Space Cheese Battle is Coming

Just spent some time this evening making this. It’s the game board that we will be using for the course work this year on the programming course…..

How Things are

We’ve had our final auction of this Three Thing Game. After a lot (and I mean a lot) of money changed hands the final thing mapping as as follows.

Team Name	Thing1	Thing2	Thing3
A Druish Princess	Invading	Marvel	wearing glasses
Aint no partly like a kambham-party	Steaming	Spam	copyright infringement
Beta Jester	Tron	Speed	attack
Battle Brothers	Something beginning with P	Ship	Spoon
Brayshawshank-Redemption	Pink	Nuts	In the rain
BRB	Snowing	Spendthrift	Banker
C Hash	Keyboard cat	Vampire	at midnight
Chicken Dippers	Chicken	Hamster	Parade
COMPUTER SCIENCE FC	Ghost	Yoghurt	Gangnam Style
Did you mean "Uncle Mikes Recursive Prolog Party?"	Fighting	Toast	Party
Double Jump	Atomic	Bath Sponge	Raider
Fresh Pot	Shark	Saxaphone	At the Zoo
Honeybadger Productions	Ninja	Mountains	Defence
Left 4 Dev	Cooking	Neon	Apocalypse
LightMass	Evil Wizard	Cricket Bat	in the graveyard
M.C.S.	Camel	Bus Stop	Werewolf
Men On A Mission	Sneaky	Assassin	With a moustache
Michael Jacksons Indian Takeaway	Poptart	Deoderant	Teddy Bear
Mr. Parse	Jelly	Orchestra	Four Letter Word
Mulan	Daft Punk	Rhymes with Truck	Pinball
No Method(), No Class{}	Caffeine	Monkey	under attack
Pigs Might Fly	Pirates	Duvet	racer
QWERTYUIOP	Lion	Skeleton	Swimming
Red Light:Green Light	Heroine	Nick Cage	wearing a tutu
Rusty Spoons	Roman	Motorboat	Pig
Sheerware Games	Flying	Bombs	Tank
SkyNet	Bungling	Bread	Pie
TBC	Zombie	Butler	Swimming Pool
Team HAL 9000	Dragon	Spider	goes fishing
Team Plan B	Gazebo	Javelin	word processor
Team Titans	Lonely	Robots	find love
The C Hashes	clone	Vampire	Apocalypse
The Compilers	Underwater	Atom Bomb	bike ride
The Cosmic Corn Snacks	Students	Bishop	assault
The Infamous Two Sirs	Goldfish	Plug hole	Invasion
The Runners Up	Grunting	Spring	Light cycles
The Y-Nots!	Fruitcake	Banana	temptress
Three Men	Lightning	Kung Fu	plays piano
Three Game'o'holics	Fighting	Desk	In a Dress

I think my favourite has got to be “Ghost Yoghurt Gangnam Style”. Can’t wait to see the game.

Writin’ Skilz R Important

If I had one piece of advice for a Computer Science student I think it would be nothing to do with programming. Or even computers. It would simply be “Learn to write well”. This doesn’t mean I necessarily want to see short stories, or poems (although send them through if you like), it just means that the art of putting words our there that make sense is something you should work at.

In my experience the only way to get good at writing is to write a lot. Then write some more. Blogs are great for this, as are diaries. And Final Year Projects. Just set yourself the task of knocking out a few words a day and putting them somewhere where others can find and comment on them. Try writing in other styles, from the dry “It can be shown that” kind of report style to anything else you like, including murder mystery if you fancy having a go. And get used to revising your text after you have read it. Just because there are no wavy red lines on the page doesn’t mean it actually makes sense. Watch for repeated phrases that repeat themselves repeatedly. Try to find alternatives to make the text sound better.  A good tip is to read out loud what you have just written. Anything that is not quite right will really sound  that way.

Another tip is to read stuff by people who can write well. The BBC news site is pretty good for this, along with newspaper sites like the Times and the Guardian.

I’m not saying that Computer Scientists are now doing an English degree. What I’m really saying is that if you can express yourself in written words, this will pay off big time when you go for jobs.

So Many Things. So Little Time.

What 20,000 pounds actually looks like. Of course you can't spend it in the shops...

Teams and their Two Things

We had our Thing Auction today. Last year we just managed to get through all the lots in the time that we had. This year we had more teams and just didn't make it. There was a time when I thought that we would get everything done, then a couple of mammoth bidding wars put us a bit behind schedule.

Never mind. We plan to run the "Third Thing Auction" just before the Rather Useful Seminar on Wednesday. That's at 1:15 pm in LTD on the Third Floor of the Robert Blackburn Building. The lecture is all about preparing for Three Thing Game, so it seems rather appropriate.

If any team really can't wait until then to get their hands on a thing, they can contact me and I'll dig one out for them.

It was fun though. The sound the crowd made when the thing "Keyboard cat" came out was wonderful.

Sunday Printing

I’m getting the hang of 3D printing now. I started off thinking that I would be using it to print cases for gadgets. I am doing that, but now I’m just printing out things that I find pleasing. Like the “Heart Gears” above from Thingiverse. I’ve been busy today writing quiz questions and auction stuff for Three Thing Game and in the background Una the Ultimaker has been turning out the parts above. It is a design that we saw at the exhibition yesterday and I really like it.

I’m not completely happy with the results (that will never happen) but on the whole I think it works well. The gears turn and the object turns into and out of a heart shape. I need to adjust the flow and layers slightly to get rid the gaps in the surfaces above.