Poster Power

I'm presenting a poster at a programming conference next week. I've been told that just taking the Thurderbirds movie one down from my office and toddling off to Oxford is not how it is done. So I'm grappling with graphics programs and words in equal measure. How about:

"The teaching process at Hull is best described as: 'A Metadata Driven, Test Oriented, Algorithms First Approach'"

Kind of rolls off the tongue doesn't it? True too. But what shade of orange to print it in?

Blow Your Mind

So I'm sitting upstairs playing with some code. I'm doing a conversion of a little tank battle game from Pocket PC to Smartphone. It will hopefully be the basis of an MSDN article. Anyway, I'm playing the game to see what it does. My little tank manages to hit the computer's little tank.....

Well, I didn't know I'd got the speakers turned right up loud. It's not my fault that my media centre output is a bit low. The good news is that my Logitech speakers delivered the resulting explosion very efficiently. The bad news is that the sound nearly blew me off my seat. Downstairs number one daughter was left thinking that I had spontaneously combusted.

I think I'll start using that sample as a ring tone on the phone.....

The Seven Signs of Aging

There's a really irritating advert for face cream on the telly which goes on about the "Seven Signs of Aging". I've been wondering for ages what the signs might be, and speculating that there might be a sign of age for each deadly sin (would make job interviews and the like much easier if there were).

Interviewer: "Mr Jones, I see your skin is all blotchy. According to my notes that means you are a liar"
Mr. Jones: "No I'm not!"
Interviewer: "Aha!!"

Anyhoo, on one of the more recent adverts they actually gave the seven signs. They shot past in an instant, but thanks to the miracle that is Sky+ I managed to get them. They are:

1. Pores
2. Blotches
3. Tone
4. Texture
5. Radiance
6. Dryness
7. Lines and Wrinkles

So there you have it people. I'm sure that these "signs" were derived by white coated professors with qualifications in "Wrinkleology" and "Toneness", and not by some empty headed marketing types. Oh yes.

But what on earth is radiance? The way I see it having too much radiance may be regarded as a bad thing, glowing in the dark not usually being associated with healthy living.....

Would You Want a Car that can Drive Itself?

With all the driving I've been doing recently I've been wondering when we get cars that can drive themselves. Now that the Global Positioning System can pinpoint your location to within a couple of feet and computers can read car number plates and road markings and stuff it can't be long before we get self driving cars.

Or will it?

It occurs to me that we may never get them. The car makers may never let them be built. How can they go on about the "smooth accelleration", "great driving experience", "fantastic roadholding" that their car gives if the human on board is not driving. When a car becomes just a tin box that automatically takes you where you want to go in the fastest and safest possible way, what will the difference be between the brands?

What Do They Have In Their Vans?

We drove up to Durham today to deposit number one son back amongst his studies. On the way we drove past loads of RAC vans. In the old days (I can talk about the old days now because I am officially old) an RAC van was a little affair. Nowadays the vans are enormous.

I wonder why they are so big. It is not as if new cars can be repaired. All the old cars needed was a pair ofold tights and a wad of chewing gum to get them working again when something broke. New cars might as well not have bonnets for all the good you can do mending them if they go wrong. Perhaps the vans hold complete new cars which they can assemble at the kerbside if yours fails.