Shopping, Flying and Posh Nosh

Went shopping. Had snack.

Bought airplane. Went home. Flew airplane. Broke wing. Went out. Posh nosh. Mr Chu.

Or, in the long form. Went up town and, after a small repast at Marks and Sparks we bought a little remote controlled airplane for a bit of fun. Number one son and I went shares on it, and Dad came along for the first flight to commit everything to video. Which he duly did (although rather unfortunately he missed the bit where number one son tripped and rolled over a cowpat). The fact that he only needed to use seven minutes of tape is due to a combination of wind and the ground coming up and hitting our shiny new plane very hard indeed. The one piece wing is now two pieces. It was great fun, if rather short lived in our case. However, for a first attempt it went very well - right up to the last five seconds... The plane we bought has an ultrasonic thingy which lets you have dogfights. We are now after other owners so that we can set this up. If you are interested, let me know. If you want to fight me, make sure you are not on channel 6...

Then we went out for a birthday celebration to Mr Chu. This is frequented by notable celebrities and does superb crispy aromatic duck. If you are a Hull student it is a good place to take mum and dad - if they are paying.

 

Live Labs and Daring Doings in Doncaster

I have it on good authority that the lab was ready for action first thing, with 85 seats and counting. Good stuff and kudos to the guys who finished off the wiring. I'm getting a bit old for this "just in time delivery" stuff..

Went to Doncaster for two exam boards and a Joint Board of Studies. That's three meetings. I'm going for a lie down now. I did however have one moment of glory in the car park:

 

Labs, Videos and Barrels'o'fun

The new lab is coming along. With a bit of extra overtime we should have everything in place for the first students tomorrow. Rather unfortunately (or something) I'm in Doncaster attending an exam board tomorrow, so I shan't be around when the lab comes to life. A pity, but there you are.

Got the final version of the video back from Microsoft today. Very good, even though I'm in it. Of course, if you want to see the production you'll have to come along to Hull on Wednesday next week, but take it from me it is worth the trip.....

And so to the first programming lecture. Dunno why, but I love teaching programming. And the first year seem a really great bunch (although I suppose I must be careful what I say because some of them might read this). We started by considering what an algorithm is and isn't. (Clue - it is a recipe but it is not a shopping list). Then we tried to make an algorithm to stack a bunch of coloured plastic barrels in order of size, largest first. It is something that anyone would do without thinking, but for a robot or computer you have to do the thinking for it. And since you don't know what you did when you did the task...I'm awarding a prize for the best english version of the algorithm. By best I mean the most idiot proof. If you want to have a go, the tower looks like this:

Note: This is the first ever picture in my Blog. More later....

 

What a day. Started with a fire in the fire alarm panel. Which I find really funny. Then another, but unrelated, incident which has taken out all the telephones in the surrounding area, including the university. So presently we have no fire alarm and no telephones. Which apparently means we can go home early.

Spent the day unpacking machines for the brand new lab. Not a thing I do very often, but it is important to lead from the front when your back is against the wall and a deadline is looming. I got quite good at it by the end. The new lab is going to be super duper. It will be the biggest lab on campus with over 130 seats. And if it doesn't work, or isn't ready on time it will all be my fault. Ho hum.

 

Another busy day. Is the semester only two days old? Met up with some of the students on the .NET masters today at the introductory lunch. They are really keen, which is great. Next week the course gets up to full speed and the real fun begins.

Found out something "interesting" about my Microsoft Smartphone today. Smartphones are mostly wonderful - based on Windows Pocket PC and fitted with a slot for MMC devices. I got a nice big memory card, filled it up with choice tracks and I've been happily listening to high quality music using Media Player on the phone. Then I, rather stupidly unplugged the phone from the cradle whilst I had the memory card open in explorer on the PC desktop. And lost the lot. I've tried to reproduce the fault, but of course it works fine every time now. But once is enough. I'm going to keep backups of the cards from now on..

Went to see "Calendar Girls". Not my choice particularly, but enjoyable all the same. Simple enough plot - bunch of WI (that is Women's Institute) ladies decide to make a nude calendar to raise money for a good cause - but I get the impression that the unseen hand of the producer had decided to complicate things and add bits to make the film more "marketable" and last longer. Some of the scenes seemed rather contrived and straight out of the "plucky little team taking on fusty institution and then learning to handle success and fame" book. Or perhaps I'm just too jaded and cynical. Anyhoo, some wonderful moments and it is nice to see a film with a proper happy ending, even if there weren't any car chases or spaceship battles..

 

Welcome to any students new to Hull who may be reading this. I'm going to be updating it with course related stuff as we go, which you may or may not find useful. If you are not from Hull, feel free to read along and join in with the chorus. To find out more about me, follow the About Me link.

Today has been mega-busy. On top of all the usual start of semester stuff we also had a film crew turn up. They are shooting some stuff for a video diary about our Imagine Cup team. They wanted to film in my office; which suddenly and mysteriously became very tidy (just don't look in the cupboard..).

Then they went on to a student house to film the bits with the team. By all accounts a good time has been had by all and the footage is, well, "interesting". The video is being premiered at the Imagine Cup presentation in Hull on September 24th. If you are able to, I'd strongly suggest that you drop round to the Basil Reckitt Lecture Theatre in the Ferens Building on the Hull University campus at 14:30 on that day. There will be presentations and free stuff from Microsoft, who will be coming along to give us a launch preview of the new competition.

 

Spent a lot of the day grappling with remote systems management and Windows 2003 Web server for an article I'm writing for a magazine. Still found time for some KOTOR and Babylon 5 though.