Anonymous Food

So, I'm sitting in my hotel room feeling peckish. Lacking the energy to go downstairs and actually find some food, I turn to the room service menu. It is very decadent, but the prices are reasonable and the menu inviting, so I ring up and order a sandwich and some chips. "Fifteen minutes" says the man. "Fine" I reply.

Fifteen minutes go by. then another fifteen minutes. No food. We english have a problem with complaining. We hardly ever do. Anyhoo, after 45 minutes hunger gets the better of me and I ring back.

The chap on the other end of the phone assures me that the food is on its way even as we speak. At the end of the call, almost as an aside, he asks "What room are you in?".

The penny drops. When I called the first time I assumed the hotel had one of those fangled things where the phone system tells the receptionist who is calling. The first time I experienced this it was really scary. I was jetlagged in a hotel and at 3:00 am I rang up to ask for a network cable so that I could connect to some people who were as awake as I seemed to be. "Good morning Mr. Miles" said the person at the other end. "Have we met?" I blurted out, before I figured out what was going on. This caused much confusion at the other end, as the poor desk porter tried to figure out why someone would ring them up at 3:00 to find out if they had met them. Anyhoo, I digress.

The first time I called for my food it did not occur to me to tell the chap at the other end where I was. Which gave them a problem.  They had a beef sandwich and a plate of chips and no idea of where to send them. All the could do was wait until I rang back and complained, which with me being english, took a while.

The good news is that the food was excellent.

Tech Days 07

car-airport-plane-airport-plane-airport-taxi-conference centre-hotel

Well, that was my day. How about yours?

Some time back I got an email offering me a chance to speak at a student conference in Portugal. The date was a long way away, and I was pretty sure it was out of term time, my boss said it was OK,  so I agreed to go. What with the Imagine Cup effort at Hull, and my term dates being messed up, I very nearly didn't make it. But I'm glad I did. Even if it meant getting up at 4:00 am and a couple of flights to get here, Lisbon is worth the effort. I was expecting to speak to a room full of students.

Well, there was a room, and it was pretty full, but it was a bit more than I expected. Tech Days is essentially TechEd for Portugal only. I'm rather jealous. I wish there was something like this in the UK.

TechDays has everything that TechEd does, speakers shirts, timetable of interesting sessions, plush venue. And loads of keen delegates, including several hundred students who are given a day pass to the most interesting sessions. One of which was mine....

I was talking about XNA, the way that you can write games in C# for your XBOX 360. It is a subject that I like talking about, and the audience seemed happy to hear about it too. Even putting up with the jokes... I was a bit worried whether or not my particular brand of humour would go OK with a Portuguese audience. But in the end everyone seemed to have a good time, and a bunch of students even stayed behind at the end to hear the famous "Orange for a Head" joke. And then promptly wished they hadn't.

I would very much have liked to stay longer. I only managed to get to one session, about the Microsoft Robotics Studio. This is something I'd love to have more time to get to grips with. It is a fantastic way to start programming robots, with a proper simulated physics environment and an interface to lots of robot platforms, including the new Lego Mindstorms. Maybe when I get back I'll set aside an afternoon as robot playtime and see what we can make.

At the end of the day I staggered back to my room in a very nice hotel, and just flaked out.

Anyway, thanks very much to Microsoft Portugal for inviting me and making me so welcome, for the audience for making the trip worthwhile, and to KLM for actually finding me some seats on the plane with legroom. I've only been in Portugal for around 16 hours, I can promise that I will be back, and that next time it will be for a proper look round.

Portugal Pictures

I'm only in Portugal for around 16 hours. I took loads of pictures from the taxi on the way from the airport to the conference centre. The taxi driver thought I was mad at first, but after a while he was pointing things out for me. Great stuff.

View from the Taxi

Nice Stadium

Love the colours

Aqueduct

Lisbon has a nice bridge too

The TechDays in a break

At the end of the bill. Or is that top billing?

The audience. What a great bunch

..until I told the Orange for a Head joke.....

A great bunch of MSPs

Some more students. That chap in the middle needs a haircut...

Nice bridge by night

Portugal here I come.......

Portugal here I come.......
Originally uploaded by RobMiles.

Traveling At Speed

I'm away again tomorrow for a whistle stop trip to Portugal. I've been invited to give a talk at TechDays07 there, but I don't really have time. So tomorrow I get up at 4:15 and fly to Lisbon. Then on Wed. morning I'm going to get up at 4:15 and fly back. I reckon that my average speed over the next day will be around 100 miles an hour....