Going to Hacked

Next weekend we are off to Hacked. I’ve managed to get hold of a couple of tickets so myself and number one son will be taking our places with lots of other developers who want to make something silly/awesome/fun. I’ll be taking my lovely Lumia 920 along and targeting the Windows Phone platform, along with a bunch of gadgets and other things that we can use if mood takes us.

I’m really looking forward to this. The plan is to try and last through Saturday night. But I’ve booked a room in a nearby hotel just in case…..

Imagine Cup Memories

I often refer to the Imagine Cup as “Planet Imagine Cup”. For a few days the real world, time and space have no meaning. You are just in a little space with lots of projects to look at and a whole bunch of interesting folks to talk to. And strange things happen.

The first piece of weirdness was having my picture taken by the chap who wrote Tetris Note that is by the chap, not with him. The whole thing took place in the judging room, when one of the judges wanted his picture taken with me. There’s no accounting for taste. Anyhoo, the only other chap in the room was Alexey Pajitnov, who was kind enough to take the blue HTC device from my friend and snap the picture. I didn’t have the nerve to ask for one of my own, but I did have a chat with him, and told him how many hours I’d spent with my Mark 1 GameBoy and his ingenious game.

The second weird thing took place was when one of the judges, Bill Buxton, mentioned that he’d found a couple of entries in the competition intriguing, and had reached out to Bill Gates (who was something of an expert in the project areas) to let him know what was going on and get his input. Bill had responded with some comments and had made time to pass on details to a couple of experts in the field. Amazing.

Navigating Neatly with Nokia

   

This is one thing I found very useful while I was in St. Petersburg. The clever bit started when I downloaded all the maps for this part of the world before I left the UK. This meant that I had full navigation support without needing any form of networking connection. The map application lets me pin locations and also routes onto the start screen. The left hand screenshot shows the hotel pinned to the upper left and a route to the Errata gallery on the right. At any point in my travels I just had to hit that shortcut and I’d get a route to my destination. On the right you can see the route, along with my present position. If it looks like I;m going the long way round it’s because I’m on a bus. The whole thing worked splendidly and got me where I wanted to be.

Heading for Home

It may not have been particularly bright, but my goodness it felt early. Allowing for the fact that we are 3 hours ahead in St. Petersburg meant that I actually got up at a quarter to two in the morning UK time, so I could be outside ready for the bus to the airport. The good news is that we arrived in plenty of time for the flight.

This was the view from the plane as we came in to land, taken and processed on my lovely Lumia 920. I see that Nokia have now launched the Lumia 1020, which promises an even more amazing camera. Sign me up.

I’ve been in Russia just long enough to know that I’m sorry to leave it, and I’m going to come back for a proper look around in the future. Thanks to everyone for making the visit so memorable and so darned good.

Art and Imagine Cup Finals

Today I actually had time to take a look around St.Petersburg. We caught the Metro up down and took a look at the Hermitage Museum.

They it can take at least six hours to tour the museum properly, so we settled for just looking at the imposing building from the outside. One day I’m coming back for a proper tour.

On Monday one of the judges, Bill Buxton, had mentioned that there was a really good contemporary arts museum quite near to the hotel. He reckoned that Erarata was well worth a look. So, with a couple of hours to spare before I had to head off the the world finals I hopped on a bus and went over there. I didn’t have as much time as I would have liked, but there was some intriguing stuff on show. I’m not a great art critic, but I like seeing stuff that makes me think.

This is a singularly appropriate exhibit, given that we have the creator of Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov, judging at the competition.

I think this was my favourite exhibit. Not least because it made me think the hardest. I hope they don’t mind me posting a picture.

If (or more accurately when) I go back to St. Petersburg I’m going to set aside a goodly chunk of time to have a proper look round this lovely gallery. And I’ve just discovered they have a gallery in London too, which is going on my list. I managed to make it back to the hotel with just minutes to spare before the busses headed off to the theatre and the World Finals show.

I took a whole bunch of pictures at the world finals, but curiously the only one that I can find to put on the blog is the one of the UK team (that’s UNITED KINGDOM) winning top prize for the Innovation competition. You can find out all about the all the other results and more details of the WORLD BEATING TEAM FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM at the Imagine Cup site.

I’ll be posting more pictures telling some more Imagine Cup stories (and there are some amazing ones) when I’m somewhere with some power to charge up the Surface.

Update on Sunday, July 14, 2013 at 03:12PM by Rob

If you are still not sure about that picture, you might find the following helpful. I got it the comic book store in Seattle market.