The Sound of Silence

Found a lovely feature on the BBC coverage of Wimbledon today. If you use the fancy match selection thingy you can sometimes find a game with no commentary. No people saying things like:

"He must really regret missing that serve"
or
"I'm no expert, but I don't think he meant to do that"
or
"If he doesn't win the next game, he might not win the match"

I watched an hour or so of play and it was wonderful. Just the players and the game and the score. Even the crowd was well behaved. One of the players was Spanish and the other was Greek (I think) and so they didn't quite know who to root for.

I've never quite understood the need for commentary. If you go to see the game live you don't get it and we don't get people commentating on other things:

"..and here comes Miles into the lecture theatre now. Running only two minutes late, a record for him. And yes, he's going for the laptop. Let's see if it will boot first time, or if he'll have that blue screen problem like he did back in 2002 in that memorable data structures seminar. I think that was also the time that his green marker pen ran out, but I may be wrong on that one. Anyway, I see he's found the remote for the video projector, and turned it on at only the third press. I think we could be in for a good session here. The students on the back row have opened their copies of The Sun already in anticipation of a glorious display of teaching at its finest. What do you think Graham...."

A week with Portia

I've had my new tablet PC for nearly a week now. I got it from Max after advising him to buy it. So far it has worked fine. I've loaded a bunch of software on and I have had no problems at all. Love it. In fact I've decided to call her Portia the Portege. The docking station I am going to call "The Devil".

It is as if at Toshiba they had a meeting and asked the engineers to line up, smartest on the left, dumbest on the right. All the engineers on the left went off to build Portia. All the engineers on the right went off to build the docking station. When Max was showing me how horrid the docking station was I noticed that he had to roll his sleeves up prior to beginning the process of putting the machine onto it. You do. The process goes like this:

1. Shut the tablet down.
2. Close the tablet so that the screen is not facing you; i.e. it is in the position where you would not want to use it on a docking station.
3. Remove the dangly bit from the docking station.
4. Insert the left hand docking fitting into the left hand peg on the dangly bit.
5. Insert the right hand docking fitting into the right hand peg on the dangly bit.
6. Notice that the left hand peg has now come out, so return to step 3 and repeat a few times.
7. Now that you have got both pegs lined up and are fairly confident that the things are sort of lined up, apply sufficient pressure to force the tablet onto the dangly bit. You have to push hard to get all those tiny gold pins to fit together, more than hard enough to bend one or two of them I suppose.
8. Assuming your nerve has not failed, and you now have the tablet clipped on to the dangly bit, attach the dangly bit to the main base, making sure to line it up carefully or the whole thing will crash to the floor, smashing the tablet and pulling the cable off the end of the dangly bit. Oh, and be careful not to accidentally twizzle the thing into the landscape mode as this makes it hard to handle and, if the tablet is not properly fitted, will also cause it to plummet to the floor.
9. Remember that you really wanted to see the screen, so get the dangly bit back off the base station and turn the tablet round and then put it back.
10. Turn on the power and wait for the tablet to boot, all the while hoping that the connections are good.
11. Note that the display is now the wrong way up but the tablet pen has X and Y transposed. Spend a mind mangling two mintes trying to press the correct button to log in and have the screen sort itself out.
12. To remove the tablet, first press the special release button and wait for it to go green before continuing or Bad Things (tm) will happen. Then pull the mystery lever, just like the one that lets you rotate the tablet around but on the other side, to have the precious device catapulted into your lap.

This is in sharp contrast to my previous docking station for the Fujitsu tablet, which had a fitting procedure which went like this:

1. Put the tablet on the docking station.
2. Pull the lever.

The good news is that I am going to practice on this until it I've beaten it. The better news is that with Portia having a keyboard of her own there is no particular need for the docking station at the moment. Perhaps I could sell it on eBay to people who've never seen one...

Depressed of Wimbledon

Watched a bit of tennis on the telly today. A english player got beaten. It seemed like he was having difficultly coping with the fact that the other guy was a better player then him. And the crowd, watching weren't much better.

When I was a lad (gosh I sound old) the audience at Wimbledon viewed the game in respectful silence, allowing themselves a sharp intake of breath and perhaps a ripple of clapping at a particularly excellent piece of play by either person on the court. This rabble cheered every time the english player got a ball back and applauded wildly whenever his opponent hit a ball out of the court or double faulted. I ended up rooting for the other guy. And he won.

Once the game was over there was non of the "...and now moving over to the game on court number one.." business of the old days. We had to have an interview with the winner, asking him how he feels about winning (my guess would be pretty pleased - but I'm not a professional tennis commentator). I left the room before they had the interview with the bloke who lost so they could ask him how he feels.

There seems to be an obsession with finding out how people feel these days. Not impressed. I want to watch people playing tennis, not explore the feelings of someone I'm never likely to meet. Ho hum. And I do miss Dan Maskell.

Verity Stob Lives

Went to Foyles today. Spent far too much on books. One book I just had to buy. The collected writings of Verity Stob. She is a legend. Many years ago a new magazine called .EXE, written by programmers for programmers, hit the stands with a regular column by the aformentioned Ms. I remember looking forward to the magazine just to turn straight to the back and read her bit.

Very clever, very funny and very clever (have I mentioned that she is very clever). She now writes for Dr. Dobbs. And you can buy a book of earlier writings. If you have any computer leanings you should read her stuff. And you will laugh. And you will thank me. So go. Follow that link now. Shoo.

Back here? Sorry about that. The Dobbs people stop you from reading much. Never mind, there is always here for a little bit more. I guess you'll have to buy the book. After all, I'm afraid I'm not going to lend you mine.

A Cup of Imagination

I've been sort of associated with the Microsoft Imagine Cup student programming competition since it started a couple of years ago. A couple of years ago I had the great pleasure of seeing a team of Hull students give their all in the competition and come third in the world. Today I saw another set of keen and knowledgable folk strutting their technical stuff in search of glory.

And one of them is number one son. I'm a bit concerned. I've taught him everything I know (took a surprisingly short time) and this might not be enough.

Needn't have worried. The lad done good. Not a winner, but pretty darned impressive (and I say this as an unbiased parent) and a very good start in the business. I think he will be around again next year...

I took a load of pictures. The event took place on top of the BT tower and I think I made a bit of a fool of myself at the event with my big camera and the 130 photographcs I took. Ho hum. I've put some of the better ones on my flickr account (just click on the moving picture thing on the right of this page to find your way there).

Then back to Kings Cross to my little hotel. Meeting up with number one son tomorrow to go to the best bookshop in the world and also the Gizmondo shop.