The Opposite of Planning

“Plans are Useless. Planning is crucial”. I really like this statement. I reckon it boils down to the fact that even if you plan stuff carefully there is a very good chance that it will all go wrong. But it also says that if you don’t plan, things are even worse.

I reckoned I’d planned carefully enough. I had all the bits on hand to make the tags, I got the software mostly working on time. I was held up with a bug of mine that I blush to think about now, perhaps it will be the basis of a blog post in later days.

Anyhoo, the only thing missing was the little plastic envelopes that I’d ordered a couple of weeks ago to put the tag, and the name of the lucky owner, into. But they were bound to arrive in time, weren’t they?

No. So tonight we got to spend a chunk of time sticking bits of papers onto tags with bits of freezer labels that I’d “liberated” from the kitchen.  I know some of the labels will drop off, but it is the best I can do.

Number one wife gave me some sage advice. “Why didn’t I get some at the weekend, just in case?”. Indeed.

And I just know the little bags will arrive tomorrow.

“Tags of Fun”

Regular readers of this blog (and yes there are some) may remember back in March when I made “The Door of Mystery”. This was an RFID tag powered raffle management system based on the .NET Gadgeteer. It worked very well when we used it for the Red Nose Day Lecture in Rhyme, and the people who bought tags to take part rather liked having them around, and hung on to them.

Which got me thinking. I’d like to be able to do prize draws and things in lectures, with bigger prizes if you’ve been along to more lectures. And I reckoned that these little tags might be a way to do this.

So I’ve invented “Tags of Fun”. We are going to give all the new students a tag each and I’m going to trial the devices at the Welcome Party on Thursday evening. We usually give “Drink Tokens” out, but this time everyone can use their tag with a customised “Door of Mystery” device to see if they can have a drink. The system will let you buy one drink, and then the head of department will have to use their magic “key of power” to reset the keys and allow more drinking.

Just to make things even more interesting, I’m going to link each tag with an owner, so the system knows the name of the tag holder.

Of course, now I have to get the software updated, download the student lists, build the user interface and program around 250 tags.

Before Thursday.

First Day of the First Week

The progress of the cold continues. My nose is now an even brighter red than is usual. I’ve always fancied being the kind of person who could light up a room when they entered it, but I don’t think this is quite what I meant.

The good news is that all our new students have arrived. It is great to see you. I’m looking forward to my first sessions with you on Thursday.

Falling Ill

I seem to be falling ill. It is a bit like someone is inflating a balloon full of concrete inside my head. Although of course I have no way of knowing how that really feels.

Acer Iconia W3 Tiny Windows 8 Tablet

I really should not be allowed up town just after I’ve got paid. Particularly if I then happen across an Acer Iconia W3 for a very tempting 250 quids. I had a careful look online and read a bunch of reviews that said the screen was horrible and it wasn’t up to much. And then I bought one anyway. Two reasons really. I’ve love to have Windows 8 in an 8.1 inch display form factor. And this is actually “full fat” Windows 8, in that it is running on an Intel Atom processor and so it is able to run LightRoom and Windows Live Writer. The one thing the reviews agreed on (even the unhappy ones) was that the battery life was good at well over 8 hours. I like that a lot. And to me the display looks fine.

It comes with a license for Office 2013 Home edition, which I’ve bumped up to the Premium one. I’m not going to be putting Visual Studio on the machine, but then again with only around 11G free (I got the penny pinching 32G version) it might not fit anyway. The thing is, I don’t see this as my primary developer machine. More something I can cart along with me and use to knock out blog posts with pictures.

I’d just about got everything working and then I broke it all by wiping the machine clean and loading up Windows 8.1. This has mostly worked, although at the moment the orientation sensor is lacking a proper driver so I can only use it in landscape mode, which is a pity.

The main reason for all that danger and excitement is that I wanted the much improved SkyDrive integration in Windows 8.1. The small amount of internal storage matters a lot less if I’ve got access to everything in the cloud and then I can mark “work in progress” folders as living on the device. Windows 8.1 does this really well, and there’s no need to install the desktop client thingy. And I can drop another 64G of storage into the micro SD slot if I want to take some movies or music with me.

At the price I reckon it is an absolute steal. The screen is a bit of an acquired taste. It looks wonderful if you can get your head into the correct position, otherwise the contrast dips and all kinds of weird colour schemes appear, although it remains useable. If you consider that you can’t get much of an iPad for that price you start to see just how much properly useful technology you get in a tiny package.