Jumpstart Prep Day

Frank and Jeff solving problems.

Today was the in-studio pre for the Jumpstart tomorrow. This is when we set everything up and then try to see if it all works. It is kind of important that we are comfortable here because, as Jeff says “Your guys are going to be spending around 16 hours in those chairs…”. 

Andy looking thoughtful

For tea we went to a place with a really good view, although by the time I got around to taking a picture the cloud had come in a bit.

Anyhoo, everything is pretty much good to go. We’ve even written the review questions and persuaded Stephanie to get us a private jet as the big prize. (some winners will have to make do with Windows Phones instead…)There’s still time to sign up if you head on over to Windows Phone Mango Jump Start. All fun, and all free.

Hello from Redmond

Well, here we are. Another plane trip, another hotel room, more getting up at 1:00am feeling somewhat rested and refreshed and knowing you are actually neither of those things. I’m here to do the Windows Phone Mango Jump Start, which begins on Tuesday. Andy and I will be streaming 7 hours a day of Windows Phone content, from getting started all the way to using the shiny new Mango features like Fast Application Switching. Sign up now if you like, it’s free. The timings mean that it will be streamed rather late in the day for UK viewers, so I can see it being used as the basis of a rather good drinking game. I’ll leave you to invent your own rules.

Anyhoo, I’m wandering round the hotel room with a camera, as you do, and taking happy snaps.

How many pillows does one man need? This room has a catalogue, I could actually buy this exact same set and carry them all back to Hull. But then again, not.

Not been to Redmond Town Center before (I have to spell it that way because I’m in America).

I do like a place that has a nice sky.

Aptly named place.

Fez Ultimate Kit Last Chance

Apologies to those who have got in touch about the Fez Ultimate Kit. I’ve been a bit busy with other things, but I’m going to get it sorted as soon as I’m back in Hull next week, so that we can get the order out. I’ll be in touch later this week, once I’ve finished the Jump Start….

For those who aren’t sure what I’m on about, the Fez Ultimate Kit you can see above is a .NET Micro Framework device along with a whole bunch of sensors. You can program it in C# from Visual Studio and we use it in teach for our embedded courses. I’m really excited about the Gadgeteer too, which will be along later this year and will make embedded development on small devices even easier.

We are currently sorting out a cut price deal on the kit above, which usually goes for 150 dollars. I’m going to get a bunch sent to Hull for the labs, and anyone who can get to Hull and pick one up (I can’t resend anything out I’m afraid) is welcome to piggyback on the order. There’s still time to send me an email at ultimatefun@robmiles.com and I’ll let you know just how much you could save.

Welcome to Hull

If you’ve got your results and you’re coming to Hull to study then welcome. The campus was looking lovely in the early morning sunshine so I took a few pictures on the walk to my office. There are a few more on my Flickr pages.

This is our front door. Please don’t pull on the blue rope. We are on the third floor of the Robert Blackburn building. See you an a few weeks.

When Clouds go Bad

I’ve been a fan of Dropbox and Live Mesh for a few years now. I pride myself that I can work anywhere, and if my computer breaks or I get a new one I can just attach to the shared directories out there on the network and carry on. No worries about backups or version control, just messages every now and then that files have been updated. Live Mesh is better because you get more storage. Dropbox is better because it keeps track of versions. Both seem to coexist on the same machine with no problems and life has been good. Until now. We have been keeping all our content for the Mango Jump Start (sign up – you’ll love it) up in the cloud. This has been great for collaboration and instant access to the latest versions.

But then weird things stated happening. Files would vanish and older versions reappear. Worse yet, and this happened this morning, both the Live Mesh and the Dropbox versions of some files completely disappeared. Wah. It reached the point where I had to go home, find my desktop machine, unplug it from the network, start it up, and make backup copies of the missing files before they were “synchronised” into oblivion. I’ve no idea why any of this happened or what is to blame. All I know is that, like anything else, if you rely on something to be there all the time, sometimes it won’t be. This means that the sad message is that while cloud storage is wonderful and lets you work anywhere, you can’t beat a good backup. I’m now going to copy from my synchronised folders to another place on the disk (or perhaps a different disk) every now and then. Just because nothing is perfect.

Oh, and a note to students. The line “The cloud ate my homework”, while more original than one involving a dog, will still not get you an extension.