Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at 02:54PM 
We are holding our Summer Bash a little earlier this year. But the fun and games will be just the same. We'll have lots of games, Team Fortress, a Word Search (win a copy of my book) and lots of good stuff. Including Pizza. And cakes. If you want to come along you can get tickets from the Departmental Office from Thursday the 26th for a mere 2 pounds each.
Monday, May 23, 2011 at 04:10PM 
One of my golden rules for developers is “Make yourself a nice place to work”. Of course I don’t always apply this to myself. For the last few years I’ve been using keyboards that I bought from the US which don’t have the proper keyboard setup for my machines. I’ve written a whole bunch of stuff on C# development using a keyboard that doesn’t have a proper mapping for the # key. Things are even worse when I use my MacBook, that doesn’t even have a # anywhere – I end up using block copy to get one, even though there is a strange “Picnic site + something or other” combination that you can use.
Anyhoo, I’ve just managed to get hold of a couple of bendy keyboards that actually have a # key on them in the correct place. My one worry now is how I’m going to get used to them.
FYI I prefer the Microsoft Bendy keyboards. These help a lot with things like RSI (at least for me). If you get any kind of wrist ache after a long bout of typing I’d strongly suggest investigating them. One of my big worries is that they might stop making them, which would be annoying. Fortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case at the moment, you can still get the one I like, albeit for a lot more than I paid….
Life Sunday, May 22, 2011 at 06:09PM 
This is right in the middle of Cottingham.
Thwaite Hall is one of the student halls at the university. At the back of Thwaite Hall is a frankly amazing garden (including the lake you can see above) and some greenhouses containing plant collections. This is all managed by the Friends of Thwaite Gardens, who are working to make the gardens more accessible. They are open during the week for anyone to walk around and each year they hold an Open Day. This year’s Open Day was today, so we went down there with a whole bunch of cameras and lenses. And I took a bunch of photos. You can find all of them on Flickr here. Here are some of them.
This is just a small part of the gardens.
Trees
Cactus Greenhouse
Some of these cacti have amazing flowers
Flower
Cactus Flower
Another Flower
Using the bendy lens..
Life Saturday, May 21, 2011 at 07:34PM Today was the day of the Lord Mayor’s Parade through Hull. I was in town at the time, and had the little camera with me. Unfortunately I also had a enormous suitcase that I’d just bought, which made moving around the crowd a little tricky, but I did manage to take a few shots of the fun and festivities.
This is as the procession went past. Note that there are some people in this picture who are even taller than me.
Only a really skilled photographer can manage to get a traffic light to grow out of the Lord Mayor’s head…
Saturday, May 21, 2011 at 09:12AM
I just love this message. You can see it too when you donate.
Number one daughter is taking part in a Three Legged Race today. Since she only has the two legs herself, she has teamed up with Bronwyn and they will be trying to cover three miles on three legs.
The cause is a great one, and she would really appreciate your support, however small the amount. You can give with PayPal, it’s really easy and completely painless.
Life 