Sunday, March 18, 2012 at 10:05PM 
Just a very quick note to let you know that the competition is over. I’m a bit too tired to put a full breakdown on the site just now, but the picture above is a clue that might help you work out who won. Pictures and videos tomorrow.
Friday, March 16, 2012 at 06:18PM - what would you do with this?
I got to be a dragon today. For a little while. Elliot, one of our final year students, is doing one a module which is all about teaching computing in schools. He had the neat idea of asking Emma to show our HIVE Immersive Visualisation Suite to his group and then getting them to pitch business plans based on the technology they’d seen.
And he needed some dragons for the pupils to pitch to. Which is where I came in. So today we got to see the presentations.
Most impressive. Virtual golf on a cruise ship, using motion capture to sell fashion, 3D mapping for fire safety and the winner, an immersive take on driving lessons.
All presented with enthusiasm and not a little business acumen. To say that this was probably the first time these folks had presented to an audience in this way they did a very impressive job. As I said at the time, make sure that when you are telling people the things that you have done you mention you’ve done stuff like this. Great stuff.
Teaching Thursday, March 15, 2012 at 09:00PM I tell all my students to start a blog. Not because they’ll instantly get loads of readers, or because the world necessarily cares much what they think right now (sad but true) but because it is good practice for writing.
Writing is important. It is how we tell people stuff. Being good at writing is a really useful skill to have. And like any skill it gets better if you practice. I’ve been blogging for the thick end of 10 years or so (and I do mean the thick end). I’ve set myself the goal of writing something different every day and I’ve mostly kept at it. It has made me much better at writing. I can turn out a few hundred words really quickly now if I need to. And the words make a lot more sense than when I started. Or as I used to say “Sense words make much more now. Want cookie.”
The lovely thing is that quite a few Hull students have taken my advice to heart and even got together to bring you all their stories in one big chunk of blogging goodness. If you head over to http://hullcompsciblogs.com/ then you can see what they are up to.
I hope they all keep at it. Starting a blog is easy. Keeping it going is the hard part. You don’t need to write every day, but you do need to have writing as part of your routine. And when you do something, even if it is just go see a movie, try to put down a piece that sets out what you thought about it. And keep an eye out for things to write about. As I always say:
“What doesn’t kill you makes a darned good blog post.”
Link Thursday, March 15, 2012 at 12:47PM 
Rob
Years ago I did this blog post along the lines of "If you aren't finding shelfish particularly relaxing you may have bought the 'Little Book of Clam' by mistake." Every since then I've been tickled by the way you can swap two letters round and get a lovely, absurd, result. Then, in the Programming 2 Lecture today one of the students had a "Keep Calm and Carry On" T-Shirt, and I knew how I was going to spend my lunch hour......
