Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 09:46AM I've just pulled some pictures off my little camera and so I thought I'd post them on my otherwise boring (graphically wise) blog.
Last week my car showed me this. Scary eh?
Things were much simpler when cars were like this one I saw on campus on Thursday
Bulding a new Hull
University this morning.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006 at 09:16AM Spent a whole evening achieving virtually nothing. I'm writing a little program for the plasma display in our new, spiffy, meeting area in the middle of the department (if you think that this means I'm a lot better at starting projects than finishing them- Icon Invaders, Moosaic etc etc then you are probably right - but this one needs to be done pronto and I'll get round to the others later).
Little know fact: Pronto was Tonto's younger, and much more punctual, brother.
Anyhoo, I'm using WinFX which is very nice. Got the latest versions of .NET 3.0 and all the trimmings and I can make swooshy windows now. I even managed to figure out how to read the RSS feed that is going to provide the data source for the display, and unpick the data from it that I want.
Then I try to put messages in the WinFX containers that hold my text. Now I'm using my usual learning technique here, which is to use Intellisense and MSDN and not read any books. Bad move. Simply couldn't figure out how to get text onto the control. Unlike old style windows components, which have a Text property, WinFX is much more complicated. It has FlowDocument and Paragraph and Block and all kinds of paraphernalia. But no Text property. After a lot of messing about I found that there is an InLines property which does pretty much what I want and lets me add strings of text to the display. Hurrah.
But the really good news (which probably makes the 90 minutes of cursing and swearing worthwhile) is that it will do all the formatting for me using Xaml cues in the string to lay out the text.
Which means that whilst it has taken me ages to do the easy bit, the hard bit should be really easy. If you see what I mean.
I'll post the program in source form once I've got it working.
Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 09:48PM Tonight in the Miles household, for your viewing pleasure:
I've seen Jane Eyre a few times. Once you have worked out that her surname is actually pronounced "Air" and reached the four magic words "Reader, I married him" (hope this doesn't give to much away folks) you have taken pretty much everything away from the story that you need.
Although, having said that, and sat through Aeon Flux (which also has its pronunciation problems) I have noticed some similarities between the two:
Male Lead : both of them have a male protagonist who may/may not be a baddie (you guess). Both males have equally dodgy hairstyles and stupid names. Rochester sounds like something from a sixties heist movie ("Tonight we steal the Rochester Diamonds...") and don't get me started about having an evil overload with the first name Trevor. Both of them looked like they were thinking of getting sideburns too.
Plot : Actually there isn't that much in common here. However, they do both have big explosions now and then. And both of the male leads have crazy people trying to kill them.
Female Lead : OK, so Jane Eyre doesn't have skin tight leather clothing and access to futuristic weaponry. But she does wear those dresses that reach all the way to the floor and let her move about like a Dalek with no obvious means of propulsion. I just hope that she can climb stairs. Of course Aeon Flux doesn't actually climb stairs at all, she would use a double somersault flip with a half twist up the banister rail in case the stairs vanished when she was half way up them.
Happy Ending : (plot spoiler alert - though if you read the bold bit it is probably too late) Both have a happy ending. Despite being shot a great deal (but missed an improbably huge number of times) Aeon ends up in a happy clinch with her man. In Jane Eyre something equally unlikely happens, when her new husband mysteriously regains his sight after having married her.
So there you are. Stay tuned for more cultural insights. Once I've finished watching the Simpsons.
Life Saturday, September 23, 2006 at 06:51PM If you are in the UK, and are in the market for a good XBOX 360 game for less than 13 quid, toddle down to HMV and pick up a copy of Amped3 which is in their sale at the moment.
It is a snowboarding game. And a very good one. Some games feel kind of churned out. But with Amped3 I got the feeling that the development team really enjoyed themselves. A lot. They have taken the "silly" control and turned it all the way up to 11. Oh, there is lots of good snow. And very pretty mountains. And lots of things to do. And a nicely judged difficulty curve. But the thing that really does it for me most of all is the quality of the cut scenes and the challenges. These are just bonkers. I've only seen two, but the first one, "Wienerland", is worth the price of the game alone, and I'm definitely going to work my way through the rest of them, just to see what they are like.
If I had paid fully price for this game I would not have been dissapointed. I only didn't get it because I'm not mad about snowboarding games particularly. However, I am well happy if they are as mad as this one.
And at the price, a steal.
Friday, September 22, 2006 at 10:53PM Boy did it rain this afternoon. Heavy stuff. The little dimple in the road near our house filled up with water to make a mini-ford. There was a Fiesta parked in it. A Ford in a ford. How poetic. Not that that poetry was really on my mind as I trudged up the road to the chip shop to fetch Friday tea.
As I was walking along the pavement, trying to avoid the puddles that actually went over my shoes, I noticed a big Jaguar car approaching. The driver wasn't slowing down for the dimple in the road, in fact he was speeding up. Just as he reached me the awful truth dawned. He was heading for a pool of water in the gutter that I was just passing. He went past at speed and with the evident intention of soaking me to the skin.
Which he nearly succeeded in doing. Fortunately, thanks to some fancy footwork on my part, he only managed to drench my trousers. The only good thing that came out of this was that he then drove at speed into our little ford, sending a jet into the air reminiscent of the water splash at Disney world. Unfortunately his car kept going, but I hope it was a nasty shock for him.
Life 