Knights of the Old Republic. Sounds good to me. I'm not really one for this kind of game - not got the patience you know. However, number one son is. So we agreed to share a copy. Star Wars games are usually horrid or wonderful, with not much in between. KOTOR (as people seem to want to call it) is wonderful.

It is very like being in a Star Wars movie. For once all the text has been spoken by proper actors, which slows things down a bit, but adds immensely to the gaming experience. They must have spent hours in their studio recording scripts, because there sure is a lot of spoken stuff in there. The characters interact with each other, and you with them. We have just escaped from one planet (which was blown up just after we left in a fit of Dark Side pique) and are being trained up as a Jedi. We are playing everything as "Mr Nice Guy" at the moment, but we are looking forward to doing the whole thing again in totally evil mode.

An excellent game, if you have an XBOX you should invest in a copy.

 

Somewhat busy today. Have a whole bunch of things that needed to be completed yesterday. And my office needs to be tidy in case we want to film anything in it. Keep finding things whilst I'm tidying up though - 3D Tomb Raider poster (with glasses) anyone?

 

Hmmm. More fame. The October issue of Everyday Practical Electronics has a nice feature on the Imagine Cup team, along with a colour picture. I've told the student team members about this. What with the upcoming presentation and video diary they are going to have difficulty getting their heads through the door.

Ideas Incorporated: I always get into a kerfuffle when my mobile rings (perhaps this is because it happens so rarely, but there you are). The problem is that I have to press a button to answer it, and I sometimes press the wrong one. My Nokia 7650 (retired) had a lovely design flaw which meant that you could actually turn it of whilst getting it out of your pocket to answer. The power button had been carefully position to make this not just possible - but downright easy. My SPV (the present phone of choice) doesn't have that flaw, but it does have a power button which is remarkably coy about actually switching the phone on. Anyhoo, back to the plot. Why don't phones have some kind of inertial sensor in them that can detect them being moved up to your ear? That way the phone could answer without you doing anything. All it has to do is detect a change in orientation over time as the phone rings. Note, if anyone out there makes a fortune out of this one I will expect a cut of the royalties....

 

Another day of hard graft (boo) followed by a trip to the Bradford Photographic Museum IMAX cinema to see "The Matrix Reloaded" on the very big screen (yay). If you have not seen an IMAX film they are very impressive. You sit about twenty feet from a screen the size of a five storey building. The images are projected using special film which is so large (each frame of the film is around the size of a postcard, rather than the usual postage stamp negatives in ordinary films) that it has to be flipped through the projector rather than pulled. There are a whole bunch of speakers inside the screen to give you a really powerful sound and the total effect is amazing. Up until now they have used IMAX for specially shot films but now some Hollywood blockbusters have been given the treatment. It is kind of expensive apparently, with all kinds of digital trickery being needed to make the images fit on the screen and retain quality, but the effect is well worth it.

The only real problem is that the screen is so big, and fills so much of your field of view, that you can't easily take in the very fast moving action. Also, the somewhat pockmarked face of Morpheus in extreme close up comes out looking like the surface of the moon. If nothing else this film shows the wonderful job that the makeup department did. And the chase scene is absolutely amazing.

 

Busy busy busy. Writing stuff for the new course. Sorting out last minute details for the new lab. Organising our Imagine Cup presentation. Forgetting to go to the Staff Meeting (oops).

Then going home to watch another two hours of 24 season two. Question: How can someone as clever, resourceful, determined etc etc as Jack Baur have such a daft daughter?

 

Got a lot of stuff done today. I like going home feeling that I've made a difference. The new lab is looking really sweet, and it looks as if it will be ready in time. It is so posh that we've decided to call it a "Computer Suite" rather than a lab! It has been a bit nerve wracking getting it all sorted, but everyone pulled together and it looks like we are heading for a happy ending.

To help manage the project I did something which has worked quite well. I built a private web site for all the people who were involved in the development. I then posted all the contact details, notes of the meetings, plans of the lab and timetables on this site so that everyone involved is able to quickly find out the status of the project. I didn't use anything particularly clever, just IIS on my office machine and the Frontpage project web site wizard, but I think that it helped quite a bit. As we added new people to the project I just gave them the password to the site and they could quickly bring themselves up to speed on things. I'll have to go thorough the site logs to find out just how many people used the pages, but if nothing else it helped me a lot! The only thing that was rather quiet was the forum part where people could raise issues, but I think that this is because we had regular meetings and there was no need to use forums to discuss things.

Microsoft reckon that the next big push is on group working, and that their new Office tools are geared to making this all easier. I'm very inclined to agree - and the next big project I'm involved with I'll definitely do the same again.

 

Ah Sunday. Day of rest. So I shall.

Then I decided to dismantle the PA system for my Dolby Digital setup. I bought it cheap (never can resist a bargain) and it works fine, except that it hums along with the soundtrack at around 50 Hz. The way I see it, there are four reasons why amplifiers hum (other than the fact that they don't know the words - ho ho), either the inputs are not properly earthed, the device itself is not properly earthed, the power supply is not properly smoothed or the box is picking up hum from inside.

Of course the answer to these complex technical problems is to "take the back off and poke around a bit". By the way, don't try this yourself. In the UK we have 240 volts coursing down the mains cable and this can seriously damage your lifestyle (and even end it). I read some advice (which may be bogus) which is that when messing with things which might be live you should keep your left hand in your pocket. This is the hand which is (allegedly) wired through your nervous system directly to your heart. Mains up this hand will go through your heart and probably stop it. Apparently the right hand is wired differently (and somewhat less life threatening). This is a bit of a pain for any southpaws out there and it may not even be true, but I always do this now...

Anyhoo, got the back off my nice little subwoofer revealing the true horror which lies within. And found out why it is so cheap. The standard of construction was horrid. And it had all been covered in glue. And the designer had located the mains transformer (a device which works by pumping out a magnetic field) right next to the input connectors (which are designed to transfer tiny signals). Of the four possible causes of humming, I've got three of them. I hate bad design. I see is as a form of cheating. By simply turning the board the other way up, and putting the speaker connectors near the transformer the idiot designer could have removed most of the problem. By putting bigger capacitors on the power supply he could have removed just about all the rest. And then by adding an earth wire we would have had a squeaky clean signal. Instead the whole thing was around ten pence cheaper to make and didn't work very well. Hmmm. I think this will be a case where we have to use a dustbin to solve the problem. Should have saved up and bought the Sony one....