Kicking out Andy, and other acts of rudeness

Kicked Andy out of my office today. Didn't quite shout, but I was quite brusque. There was no problem as such, except that if he had come another pace into the room he would have seen the three laptops that we were going to present him and the other Imagine Cup team members with later in the day. I'm not sure whether he would have put two and two together, but I kicked him out anyway. I felt rather bad about this at the time, but since he ended the day up a rather nice HP laptop I reckon that he will forgive me.

Then, at the quiz night somebody asked me for their grades for the programming work. I didn't actually mark that one, so I said that I couldn't help - perhaps more forcefully than I should have.

I must be careful when I feel a bit tired that I don't actually upset people any more than I do when I'm wide awake. It has been a somewhat exhausting week. Hopefully I will be back on fully polite form for Monday.

Marking Time

I've been marking again today. It is great fun to take a look at the kind of stuff that the students come up with. Sometimes the code is neat, other times it can be scary. Having said that, these are first year coders, some of whom have not programmed before - so getting the code to work is good enough for me at the moment. Style will come later.

Diners and Meetings

After the fun and frivolity of last night it was up with the lark so that we could be on the way to Doncaster at 6:45. Just to get to a meeting. The good news was that we rolled up at the diner for breakfast just as it was opening.



Then it was on to Doncaster where we had a good meeting (one were we actually sorted things out and made some plans) and then back to Hull.


This one is for you Rory, if you ever make it this far off the beaten track....

Valuable at Cambridge

I'm a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), which is nice. Always good to be considered valuable. Amongst the benefits of this status are invites to MVP Open Days, which are always interesting. Today I've been at one in Cambridge.

..and that's just the local public toilet.

Anyhoo, we set of bright and early, as shown by the clock below, and went down to Microsoft Research where they showed us a whole bunch of good stuff, only some of which I'm allowed to tell you about. There is a lot more to Vista than a pretty interface, oh yes, and mobile development is just going to get more and more interesting.


Town clock?


On the way back to the college we noticed that the bluebells were out.


..and they do have the most impressive garden sheds I've ever seen.

Every now and then you find out that someone you have admired for being very good at one thing is also extremely good at another. Our MVP Lead (the person charged with looking after our valuableness) has always impressed us loads. Turns out that she can also carry a tune, as she proved by donning a blonde wig and belting out a whole bunch of Eurythmics tunes at the meal at the end of the day. I managed to get a photograph of her in action but it is a bit dark because as a serious photographer (ho ho) I eschew such modern frippery as flash :



Good job Lorna, great stuff.

Winding Up (or is it Down?)

Last few pictures from the San Jose experience.

On Friday night we went to Fry's Electronics (seemed somehow appropriate). While we were waiting for the taxi back I snapped this. And I didn't buy that much really. Honest.

This is where I've been working all week. The dog is called Jake (you can just see him on the Smartphone screen).

Jon said he was not really trying to get T shirts from the stands. Yeah, right.

This is the offical vehicle of the San Jose Aviation Special Police. Please try to keep a straight face when you are being cuffed and stuffed.

Travelling Ages your Brain

When we were at the Nintendo GDC keynote we were given a copy of the new DS game which trains your brain and works out its age. I fired it up on Friday and managed to get a brain age of 52 (which is not great but close enough to my real age to not frighten me too much). And it does give me scope for improvement.

Today, in a heavily jetlagged frame of mind, I fired the game up again. 68. Oh well.

Actually, I've just been thinking, if the better you are at the game the younger your brain age is, the best way to win is to set there going "Goo Goo" and sucking a dummy.

Note : this is not the case. According to the book, your optimum brain age is 20. I'm going to head for 12.

Missing Day

As far as I am concerned today does not exist.

Crunch Day

Today was the day that I did my talk at the GDC. After some last minute tweaking I set forth at 9:00 with 41 slides and 8 demos to deliver in one hour. At the end of it the audience seemed happy enough. Only one demo failed on me because I'd left a file open by mistake, but the rest worked OK and at least this failure gave me the chance to tell "my favourite joke in all the world" while I tried to recover.

If you want to get hold of the resources from the talk you can find them here. I'll be using the material as the basis of a talk at the MEDC (the Microsoft embedded developers conference) in May. If you are serious about mobile development (and who isn't) I'd strongly advise you to go along and take a look. And I promise to tell my favourite joke again.

The Longest Bar in San Jose

Tonight we went to what is apparently "The Longest Bar in San Jose". I can't comment on whether there are longer ones (although the research on such an issue would be fun) but their pitcher of Bud was just fine by me. On the way out I snapped a picture.



The bar goes into the picture. And there was a big jukebox.

Now you see it, now you can't

We went to the Sony PS3 keynote today. The queue was enormous and so we only just got in. Fortunately we managed to find a seat on the balcony next to one of the huge screens:

Unfortunately for us, they were not using the side screens for the actual PS3 video. so all we saw was as above. Apparently they wanted to use High Definition Video, and only the middle screen (set cunningly back on the stage) could do that. So we were left with nothing. Which did not impress. Later in the talk I moved further back so I could see things and the stuff there was very impressive. Launch in November? I'll be there.

Then one of the real highlights for me. Ronald D. Moroe, the brains behind the wonderful new Battlestar Galactica, came and told us how he put the new show together. Very interesting to hear what were effectively design decisions being described about character and plot. I wasn't sure about the video game connection when he started, but as a lot of video games now tell a story it actually made a whole pile of sense to have him give a talk.


Ronald and the original version.

After that I was due to help out on the Windows Mobile stand. So it was on with the Microsoft shirt and away to give help and support to people wanting to know more about writing code for mobile devices. Great fun. I keep meeting ex students and people from way back who see me, do a double take, tell me I taught them to program and then give me a business card with an impressive title on it. Great stuff. Jon insisted that I put this picture of me out there.



The chap on the right is Eric Engineer, Microsoft Product Manager and top bloke.
As a form of revenge, and also so his loved ones can see what they have been missing, I've also added a picture of Jon with a Camel.



More later

Not so wet today

Today was a bit drier than yesterday. Although there was some snow on the mountains apparently.

The day started well, with this really cool car in the motel car park. Then, when we went up town the skies turned a bit more blue.

After a hard day being told stuff we ended up in this neat bar.

A pitcher of Coors Light? That will do nicely.

It Never Rains in San Jose

They say it never rains in San Jose.

Until I go there.

San Jose Sunday

So we set off for a wander round San Jose.

Fancy a weiner?

These are the things you aren't allowed to do on the train. I was kind of hoping that one of them would be take photographs, which would have been a lark. What do you think the thing on the bottom right (which you are allowed to do)is?

I have a weakness for neon signs.

This was inside the mall in the police station thingy. This is a kind of care in the community that I've not come accross before.

The trainstop had this really nice glass roof.

..and here is the train.

This is the San Jose flea market. A completely amazing place. If you are in San Jose and have a need for a cheap chainsaw, or arc welder, or wedding dress, or cowboy hat, or anything, you must go there. I bought a bag. And a watch.

Where we are.

So, are you a Felipe kind of person. Or do you prefer Eli?

On the way to the brewery for dinner.

This is the beer sampler. Don't have the very dark one. We think that they accidentally poured us some furniture polish. The one with the lemon in was nice though. As was the buffalo burger.

San Jose Morning

It is a very nice morning. But apparently things are going to get a lot worse weather wise later in the week. Never mind.

Found this outside the room in our motel.

And this is our motel. We are just about to head out for a day trip. I'm taking the camera, there will be pictures....

Do I know the way to San Jose?

Yes. In fact I'm here now writing this. Sitting in my motel room with free WIFI and a big bed. Which I plan to use in a minute or too. But first, the start of the reportage.



At Manchester airport they had a very impressive skylight.



On the plane to Chicago they had happy cheese.



This was the roof of the moving walkway accross the airport in Chicago. Impressive for a ceiling I thought.


..and this is where we just had tea. More tomorrow.

Gungy

Helped out at the University Awards Ceremony tonight. I did some judging and some presenting. Great fun. Half way through we had a quiz called "Hostage to Fortune". Two local schools were in the final. Each school had a quiz team and one very special member:

You may be wondering why the two people in special suits. In a padling pool. Well, at the end of the quiz this happened:

I thought the tradition was that only the loser got gunged, but apparently in Hull we are made of sterner stuff.

Bongo Friendee

My next door neighbours have a car which revels in the name of a "Bongo Friendee". It is a super four wheel drive people carrier with the best name I've ever heard. I think it originally hails from Japan.

I can't find the bit of the car called "Bongo" (although I swear it is there) but I found the "Friendee".

Manly Voice

Got a very manly voice at the moment. Something to do with a throat thingy which I seem to have caught. I feel fine, but I have very a very impressive rumbly way of speaking. I think I should record a bunch of movie trailers and advert voice overs before the usual sound comes back.

Thin Ice in Thin Prose

Thin Ice is a BBC comedy show. It is on every Tuesday at 10:00 on BBC2 (or you can watch it via the interweb)

It is brilliant. You must watch it. Message ends.

Pressing Engagement

Writing press releases today to tell the world about our success at Microsoft. I think I might get one of those green eyeshades like they have in old movies, just to give the prose that proper editorial slant.

Misheard?

....well, we had all the dancers wrapped in tinfoil and the rehearsals with the orchestra completed in time for the full moon. But as the werewolves were coming in someone at the back asked "Are you sure they said silver ballet?"

Shopping for Bargains and Shutting off the Power

Went up town with number one son today. Which was nice. Although I always seem to spend more when he is around. I'm not quite sure why this is, he protests quite strongly when I start to buy something, and definitely sees himself as the voice of reason in this respect.

But I still end up getting stuff. In this case I bought the game Lumines for the PSP. It is rather impressive in a "tetris on acid" kind of way. It never ceases to surprise me how games manufacturers can come up with different takes on falling blocks that need to be jiggled in some way.

I also found out something about the PSP (and also my stupidity I guess). You can just turn it off. In the middle of a game. Previously I've been carefully exiting my games and then shutting down the power. You know, like you do with the PC. However, just to see what happens I turned the PSP off in the middle of a game. And when I turned it back on again the game was still there. Amazing. I suppose that this is all in the thick little book which came with the device (being a thick big person I never read that of course).

Beyond Your Wildest Imaginings

Bad things that happened today: At the celebration meal at TGIF on the way back from the competition I dropped a piece of some chilli stuff off my fork in my bag onto the tablet PC.

Good things that happened today: Everything else. And I mean everything else. We won big. We won the lot. I think I've just slid into an alternative reality where I'm writing the script for a while (but even I wouldn't have dared write down what has happened today). The various Hull teams took over the competition like a really tough bunch of highly trained competition ninjas. Which they sort of were. We ended up with first, second and third place. Amazing. The rest of the world must even as I write this be planning their revenge. Let them try. We can take it. After today we can take anything.

After we had cleaned out Microsoft we went out for our meal where the one bad thing of the day happened. After that it was the smoothest bus ride we have ever had from Reading to Hull. No hold ups, in bed before midnight.

I'm incredibly proud of the students in all the teams. I'm proud of my colleagues who came along to provide mentoring support. Very well done people. I'm fairly sure that real life will be kicking back in soon. If you want to find out more, and see some pictures, take a look here.

Ride a Shiny Bus to a Competition Lifestyle

At 11:30 we were on the shiny bus and off to Reading to the Microsoft Imagine Cup Software Design Challenge Final(tm). Just me, Dave, Iain and most of the four winning teams. A very smooth ride down, enlivened by a really naff, but hugely enjoyable, film called "The Longest Yard". This is a remake of "The Mean Machine", a film about an American Football team made up of jailbirds who sign up so that they can beat up the guards but end up learning important life lessons and stuff like that. A hoot.

When we get to our posh hotel we just have time to down a couple of free drinks before being ushered into the dining room to eat a delicious meal (which was curry as the final winner of the UK competition gets to go to India to take on the world - I of course was the last person to spot the significance of this). Then a quiz which, much to our surprise, our table manged to win. After that it was one more free drink and then off to bed.

At least, that was the plan. In fact I spent another hour going through team presentations and then bed. But great fun.

Haberdasher to the stars

I'm still working on getting all the Imagine Cup teams sorted. The latest thing is sorting shirts and stuff so that everybody in the team looks spiffy. So from developing posters and desigining presentations I've now switched to choosing shirts.

Good job I'm multi faceted.

Sorry Software

There are some things which are guaranteed to drive me into a blinding rage. No really. And one of them is software which says it is sorry. I'm trying to get some tunes out of Napster and into my music player. Everything is right. Except that it won't work. It says "We are sorry, but we could not do this...". It then goes into an explanation which makes no sense and leads to no useful conclusion. I'm used to that bit.

But the way that software now feels the need to say how sorry it is when it fails drives me up the wall. It can't be sorry. It is a machine running a program. OK, a person wrote the program, but they are obviously an idiot (otherwise the program would work). Do I feel better when an idiot (who is probably paid more than me) tells me, via his broken software, that he is sorry. I think not.

Is this supposed to make me feel better? Are there people who do like it when the machine says that for reasons of its own which it is not going to divulge but may well be down to some incompetence somewhere down the line it is sorry that it can't do the required thing. Where are these people? Do they want to buy shares in my oil well, microwave oven that changes lead into gold and perpetual motion machine?

Next thing that will happen is that software will start shifting the blame. "I'm sorry I could not do that, but you did press the keys rather hard just now so I don't feel at all bad about this....".

I think I'll go and have a lie down.

Missing Day

Lost a day today. Very busy but I'm not sure just what happened. Most of it was spent mentoring our Imagine Cup student teams which have made it through to the UK final. Out of the 10 finalists from around the country there are 4 that I'm kind of involved with. Three teams are from Hull and the fourth contains a couple of our students.

This is great for the university, and says something about the quality of the people that we have here, but it has meant that instead of doing proper work I've been looking at posters, commenting on presentations and devising marketing strategies all day.

And loving it.

The Cloggs have gone

Well, after a frenzied round of bidding the cloggs have been sold. As with a lot of ebay sales, it all happened in around the last ten minutes. We are now looking at everything in the house with a view to it's saleability on ebay....

Embarrassed by Musical Socks

I was looking after a question-answer session during our open day today when somebone's mobile phone went off. A silly, reedy, ringtone which sounded like the drinking song.

Turned out to be my socks. I had been given a pair for christmas which play tunes and I'd triggered them when I crossed my legs. It is kind of hard to manage a serious discussion of academic prospects and student finance when your socks are making music.....

I don't remember ordering this...

Parked the car in bright sunshine. Wandered outside at half five after a busy day and found:

I don't remember ordering this.

Movie Mogul?

Whilst going upstairs just now I was seized by the idea of making a movie with the title "Undersea Chins from Space". I wonder if I have been working too hard.

Update: Actually I think it comes from playing "We Love Katamari" too much. Plenty of chins there. Oh yes.

Here Comes the Judge

Got to be a judge today. At Hull we have a Young Scientist of the Year competition and we were selecting the finalists. All of them had to give a stand up presentation and then handle some questions. A pretty scary ask for someone under 16. And they were all great. Made the judgely thing really hard for us, since I found out quite early that we weren't allowed to pick everyone.

In the end we narrowed it down to the three from each category who get to go to the final in a couple of weeks. Sometimes I worry about the future, what with global warming, bird flu, energy crisis, asteroid strikes etc etc. And then I see all these keen people who are really into science and I get a lot happier. I reckon that they'll be able to handle whatever is coming down the tracks.