EA Good Sports

If you are a student at our university you might be interested in a little event that we have been invited to. Hull University has been recognized by Electronic Arts as one of their key partners, which is rather nice (well, they did hire a whole bunch of our students last year).

Anyhoo, they have very kindly invited our students to a "do" at the Science Museum in London. It is based at the Game On exhibition, which traces the history of video gaming by means of a whole bunch of old consoles and arcade machines.

Which you can play on.....

I was going to make a trip down there myself later this year, but the chance to attend for free, and with a talk from Bing Gordon, EA's Chief Creative Officer, is just too good to miss.

Hull students can apply here.  Note that unfortunately, because they have an exam on the day of the trip, first year students will not be able to attend, but any others can. Places are limited people, so get your names down as quickly as possible.

Make Anything

My co-writer on the .NET Micro Framework book put me on to this. This is a machine which can make anything. So called fabbers can be regarded as three dimensional printers. We have one at the university which is used in the engineering department and it is amazing. It even makes spare parts for itself.....

Anyhoo, you can now think about making one of your own. Take a look here.

Code that sucks

I'm writing some background stuff for the .NET Micro Framework book. We've been working on the final project, which we want be a mobile robot of some kind. I suggested a Micro Framework controlled vacuum cleaner, and so today I started work on the emulation environment for it.

The idea is that we can simulate "pixel dust" on the floor and the "virtual sucker" will sweep this up and collect it. Our vacuum will have a dust meter which will allow it to tell how much dust is being collected and the name of the game will be collect as much dust as possible whilst avoiding crashing into the "virtual furniture". Then we are going to try to put exactly the same code into a real roving robot and see what happens, Great fun.

It also means that I can write properly factored, well commented code with methods called "doSuck". Wonderful.

Warioware Smooth Moves for the Wii

I didn't mean to buy it. I'm supposed to be on iron rations and saving up my pennies for a Playstation 3 (which is going to take a lot of saving). But number one son told me to buy it "The best Wii game you can get at the moment" was how he described it.

So I weakened.

And do you know (and most annoyingly) I think he is right. I mean, it is bonkers. But I like bonkers. It is cute. But I can handle cute (within limits). I've loved the Warioware games ever since they first appeared on the Gameboy years ago. This one takes the idea (mad mini-games that take seconds to play which are thrown at you in rapid succession) and adds the new Wii controller, which is used in a variety of configurations including "The Samurai", "The Chauffeur" and one where you stick it on the end of your nose. Oh yes.

If you have a Wii you owe it to yourself (and the rest of your family) to get this disk of insanity. Last night I watched the pantomime, a show which managed to keep three generations amused at the same time. This game is one of the few that I've seen (and most of the others are on the Wii as well) which I reckon will do the same thing. Fantastic.

Oh Yes We Did

We went to see the pantomime tonight. Just the two of us, which meant we felt a bit out of place amongst all the complete families that packed Hull New Theatre, but number one wife has always liked the Chuckle Brothers and I like watching professionals drive an audience so off we went.

One of the reasons we ventured out was that we heard this was a good one, and so it turned out. The Chuckle Brothers are the kind of comedy institution that it is popular to throw rocks at in this interactive, multi-channel, reality TV driven world. However, the simple fact is that you can put them in front of an audience and they will give darned good value for money. And so they did. Very funny.

I found it interesting to look across the theatre and see three generations of a family all laughing like drains at the antics on the stage. I enjoy a good pantomime. There aren't many traditions like it in the world and I love the idea that successive generations will turn up as grandkids, parents and grandparents and all enjoy something which, with a modicum of tweaking, has stayed fundamentally the same for many years.

The rest of the cast were well up to their roles. The story was Cinderella, and the ugly sisters were suitably nasty, the prince dashing and the fairy good mother flew about the stage with the right amount of bangs and puffs of smoke. They all had real barnstorming voices too, and belted out their versions of recent pop songs with great gusto. I'm very impressed that they managed to keep up the pace and the volume even after a month of solid performing. Good stuff.