If it can go wrong...

Did a lecture with the first years today. Progamming II. I swapped with John because his voice is in the process of shutting down with one of the many nasty colds which is going around at the moment.

"No problem" I said breezily. "I'll do that for you, easy peasy". Somebody upstairs must have heard me. The same somebody who then made my tablet PC stick in portriat mode (i.e. on it's side) when I hooked it up to the projector. The same somebody who tampered with the wiring in my brain to make thoughts not work and come out wrong and generally respond badly when other things tipped over. If I had made any rash bets involving clothing (fortunately this time I kept my big mouth shut on that one) I would have left the place stark naked.

Sorry folks, I'll try to be a bit more prepared next time. Although it did all work at the end.

The one bit of brightness on the horizon was how keen that the students are to take place in the Imagine Cup this year. It looks like we will be sending a goodly number of project proposals down to Microsoft in Reading for entry into the UK finals which is great. One or two of them look like real winners too. Fingers crossed and all that.

Keen Powered

We had another open day today. I did my warm up routine and it seemed to go OK, although perhaps next time I won't introduce it with the shouted line "OK you lot, now it is time for the boring bit...".

Had some good conversations with the people thinking of coming to Hull. A lot of them were very keen to get into games programming. We've told them that it is hard work and it is by no means guaranteed that they will get rich, but still they come. I think it is for the joy of doing the stuff and also for the chance to see your name on the credits of a game. Fine by me, I love working with people who are keen to create software.

Wacky Day

Some days are just wacky. Today was. It was supposed to be mostly normal, but it didn't seem to quite end up like that. The department was greatly enlivened by the arrival of a bunch of students from Korea, who had come to see what we do in the gaming department. I gave them a talk about Smartphone game programming which was quite fun (by that I mean that I enjoyed giving it - and I hope that the audience enjoyed it too).

At one point the program failed and I made one of my stupid statements as in: "If it doesn't work this time I'm taking my tie off". Of course, it failed, so off came the tie to much amusement. I then added that if it failed to run again my shirt was coming off next. This was greeted with much less amusement, and no small amout of fear. Fortunately for all concerned, the program ran fine from then on. I then put my tie back on and we went outside for some photographs...

Wallet Full of Hearts

We went out for our romantic dinner tonight. The place we go, which is really nice, marks the day by covering the tables with lots of tiny, shiny, hearts and stars. Which we hoover up and put into our wallet and purse. This means that for the next six months, whenever I pay for something the cashier is treated to a little happy, shower. Which is quite romantic I suppose.

Fighting with Tins

I've never been keen on false economy. (actually I've never been keen on any kind of economy, but that is by the by). Therefore I'm not sure what it was that made me buy a cheap tin opener. Perhaps I hoped I could use the money saved to buy some gadget or other. Anyhoo, it was a bad move. Fighting your way into a Fray Bentos tinned meat pie with the apology for an opener that we ended up stuck with is just the kind of thing that you don't want to do after a hard day at the office.

Perhap I'm being unfair to the device. Perhaps when it was new, all those years ago, it was actally able to do what its name implies. But now it doesn't. What it does do is extract swear words and blood in equal measures whilst scratching the paint on the pie tin a bit.

So next time I'm in a position to get one I'm going to get the finest and poshest opener that money can buy. Which is a gadget of sorts I suppose.