Geek Power

I was in the Union Shop today and noticed that they were selling a Top Trumps style game called “Geek Power”. Fortunately the card at the top of the deck looks nothing like me. Nothing at all.

C# Fun with Pexforfun

pexforfun is fun. Especially if you like writing code. It gives you a mental workout, teaches you programming smarts and has a lovely test driven, puzzle powered approach based on “Code Duels”.

You are set the task of writing a program that behaves in the same way as some “mystery code”. You type your code into the browser (you get intellisense support and everything) and then hit the “Ask Pex!” button. Pex then compiles your program and runs it against the test cases for that mystery code. If your program works you get bragging rights and then move on to the next puzzle. If your program fails you get to see which tests failed, so that you can refine your code for next time.  You can log into the system so that you can track your progress through the puzzles or you can just turn up and have a go, like I did.

I’ve just done one puzzle and really enjoyed it. I think we will be using pex during our first year programming labs at Hull, it really is a nice way to sharpen your C# skills. Find out more here:

http://www.pexforfun.com/

Travels with a Kindle

I took my Kindle on holiday with me last week. Turned out to be a good decision. I loaded it up with a few books (and it also took a few PDF files, including the manual for the camera) and off we went. The Kindle I’ve got has the Whispernet feature, which means that it connects over the 3G phone network and fetches content that way. It also has an experimental web browser. While waiting for a train in Milan last week I fired it up, just to see what would happen.

It worked fine. It looked to me like I was getting free web access abroad (which is usually very expensive). I then bought a travel guide from the Amazon store and this downloaded fine as well. It looks like a Kindle gives you a way of surfing the web for free anywhere in europe, which is interesting. Then again, when the feature stops being experimental it might start being expensive.

As for the travel guide, what I’ve learnt is that for books that you just read straight through a Kindle is great. For things that you want to refer to and flip between pages, like a travel guide, not so great. It made a reasonable job of the pictures and some of the material was useful, but for pure ease of use a real book wins in this situation.

Xbox Game: Angry Robot Rampage

Tom has been busy writing a game over summer. Angry Robot Rampage is the result. He has a blog post all about it here and you can find it on Xbox indie games here.

Great stuff. Now Tom, I want a Windows Phone version…..

Update on Monday, September 13, 2010 at 04:46PM by Rob

There is a fan page too:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Angry-Robot-Rampage/112880442102923?v=page_getting_started

Happy Anniversary Don and Jessie

Today we were invited to Don and Jessie’s fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration. I met up with a bunch of folks I hadn’t seen for a while and a good time was had by all. Thanks very much for inviting us.