Hull Digital May Meetup

Hull Digital are another good reason why you should live in Hull. They’ve been going for a while now and I’ve gone along to a number of their Meetups. I always leave with plenty to think about, and tonight’s meeting was no exception to this.

There were a couple of speakers tonight. First up was Marc Towler who was speaking about Open Source. Marc made some very good points about Open Source development, including one which I think is particularly relevant to students. Taking part in an Open Source project is a great way to get development experience. It exposes you to production quality code, and lets you work with other developers, some of whom will be the best in their field. It lets you build your expertise and get yourself noticed. It is a wonderful way to break the “can’t get a job with no experience – can’t get experience without a job” cycle. And with a wealth of projects out there it is very likely that you will find one in an area you find interesting.

The second speaker was Adam Jennison who works at Hull City Council. These people are in the big league when it comes to data processing, with more systems than they can count and a huge number of users, all with different needs. Adam was talking about Open Data and how the council is building APIs that will allow developers to get hold of council data and use it. By the use of appropriately designed interfaces based on RESTful principles, anyone can take the information and do things with it.

For me the strongest message from the talk was that Adam doesn’t see himself as in the business of predicting exactly how the data will be used, or how it can be combined with other data to produce new kinds of applications. He spoke about one or two ideas that he had, and how the open data could be used within the council itself, but it seems to me that there are all kinds of fascinating options to explore. Benjamin Welby, who also works for the council, has written some interesting background here.

From a teaching point of view the possibilities for great projects and practical work look really interesting.

Universities and Gymnasiums

Something that one of the speakers said at the “do” last night has stuck with me. He said that, with students paying more and more for their degrees there was a danger that they might be seen as consumers of education, where they were obtaining their qualification by paying for it. He suggested another way of looking at the situation that I hadn’t heard before.

He said that going to university was like joining a gym.

You can join a gym to get fit, but just joining doesn’t make you fit. It simply gives you access to machinery and expertise that you can use to get fit. If you fail to listen to the trainer or make use of the equipment then you don’t get a better body, you just get poorer.

I really like this way of thinking. I think it puts all the responsibilities in all the right places. Our job as educators is to make sure students have all the stuff they need to make progress, but at the end of the day it is the student that gets their qualification.

Inspiring Teacher Award

A couple of weeks ago I got an email saying that I’d been shortlisted for an award. The Student Union at Hull has instituted a set of Teaching Awards and I’d been nominated in the “Inspiring Teaching” category, which was very nice.

I was invited to an awards ceremony where they were serving tomato soup, roast beef and profiteroles. My favourites, which was even nicer.

The actual ceremony was fantastic. They even had a band who played through the evening. The result for my category was towards the end of the proceedings, which was a bit nerve wracking, but the food and conversation were great and the time passed really quickly. Then came the results. And I’d won. Which was amazing.

I staggered down to the front and was presented with the trophy. Photos were taken and then I staggered back. I’m not usually someone who is lost for words but I was this time. In fact I still am. It is just so nice. Thanks everyone.

Event Today: Real Life Software Engineering

Anyone at Hull who fancies an hour’s break from coursework and revision today can pop along to a lunchtime event run by Robert Hogg and Steve Spencer of Black Marble. Rob and Steve are Microsoft MVPs (but none the worse for that) who have a lot (and I mean a lot) of experience of writing software for customers. If you want to hear some “Tales from Real Life” then you should go along to LTA in the Robert Blackburn Building at 1:15 pm today.

This event would be particularly useful for any First or Second Year students who want to learn more about the software development process.

I’ll be there…. taking notes….

Update on Wednesday, May 2, 2012 at 08:43AM by Rob

Steve and Rob gave a great presentation that brought home the realities of the software development business. I think for me the thing that they brought out is that, perhaps surprisingly, software development is all about people. A successful developer must be able to interact with the customer, their manager, other developers, the test team and lots of other people to get a happy ending.

The iTunes Experience

Apple make carefully designed and beautifully presented products that amaze and delight their owners. They also make iTunes. Which is amazing, but not in any good way.

Yesterday number one dad got a new iPad. I heard the news with dread. Because it meant that I’d be the chap installing it. In theory this is easy, just back up the first iPad and then restore the backup to the new iPad. A doddle. Except….

The new iPad refused to talk to the version of iTunes on dad’s laptop. So I fired up the Apple Upgrade Manger. Which found an upgrade for itself. Which failed. Eventually I figured out that it was trying (and failing) to uninstall the old version. Nothing I could do would persuade the darned thing to get out of the way so that I could upgrade iTunes. Time for Plan B. Install a new version of iTunes on the desktop and use that to do the upgrade. Installation went well, tried to sign into iTunes and authorize the computer. Turns out that iTunes is incapable of remembering dad’s password for more than ten minutes. Go through the password reset. Authorize the computer. Plug in the old iPad to perform the backup. Fail. The iPad will only talk to the iTunes library on the broken laptop. One wrong press now and I wipe the iPad by restoring an empty library onto it. At least you get the warning now. I’ve known people wipe their iPods when they get a new computer. Why Apple persist in such a stupid library arrangement in this cloud connected world is beyond me. Anyway, no dice.

So decide to just register the new iPad so that we can do something with it. Find that that iTunes has forgotten dad’s password again. Get another password.  Finally get the registration completed and start restoring applications onto the new iPad. Three hours in and we now have something working.

I’m going to have to back up and rebuild dad’s laptop so that I can do a clean install of this idiotic program. I looked up the procedure to back up the iTunes library. It seems that there are two ways you can do this. Copy the files and hope or buy a program to help you do this.

I’ve thought for a while that Apple are probably quite happy to give users a horrible experience if they use iTunes on a PC. I’ve found PC installations to be very fragile and completely impossible to get off a machine. There’s no way I’d install iTunes on any of my PCs, in fact I keep an “emergency Mac” around with iTunes on it that I use to keep my Apple devices up to date. I’ve found the Mac version of iTunes to be a lot better behaved, thank goodness.

One of the great things about iOS 5 is that you can do pretty much everything without using iTunes. As for me, I’m off for a lie down….