University Life

Last year I did a blog post about getting set for university life. I thought I’d bring it up to date. This is a tad late (term has started here) but there might be some stuff folks find useful:

1. Make sure that you have all your updates installed on your system. It doesn’t matter whether it is a Windows PC, a Mac or a Linux netbook. Find out how to check for updates and get everything up to date. At some point you will want to connect your machine up to a campus network of some kind, and if you don’t have all the latest security patches you may be vulnerable to infection.
2. Do something about viruses. At the very least make sure that your Windows PC has Windows Defender installed and running, and that the databases are up to date. If you want to install an anti-virus program don’t feel obliged to spend a lot of money, the AVG free anti-virus program is good and will cost you nothing. Get it from http://free.avg.com/. Please don’t spend huge amounts on some of the more expensive ones. The benefits are dubious and they also have annual renewal charges too.
3. Take a backup of your machine  and leave it somewhere safe (perhaps even at home). Find out how to use the backup software on your machine and take a copy of everything. Use one of these cheap external hard disks that you can pick up for around 35 pounds or so from places like http://www.ebuyer.com/ or Staples, or even Tesco. That way if it all goes horribly wrong when you get to university you can recover your precious music, videos and other stuff. Once you have the backup habit, take one every month or so.
4. Don’t spend huge amounts on other software just yet. Most universities (including ours at Hull) have deals that get you some programs that you need cheaply.  The same goes for books. In the computing field they are rather expensive, and you don’t want to pay a lot for a book and then find out that it is only used for a small part of the course. You can check the books out in the library, and you might also find that there is a second hand book sale on your campus where you can pick up the required volumes from other students quite quickly. You might also want to form a little cartel with fellow students to share books between each other and spread the expense (this is also neat because it can also give you a ready made study group).
5. Get a usb memory stick . Keep backups of all your work on it. You can also use it to take files into the university to work on. You will get some filespace on the university network, but it will not be an enormous amount, and having your files always with you is useful. Put a file on the drive with your contact details (just your name and phone number) so that if you lose the drive people can find out who to return it to.
6. Get some free on line storage. I like Windows Live Skydrive: http://skydrive.live.com/. This gives you 25 GBytes of space which you can access from anywhere on the web via a browser. The major limitation is that files can’t be more than 50M in size, but this is a perfect place to lob all those important essays and program source files. You’ll need a Windows Live account to use this and the uploading and downloading of files is all via browser which is a bit of a pain but there is a tool called Gladinet: http://www.gladinet.com/ that is supposed make this storage available to your applications although I’ve not used it. You can also use Skydrive to make your files available to other people. The access is controlled via their Windows Live Accounts and you can just email them a link to the download location or folder you want them to have access too. If you have more than one computer and you want to make sure that files are up to date on all of them you can use Windows Live Mesh for that: http://www.mesh.com/. Mesh gives you another 5G of free online storage and you can even synchronise files to Windows Mobile devices.  Anyone who just stores their important files on their laptop hard disk is an idiot. These services are free and mean that you can get at your files from anywhere, and you will not lose them.  If you want even more online space take a look at DropBox at http://www.getdropbox.com/.
7. Make sure you have insurance for all your nice toys before you set off to university. Don’t plan to sort it out when you arrive. It would be terrible if they got stolen or damaged before they were insured. Take a look at cover from student specialists like Endsleigh: http://www.endsleigh.co.uk/student-possessions.html (if anyone knows any cheaper deals feel free to let me know and I’ll update this post)
8. Don’t worry. Really. You’ll be fine.

Free Windows Phone Developer Event Next Week

Coming to a cinema near you. Probably.

Hot on the heels of the Windows Phone 7 Live training that we did last week in Bellevue,  Andy and myself will be presenting at a Developer, Developer Developer (DDD) event in Manchester next week on Thursday 7th October (seems appropriate).

If you want to find out how to get started with Windows Phone then come along to the free day’s worth of training. I’ll be doing two sessions on XNA for Windows Phone. I’ll also be telling the jokes that I wasn’t able to use in the Live Broadcasts…. Should be fun.

You can sign up here.

Home at Last

I think I’d rather like to live near here though.

Made it home this lunchtime. Luggage got here in time for tea (not that we wanted to eat it).

The journey nearly managed a final twist though. On the way down to land the pilot said, in a rather whimsically Dutch way, “The cloud ceiling is only around 100 meters above the ground, so we might have problems seeing the runway. Anyhoo, we are going to have a go and see how we get on…”.

The alternative to landing at Hull was not actually piling into landscape at speed but an all expenses paid trip to Doncaster airport. I’ve used this line before – nice enough place but no great desire to go there just right now. Fortunately the ground came up to hit is in just the right way.

It wasn’t a fun trip, but it was considerably funner (if that is a word) thanks to the folks that I met up with along the way. With my terrible memory for names I’ve forgotten what you are all called, but I do remember that you were great company at a time when a few laughs was probably the best we could hope for. Hope you all got to your destinations OK.  And your luggage too.

Breakfast of Heroes

At least the breakfast at the Renton Clarion is colourful….

Flight into Danger (well, almost)

Not a bad place, just not where I want to be.

In a perfect world I’d be posting this from home, not the Renton Clarion Hotel  “Conveniently situated just minutes from Seattle Sea-Tac airport”. But there you are, and here I am.

Twenty minutes into our flight out we had a “passenger incident” which resulted in us returning to Seattle and the plane filling with burly men wearing Tasers and striking action poses. Most exiting. Less exciting was the “slow reveal” of the fact that we would not be flying out on Saturday, but on Sunday. I feel very sorry for the staff on the plane and those at the airport who had to deal with a nasty logistical problem not of their making. I feel even more sorry for anyone who fell asleep just after takeoff and then woke up fifteen minutes later thinking they’d just had the shortest and smoothest transatlantic flight ever.

Still, the system worked and I’m sitting here with my “Delta Airlines Meal Voucher” and wondering what kind of breakfast blowout you can get for six bucks.

We are taking off again at noon today. Then I get to enjoy a seven hour stopover in Schipol airport before catching my flight to Humberside a day late.  Good oh.