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Programming, gadgets and life as a lecturer in a UK university.
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May 2004 - Posts
New Microwave
Sunday, May 30, 2004 10:23 PM
Bought a new microwave today. It does around four times as many things as the old one. And cost around a quarter the price. (and that is assuming that money hasn't devalued over the last 15 years - which I'm pretty sure it has). Modern technology eh?
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Nobody knows the answer
Thursday, May 27, 2004 4:28 PM
OK, since nobody knows how to solve this one I'll post the answer tomorrow. If you want a clue; it has to do with construction.....Oh, and in case you are wondering where I've been, I've spent a very happy time at an MVP (Most Valued Professional) day
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Ninja Gaiden
Sunday, May 23, 2004 9:49 PM
Got another XBOX game. The man in the shop said it was a bit tough. "The first boss is the worst" he said. "Just remember to keep moving and blocking". Wow. Was he ever right. Number one son has been grappling with it and still not got past this bloke
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As Stupid As....
Saturday, May 22, 2004 10:06 PM
Trying to think of programming aphorisms. Got one or two so far:"As stupid as writing an interrupt handler in Prolog""As fast as a Pentium IV running MS-DOS 6.0""As scary as a run time error at 30,000 feet"Any ideas folks?
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The Love of Randomness
Thursday, May 20, 2004 12:43 PM
The new firmware in my Jukebox has a wonderful feature. Todally random play. It just picks up a track from anywhere on the disk and plays it. Followed by another and another and another. It is like having my own personal radio station. I'm even going
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Morality Test
Wednesday, May 19, 2004 6:43 PM
So I go down to the coffee machine (not to get coffee - I'm not that stupid..). And I notice that there is already 10 pence paid into it. This causes a huge crisis. Do I:
Pay less for my drink and consider myself 10 pence up on the day (a major
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I got a new MP3 Player
Tuesday, May 18, 2004 8:25 PM
I got a new MP3 player today. It has a snazzy icon driven display, shows a neat clock when it plays music and it cost me nothing. Great stuff. All I had to do was upgrade the firmware in my exisitng Creative Nomad Jukebox 3. Silly me, the upgrade has
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Exam Tips
Tuesday, May 18, 2004 1:08 PM
I've got this new device for measuring time. It is called a pen. I can get around a third of the way through a new red ball point pen in a day at the moment. I can just about tell what time it is by the amount of ink left.In case you haven't guessed,
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Time Management
Monday, May 17, 2004 10:15 AM
Been using my wonderful marking program today. Together with the snipping tool for the Tablet PC it makes quite a formidable device for grabbing bits of program displays and listings, annotating them and then dropping them into a customised web page for
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Systemantics
Sunday, May 16, 2004 7:32 PM
Many years ago I bought a book. This was not an isolated event, in fact I have bought many books since. And I've even read some. This book (purchased in 1975) is a wonderful read. I ran across it on my bookshelf today. I was therefore very pleased
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Cupboard Love
Saturday, May 15, 2004 7:03 PM
Apparently cupboards should have backs. They are not supposed to act like those things that magician's assistants get into and subsequently disappear from. The cupboard in our kitchen is slowly changing back into sawdust, and as a kind of weigh point
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Lookout for Outlook
Friday, May 14, 2004 12:24 PM
If you use Outlook for your email and contacts (and who doesn't) then I can heartily reccommend Lookout. It builds an index of your inboxes and contacts and then performs fast (and I mean *really* fast) searches of them. It uses similar search expressions
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No Two Ways
Thursday, May 13, 2004 10:13 PM
I've been marking student projects for a while now and it never ceases to amaze me how, given the same problem, lots of people can come up with different answers. Some are much worse than the one I thought of, others are better. I love this (except for
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Shiny Class Server
Wednesday, May 12, 2004 9:54 PM
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a sucker for bright, new, shiny objects. Today Rob and Claire from Microsoft came over to Hull and showed us Microsoft Class Server. It is very bright, and very shiny. OK, so it is is technically not an object,
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Virus Thoughts Two
Monday, May 10, 2004 1:37 PM
Imagine you run a delivery company. Imagine that the manufacturer of the little vans that you use sends you a message saying that they've found a fault with the tyres and if it rains your little vans might go off the roads and crash. The van maker offers
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So, no trombone then
Sunday, May 09, 2004 11:48 AM
I've talked to a few people about trombones and they tell me that they are much harder to play than the piano (which I seem to have given up) and the guitar (which I seem to have given up). Basically you have to blow a raspberry down a pipe and then adjust
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I want a trombone
Saturday, May 08, 2004 9:14 PM
I want a trombone. I've wanted one ever since I saw one in a shop up town at around 11:30 today. And only 99 pounds too. I'm sure that a trombone would give me that air of cool which has so far eluded me. I could be "discovered" in my office playing really
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Sasser and Viruses
Wednesday, May 05, 2004 8:08 AM
My brother in law has the Sasser virus. His shiny new portable is now seething with the darned thing. I've send him a CD-ROM with a killer program, an anti-virus suite and Zone Alarm, but it is very irritating when these things happen. I keep wondering
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Disks Wah!
Tuesday, May 04, 2004 6:48 PM
Spent most of today preparing media for my wonderful "Fullmarks" marking program. This is the all singing, all dancing, annotating masterpiece which will make marking this coursework really easy and fun. The program seems to do everything now, but I'm
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Collectormania
Monday, May 03, 2004 9:33 AM
Went to Collectormania yesterday. Caught the bug from number one daughter, who dragged me to the last one in search of hobbits. This time things were a bit quieter, but still very busy. The name of the game starts with getting signatures of notables,
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Two Doctors!
Sunday, May 02, 2004 7:50 PM
Up bright and early to get to the Collectormania event in Milton Keynes, a made up city around three hours from Hull. They have stars of TV and screen signing things and you can get your picture taken with them. Yay! (by the way, I'm fully aware that
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The Nightfly
Saturday, May 01, 2004 10:01 PM
Went shopping today. Major find. Around 20 years ago I bought about the best record ever, "The Nightfly" by Donald Fagan (he of Steely Dan fame). With it being a long time ago the record was a 12 inch vinyl thingy which is now up in the loft (along
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