Widen your angle

On Saturday I bought this stick on wide angle lens thingy. It is a kind of sticky thing that you can put in front of the camera on your phone to give you a much wider field of view. As it only cost three quid I was not expecting great things. However, the above shot (taken from the same position as yesterday) shows that it actually does quite a good job of pulling in even more office untidiness than the standard lens.

I love taking wide angle shots, and so I think I'll keep this with me. If you want one you could take a look here, but they are much cheaper from the Red5 shop in Hull.

testing again

This is just a little test to see if I can still post pictures from my mobile phone. Yes, this is my office, and no, I haven't tidied up for a little while.

Fun with Code

I'm doing some more weekend coding. Some people jump out of planes for fun. Others go diving. Apparently the most popular "sport" in the country is fishing. Whilst sitting by a canal in the rain waiting for nothing to happen is not as dangerous as the first two, it still has somewhat limited appeal to me.

I write programs for fun. (it is not the only thing that I do for fun - that would be deeply scary) However, I've been turning out some code today and I've really enjoyed doing it. It is all for a talk which I'm giving in March at the Game Developers Conference. I'm trying to make a video game which starts with you taking a picture of a chum and transforming this into an item in the game itself. The provisional title is "Playing with Friends" but that may change. Anyhoo, with just a few lines of code I've got my picture, and with a few more I've made it into a pretty game sprite. (it runs a bit slowly at the moment - but it is early doors).

Eventually the whole content of this little endeavour will be released to the outside world. I'm sure you can hardly wait....

Tiny robots will make me complete

Nearly bought some tiny robots today. They were on sale cheap (but they had none left). Up until now I had not realised that the thing I need to be complete is a tiny robot fighting arena and a couple of robots to fight in it. But now I'm sure that it is (mainly I suppose because there are non available)

I'm not sure if this is a significant step along the road to my own particular brand of spiritual enlightenment, but there you are.

Update: The shop is trying to get me some from another branch. We shall see....

You don't know what you've yot ''till Its gone

My office machine is crumbling again. It went through a bad patch a few weeks back and I thought I'd put it back on the straight and narrow, but now it is becoming seriously wobbly. I think it has actually reached the point where it is more trouble than it is worth, so a rebuild beckons.

This means that I am frantically backing up all the files that I think are important, prior to a day spent reinstalling everything. The problem with this is that you don't know what is important until you lose it. I work on the "distributed backup" principle, which means that the files that are vital to me are smeared over three machines, my office, my tablet and my home computer. This works pretty well most of the time, but it is not unknown for vital files to drop through the cracks.

When I do the rebuild I will of course build onto a brand new disk, and keep the slightly broken one as a combination novelty paperweight and get out of jail card. The idea is that I can probably get it to work long enough to pull off that file I didn't think I needed, but turns out to be vital. In fact, I have a little pile of such discarded disks in my cupboard at work.....

Degrees of Bad Photography

I was Graduand Marshal today at our degree ceremony. Tricky little job, with lots of graduands to tell what to do and get into the right place. But in the end it all went very well. I took the tiny camera, which takes wonderful pictures.

But only it you point it in the right direction and press the button at the right time. Two things I singularly failed to do today. The first Honorary Graduate, the actor John Hurt, took his position behind the lecturn barely six feet from me to give his acceptance speech. I took six lovely photographs. Of the lecturn. The second, Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, was nicely in view but I did not manage to capture her smile (which is very stupid of me because she did smile a lot). I've put the picture in though, I hope that she is not too upset with the result:



Sorry about that, I think I'll stick to landscapes and hotel bathroom switches...

Breakfast for Dummies

I was having breakfast this morning. The pack of was adorned with a picture of a bowl containing the cereal and some milk along with a spoon. It as also captioned "Serving Suggesting". Well, duh.

Buy this record

Bought the record at Christmas. Listened to it a bit and then it drifted to the back of the media player for some reason. Found the file again today and gave it another hearing. And by gum it is good. Rush and and buy (or stay in and download) a copy. Now.

In case you are wondering what I'm going on about, the record is "Speak for Yourself" by Imogen Heap who has a really good blog too.

A Life of Sundays

I really like our Sundays. I like the idea that you don't have to do much (or at least in my case people have probably given up asking me to do things on Sunday). They are a chance to do something which may or may not be useful, either way it doesn't matter - it is Sunday after all. You can also meet up with friends and family and also have a good lunch.

I think a life of Sundays would be rather nice.

Take the camera shopping

I always take the camera when I go shopping. Every now and then you get the chance of a nice picture, and it is useful to be able to record it.

City Hall is looking rather fine. I suppose the ladies sat there symbolise something, but I've no idea what

World Domination Thwarted

I was thinking about creating a thousand killer robots to do my bidding.

But then I remembered that I don't go to many auctions.

...and as a follow up

What do you call a piece of clip art that defects to the enemy?

A loyalty free image.

Open For Business

Had our first open day of the year today. I did my usual warm up and got laughs in most of the right places. Then we gave away a Playstation Portable to one lucky attendee. I've started telling people who come for a visi that I will be the person teaching them to program if they come to Hull.

Not sure if this is a good idea...

Fit To Drop

The Simpsons Programme for exercise is coming along. This evening I trudged through "Bart the General" and still have some breath left. The idea is that greater physical fitness will bring with it improved concentration, humour, vision and hopefully dress sense.

MySpace is not My Space. Yet.

Someone I know is now on MySpace. I've been checking it out. Maybe I got stuck in a loop of people, but everyone seems to be the kind of person that you see in Gap adverts. They are all young (by my standards), have dynamic looking pictures, are slightly goofy but serious deep down y'know and into things like Tai Chi (whatever that is).

This is supposed to be the new, happening thing which will change the way that people live/work/play/meet/greet/eat/sleep etc etc. I'm not that convinced. But I might get some space anyway, it is free after all and someone on there says she would like to meet "Anyone who owns fainting goats". I've just googled this, and they do exist.

Tall People Eh?

Ever wanted to throw things at the telly? Tonight on the local news they had this bloke who was moaning about how hard it is to be tall. He was around the same height as me (perhaps slightly shorter - I really hope so) and so they photographed him squeezing into tiny cars (with the seat obviously set as far forward as possible) and looking forlorn outside clothes shops. The report didn't really go anywhere, except that he was unhappy about being tall and presumably expected people to feel sorry for him.

I guess it must have been a slow news day. Perhaps tomorrow they'll have someone who is blonde going on about how hard it is to be blonde and have to endure all those "dumb blonde" jokes. Then on Wednesday they can bring in a person with big ears and a big nose who will complain how hats never fit and tissues never seem large enough.

Well, really. As a tall, blonde person with big ears and a big nose (who will therefore presumably get called in on Thursday so they can shout "full house") I can state that life for someone in my position is actually not that bad. Sure, I can't buy clothes that easily, but if you liked shopping for clothes as much as I do this would not seem to be a problem. And as for stupid comments, I am in the perfect position to rise above them. So there.

It looked red in the packet

My new toothbrush is pink. I didn't mean to buy a pink one particularly, but there you are.

Actually, buying toothbrushes is now quite fun. In the old days, when they were made by paintbrush companies and were just a bit of plastic with some bristles shoved in one end, they were rather boring. But now they are all exotic shapes and colours with things like "high performance" and "super whitening action" written all over their shiny packages. Of course they also cost around ten times what they used to as well, but that is the price of toothbrush progress I suppose.

Anyway, I enjoy reading the claims and weighing up which particular type of tufted, high performance, spiral weave brush structure would best serve my dentistry. I will never be able to afford a Ferrari, but at least I can have a toothbrush that sounds like it might be one.

Bought It

I was up town today and noticed that the "Everything for a pound" shop is now completely empty. I wonder if someone actually did go in and manage to buy everything. For a pound.

Curse of Friday the 13th

Today is Friday the 13th. I've been waiting nervously to find out what kind of terror this day, which traditonally brings bad luck to all, is going to deal out to me.

Well, it is late in the evening and the worst thing that has happened so far is that my nice ballpoint pen has run out of ink.

I think I may have got off very lightly, although it is a very nice pen and refils are bound to be expensive.

Winter Drawers On

It was quite cold in the night. In the morning I was back scraping ice off the car.
I'm always confused by the way that the days after christmas seem to have more depressing mornings and evenings. You would think that the nights and mornings would be getting better and lighter, since we are now moving closer to the sun or somesuch. However, the last week has seen huge amounts of grey, dank, unpleasant times. This morning was a bit of an exception, so I took a picture of the event.

Full Episode, Full Fat

I managed to exercise for a whole Simpsons episode tonight. I'd forgotten just how good the first season was. Then I went and spoiled the effect somewhat by having an enormous chilli followed by christmas pudding (I got one half price) covered in cream and custard. Oh, and half a bottle of wine. Then I went and drove my Maclaren F1 very fast into walls (not in a real sense fortunately - and not very well).

Missile Launcher for a fiver

Ian came round tonight to pick up his misile launcher. These are quite neat devices which a clothes shop has been selling at a reduced price. I never thought there would be anything interesting for sale in Marks and Spencer (a big UK clothing chain) but it seems that times have changed. You plug the launcher into your system via USB and it lets you aim and fire three foam tipped missiles under computer control. Great fun for cubicle wars.

They were initially rather expensive, but becuase the takeup has not been great they were knocked down to a fiver. I ended up buying four, one for me, one for number one son, one for Ian and one for Geoff (who at this moment is unaware of his good fortune). I thought we could have some kind laptop controlled pitched battle.

Actually, I've just started to fret about the way that things on the web are scanned etc. Do you think that something at GCHQ will now flash red and finger me as an arms dealer? Will my blog now be pored over by intelligence types looking for coded messages. On the other hand, another reader is another reader.....

Update: They seem to have sold out in Hull now, but if you want to get one it might still be worth dropping into your local store.

Self Sabotage

The "Simpsons Programme" for physical fitness is not going well. Today, ten minutes into the first session, number one wife came in and informed me that I had sent her out to tax the car without the insurance certificate. This had resulted in a trek across town to the post office, followed by dealings with a smug cashier which did not have a successful outcome (although I've a feeling the cashier had a good time). At this point my torture changed from physical to mental, as I was forced to stop exercising and begin the hunt for the missing piece of paper.

Of course I found an insurance certificate within 30 seconds. But it was one year out of date. I've no idea why I set myself up in this way. The obvious thing to do with an old insurance certificate is to shred it and put it in the bin. The less than obvious action is to leave it lying around so that it can be found in mistake for the proper one. I've often wondered why I do this kind of thing. It is on a par with putting stuff in a "safe place" from which I'll never find it again.

I've come to the conclusion that I have a talent for self sabotage in some matters, particularly those involving bits of paper that you only need once a year or so. The good news is that only two hours later I found the vital document. Of course it was just where I had put it. In a safe place.

Tact Leakage

I think I may be losing my tact as I get older. Last week my father gave me a chocolate orange with the words "It's only a small token" to which I replied "Yes it is". Yesterday number one wife bought a tartan skirt and I found myself quoting chunks of Braveheart dialogue and offering her some shortbread when she showed me it. Not good.

The Simpsons Programme

For some time our bathroom has had two sets of scales in it that we use to keep track of our weight. We had a "happy" set and a "sad" set. The happy set gave you a value which was two stones lighter than the sad one. The idea was that you used the set of scales according to your mood. If you were feeling unaccountably happy, you could use the sad set to normalise this. If you were feeling particularly fragile you could use the happy set.

However, as part of a controlled weight loss programme (which everybody seems to be starting at this time of year) this approach does not work terribly well. So last week we bought a third set of scales which we were going to call "the arbiter". The hope was that they would give a weight which was the average of happy and sad. Unfortunately they promptly agreed with the sad ones, so we threw the old scales in the bin and now we are permanently sad. And heavier than we hoped we were.

In response I'm about to start an exercise progamme which I'm going to call the "Simpsons Programme". Every day I'm going to exercise for the length of a Simpsons episode. I'm going to work my way through each series and see what happens to my physique. Number one son reckoned that I could move up to programmes with longer episodes as I get fitter. So I could go on to the "Dr. Who", and then the "Ally McBeal" and finally the "Lord of the Rings Return of the King Extended Edition" programme. Which would probably kill me.

Sherlock Holmes to the Rescue

Did my bit of the presentation today and it seemed to go OK. At least nothing was thrown at me.

Then back onto the train for the journey home. I've got hold of some Audio Book versions of Sherlock Holmes stories (they were on a magazine cover disk) and they are great. I spent the journey back listening to "A Study in Scarlet". The writing style is a bit dated, but it still works for me. You can get hold of the books (and an MP3 Player styled after a Kalashnikov rifle magazine) from here.

In the Club

I went down to London today. We are staying in a posh hotel which Google Earth doesn't know the location of (or perhaps it is the posh people trying to throw me off the scent). Anyhoo, when I finally found the place I was told that I am being given a complementary room upgrade to "Club Class" or somesuch. I therefore inspected the room with particular care to find out what this means. In truth I didn't find much. The wardrobe has a light in it. There was a knob in the bathroom (which doesn't seem to do anything).

I turned it all the way both ways and nothing happened. There was also a wide selection of "adult" movies available..


Apart from that everything was pretty much as I would expect a room to be. And no, I didn't spend 9.99.

High but not Mighty

Today is kind of a red letter day for me. It is the day that the shop where I get my clothes has a sale. If yo uhave ever been lucky enough to meet me you will have noticed that I am quite a tall chap. Tall enough to be unable to buy clothes at normal shops. So I am forced to go to an establishment with the lovely name of "High and Mighty" to obtain my apparel. The logo used to be a big picture of Henry the 8th. What a lovely person to be associated with.

Anyhoo, fourth of January is when their sale starts. Other shops have theirs on more convenient days during the christmas break, but hey, they have no need to worry about fitting in with the plans of their customers. It is not as if we are going to go anywhere else. So we take time off work and rumble down the motorway in my recently clean car to see what was fashionable in Sweden five years ago.

When we get there we find a bunch of strangely shaped people pawing the rails of clothes and looking a bit fed up. As well they might. The shop has mixed up all the high and the mighty stuff, so that you have no way of knowing whether that nice jacket will fit or turn out to be large enough to go round your body twice. They have two well defined customer groups (as in the name) and so of course the obvious thing is to mingle the products for them, doubling the time it takes us to shop. Perhaps their rationale is that I will like that jacket so much that I will ignore the fact that the sleeves stop just above my elbows and there is enough room inside the thing for myself and a couple of close friends. Whatever, at least it saves me money when I only manage to track down one jumper.

Not Really Working

Today is the day that everyone drags themselves back to work. Except us. We have taken an extra few days of precious holiday to avoid having to do this. So while the breakfast news was full of stories about how this is the worst day in the year to go into work and how everybody is horribly fed up with this we were able to roll over in bed.

Then I got up, got dressed and went into work anyway. Just for a couple of hours. Well, I had to work out some timetables for laboratory demonstrations for next week.

Slave to the Shiny Car

Cleaned the car again today. The previous car was lucky if it got cleaned once a year. The new one is getting a going over every week or so. I think that it is because the new one shows the dirt more readily (good plan that one rob) or it might be that I like going out and coveting it. Although at the moment I only actually own the steering wheel and one of the seats.

At lunch time we went out for a free lunch courtesy of number one dad. Good food, good company and then back to his house for some of the million mince pies he said he had bought. He fibbed. I only counted around a thousand. Mind you, we can eat any number of them.

Resolutions Resolution

Today is supposed to be the day that you make all kinds of life changing resolutions and set an agenda for a better you and a more wonderful year. I was asked what resolutions I'd made and I was forced to admit that, as I have already achieved perfection, there is nothing much left to aim for. Perhaps I should resolve to be a bit more modest about my greatness.