Marking Time

Been in the labs marking for the last three days. Today I did the last few presentations before I sit down and enter the whole lot into our system. Students have been making games or banking applications. I have seen some lovely stuff. It’s very hard work, I must have asked “..and what does this bit do?” loads of times. But great fun. Thanks to the first year for turning up on time and to Simon and Mike for sharing the work.

Fashion Victim

According to The Guardian children are now taking 3D glasses, popping the lenses out and wearing them in the playground as fashion accessories. As you can see from above, I’ve been ahead of this particular trend for years.

Windows 7 Upgrades for MSDN AA Students

This is a tip for students who are lucky enough to study at places that have Microsoft Academic Alliance set up. These students have access to free copies of Windows 7 which may well be better than the ones on their machine.

If you fancy upgrading your Windows 7 machine (which may have the Home version of the software)  to the more advanced version provided by MSDN AA you don’t have to re-install your operating system. You can use the Windows Anytime Upgrade command to enter the product key for your new version and the upgrade happens for you automatically. You can find out more about this here.

Hull Digital Question Time – Free Event

 

It is funny how the person asking the questions always gets the best chair…

Hull Digital Question Time is in a couple of weeks or so. It brings together a panel of experts and an audience to have a discussion about the internet, mobile, the future of communication and anything else you care to ask questions about. Given that one of the panel is the Vice Chancellor of the University of Hull you might also expect some discussion on the relevance of technology to the future of Higher Education. 

It is being held on the university campus at the Donald Roy Theatre in the Gulbenkian Centre. The free food and networking starts from 6:30 pm onwards on Wed. 26th May.

The event is free and open to anyone who wants to sign up here. I’ve got my ticket, and a question to ask. 

Split/Second Looks Excellent

I used my new, high speed, internet connection to download a demo of Split/Second today. The 815M came down the line in around 12 minutes or so, which was nice.

The game looks excellent. It is a mix of Burnout, Need for Speed and Super Mario Kart, with destructible scenery which is all set up for maximum mayhem. Accumulate power by drifting and tailgating other cars and then use this to unleash the environment on your opponents. If you thought the red shell in Mario Kart was nasty, then you haven’t seen anything yet. We are talking exploding buildings, out of control aircraft and all kinds of other bad stuff. After a few tries I realised that first place is probably not  place you want to be until the very last part of the race, what with everyone behind you lining up to blow you away.

The handling model for the car (at least on the demo) is quite forgiving, but I don’t think people will really be playing it as any kind of simulation. If you think of it as a big budget car chase action movie where you get to drive, then you are pretty much there.

Split/Second was written by Black Rock Studios, who are division of Disney Interactive and are based in Brighton in the UK. They presently employ quite a few of our graduates and our students visited them earlier in the year for a look at their HQ. The game comes out in the UK in a week or two. I shall definitely be getting a copy.