Hull Pictures

I made a quick trip up town today to pick up some bits and bobs. The weather was nice, and of course I had a camera with me.

You really wouldn’t think this was the middle of Hull.

Zune HD

I’ve just managed to get my hands on a Zune HD. It is a personal music player from Microsoft. The Zune brand has been around for a while. The first players appeared a few years ago and have been developing ever since. They are rather like ipods; but they have one or two nice extra features, including built in WIFI and radio but they have always something of also-rans when compared with the all-conquering Apple product.

However the HD version might change that. It has a superb OLED display and an all new multi-touch user interface. As the name implies, you can put high definition video onto the machine and get video output into an HDMI display.  The whole package is lovely and the hardware is beautifully made and very stylish.

It also runs XNA, so you can take C# games that you have written for the framework and they just run on the device. Your games can even take advantage of the multi-touch interface and the accelerometer inside the Zune. I managed to convert a game to use them in just a few minutes. I’m going to write some posts nest week about porting games over onto the platform, but there won’t be much to say as it is all so easy to use.

The only problem with the Zune is that you can’t get it in the UK yet.

Undergraduate Welcome Party

Today was the day of our welcome party for those new to the department. There was free drinks, free food, silly games and my evil quiz.

This is the team that won. You should have seen this picture before I removed the red-eye…

These folks came in second. The prizes this year were a bit smaller than previously, so we could pay for extra beer…

This is the third placed team, obviously deeply moved by the generosity of the department.

Windows Live Mesh Rocks

I’ve been using Windows Live Mesh now for a while and I must admit I love it. I now no longer have to bother about keeping files on my various machines up to date. I just have a couple of Live Mesh synchronised folders and I lob all the important stuff into there.

Live Mesh gives you on-line storage that is synchronised to the hard disk of one or more computers. Each computer runs the Live Mesh software which makes sure that whenever you change a file on one of the machines the copies on the other devices are automatically updated next time they connect to the network. It even provides a log of your activity, so you can track back what you have been up to.

Now, when I take my portable along to a lecture I don’t have to worry about putting the latest presentations onto it because I know they are already there. If I forgot the machine completely I could even use a web browser to pull the files off the Live Mesh online storage.

You get 5Gbytes of storage for free, and that is more than enough for a year’s worth of lecture notes and other teaching stuff. In fact, the service is so good that I’d pay to have more than that. If there was an annual subscription like I could put all my important stuff out there and I’d be happy to pay for that.

For students I can’t think why you wouldn’t use it. It would mean that you never lost your notes or programs, even if someone made off with your precious laptop.

Find out more at:

https://www.mesh.com/welcome/default.aspx

Making a Fool of Yourself the Rob Miles Way

Turns out to be surprisingly easy. Here is your simple 7 step guide:

1. Stand around talking after a lecture and forget that you are due in another lecture.
2. Remember, panic and run to the lecture room.
3. Note with surprise that your room is already occupied, and that a bunch of students are stood outside not knowing what to do.
4. Assume that the there has been a timetabling error and apologise profusely to the students.
5. Ring the office, and ask if there has been a timetable clash.
6. Find out that you are in fact stood outside the wrong room sympathising with some students who you have never seen before, and that your class is in fact patiently waiting for you in the room across the corridor.
7. Apologise to everyone. Twice.

Oh well. At least the lecture went well in the end.