Rain

It rained today. That is pretty much all it did. Rained. We heard the rain over our meetings, and the view out of the window into the car park was not encouraging. After lunch, meetings over, I decided to go home early. This turned out to be a good call. On the way to the car park the water was a good six inches deep, easily covering my shoes and forcing me to drive home with bare feet. And what a drive. Getting of the campus was not good, with the road out of the university looking more like a river. Many of the streets were impassible, but fortunately myself and number one wife got back home safely.

This is the worst I've ever seen. Many people in Hull have been flooded out. Buildings on the university campus have basements full of water. The folks across the road had what looked like a stream running down the side of their house. I've not taken any pictures, but you can see loads here.

Visit St. Custard's

These pages don't do the Nigel Molesworth books proper justice. But they are worth a look.

The Value of a Degree

Earlier this week there was a big feature on the UK MSN homepage about the value of a university degree. The central thrust of the feature was that a degree does not prepare you for the real world and leaves you only with an enormous debt and a huge hangover.

The article contained a link to a discussion where folks told tales of woe and how their hard earned qualification has not landed them the job of their dreams.

The way I see it (if you really want to know) is that if you decide you want some thing (such as the "job of your dreams") then you should plan a campaign which will get you it. A degree can be a useful part of such a campaign. But it is not the only one. You should find every other possible way to get there. Try to land some work experience in the area. Do things that broaden you out and make you more "interesting" to people working in the field.

If you want to be a games programmer, by all means do a degree in it, but also start writing little games and putting them on your games programming blog. Start contributing to forums about the field, asking and answering sensible questions. Get a job in the business, even if it is just working in a games shop. It all helps make you into a more enticing prospect.

Getting a degree and then expecting to be snapped up because of your evident brilliance will not work. In fact I don't think it ever did. When I did mine, all those years ago, when history was current affairs etc etc I remember being told that a degree is not a job ticket, but merely a licence to hunt....

Motorola Game Development Challenge

If you have nothing better to do this summer (and who doesn't) you might fancy having a go at the MotoDev game development challenge. You can write your game in Java, or even user C# and managed code to enter in the Windows category. Closing date is in the middle of August.

If you want some ideas about how to get started, you can always have a look at my articles on Smartphone programming with Cheese on MSDN.

Johnny Dollar

I've always loved radio drama. It is amazing the atmosphere they can conjure up. And you can draw your own scenery in your head. If you want something well cool to listen to you should seek out and download some Johnny Dollar. Johnny the "freelance insurance investigator with the action packed expense account" had a series of radio adventures in the forties, fifties and sixties. Cracking stuff.