Making Games close to the Edge

Calling a start to the event in noisy style..

Andy Sithers of Microsoft and a few Hull students got mention in an article in this month’s Edge magazine about some recent 48 hour game development competitions.  This is where a bunch of teams are given a theme, 48 hours and a lot of pizza to make a game. XNA is a brilliant tool to use for  this kind of thing, and Microsoft set up a couple of competitions this year.

Some students from Hull took part and while they didn’t win anything this year (having got a “Cheesiest Game” award last time) they did have a great time. I’d love to take part in one of these one day.

Ipad Wifi Fix

I think I’ve fixed the iPad WIFI now. Thank goodness.  I had to reset all the network settings and then I’ve told my home network to always give it the same IP address whenever it connects. The device itself is lovely. I’ve put a few games on it and the user experience really is great.

iPad Review – Great apart from the broken WIFI

The iPad is a lovely device. It hasn’t made me any cleverer or better looking yet (but then I’ve not had it a day) but it is nice to use.  The screen is great to look at. Browsing web sites is a doddle (until you bash up against somewhere that uses Flash). The applications that you can buy look like they will be really quite useful. And number one wife quite fancies one too. The battery life looks good as well.

As of last night I loved it. This morning, when I woke it up and found that it no longer recognised my WIFI at home, I’m a bit less enamoured. I’d read about these problems when the iPad came out in the ‘states, but I presumed they would have fixed them before I got mine.

They haven’t.

I had to leave the house for work before I could do too much fiddling, and the iPad found the university network and is working fine at the moment, but I’m expecting a tussle when I get home. I’ll probably get around this by hard-wiring the network settings and with a bit of luck this will fix it. Otherwise I’ll have to wipe all the connections and re-connect. I can live with this, at a pinch, but I’m sure that number one wife wouldn’t like it much, along with anybody else expecting to buy an appliance.

I went onto the Apple support site and they have acknowledged there is an issue here, which is nice.  They then said it might be a problem with “Third Party” – i.e. not made by Apple – routers. I found this a bit irritating to be honest. If I have twenty devices (and I must have used that number of WIFI devices at home over the years) and the 21st one doesn’t work I’m more inclined to blame the new device than anything else.  Some of the suggested remedies (“Turn down the brightness”, “Hold the device above your head”, “Stand on one leg” etc) strike me as a bit daft when the proper solution is “Get Apple to replace the driver software with some that works”.

My advice, for what it is worth, is don’t turn your iPad off. I shut mine down last night and the reboot is the thing that seems to have broken it.  Of course you might get the same effect when you wander in and out of range of your “Third Party” access point. Oh well.

Ring in the New

Some old gadgets. And a new one.

Been clearing out the cupboard in my office as part of a stocktaking exercise. Somewhat nostalgic.  Do you remember all these?

Hull Digital Question Time

The view from the audience, from left to right Jon Moss in the chair, Imran Ali, Helen Philpot and Prof. Calie Pistorius, VC of Hull University.

I’ve just been to something really, really good. With free drinks at the end. Hull Digital Question Time was set up by Jon Moss and brought together a panel of experts to discuss the future of digital technology. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the combination of interesting questions, a range of expertise from the panel and sensible debate from the audience made for a fascinating evening.  And then we all went to the bar..

I think the event has been filmed and it would make an absolutely great podcast, so with a bit of luck it will turn up in a downloadable form at some point in the future. In the meantime, if you get the chance to go to any events like this in the future (and I’ve already asked for another one) then you should jump at it.

One more thing, Jon told us that the date for the next Hull Digital Live event has been set. It is the 4th of November this year. Note it in your diary.