July Open Day

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The university had an Open Day today. I shot back from town and then turned up suited and booted to do the talk. Thanks for being a good audience people.

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Could have used a slightly wider angle lens.....

We will get C# books out to everyone as soon as we get another batch printed up. And we will be doing the draw for the PSP on Monday.

Anyone who was there but didn't get their name and address to us, all you have to do is send me an email with the name of the fish the Dutch audience didn't know, and we'll send you a book and enter you in the draw.

Got the Bird

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When I got out of the shower this morning I found that I was being watched by a bird. Well, with a body like mine I suppose I should expect this to happen every now and then.

Actually, it was not quite like that. The bird was sitting on the bathroom window sill

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I don't think she saw much

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When I left for work the bird was still there.

I think that particular part of the house has the attraction of the updraft from the boiler flue, which is probably a good way to warm up (it was slightly chilly first thing).

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Bonus flower pic

Slide 7 Rocks

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Today is Slide 7 day. Slide (Students Learn Innovative Developer Expertise - or something - we picked the name because the domain name was available) is run by Microsoft the Academic team at Microsoft UK in Reading. They put on sessions about professional development and get a bunch of students to turn up. This year it was all about connected applications.

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Our posse on the way into the Mother Ship....

I took a minibus full of folks from Hull to join the hundred or so others that had made their way from all over the country for the show.

And the show was good. There was a slight dip in quality after lunch, when I did my bit on Web Services, but the rest of the material was top notch. There were sessions on Web 2.0 (where we discussed the question of what Web 2.0 actually is), ASP, Windows Live and Orcas. And then a great talk at the end on Sliverlight.

People, you should find out more about Silverlight. You should also sign up for Popfly since this is mucho funo. I've been playing a bit with my Popfly account and it makes it dangerously easy to develop impressive applications.

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My Audience (most of the students were next door, but we manage to make more noise than them...)

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Mingling at the BBQ

At the end we had a BBQ and a great time was had by all. There will probably be a Slide 8, you should get your name down for it if there is...

Ed Dunhill, the Microsoft bod who made it all happen (Kudos Ed) is going to post all the slides and other material on his blog.

Then, after a five hour rumble up the motorway it was home in time for bed.

Amsterdam Gets XNA

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Had great fun today doing a session about XNA for DevDays. The audience were wonderful, and I took some happy snaps:

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on the right...

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...in the middle...

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...and on the left

Thanks for paying attention people, and I hope you use XNA to get to some interesting places.

Before my talk we had a session from Dave Mitchell of Microsoft. He was able to tell us that the XNA Creators Club memberships are going to be part of Microsoft Academic Alliance. This is the best news. Now we can put a bunch of machines in our labs for people to write for and it won't cost us extra on top of our AA subscription. That news alone was worth going to Amsterdam for. If you are a member of a university faculty you owe it to yourself (and your students) to follow this up and get your hands on one of the best bargains in education at the moment).

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Dave at the start of his presentation

Earlier today I went to a presentation by Scott Guthrie about Silverlight. This is a fantastic technology that lets you make very impressive user experience. It lets you put .NET powered behaviour into web pages and also gives you the Windows Presentation Foundation to drive your user interfaces. Excellent.

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Scot talking about multiple language support in Sliverlight.

I've had a really good time in Amsterdam. I went out for a meal last night and took even more pictures:

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Standard Canal picture

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Artistic cake

There are some more on my Flickr site.

Wedding Daze

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Confetti

Went to a wedding today. We went to the service and then the reception and then came home. Everything was great, even the weather. Number one wife was going out to the evening party, whilst I stayed at home and nursed the jetlag. Before she went out again I thought I'd print off a few of the photos I'd taken. Bad plan. The process went like this.

  1. Upload pictures to computer. Select picture and press print.
  2. HP printer drops out the print onto 6x4 as requested, but the ink cartridge has run out.
  3. Insert new ink cartridge.
  4. Printer refuses to do cartridge alignment.
  5. Take out all paper. Reset printer. Put paper back in. Reset printer again. Printer does alignment.
  6. Restart print.
  7. Printer prints out picture on A4 paper, not 6x4.
  8. Move lever on printer to get the right size. Print again.
  9. One good print. Hurrah. Print two more. Works again. Hurrah.
  10. Move on to next picture. Select print, ask for three copies. Go for cup of tea.
  11. Come back and find that all three copies have groom's head cut off.
  12. Examine the pictures carefully and note that all photographs are being cropped.
  13. Spend ten minutes trying to figure out how to get the HP driver to print the actual size that I want.
  14. Discover that this is impossible.
  15. Select another picture with groom's head closer to the middle. Ask for three copies. Go watch some Dr Who.
  16. Come back and find that the 6x4 paper has run out, so the printer has printed the three copies on A4.
  17. Load some more 6x4 paper in and ask for three more copies.
  18. One print comes out, with the picture diagonally across it as it has not loaded properly.  Printer then stops and flashes a red light.
  19. Give single print to number one wife, and walk away from the computer/printer before I do it some serious damage.

Virgin on the Ridiculous

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Tonight I had to fly back to the UK. I'm a tall person. On the way out Virgin Atlantic were kind enough to swap my seat for one near the emergency exit so that I could sit with my legs in front of me. On a normal seat I just can't do this, so it is always nice when an airline makes an allowance for my particular shape. 

On the way back Virgin Atlantic were also happy to swap my seat. As long as I paid them 75 dollars. I thought that stank. I paid up though, since the prospect of nearly nine hours sat with my knees above my ears and no circulation in my feet did not appeal. Are they really so strapped for cash that they have to resort to ripping off people who have no choice in the matter? Up until that point I had been very impressed with the airline, who seem to have the most chirpy and upbeat cabin staff I've ever encountered.  Now I'm a bit less pleased. I've emailed customer relations (I'm reaching the age where I can dash off "Yours, disgusted" emails quite quickly) and we will see what happens.

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Inside Orlando Airport. Big place.

Prime Outlet Shopping

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After a morning on the booth telling people they were now embedded developers as well (most people with C# and Visual Studio 2005 are, thanks to the .NET Micro Framework) it was time to head out for some shopping. I quite like strange watches, and I knew that at the Prime outlet there was a Fossil watch outlet store.

My plan was to catch a bus up to the top of International Drive, have a wander round and then catch another back. As I was leaving the conference hall I heard a strange sound, like a very long round of applause. It was the rain on the roof. Lots of rain. I carefully charted my route back to the hotel so that I was under cover for most of the way, except for the last 50 yards.

I got soaked. In Florida, when it rains it rains. Muchly. After a complete change of clothes I ventured out again, but standing at a bus stop was not a plan. So I was forced to spend a goodly chunk of cash on a taxi ride instead.

I much prefer buses to taxis. In a bus I reckon you have safety in numbers. Being alone in a taxi cab with a person I've never met always makes me nervous. In a bus, even if the driver does turn out to be an axe wielding maniac with a passion for driving off cliffs you have a few people with you to help take him on. In a taxi it is strictly one on one. Also, with a bus when it stops at the lights or in traffic there is no worry about the price going up. In a taxi I can always see that number steadily rising, and making me poorer. And I always think that the taxi driver will spot that I'm from out of town and take me to my destination via Brazil or something.  Having said all this the taxi drive was, like just about every one I've ever had, smooth and uneventful and within around 15 minutes I was at the Prime discount mall.

Which was a dump. I'd taken a camera so that I could snag some pictures, but there was nothing worth photographing. Everywhere had an air of decay and moving on, I suspect there must be other discount malls in Florida doing well, because this one was more than a bit quiet. Anyhoo, I found the watch shop and after a long and happy search through the display (I like looking at watches, OK?) I selected one for me and one for number one wife.

On the way back I was lucky to walk straight onto a bus which took me right back to the hotel.

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View from a bus

Play poker with your fridge

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Another day on the stand describing the Micro Framework. Half way through an explanation I mentioned to one chap that on Thursday in our lunchtime session Roger will be demonstrating his program that lets you play wireless poker using Zigbee devices connected to a Micro Framework board. The delegate thought about this for a moment. "You mean the .NET Micro Framework lets you play poker against your fridge?" he asked.

I can't think of a better way of putting it. You can easily add lots of intelligence to a tiny device, and then connect it to other things to make life interesting. Although in that situation a poor poker player might starve to death, or at least have to drink black coffee for the rest of their life.....

After stand duty it was time to head up to a demonstration of the framework. I had been invited to provide some closing remarks (nobody can close down an event better than me) and so I told everyone there about one of my major claims to fame - around 10 years or so I wrote some code which helps put datestamps on bottles of Budweiser beer. There was no .NET Micro Framework then, of course, so the application was forged in the hell of cross compiling, no debugging, and code that had to be strange "just so it would work". I made the point that if I was doing the job today it would take me a lot less time, and be much more fun to do. You can read one report of the event here - it is great to hear nice things about the platform.

On the way to the event I poked the camera out of the bus window and grabbed a few snaps.

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Apparently "Inverted pimply pyramid" means "Titanic Museum" in Orlando

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Believe it or not

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Nirvana in a box?

So Many Questions

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I spent a big chunk of today telling folks all about the .NET Micro Framework. We had a stand near the Visual Studio booths, so I had the pleasant duty of telling lots of people who had C# and Visual Studio 2005 experience they are now fully qualified embedded developers too. Embedded development is the fiddly business of putting code onto tiny processors.

One example application we have is a C# controlled massage char (which proved very popular as the day wore on) but we also have Micro Framework controlled RSS display sign and also a Z-Wave network interface device that was developed in weeks rather than months thanks to the fact that the company was able to use C#, VS 2005 and all the powerful emulation and debugging support that comes with it.

Once folks cottoned onto the idea they were well keen. Quite a few had experienced the horrors of writing embedded code and really relished the thought of controlling hardware with software again. Particularly as there are no new skills to learn (I'm starting to sound a bit like a salesman now, but what the hey, I like the stuff).

Then it was back to the hotel. I had a quick shower, lay down on the bed for a minute and then woke up four hours later. I love jetlag....

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Another satisfied customer

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What it is all about

Free Massages

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One of my favourite ever jokes was on an old Monty Python record. As I remember it went "And now for a massage from the Swedish prime minister". Followed the sound of heavy slapping. Wonderful stuff.

We haven't got the Swedish prime minister available, but we are giving out free massages at our stand in the TLC Blue area at TechEd 2007. We have a couple of .NET Micro Framework controlled massage chairs which are just the thing to ease away the strains of the day. And you can find out all about how you could be an embedded developer but just not know it yet....

Hot Spot

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I wandered out to register at the conference. I mutter about my air-con in the room (I call it "Old Faithful" now) but I'm darned glad that it is there, because when you leave the hotel it is like stepping inside a hair dryer. This is not a cooling breeze, it is the output from a blast furnace.

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Branded Lamp Post

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My hotel

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This probably symbolizes something

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Why we are here

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Guess what it is, and win a prize

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My universe for the next few days....

Apparently it is going to be even hotter for the rest of the week. Oh goody.

Bright and Early

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Slept surprisingly well considering. I seem to have an air conditioner in the room which was designed by the same person who does jet engines. And air raid sirens. It came on by itself in the middle of the night. The first time it did this I managed the amazing feat of leaping up in the air from the bed, whilst remaining completely horizontal. Since the unit seems to start up every ten minutes or so, I'm now mostly used to it, the sound only causing mild palpitations at the moment. By the time I leave here you'll be able to drop a piano on the ground behind me and I'll hardly bat an eyelid.

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Noisy beast

The room is huuge. It is the entertainment part of a luxury suite, which means I get the sink, the fridge (bigger than the one at home and also with a distinctive sound) and the bed that pulls down from the wall.

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Rich Living

I managed to sleep in until around 5:00 am, which for a first night away is pretty good. I was lured from my bed by a rather nice sunrise.

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I bet all the sunrises are all like this here....

Later today I'm off to meet up with the rest of the team. For now, it's time for breakfast.

The Road to TechEd 2007

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Author's Note:

From now on pictures are going to be presented in "SlightlyLargerVision" (tm). I've modified my Flickr plugin for Live Writer so that imported images now fill up the available screen width. Just one of the many ways I strive to make your lives better. Next I'm going to add a settings page so that you can adjust this. Not sure when, depends on how the jetlag goes.. 

Today's the day I head out to Orlando for TechEd.

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My plane (although there were others on board)

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The taxi from the airport. Note the rather worrying umbrella handle..

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Trees and planes

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The conference centre looking good

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Pretty skyline

More tomorrow

Best Cafe in the World

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I've found the best cafe in the world. It is in York station and the coffee is good, but everything there is annotated in a most amusing way.

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Message coated sugars

I know that all the slogans and clever artwork were actually concocted by a bunch of soul-less advertising executives for a franchise owned by an uncaring global corporation working out of an anonynous office somewhere in Slough, but I still think they are neat.

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Indeed it is, but we got one anyway

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York station looking good.

Surviving Marking with the Gitaroo Man

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I've found a way to survive marking. It goes like this.

Seems to work a treat.

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Only got to level 3 so far, but great fun

If you've got a PSP you ought to get this game. Recommended by number one son (there is no higher recommendation, believe me) it is worth getting just for the frantic Japanese music and the look of the thing. I picked it up for ten quid last weekend. You should too (except for the last weekend bit - which would require a time machine).