Blog Hiatus

I'm sorry to have to tell everyone that my mum passed away today. For that reason I'm suspending blogging for a while until I get my act back together (if indeed it ever was).

 

Suited and Booted, and Brainless

Engineering accreditation today. The Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEE) are coming in to make sure that our Electronic Engineering degrees are of the proper standard. As I'm in Computer Science this should not concern me greatly, but we do jointly run a degree (a superb course called Computer Systems Engineering) with them, so it is on with the suit and tie and ho for the meetings. The meetings went OK, and they quite like the CSE course, which is nice.

Then into a first year java lecture, still wearing my suit. A bit thrown by the fact that as soon as I got into the theatre the students promptly chucked me out again. This is down to the fact that they now have class meetings to review the quality of the courses. These are fed back into our quality process via student representatives. And staff are not present. Ho hum, played patience on the Smartphone until called back in to do the business.

I was explaining inner classes, which are one of the more tricky and useful parts of Java. As is my custom, I wrote a sample program during the lecture. As is not customary, at the end I couldn't get it to work. We traced the problem to my suit jacket. Apparently it was stopping my brain from working properly. Took off my jacket, rolled up my sleeves and solved the problem - which was that you can't create inner class instances from a static context (how could I have forgotten that). I wonder if suits always have that effect on the wearers.

Then back to the office to find that Electronics have got their accreditation OK and that the CSE course has passed OK. And they really like our Mouse Organ practical and the CSE tutorial arrangements. And then back home to take the suit off.....

 

Wah. Nothing Works

Ever had one of those days when nothing works. When, after the first couple of failures you are wondering what new and interesting way the next device you try to use is going to break. Just had one of those. Ecch. First my ADSL started playing up at home and stopping me going onto MSN. Then the university fell off the web (not our fault, they were playing with the big wires in the Joint Academic Network). Then I couldn't get on to the Sharepoint web site for the Imagine Cup contest. Then the men picking up the mobile shed were late. And so on. Ho hum. It is incredibly frustrating to have lots of ideas and things that you want to do and say, and the technology won't let you. Fortunately by lunch time things were back on the sort of level.

Then spent the rest of the day dealing with students who are setting up their projects for next year. Some nice ideas for own projects coming in, I think we are in for another fun year.

Rounded things off with our first virtual meeting of Team Sinclair. Everybody is knuckling down nicely and having neat ideas.

 

Secret Assignments, and the Microsoft Mouse Museum

Today Team Sinclair (as we have been named) was given its "Silver Envelope Challenge" by Microsoft. I was pleased to find that the envelope actually was silver. Apparently it would have been a "Gold Challenge" but, with the Oscars and a bunch of other award shows just completed it seems that gold envelopes are in short supply at the moment. Anyhoo, we got our task and we are off and running. I can't tell you what the challenge is just yet (to preserve air of mystery and suspense in blog) but when we get it working we may decide to reveal all. The really good news is that the challenge (which is a real toughie) is a very good fit to the expertise of the group.

All the team members had personality profiles (except me the mentor, who arguably doesn't have a personality anyway) and these turned out to be a good fit. Then the team had to do a "Team Building Exercise". Now I committed a bit of a faux pas here, in that the night before in TGI Fridays (why don't they just say TGIF) I had waxed lyrical about how silly these things were and how building bridges over rivers with string and drinking straws was just daft. Of course one of the chaps at our table was Ian (if I remember your name correctly sir) from Obvious, the company setting up the challenges. I think I would score low on the "tact" part in any survey....

Anyhoo, suffice it to say that the challenge they set was actually very interesting and I think did pay off in terms of teaching the team a bit about how to work together.

Of course the highlight of the day was the trip to the "Microsoft Mouse Museum" in the middle of one of the office suites:

Viewing by appointment only

They have a whole bunch of old mice hanging from the ceiling, including one of the first Microsoft serial mice. As it would happen, I have one of the very original bus mice from 1986 in my possession, complete with the hardware interface card, box, programs and manuals. I mentioned this to Paul the curator, and he was keen to add it to their collection so I'm going to box it up and send it through later this week.

My mouse could be here soon.....

Then we clambered back into the mobile shed for the five hour drive back to Hull. Half way through the trip the evil students swapped my smooth Steely Dan sounds on the stereo for some thrash-metal-rap-disco-trance rubbish. Ho hum, but at least it made me drive faster.

Found this on my travels, but what does it do?

 

King of the Open Road, and then time to meet the team

Drove the shed down to Reading. It has the gear lever in a really stupid place which fooled me for a while. I've got used to it now, but when I get back into my car I'll be changing gear with the heater controls...

What a stupid place to put a gear lever..

The introductions took place at Reading football ground in one of the directors boxes. Had a very good view of the pitch (which looked surprisingly small). Then it was time to meet up with the team for whom (posh language) I am mentor. Got off to a great start when one of them wondered aloud where their mentor was. I know I look young for my age, but that is just ridiculous. Or is it....

Anyhoo, they turned out to be a lovely bunch of folks. Plus Andy. We had a good night out at TGI Friday's with food and beer paid for by Microsoft. Tomorrow we find out what we are going to have to do.....