To Podly Go....

My voice is now out there... Rory has launched his TinyThings podcast. If you want to hear what I sound like, then you can go and listen to my gadget bit in the middle of the interesting stuff.

I should be on the stage....

What is the most popular image editing program in the jungle?
Photoshop elephants.

Do cowgirl cinderallas have prarie godmothers?

What kind of games console can you drink?
Playstation potable.

..thank you and good night

Grand Theft Not Yet

Today I went up town with a spring in my step and thirty five quid in my pocket (this equates to nearly two week's pocket money - since I got the car I'm on iron rations gadget wise, so that Mr. Cahoot doesn't fail to get his funds).

I intended to buy Grand Theft Auto for my Playstation Portable. Now I know that the game is vulgar, violent and generally horrible in most respects. But I do rather enjoy playing it. I had heard that it was due for launch on the 28th of October and I was looking forward to getting my hands on a copy and tearing up Liberty City all over again.

Of course I had forgotten that there are lies, big lies, complete whoppers and video game release dates. The game has been put back to next week. So I returned home with less of a spring in my step, and no video game.

At least it means that when I get it I will have saved up for it.....

Scary Software Engineering

I thought it was time to do a tutorial session on how to take Software Designs and make them into real software. So today I spend a couple of hours with the second year using Visual Studio to create classes and link them to each other. I hope it wasn't too scary folks. I'm very worried that I might end up with a bunch of people who can draw lots of pretty diagrams but don't know how to make the program that actually does the work. Those that stayed to the end seemed fairly happy.

If some bits didn't make sense, don't worry - I'll be doing more of this later.

Trip Hazard is coming....

I'm busy writing the fifth installment of "Trip Hazard - Los Angeles Private Eye who will also work for publicly quoted companies". I've not written the first four yet, maybe I never will.

I'll let you know when it's ready. It might even come out in podcast form if I can come up with a convincing american accent. Just as a taster, here is the cast:

Trip Hazard: an LA PI who nearly always does the right thing. In his own way. Cast aside by the LAPD for a crime he probably didn’t commit he now wages war on the side of the angels in the city of the angels, helped by his treasured ’74 open top Mustang and numerous friends and acquaintances. First seen in the pilot programme: “This Shield May Not Be for Hire”

Mycroft Strange: sometime sidekick to Trip who finds his classically trained, British Empire background a help and hindrance in equal parts. A mystic codebreaker who also worked for MI5 he joined forces with Trip in episode two; “Eat Lead for Breakfast”

Koyoto: Enigmatic Japanese beauty with brains to match. Teamed up with Trip in episode three; “Ninja Motorbike Assassins from Tokyo” when he saved her from a life of high octane crime.

Beverley Vermont: Wisconsin Cheese heiress who, due to her inadvertent involvement in a Mafia yoghurt scam, ended Trip’s police career. Returns to become his full time lover in episode four; “Milk isn’t the only thing that curdles”.

Archibald Nemisis : a childhood friend of Trip who has since gone over to the wrong side of the tracks and lives in a disused station there. Now a boss of a huge underworld syndicate which also operates above ground. Really the cause of Trip’s downfall, and nurses a non-secret passion for Beverley. Although he wouldn’t kick Koyoto out of bed either. Introduced in episode one.

Drop that Motherboard in the River

Ha. I don't have the voice of an express train going past. What I have is a motherboard with an idiot sound card. I' re-recorded my dulcet tones using a different piece of hardware and all is well. I still sound a bit stupid, but I'm reliably informed by experts that I've always sounded a bit stupid. So all is well then.

I think that my PC knows I'm onto it. This evening, to celebrate its failure to record sound and the sudden departure of most of my USB devices it failed completely. I think it may have an appointment with the council tip.....

Speaking From a Bungee Jump

As you may know (but perhaps not care) I'm doing some gadget reviews for a my friend Rory Blyth who is an all round top bloke and also works for Microsoft. He is doing a podcast thing which will have interviews with the Microsoft great and good, and inserts from yours truly.

I've not been in front of a microphone for some time (I used to do radio work but I kind of gave it up when real life got in the way) and I was rather disturbed to find that my voice technique seemed to have collapsed. I sent some bits and bobs off to Rory and he politely suggested that there might be something wrong somewhere. I sounded like I was moving towards and away from the microphone at great speed, as if I was talking whilst doing a bungee jump, with the microphone at the bottom of the ravine. I took a listen and was highly disturbed to find that he was very right. I seemed to get very quiet and then suddenly, and for no reason get very loud.

It sounded awful. One of the hardest things to do when recording voice is keep yourself around the same distance from the microphone. I usually do this by putting my elbows on the desk, but this did not seem to work. I still have the voice of an express train whizzing past. So, after two hours of trying to record a three minute piece I'm going to bed rather unhappy, and wondering how to train my vocal chords to behave themselves.

Where would you think?

I've spent a big chunk of today working on our new admissions portal thingy. We used it last year and the people that visited quite liked it. We put the site up on www.wherewouldyouthink.com and had a fair few visitors over the year. Then it broke. The hard drive head decided it wanted to find out what rubbing itself against the disk surface felt like (answer, it hurts a lot and also breaks everything) so I've just finished rebuilding the site on a new server, using new technology. With pictures. There is a bit of content to add, but the overall structure is in place and I think it is spiffy (but then I would think that).

If you want to take a look, have a go at the puzzles, marvel at the pictures, and let me know what you think, I'd love to hear from you. With the coming of the new site we do of course have new T shirts, which will be going off to be printed next week. We got through loads last year, I think we will have a few extra made this year. The most surprising thing is that I see first year students, in my lectures, still proudly wearing their shirts. I'll see if I can get a few snaps. Next year we are going to give a prize to every new first year who turns up in their shirt....

Petrol Obsession

The new car (which isn't mine, but is new) has a rather clever trip meter thing which gives you live fuel consumption figures as you bowl along. For someone like me this is like mana from heaven. Something else to become obsessed with whilst driving. I have become fixated with keeping the MPG (Miles Per Gallon) figure above 40 as much as possible. To achieve this zen like state around town you have to never stop and never speed up. Once you reach that magic point on the bar chart you have to hold it there by fair means or foul. This means that driving now has a new level of excitement as I career over level crossings dodging trains and fail to stop at traffic lights (only kidding folks).

I'm not sure if this will improve my fuel consumption much, I wasn't much of a lead foot driver in the first place, but it is fun for the moment.

I'm reminded of one of the great advertising blunders of all time, which came out a few years ago. BMW were very proud of their new fuel system, which completely shut off the petrol to the engine when the car was coasting. This was quite an advance, and must have been quite hard to design. Pity that they gave it to an idiot to advertise. The picture showed a car going down a mountain side, and in large letters over the top was the strap line "120 miles per hour, 0 miles per gallon". I reckon the driver was drinking the stuff.....

And there weren't any monks

Went to York today. It rained. And rained. And rained. For lunch we went out to Monks Cross, a shopping centre on the outskirts of the city. Number one daughter (who we went to visit) had need of some commestibles and an ironing board from ASDA. I figured that it would be quieter and more pleasant than York.

I could not have been more wrong if I was from Planet Wrong in the Wrong part of the Wrong end of the universe where I had a first class degree in being wrong for all the wrong reasons wrongly.

It was horrible. Wet, hard to park, very busy. People in cars were driving around being selfish and stupid (I of course stopped doing this as soon as I got out of my car). There were no paths. At one point we got stranded in the middle of the road, surrounded by whizzing idiots in 4x4s. The only satisfaction that I could gain from the situation was the fact that I was in a position to choose to never go there again. Ever.

In short, I did not like the place much. But in the end we got what we wanted, and escaped with our lives and most of our sanity. And an ironing board.

Speaking in Tongues

I've spent the evening trying to turn "The Little Brown Ikea Pencil of Doom" into a podcast. This is the first time I've ever tried doing audio drama, and it is a bit hard. Doing all the voices is very difficult. I come up with an accent for Sergeant Wilkins and then, when he speaks again it is with a totally different one. And everyone ends up sounding like they are from the West Country.

I'm starting to regard the trade of acting as slightly more difficult than I thought, and holding actors in slightly more esteem. But only slightly.

Wrong Lump of Metal

So today I turn up at the garage to pick up my shiny, nearly new, car. I have emptied the old car of around 40 cassettes, taken all the bits and pieces from the hidey holes in it and bade my farewells. I have all my documentation, money in the bank to pay for the new vehicle, and I'm quite looking forward to playing with it.

Then I'm told that I can't have my new car because the garage is unable to locate the log book for it. This is a fairly crucial document, in that it is the one that proves you really own the car. Without that you can't get a tax disk, another fairly crucial item which actually allows you to take the car on the road. Nobody is quite sure how the document got lost, or where it is, but everybody is sure that it means I can't have the car.

Oh dear. Big problem. The good news is that the garage works well in failure mode. I now have the use of a courtesy car (which is newer than "mine" but pretty much identical) until they can sort this out. I must admit to getting kind of cross, but in a "Oh dear, you have a problem, how are you going to make me happy?" kind of way, which seems to have worked.

Saying goodbye to a lump of metal

Is it normal to get worked up about mechanical things? I've had this car since new, for a sixth of my life. Tomorrow it goes away to be replaced by another one. I've got a lot of memories tied up in this lump of metal. When I got it the kids were much smaller and more inclined to do what I said. Now, not only do they not always follow instructions, but they are not usually even around to do that. The car has taken us three times round the world (not actually - driving across the Atlantic would have been a bit of a problem) and never let us down once.

And tomorrow, because it is old, it is being replaced. Today I took all the bits and bobs out of the various storage compartments, peeled the stickers off the windscreen that I need for work and dug out the handbook, still in its original folder. I also took a whole bunch of photographs of the thing. I will look back on my "Scenic era" as a great time in my life, here's hoping the next car is as reliable, and the times as good.

Meetings are good?

We had our mid-semester reviews today. These are when the staff and students get together and discuss how the course is going. All the staff responsible for the teaching drop by and find out how things are going. We've had these for a while, the idea is that we find out if anything is wrong when we are still in a position to do something about it.

Nobody complained about my jokes, which is good. Perhaps they've not figured out that they are jokes - and are busy revising them in case they turn up in an exam. Ho hum. Generally speaking things are fine, but some bits of one module have some of the students a bit bamboozled. No problem, a bit of arranging and we will have extra tutorials rolling for the group on Friday.

It is nice when something useful comes out of a meeting. One of the many reasons I like working at Hull.

What?

My invisible friend has disappeared again. I've looked for him everywhere. I went to the police to report him missing. They asked when I'd last seen him. I said never. They said I wasn't helping them much with their enquiries. Have you noticed how young policemen are looking these days? The way I see it, you can time travel into the past by looking at a baby policeman. Babies are cute. They are like little versions of people. But smaller. I used to be small. But that was a long time ago, when things in general were bigger.

I think it is time I went for a lie down.

Jane Eyre, Trapped

Had to rescue Jane Eyre today. She had got herself trapped in our telly in the kitchen. It ate the video and then refused to spit it out. It was a bad buy that telly. It went wrong just after the guarantee expired (I wonder how these devices know to do that) and I had a big fight with the supplier (no names - but Haley probably shopped there) to get it mended. Anyhoo, it broke again today in just the same way. A cassette got stuck inside and stalled the motors, causing the power supply to cut out.

This time there was no talk of repair. It was simply a matter of getting the tape out and then taking the whole thing to the tip (where I can mingle with all the rich and famous). There is something very liberating about taking something to bits without caring how to put it together again. I had the video out (undamaged) in ten minutes. The TV will never work again.

I used to know someone who worked in a TV repair shop. He had some lovely stories of upright, solid citizens who would bring in video players for repair because they had copies of "Swedish Chartered Accountant on the Job" or somesuch stuck inside them. He would make a special effort to be in the shop when the owner turned up to collect their mended machine, to describe how the tape had got stuck and hand back the video with a smile.

Jungle Warfare

Took a bush out today. I chopped it down, put it into six big bags and drove it down to the tip. And I didn't bring it back. I felt quite macho as I laid into the defenceless plant (apparently it will grow back next year and the bets are on it to outlast me over the long term) but then I had to spend quite a while picking up the pieces and getting them ready for the tip.

At the tip mine was the oldest car there (but that will change heh heh). In fact people kept rolling up in shiny Jags and brand new sports cars to drop off their garbage. Perhaps the council dump is now the new trendy meeting place to hang out and compare refuse sacks.

Thoaty Voice

I talked continuously for three hours today. Two tutorials and a lecture. I've got nice, husky, tones as a result at the moment. By the end of it I'm afraid that both me and the students (it was all the same group) were finding the art of drawing Collaboration Diagrams perhaps a bit less inspiring than it might be. Sorry folks, I'll be back to my wise cracking, enthusiastic, form on Tuesday (as if you can wait).

In the Money

I'm getting a new car. The neighbourhood where I live is changing to the point where if you don't have a slver car they might not let you in. I seem to have the only non-silver vehicle in the place. My car is red. I originally chose that colour because of course red cars go faster and also I heard somewhere that they also last longer because of all the lead in the paint which gives them that nice crimson hue.

I've since found out that this was true in 1950, but since a number of people got lead poisoning from sucking red cars they have now changed the formula.

Anyhoo, in order to get me past the local border controls my new car is silver. I've applied for loan on the internet to pay for the new motor (what do you mean "Don't you have savings?"). That was a very interesting, and scary, experience. Just fill in a few forms and press submit and thousands of pounds can be winging their way towards your account. Or not if you fail the credit checks. At the moment all is well, and if the nice people at Cahoot like the cut of my jib (or reason that they can always take my house off me if it all goes horribly wrong) then it should be all sytems go in a week or so.

Going to the Movies

Went to the movies tonight. Brian was there as well, and we set in the special row where you can stretch your legs right out. The film we saw, Serenity, was very good. It's nice when something you are really looking forward to turns out to be woth the wait.

Voice of Reason

Spent the evening recording my voice for some podcasts that I've been putting together for a while. I'm finding it surprisingly difficult to talk continuously for five minutes. I think that anyone who has met me might fnd this surprising too.

Fairly Busy

Tried to go to Hull Fair tonight. For those of you from out of town, Hull Fair is the biggest travelling fair in europe. It is kind of a mega-fair, when lots of fairs from around the country meet up. Some fairs have a dodgems. Hull Fair has around 8 or 9. It is huuuge. And tonight everyone from Hull and the surrounding area was going. In the end we couldn't get there, which is a pity as I'd like to have taken some pictures of the place.

Maybe later in the week.

Negotiation Skills

Many years ago our family set out to buy a car for mum. Having seen a few vehicles and dismissed them as being made of mostly rust, and lacking confidence for the back of some of them to actually follow the front around corners, we finally found a good prospect. Good condition, reasonable price, just a bit of negotiation to get things where we wanted them.

By now father and I were well rehearsed in whistling through our teeth, tut tutting and generally looking unhappy with the situation. This, we thought, would serve us well towards the end of the process where the seller looks at us and says "Well, what do you think?". We could then use these cunning skills to further drive down the price.

Except that for this trip we actually had mum with us. And she had not been briefed on this part of the process. When asked by the seller "What do you think?" she replied brightly "I think we should just pay the money". Which we did. Took all the fun out of it though. Turned out to be a splendid car. An original Mini with the lorry driver's steering wheel and the super whizzy handling. Great fun.

I was reminded of this today, when we ended up buying a car. That we actually did this was a tribute to the skills of the salesman. I'm not sure where they train these people, and perhaps I might be a bit more suggestible than some, but it is kind of worrying. If these guys ever decide to take over the world we are all in trouble. Maybe the good ones already have, and we are just buying stuff to keep them all happy. I tried both the techniques to ward off sales pressure that I remembered from the Which Report I read a couple of years ago. The car arrives on next week.

The memories kicked in when I was summoning my last reserves of negotiating skill to try and improve the deal and number one wife said firmly "I think we should just buy it". If it is as good a car as the Mini was, we will be fine.

Welcome to Paradise

welcome to paradise
Originally uploaded by RobMiles.

I saw this lovely sign on the wall in the student hall where number one daughter is going to stay. I wonder if they were expecting her?

Happy Ending and a York Drop Off

Got the money back. Never has thirty five quid looked so good. All was well and so we went off to York to drop off number one daughter in her place of studies. Very busy. All around were harrassed looking mums and dads with shiny new students trying to look as if their parents didn't belong to them. Left daughter in a room surrounded by a pile of stuff. And now we are two.

How to make people unhappy

Went up town and noticed that a shop was selling a particular DVD boxed set thingy (CSI Season 4 - more bodies than you can shake a stick at) for a very good price. In fact half the price of a shop that number one daughter had mentioned to me. So, being the caring parent that I am, I of course bought the thing for us to share. Good plan. Call it a win. Except of course that number one daughter promptly comes back from town and shows me the thing she has just bought (at the higher price of course).

Cue much regret and unhappiness in the House of Miles (tm). Nobody's fault of course, except mine. The current recovery plan is to throw ourselves on the mercy of the shop and try to get our money back. Or vouchers.

Yep. Funny

Qn: What do you call a bunch of witches that can reheat food?
Ans: A microwave coven

...thank you and good night...

No, Honest

Went up town with number one daughter today to kit her out with stuff for university. I was going to buy her a few bits and bobs and a coffee out etc etc.

But I left my wallet at home. Daughter had to fund everything. I couldn't buy a toy for me (not that I wanted one, but you never know) or anything else. She even had to pay for the car park. And now she is toying with the suspicion I did it on purpose. I didn't. Honest. And it was very embarrasing having to say things like "..you know I'm good for it...just a couple of quid for the car park..." in public.

Nope, Not Funny

Hmmm. Nothing in the "Computer Quips" is funny. Or perhaps I've just lost my sense of humour.

My favourite joke of all time is still funny though:

A horse walks into a bar and the barman says "Why the long face?".

I'm smiling now....

funny book?

funny book?
Originally uploaded by RobMiles.

I've been given a really funny book. Oh yes. Really. Tomorrow I might post one of the hilarious bon-mots in it.

light work

light work
Originally uploaded by RobMiles.

The lady is a pig

Have discovered that Io the pig is a girl pig. After this revalation the ladies in the house noted the cleanliness of her sawdust, her good behaviour and general air of niceness with which she has deported herself during her stay with us.

I can't help thinking that if she had been a he they would be looking at the same evidence and remaking on the mess, noise and the fact that there are not as many bottles of beer in the fridge as previously counted.

Never mind. I want them to get another pig. And call it "Silver". I'm sure the Lone Ranger would approve.

Down in Milton Keynes

Multimedia message
Originally uploaded by RobMiles.

If you are wondering why I am in a position to take photographs of the shopping centre in Milton Keynes at 8:12 on a Sunday morning, take a look here

Ba Humbug

I've been setting my alarm clock this evening prior to my "all expensive paid" trip to Milton Keynes tomorrow morning. We have to get up at 4:20 am. Not good. I hate getting up before the sun. Never mind, the usual amount of car door slamming and loud talking from the kids will make sure that the neighbours are not asleep at that time too.

Of course I have no usual alarm clock, mine is manufactured by "Oregon Scientific", gets the time signals from a nuclear bunker near Rugby and emits a faint "Silence of the Lambs" whistle as it glows to tell you the time in the dark.

And tonight it was showing "Ba" on the left hand display. I thought that it had got it's little silicon brain skewed, and had defaulted to a day of the week setting for a language where Ba means Saturday. I reset the machine several times and laboriously re-entered the alarm time and stepped through the language options. And each time, the accursed Ba came back. And the display was a bit faint. Stupid clock.

After a while it dawned on me that Ba is short for battery. Oh yes. A couple more AAAs (I always have a stock of batteries - we have been known to run out of toilet paper but never batteries) and we are back in business.