01.Blogs :
RobMiles  
Programming, gadgets and life as a lecturer in a UK university.

September 2004 - Posts

Fridge Puzzle
Thursday, September 30, 2004 7:55 PM
You have a sealed room. In the room is a fridge. The fridge is plugged in. What happens to the temperature in the room if: The fridge is left with the door open. The fridge is left with the door shut.  
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The Force is Strong in This One
Thursday, September 30, 2004 8:14 AM
Just sat through a Star Wars marathon. Number one son is leaving us on Saturday to go to university. So we had to watch the last two Star Wars movies back to back on DVD. Amazing stuff. But there are a few quirks. Darth Vader has some flashing lights
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All You Can Eat
Tuesday, September 28, 2004 7:39 PM
Some time back I signed up for Napster. It is a deal where I get access to all of their music on my PC as long as I pay a monthly subscription. At the start I was a bit worried it might be a silly idea. But over time it has won me over. The range of music
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You Can All Come Work For Me
Monday, September 27, 2004 7:46 PM
I've converted my C Sharp blog into a C Sharp Wiki. Essentially I'm trying to write a C Sharp reference which is keyed to lectures that I'm giving. I'm writing out the overview and then going back and filling in the gaps. But it is taking a long time.
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Cooking for Engineers
Monday, September 27, 2004 9:24 AM
Now and then you come accross a web site which is so wonderful you have to tell all your friends about it. Well, friends, take a look at:Cooking for engineersI just hope that our engineer keeps it up. I'm definitely going to try a few of these..
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The Wonders of Remote Terminal
Sunday, September 26, 2004 7:50 PM
Something which has suddenly become even more wonderful is Remote Desktop Connection on Windows XP Professional. It lets me set up a remote session on a distant machine and use it as if I was actually sat there.From using it to remotely check my email
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Open Day Fun - And a Record You Must Buy
Saturday, September 25, 2004 5:44 PM
We had an open day today. Wonderful to see just about a full house. I'm always surprised and impressed at the distance from which people will come to see little old Hull.I think we gave good value. Jon gave a superb talk on Computer Gaming. Paul showed
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What do you think of Where Would You Think
Friday, September 24, 2004 9:10 PM
Well, we've got it going at last. The Hull Admissions Community Resource (catchily entitled wherewouldyouthink) is now live ish. Many thanks to Andy and number one son for getting the thing sorted. I'm going to be promoting it at the University Open Day
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Another Thursday Puzzle
Thursday, September 23, 2004 8:10 PM
I hope you all like these puzzles. I keep racking my brain (I seem to remember the expression as "racking my brains" - which implies that people have multiple brains - and explains where I've gone wrong) for things to ask questions
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C Sharp Course Wiki
Wednesday, September 22, 2004 7:40 PM
Well, I did it. I found a Wiki and I got it onto our server. I've now started writing material for it and I must admit it works quite well. The only problem is that the server we are using is a somewhat elderly Linux box (apparently the best Wiki in the
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Slave to a Good Idea
Tuesday, September 21, 2004 7:42 PM
I thought I'd blog my C sharp course. It seemed a neat idea at the time. You can find the start of it here. I have just finished the second lecture. I sat down to write about it. And turned out two pages of A4. And that is just the first part. And
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Go Hull Com Soc!
Monday, September 20, 2004 9:50 PM
When to a good meeting of Hull Computer Society today (otherwise known as Hull ComSoc). They've had a massive number of members sign up and it was really great to see a really good turnout to a meeting. People sign up for stuff and then never actually
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Sad Watch Buyer
Sunday, September 19, 2004 7:39 PM
I have always had a weakness for watches. I've got a few now. I've just done a deal with number one son to buy one that he got from Tokyo and now doesn't have a use for. It is great fun, if rather impractical. I intend to wear it at weekends when the
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Lounge Music Motoring
Saturday, September 18, 2004 7:11 PM
Number one son has loaded a CD of lounge music onto the XBOX. He now drives on the wrong side of the road at immense speed in Burnout 3 to the strains of Rueben Gonzales. It just makes the crashes even more hilarious. One other neat thing about Burnout
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Dangerous Beaches - the answer
Friday, September 17, 2004 7:42 PM
I set a puzzle a couple of days ago. What is more dangerous than sharks or jellyfish on an australian beach?Answer, coconuts. Apparently people sit down in the shade of a coconut tree and have their heads annointed by the hard falling fruit. And it really
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Anchorman
Thursday, September 16, 2004 6:06 PM
So, tonight the review of Anchorman which I saw last night and should be there in place of the Thursday question which should be here. Oh well. Term has started and thing are a bit busy at the moment.Anchorman is not as good as Dodgeball. It is not even
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Danger on an Australian Beach...
Wednesday, September 15, 2004 9:13 PM
Conversation in the pub turned to Australia. Wonderful country. Pete had just come back from there. What he told me makes for a great Thursday question:On Australian beaches, what is more dangerous than stinging jellyfish or sharks? (in fact they kill
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Busy Busy Busy
Tuesday, September 14, 2004 6:55 PM
Some days I go to work and things are just a whizzy blur. The last two days have been like that. I can explain why in two words: "Term started". All over the campus new students are wandering around clutching a wad of papers in one hand and a mobile phone
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The Things You Do...
Monday, September 13, 2004 7:35 PM
Spent a chunk of the evening taking pictures of crashbarriers (and who doesn't). We are having a little competition (open to all) to see who really knows their video games. I've take pictures of 10 crash barriers from 10 driving games. If you can get
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How Much Did You Do Today?
Monday, September 13, 2004 8:37 AM
Went up town. Bought Burnout 3 (super game). Silly eletronic game. Flat speaker cable. Went over to dads. Installed washing machine. Built wardrobe. Installed TV and stereo. Came home. Played Burnout 3 on the XBOX for a while (what? you
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Burnout 3 Review
Sunday, September 12, 2004 5:55 PM
I bought Burnout. It was good. I bought Burnout 2. It was better. Much better. So when Burnout 3 came along I found it very hard to resist. Particularly as number one son had read nice things about it online. So I bought it. And oh boy, it is the best
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Mature Students
Friday, September 10, 2004 7:20 PM
I gave a talk today to a bunch of mature students who are starting at Hull. This was kind of scary, in that I think I was older than most of them. Mature seem to start early these days. I wonder if I'll ever get there.Anyhoo, I told them lots of sensible
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Speed Up Your Life
Thursday, September 09, 2004 4:05 PM
Today I did something which has made my use of the computer a lot quicker. I've sped my mouse up. All I had to do was go into mouse settings in control panel and adjust the pointer speed bar in the pointer options tab. I can now move from one side of
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Catch Dodgeball
Wednesday, September 08, 2004 7:58 PM
OK. I've got six minutes to review Dodgeball before the next episode of "The Grid", a big budget slice of American-English co-production tosh which I quite like, comes on to BBC at 9:00 pm.If you didn't think that a film about a game where you have to
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Class Act
Tuesday, September 07, 2004 9:41 PM
May have used that title before. Never mind, it is a bit late here. I've been setting up the Classrom Server material we are going to be using for our C# programming course. Classroom server looks like fun. It takes away all the hassle of managing students,
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Good Times in York
Tuesday, September 07, 2004 7:36 PM
Went to a meal with a bunch of Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals last night. We ate at Meltons in York. Very nice French food. Very good company. Met up with Marc, a fellow MVP who runs a couple of great web sites about XP here and here. He was a
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The Weirdness of Life
Sunday, September 05, 2004 9:59 PM
Solved the telly problem today. And the answer is just plumb weird. And very expensive as far as I am concerned.If you had told me that you could make a television "crash" just by sending a particular picture signal to it, I would have laughed like
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Return of the van. And something pink
Saturday, September 04, 2004 8:40 PM
Took the white van back today. Never mind. It had been great fun and by the end I could even reverse it into the correct front drive without any help. Best quote of the move: I had just taken a corner in the van when there was an almighty crash from the
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White Van Man
Friday, September 03, 2004 9:04 PM
I'm exhausted. Dad has been moving house and I've been driver and mover and shifter. We started at 9:00 am this morning and we finished around 8:00 pm. You never know how much stuff you've got until you try to move it all. Anyway, the move went well,
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Thursday Puzzle
Thursday, September 02, 2004 7:46 PM
Now here is a puzzle. Apologies for setting such a stinker, and I did promise no more "number in sequence" ones - but here goes. 6, 2, 5, 5, 4, 5, 6, 3 (or sometimes 4), What is the next number?
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The Coward's Way Out
Thursday, September 02, 2004 9:30 AM
OK. So I blinked. I got my money back less 45 quid. I paid to have the duff TV delivered and they paid to take it away. Life is too short to spend it bickering over the phone. At least I have learned something out of the experience, and that is the main
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Take It Out on the Blog
Thursday, September 02, 2004 8:57 AM
When I get really cross about something (see previous post) I usually decide to do something hyper for a while until I cool down. This is sometimes quite constructive, in that it often motivates me to get a job done that I've been putting off for a while
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Sanity Check
Wednesday, September 01, 2004 5:23 PM
I think I need a sanity check. Consider the following sequence: Person buys TV set over internet from company. TV set arrives and proves faulty with an intermittent power supply fault. Several people witness fault and remark that it is broken and
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