

Bloggers Block

Now here's a thing. What do you call it when you can't think of anything to put in the blog? Does this imply that a whole heap of nothing happened today? Or was it that what happened was too boring to write about. Or was it that it all happened so quickly that I can't remember what went on. I'm going for the latter. We get a lot of this once term starts rolling. You get so involved in lecturing (loops this week) project supervision and stuff that you forget the passage of time. So, today was busy.

I've noticed a little problem with the World Wide Web. Which is concerned with the name. It is most annoying. It is a problem because it means that all web addresses begin with w. Which is the hardest letter in the alphabet to say. It is one of the few letters in the alphabet which has more than one syllable. And it has three. And we have three ws in every web address. That's nine syllables of noise. By the time you've got www out of your mouth your brain has just about given up on the idea of speaking and forgotten about saying the rest of the address. I've never met Tim Berners-Lee (but I would love to). However, if I do I would - as tactfully as possible - suggest that the father of the World Wide Web might have thought about this issue before he gave it the name it has.

Fame at Last

I was walking back to my office yesterday when I saw a new colour poster on the corridor wall. It is to advertise a highly prestigious event which celebrates the 75th anniversary of the University of Hull. We have been in business for 75 years this year(although I've not been here quite that long.). Anyhoo, this picture shows momentous people in the development of the university; Philip Larkin - a famous poet, a king of some description, other important folks. Plus me. Down in the left hand corner, with Ian and Paul and "the product that cannot be named". I've no idea what I've done to deserve this. Neither has Ian, but there we are - large as life and twice as ugly. I'm definitely going to try and sneak one of these posters after the event....

And I've just found out that the Microsoft .NET degree, and our Imagine Cup success are going to feature in the Times Higher Education Supplement, with my name in print there as well (but fortunately no photograph this time). At this rate I'm going to need an agent soon.....