More Than One Can Play on Windows Azure

Some time back I wrote some web services for turn based gameplay on mobile devices. They provided an easy to understand lobby and game move framework which I used to demonstrate how easy it is to create web services and consume them from Visual Studio programs. I still think this is wonderful.

Now I've moved them onto the cloud. This was much easier than I expected. Once I figured how how to publish the project (thanks to http://davidpallmann.blogspot.com/search/label/Azure for the info) I had a working set of web services out there. I'm not sure how much time I'll have to play with this stuff (I'm supposed to be doing lots of other things at the moment) but I'll try to dig out and test some sample games that I wrote for this framework.

You can find out more here:

http://www.robmiles.com/more-than-one-can-play/

Au-Revoir Windows 7

Or should that be "à bientôt"? I've replaced my test version of Windows 7 with my original Vista installation. I've not had any specific problems with Windows 7, in fact the whole experience has been really good. It is just that there are a few things I want to do which don't work too well on Windows 7. I can't get the Cloud development environment to work for some reason, and I'd like to have back the buttons on my MacBook.

I'm leaving 7 on the tiny tablet though, the performance hike is something that I really appreciate on that device.  If you have a machine that chugs a bit under Vista then you should think seriously about moving onto Windows 7.

I used the restore option to put back the Vista image I made a while back before I went out to PDC. I always image my machine before I take it out and about, and so all I had to do was drop back the documents directory and I'm back up to date. Oh, that and install a whole bunch of updates....

The restore option worked really well. I just left the machine for an hour or so and when it rebooted I was back in the past.

Good Weather for Pictures

The weather may be horrid cold and icy. But it does make for some nice pictures in the morning.

Hail the Duke

The Duke of Edinburgh came to see Hull today. Amongst other things he opened the new Enterprise Centre at the university, and unveiled a "virtual plaque". Paul Chapman from our department was on hand to give the Duke a briefing on our virtual research and the Venus project.

Paul and the Duke, looking cool. (Paul is the one on the right)

How Many People Per Pizza?

I'm planning the food for next week's Christmas Bash at Hull. Of course we are having pizza. But the question arises, how many do we need? I'm expecting around 60 or so students (the fact they are students might be significant here).

How many large pizzas will fit the bill and leave us neither looking stingy or wading in cheese?