Do the Sausages Last

Had a BBQ today. The weather for the last few days has been fairly dreadful, but we went for it anyway. Ian and Geoff and Chris and a whole bunch of other people turned up and a good time was had. For about the first time we managed to get the charcol fired machine to work a treat. My top BBQ tip, do the sausages last of all. If you do them when the thing is real hot and has some flames you get loads of fat and massive conflagration. If you do the bangers at the end when things have cooled down a bit the results are much more restful.

We had one sausage left at the end, which went next door to Jack. Our neighbour's dog is vey partial to our BBQs, and apparently stands quietly next to the fence waiting for us to hurl a sausage or to over to him whenever he gets wind of of one.

Window Wind Up

The car is starting to worry me again. Only a few hours after having been given a clean bill of health I was using the electric front windows (posh eh?) at the council tip yesterday and ran into a little difficulty. The first visit was fine, with me all suave and James Bondy. The window smoothly whirred down and I was able to ask the chap where to get rid of most of a holly bush and accompanying debris. Then it jus as smoothly slid back up again. At the second visit things were by no means as suave. The window shuddered down making a sound rather like a team of blackboard finger scrapers practicing for the Olympics Blackboard Finger Scraping finals. A very talented team with a good chance of getting gold. Having staggered half way down the window then refused to go back up again. This is problematic. Leaving a car outside all night with an open window is not a good thing to do, even in an area as genteel as ours. Particularly if it rains.

By a combination of pulling and frantic button pressing we managed to get the window back into place, but something is definitely wrong. Something under several layers of trim panels, funny breakable clips, one way screws and complicated wiring. The Haynes manual says that it is a "four spanner" job to dismantle the door and take a look inside. I'm not sure if I am a four spanner mechanic. Fortunately for me fate, in the form of an afternoon of pouring rain, has prevented me from getting to grips with it today. Something to look forward to next week methinks.

Holly Gone

Did some gardening today. Spent the afternoon grappling with the undergrowth. I don't like gardening. I don't like any job which you do and then have to do again later. When I do a job I like it to stay done, but gardens are not like that. You can spend a whole hour (or even two) getting rid of all the weeds and stuff and then in a year (or sometimes even less) you have to do it all again.

Anyhoo, one of the few garden tasks that I do well is getting rid of stuff. Ask me to plant something and the odds are I will perform something akin to a burial. Ask me to dispose of something (but remember to ask me to get rid of the right thing because my targeting is a bit wayward) and you can be pretty sure that something will be removed. Today it was the turn of the holly bush.

Holly is cute on Christmas cards. It is not cute when it is 8 feet tall, prickly as hell and hiding the dustbins. So it had to go. By a cunning combination of cutters, brute strength and ignorance and innumerable plastic bags the holly bush is now spread around the council dump. A little holly removal tip: Leave yourself a nice long bit sticking out of the ground for you and anyone else daft enough to help you. This can be swung on most effectively to lever the stump out of the ground. Oh, and wear the thickest leather gloves you can find.

Fight for the Right to Purchase

Been trying to buy come computer hardware today. Only started trying at the end of last month. I'm buying from a company who you might have heard of, who probably have offices near a place called Dingley. I normally recommend this company to friends you want to buy computers because I like a quiet life. The stuff is well designed, well documented and well supported. And if you buy over the internet for your own use the service is swift and efficient. But if you try to buy as an institution, say as a university, things don't go quite so smoothly.

The first contact told me that the order we faxed over a fortnight ago would not work because they don't accept faxed orders. The second contact put me on to the third contact. The third contact told me to fax the order in and then assured me that the order had been processed and would be delivered next week. Then he went on holiday. The fourth contact told me that the order could not be found, but I should ring the next day when it would appear. The fifth contact told me that the order was not on the system because the order number could not be read. This contact then undertook to let me know when the order had been added to the system. And there the matter rests. Since I originally created the order all the prices have changed and so I'll probably have to go into battle to sort that out too.

And all I want is a couple of handhelds and a server. Ho hum.

Two Tyres and a Windscreen Wiper Blade

Took the car for its MOT (Ministry Of Transport) test today. This is the time of year when the government tells me if my car is safe to drive for the next year. Turns out that it is, with a couple of new tyres and a windscreen wiper blade.

I've been doing some sums and it turns out that I've had this car for a sixth of my life. Longer than I've had any car before. I can't work out if this is becuase I'm poor or boring. Or perhaps I've just found a vehicle that suits me. Anyhoo, this time next year I'm pretty sure I'll be taking the same car along....

Dinky Darth

darth
Originally uploaded by RobMiles.

I saw one of these in the Lego catalogue and mentioned it to number one daughter. So, when she saw one she bought me one. Wonderful. You spin it round and "Arise Lord Vader".
Soon the empire will be mine to command etc etc...

Flickr Frantic

I've signed up for a Flickr account. This is the power behind the flashing badge on the right of the blog pages. They let you upload up to 1 GByte of pictures every month. To me that sounds like a challenge. So today I tried to break it.

I've uploaded loads (and I mean loads) of pictures. Total space used so far - 8%.

Quick on the Draw

My latest MSDN Smartphone articles are now out:

Pocket Jack: Writing a Card-Playing Application
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnnetcomp/html/pocketjack.asp?frame=true

Focus Point: An Image Scaling Game for Smartphones
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnnetcomp/html/focuspoint.asp?frame=true

Pocket Bots: Writing a Battle Game for Smartphones
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnnetcomp/html/pocketbots.asp?frame=true

StarLight: Writing a Space-Shooter Game for Smartphones
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnnetcomp/html/starlight.asp?frame=true

Feel free to have a read and steal the code from them. I'm particularly proud of StarLight, which has a neat scripting language for the game objects. This lets you create really nasty aliens.

I've been thinking about moving into 3D games for a while, so today myself and number one son spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how to recreate Faceball 2000, one of the best ever games for the Gameboy. By the end of the day we had a program which would draw two triangles on the Smartphone screen. Go us.

Fantastic Fantastic Four

Went to see the "Fantastic Four" film tonight. One fantastic film. The fashion these days is for super heroes to be full of angst and grief for some reason or other. So it was good to see a superhero film where the people concerned actually seemed quite pleased to be able to vanish, fly, lift heavy things, squeeze under doors etc etc. Also good to see a film where those involved had the self confidence work on the basis that this good feeling and comic possibilities in the situations would be enough to carry the film, which they were.

If you are being a bit picky you could say that the final confrontation is a bit of an anti-climax and the surname of "Von Doom" is probably a bit of a giveaway for a baddy. But apart from that I'd reccommend it strongly.

The Dean and Edna

Met Derek (aka the Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science and Technology) up town today. Last week, on the way to the Scarborough Degree ceremony, I suggested that he buy an "Edna". Number one daughter had got one a couple of days before and they are very good. An Edna is an interactive doll tied to The Incredibles film. Very funny. One of the first toys that actually listens to what you say and replies sensibly. You ask "How do I look?" and she will respond with "Sensational dahling", or something else....

Well, Derek bought an Edna (very good price at the Disney store in Hull). Apparently it has been driving everyone up the wall in the Faculty Office ever since.

Doncaster Doings, and Skin Those Teeth

Went off to Doncaster College today to do external examining type stuff to their course. They have a lovely Business Computing Degree (if such a thing can be said to be lovely). We validate it and look at the projects and exam papers. They have some very nice scenario based assessment which is really great stuff. Found out that some of the staff there actually won the lottery! Nothing at the "Retire and buy an island" level, but enough to put a big smile on anybody's face. So now I know a lottery winner or two. Just don't give up the day job yet folks.

Then home to finish off my backup recovery. By some file diddling and renaming we finally brought everything back from the grave and all is well.

I wonder where the expression "Skin of your teeth" comes from?

Skinny Teeth

What do you say to someone who has lost all their files because the server has crashed?

"Good thing you've got a backup"

Then run like the wind.....

My Class Server and Where Would You Think Host went "toes up" last week. I wasn't that worried, because I'd taken a backup of the assessments and the databases around the end of the term. It also needs to be rehosted onto my "Shiny New Hardware" (tm) so I was just going to rebuild the system and restore the old files onto it.

Then I remembered that I had enticed the boss to have a go with Class Server and he had created some work on the system after the backup.

Darn.

So today I got busy with Virtual PC, a few database files, the SQL Enterprise Manager and the Registry Editor. At the moment I can see the files but not touch them. I think I'm going to get those files by the skin of my teeth.....

Van Lag with Dynamite

Got "van lag" today. Didn't think that all that driving would affect me much, but today I'm pretty tired. Of course I still managed to achieve superhuman type things at work today (thank heavens I only use my powers for good) but I felt rather tired as a result of all the effort.

Number on daughter forced me to watch "Napoleon Dynamite" tonight. I'm glad she did. It is an American college flick about the agonies of being young, fit and having a whole life's worth of potential mostly in front of you. The characters are distant and disconnected in that special way that only teenagers are and I suppose that you could say nothing much happens throughout the film. But the locations and events are quite engrossing and it even manages to shoehorn in a surreal happy ending as well. If you want car chases, alien invasions and extravegant set pieces, then don't watch this film. But if you enjoyed "Ghost World", "Gregory's Girl" and "Clueless" then you could do much worse than take a look.

Driving in Slow Motion

Drove "the great white whale" back from Reading today. Against the wind and uphill all the way. I thought that the phrase "up north" just referred to our position on the map, but after the trip I'm pretty sure that it actually means that you do have to climb continuously to get here.

Performance was not the van's forte. The man who delivered it said things like "..and they'll do 90 miles per hour too...." when talking about the aforementioned mobile shed. I think it would only achive this if you pushed it off a particularly high cliff, I was fighting to get above 70 for most of the trip. At least this meant that I was street legal all the way home.

Overtaking was the most interesting part. I'd draw up behind somethng, check the mirror, signal, pull out, hit a teeny tiny hill and then find that I was just about going backwards in the fast lane. With a queue of shiny Mercs and other posh cars fuming behind me. Actually, I quite liked that bit.

Conference Capers

Slide 5 student developer conference today. Been moving at speed for just about the entire day. I was trying to make sure that everything happened when it should, as well as giving three of the talks. Somewhat scary. But what a happy time. Everyone was all smiles. Think I may have pushed my luck a little by telling the "Orange for a head" joke while we waited for the judges to come back with the result of the student competition. They came in just as I was delivering the punch line (I use this term loosely) and looked very confused.

However, most folks said they would come to another one (after all, having heard my worst joke they have much less to fear second time around). You can find out more about the whole shebang, and even get hold of some pictures, by visiting www.slide5.com

Driving the Great White Whale

Captain Ahab used to go on about the Mythical Great White Whale. Huge, untameable and out there. Today I've been driving it. I ordered a 12 seater minibus to transport myself and a few select chums down to Reading to take part in a conference. I was a bit worried about such a large vehicle, but figured I'd be ok. Today they delivered unto me a 17 seater. Very big and very white. And very shiny, just 250 miles on the clock and still with that "new van" smell.

Took it round the block to see what happens and all the controls did what I expected, except for the accelerator, which seemed to increase the noise made by the engine but had little effect on actual speed. Anyhoo, gathered up the passengers, who just about had a seat each (in the end I only had 8 people wanting lifts 'cos Iain is taking a bunch down tomorrow). Then we roared off into the sunshine. Van's don't have air conditioning, but they do have windows. Very hot. The van had a fan, but it was more about making noise than doing much useful (bit like the engine in this respect) so we opened the windows and thereby slowed the mobile greenhouse down even more.

The good news is that we got where we were going in the end, and by the finish I was getting quite adept at spinning the van round and fitting it into parking spaces. But I've not tried any handbrake turns yet.

Late Cool Shades

Got my new shades today. Only ordered them a month ago. Went into ASDA, picked the pair that I wanted, did the deal and nothing happened. No phone calls, nothing. Rang them up last week and it turns out they'd got the wrong Mr. Miles. They had been ringing someone else up to tell him that the glasses he hadn't ordered were now ready. And getting no response.

When I rang up and asked them where mine were they figured out what had transpired and ordered mine on ultra high priority. And today they came in. Quite cool. And darker.

And So To Scarborough

scarborough graduation 019
Originally uploaded by RobMiles.

The hall at Scarborough is much brighter, so the pictures look much better....

fullgrad05

fullgrad05
Originally uploaded by RobMiles.

This is the best picture of the bunch. Hand held at 15th of a second rarely comes off I find....

Living in FAST Times

Did the Faculty of Science and Technology (FAST) degree day today. Went very well, but boy was it hot. I love doing this degree day because lots of the students are ones that I actually might have taught once upon a time.

I tried to take some fancy pictures with my fancy camera. They didn't quite come off, but you can pull down what did happen from my Flikr pages. Just follow the link to my Flickr pages on the right.

Old Poetry

I really must lose things more often. You find the most interesting stuff when you go looking. Today I found the text of a lecture I gave way back in 1996 to the Business Archives Council Conference. It was based on one of my famous lectures in rhyme. I thought I'd share a bit of it with you. So here, complete with footnoes, is the introduction in all its glory.

Remember this was written a long time ago....

What is the Internet?

It began with the people at DARPA
Who liked to ring doorbells and scarper[1] ,
And worry ‘bout things,
A Nuclear War brings,
Like if all the ‘phones would work after...

So they gathered a bunch of young hippies,
The folks who made UNIX so trippy,
And asked for a net,
Which would not get upset,
When the heat made the wires go all drippy.

The network they built up was smashing,
High performance and not prone to crashing,
And quite soon they found,
Lots of traffic around,
On it more and more data went flashing.

So the net was then split into two,
To manage the data going through,
MILNET for the forces,
Their network resources,
And the Internet for me and you.

The name of the game’s co-operation,
With the folks on the next network station,
When data comes in,
You pass it on with a grin,
And no thought of remuneration.

And soon people they started to see,
You could move about data for free,
Just get on to the wire,
And datagrams fire,
Save enough paper to make a tree

It became a hit with academics
They could publish their great big polemics,
And if pigeon post fails,
They could just send emails,
About “Elementary Callisthenics”

Another use that they could choose,
Was to plug themselves into the news,
Not the stuff in the paper,
But a different caper,
With much more individual views.

World Wide Web is the latest new trick,
Sounds and pictures and screens oh so slick.
It’s so easy to put on,
Just press on the button,
Even if you are thick as a brick[2]

So now using networks is hip,
And cool folks all like data to ship,
They go out on dates,
To compare their baud rates,
And the size of their latest equip - ment.

But I don't think that it’s very funny,
That the suits who’ve got all the money,
Look at the net in surprise,
Dollar signs in their eyes,
And make profit predictions all sunny..

And everyone's starting to ponder,
‘bout the spell we are presently under,
Will the net just keep growing,
More and more data flowing,
Or is this just a marketing wonder?

[1] If there are any people from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency reading these notes I aplogise for this slur but the rhyme was too good to miss!
[2] ....or even an artist!

Treading the Boards

Back in front of a live audience today. The audience in question were there for their degrees at City Hall. Yes, I'm back in charge of the ceremonies again and the mercury is climbing towards 30 degrees....

The good news is that there are now two of us doing the job. James took his first ceremony today and did a sterling job. "That's good." I remarked as we strolled back to the car. "Now I can step under a bus without worrying about who's going to look after the degrees". I said this whilst walking out in front of an ambulance which could I suppose have been very painful - in a rather convenient kind of way.......

Real World Madness

The "Crazy World of Rob Miles" is intended as a little, inconsequential, backwater of the internet where I can put stuff that I enjoy writing. It is not supposed to keep track of the outside world particularly. But, having forced myself to read the paper today, I feel that I really ought to mention the events of last week. I feel a great sadness and sorrow for those that have suffered as a result of what happened last Thursday morning. I personally intend to travel to London the first chance I get to ride around on the tube and the buses as much as possible.

Open for Open Day

Just done an Open Day talk. Thanks for coming folks. Around a third of the people there had not been to Hull before. Hope you like the place. The campus was looking super splendid in the sun.

Wore my new glasses to give the talk. These are varifocals. This means that the front row were just a blur as far as I could tell. So if you were trying to get my attention at any point I'm sorry if I didn't spot it.

Anyway, if you did come by, thanks for being a good audience.

War of the Worlds. And why not.

Went to see War of the Worlds tonight. It is a Stephen Spielberg film with Tom Cruise. There, I've just about said it all. If you are after a moving and complex narrative where characters develop amongst sparkling dialogue, with a sprinkling of romance and comedy, then you can leave the building now.

If you are after exploding buildings, gung ho action and plenty of screaming, then you might want to take a look. Two things I didn't like. Firstly the name on the tin is wrong. It is not a war. It is 100 minutes of being ground underfoot by the nasty aliens followed by a sudden happy ending (hope this isn't giving too much away folks). When I go abroad I make sure I've had all my injections. You'd think that when they go to another world the invaders would have done the same.

The second thing I didn't like was Tom's "daughter". She has obviously been to the old "Dr. Who assistant" school of acting, and took her role of not doing what dad said, gettiing into trouble as a result, screaming loudly, very loudly, and being rescued, extremely seriously. Rather tiresome I thought. Makes you appreciate Billy Piper in the new Dr. Who.

As an action film summer blockbuster "The War of the Worlds" is OK. But deep it is not. And nothing like as good as the book or the Jeff Wayne musical version (which quite literally rocks).

A Good Day at Work

You know you've had a good day at work when you can't remember what you were doing. As far as I can recall I was preparing delegate lists for Slide5, updating web sites, counting session preferences, sorting out presentation timings, designing and printing CD label artwork and some other stuff I forgot.

A great day.

The Wild Bunch of HETA

The Wild Bunch
Originally uploaded by RobMiles.

Just done a talk at HETA. Took along the Media Centre, wrote some C# with the audience and took a picture and blogged during the session. You were a good bunch. I'm sorry I called you all idiots. Only the ones who actually thought that bricks are intelligent are the idiots. And I'm glad you liked the dog.

Will Code for Beer

Asahi Beer. Never drunk any myself. Seen lots of bottles of it though. And the labels. Some years ago I wrote a system (in embedded C) which controls the laser date marking systems at the Asahi Brewery in Japan. My software controls a device which moves metal disks in front of the marking laser. Thing is, the disks run out of characters after a while and so they need to be changed, along with the controlling software.

So tonight I was re-discovering the joys of code that I wrote quite a few years ago. Quite fun using a program which displays 24 lines of 80 characters on my 17 inch monitor. Whoa. Those letters are big. And it is surprising how all the keyboard shortcuts came back to me. Did the changes, blew the EPROMS and sent them off. If a few weeks they should be in the machines in Japan. And my software will be marking beer for another five years or so.

Not my favourite embedded job though. One day I'll tell you all about my toilet flushing program.....

Dreamcast Delights

The Dreamcast is a neat machine. The graphics are good enough for solid gameplay, and Sega have gameplay in shed loads. Number one son has given Soul Calibur a thrashing and I've caught four pretend fish playin Sega Bass Fishing. Underneath my telly is starting to look a little crowded. I've since found out that you can get Dreamcasts from ebay, in good nick with a bunch of games, for around 20 quid or so. Even if you have to pay around a tenner for the postage that is still a whole hunk of fun for the money.

Life on the Ice

Alan looked out of his igloo, across the ice towards the lake. The night was very cold and very dark. He wandered out, shivering slightly, and noticed a knot of villagers by the lake's edge, huddled together and pointing at the sky. "What do you think it means?" one of them asked. Alan looked up. Where normally there was inky blackness he could make out a new star where none had been before. It hadn't been there yesterday and now there it was. It was a strange colour and he found it vaguely unsettling. As he watched he thought he noticed it getting bigger. He blinked and looked again. Yes. Definitely bigger. A frightening thought occured to him. He was just about to shout a warning to the rest of the group when he and his entire civilsation was pulverised into dust by a massive explosion.

And the headlines read:

"Worldwide telescopes analyze NASA's comet collision "

Voyages in Sound

A couple of weeks ago I decided to embark on a journey. I thought I'd start my Media Centre at the very first track on the disk, "(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)" by the Stranglers and go all the way through to "Zoo Station" by U2. In order. Well, it helps to pass the time and it relieves me of the responsibility of having to choose what to listen to.

After a bunch of tracks who's names start with brackets and dots, a few [Untitled Tracks] the machine started on all the ones that have the track number in the name. I'm presently up to "07 - Not So Manic Now" by Dubstar and I've had to stop for a break to listen to some Pink Floyd. I saw them live last night on "Live 8" and now I'm going to work through their stuff (best album "Wish you were here") before continuing. It was wonderful to see "the Floyd" together again and sounding like it was only last week they recorded the stuff. Instead of over twenty years ago. Kind of give me hope for the future.....

I've found some interesting tracks on the journey that I forgotten I had, and a few I didn't even know were there. Perhaps I'll continue again in a little while.

The Voice of Reason and Upstairs Fishing

Now that number one son is back at the ranch for a while I'm kind of relieved to have someone to go up town with me and stop me from buying more gadgets and computer games. So, today I set off shopping with a slightly lighter heart than usual, knowing that a restraining influence was present to keep me in check.

So when we got home with the second hand Sega Dreamcast console that we subsequently bought, with Soul Calibur (number one son says it is the best ever Dreamcast game) and Sega Bass Fishing (complete with computerised fishing rod) I was able to reflect on how well that plan had worked.

The console itself is in good nick, and works well. And the fishing is fun, if a bit silly. We had the windows open 'cos it was a bit warm. I hope that the neighbours weren't too confused by the loud cries of "Get that fish over there", and "Quick, reel him in, not too tight, you'll break the line"....

Hellooooooo

The cold is getting better. The good news is that it has left me with a wonderfully deep and butch sounding voice. Kind of like Leslie Phillips and Terry Thomas, with an added bit of "Pot Noodle Horn" thrown in. I've been going round saying "Helloooooo" and impressing all and sundry with my masculine tones. I suppose I could have this kind of voice all the time, all I'd have to do is smoke 20 Woodbines a day.

(if you don't understand the reference to "Pot Noodle Horn" don't worry. The latest promotion for the "lumpy dried soup in a plastic cup - just add boiling water" which are Pot Noodles involves a suggestive voice asking questions like "Do you have the Pot Noodle Horn?", a reference to a competition of some kind.)