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

October 2004 - Posts

Gathering Up the Leaves
Sunday, October 31, 2004 7:25 PM
Spent some time today in the garden gathering leaves. I'm not sure why, the tree above is still full of them and so I'll have to do this again in a week or so. But then again it is quite relaxing and the weather was being kind to us. I like doing
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Atari Lynx
Saturday, October 30, 2004 8:20 PM
I've always wanted an Atari Lynx. It was one of the early handhelds. Developed by a couple of blokes who were also behind the Amiga (another machine I have a great respect for) it had hardware way ahead of its time and a very powerful processor. And the
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Error Message
Friday, October 29, 2004 1:16 PM
I thought I'd test out the new file hosting thing which the Spoke provides. Here is an error message that I'm sure you'd like to see:
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A Bit of ASP Fun
Thursday, October 28, 2004 9:04 PM
I've been playing around with my new homepages. I thought I'd liven them up with a bit of ASP. Take a look at:http://www.robmiles.co.uk/IndexFun.aspx..let me know what you think.And now for a really stupid Thursday puzzle thing. Ask someone which is heavier,
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A week with portable media center
Wednesday, October 27, 2004 9:55 PM
I've had my portable media center for nearly a week now. I'm really getting to like having it around. I've put a few movies on it and I like having them on tap. Yesterday I had to wait in a carpark for a few minutes when I was picking the family up from
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More High Blood Pressure
Tuesday, October 26, 2004 7:17 PM
I seem to be having a bad week blood pressure wise. Had the same bad thing happen to me three times just now.  I think that by the third time I was as annoyed at myself as I was at the software.I've been using Google for email for quite some time
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Wearing a Suit Sometimes Works
Monday, October 25, 2004 7:06 PM
Wore a suit this morning for the first time in a while. We were making the final pitch to the university for our games production company thing. Everyone else was in suits (or at least jackets and ties) so the move paid off. The presentation seemed to
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Bad For The Blood Pressure
Sunday, October 24, 2004 11:26 AM
I've just finished my little paper about teaching C#. It is a few hundred words over the limit but I really can't trim it down any more without losing information. So now I need to send it off to the conference organisers. In PDF format. No
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Fragfest Madness
Saturday, October 23, 2004 8:13 PM
Went along to the Hull Com Soc Fragfest today. Didn't actually intend to take part, but in the end I cracked and took in number one wife's portable for a quick blast of Unreal Tournament. I came last - every time. But I did win at Table Tennis.All
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Creative Portable Media Center
Friday, October 22, 2004 9:49 PM
I don't think that it is coincidence that I get the chance to earn a little extra money writing a hardware review in the same week that the Creative Zen Portable Media Centres appear in our shops. I think it is fate. And you can't fight fate.So I bought
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A Thousand Words (or perhaps just two)
Thursday, October 21, 2004 10:08 PM
I had to write a thousand words today. I'm preparing a submission for a conference. You have to write 1,000 words about your presentation. I'm preparing one about why we changed to C# from Java for our first language.I can do it in two words: "It's
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Stopping Piracy
Thursday, October 21, 2004 10:14 AM
Just been talking to David about a piece of shareware that he is developing. He has got to the point where he is about to deploy it in the real world and is starting to consider how to protect it from theft. There are loads of nasty issues here and you
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Back With A Whack
Thursday, October 21, 2004 8:02 AM
Hurrah. Everything is up and appears to be working (last night I had to turn off all my computers in the office because of mains supply work). I've even managed to patch the SQL database for Class Server and it all seems to be fine.The strangest thing
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I No Longer Have the Power
Wednesday, October 20, 2004 6:02 PM
Just done something *really* scary. I've turned off all the computers in my office. I had to do this, because they are shutting down all power to the building later today. Tomorrow morning I'll have to go in early and power everything up. The machines
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What's on your desktop?
Wednesday, October 20, 2004 8:43 AM
I thought you might like to see what is on my desktop at the moment:The picture was taken in a place called Castleton in the Peak District. I was walking up the hill to the, er, castle.
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Literary Classics
Tuesday, October 19, 2004 8:45 AM
Every couple of years my mum used to re-read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. She reckoned that it was so good that it deserved re-reading. I've read it once (you should too - it is a darned good read) and I'll probably read it again some day.But there
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Why Write Things Down?
Monday, October 18, 2004 6:08 PM
I've noticed that I don't write things down as much as I used to. If I need to remember the model number of something I'm using, I'll take a picture of the item and file that away. When I wanted a new wheel trim for the car I just took a picture of the
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Happiness from cheap cable
Sunday, October 17, 2004 11:25 AM
Did something today that I've not done before. Bought a cheap cable and connected my computer into the HiFi in my room. Up until now I've just used a pair of speakers on the output of my soundcard. They have a subwoofer thingy and, up until now, I've
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Bongo Fever
Saturday, October 16, 2004 9:59 PM
For some time I've had a Gamecube. We got it cheap and we have a couple of games for it. Today I bought something which will get us quite a bit more use of it I reckon. Donkey Congo is a game which ships with a pair of bongo drums that you connect in
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We Need More Lazy Programmers
Friday, October 15, 2004 9:52 PM
I've been putting some bits and bobs into the C Sharp Wiki that we have going at Hull.  This is my take on Creatve Laziness:This is lazy in a good way. It means that rather than solve a problem I'll tend to build a machine to solve it, and then use
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Lottery Puzzle
Thursday, October 14, 2004 8:01 PM
I've never bought a lottery ticket. I enjoy life as it is and I don't think that I could be improved by millions of pounds (and I know a bit about probability). Strangely, people I know think that I would be massively improved if I was rich - but
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Eggs Rated
Thursday, October 14, 2004 7:51 PM
I never explained how you tell your eggs apart. Sorry folks. The problem posed last week was how to tell which of the two otherwise identical eggs is the hard boiled one.The answer is to spin them on smooth surface. Then stop them and let go. The one
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Where I Get Up To What I Get Up To
Wednesday, October 13, 2004 9:21 PM
AlfredTwo has put up a nice picture of what he has been up to lately in the home improvement stakes. This is not really home improvement, but it does explain why I couldn't get the Tablet PC on my desk.The mint humbugs are just next to the keyboard. If
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Scare The Cat anyone?
Wednesday, October 13, 2004 8:29 PM
Had another meeting of our Games Programming Club today. We are all busily inventing mini-games at the moment. If all goes well you could eventually be enjoying the pleasures of "Scare The Cat", "Prescott Punch Up", "Stay Awake", "Monkey Lunch" and a
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Autumn Trees Picture
Wednesday, October 13, 2004 8:12 AM
I just love taking pictures of trees in autumn. Amazing, from our carpark to the entire world in around 5 minutes...
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Writers Block
Tuesday, October 12, 2004 8:08 PM
It is that time of year. We have to write our exam questions. People, if you think answering exams is tricky, you should try setting them. Just to make life more interesting I've also got to set around forty or so multiple choice questions for a Class
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How To Get Rid Of A Paperweight
Monday, October 11, 2004 8:27 PM
Ha. Fixed it all. Many thanks to the person that saw fit to make Office require these mysterious CAB files. And a big round of applause to the person who thought it would be neat to make these files on the distribution DVD hidden. But I am the equal of
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How To Make a Paperweight
Monday, October 11, 2004 10:42 AM
Ever wanted your own novelty paperweight. Here is how I made one earlier: I wanted to finish off my FullMarks program. This is my little Tablet PC app which lets me annotate student programs and their output and creates a little web page for every
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Somebody Stop Me
Saturday, October 09, 2004 7:15 PM
Went up town without the restraining influence of Number One Son. This turned out to be a bad move. Bought a crystal XBOX (already have one - which can now go up to Durham for son to use when Halo 2 is released) which was an amazing deal. Also got a Dolby
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Mark and Andy Speak
Friday, October 08, 2004 10:23 PM
No pictures of Andy and Mark doing their thang I'm afraid. But I did snap a picture of a few folks in the audience with my Smartphone:Note how nobody seems to be asleep. Yet.
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Microsoft Come to See Us
Friday, October 08, 2004 6:37 PM
Andy, Caroline, Gavin and Mark from microsoft made their way up to Little Olde Hull(tm) to see us today. A good time was had by everyone, including the 60 or so students who came along to hear Andy and Mark talk about web services.I went along to their
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Eggs
Thursday, October 07, 2004 10:26 AM
Another Thursday Puzzle. On Thursday for a nice change...You are given two eggs. On of them is hard boiled. The other isn't. They weigh the same and look the same. You have to figure out which is the hard boiled one.Without breaking the eggs
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Mini Game Madness
Wednesday, October 06, 2004 8:35 PM
We now have a games programming club in the department. We are getting together each Wed. afternoon (it is the university games afternoon after all) and thinking about silly games. We've asked all the people who have joined (there are about 20) to come
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Mind Expanding
Tuesday, October 05, 2004 7:33 PM
At work, during my lunch hour, I make a point of looking round the internet for bits and bobs. I especially like reading blogs and I love leaping from one "blogs I read" to another "blogs I read" and finding truly amazing things. Some people write really
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The Milton Keynes Mystery
Monday, October 04, 2004 8:08 PM
Sorry about the somewhat enigmatic manner of my last post. Done at speed when tired you know. Anyhoo, Milton Keynes is a place in england notable for being a new town, having straight roads and lots of roundabouts and for concrete cows which they put
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Milton Keynes for Collectables
Sunday, October 03, 2004 7:20 PM
Whew! Just driven around 600 miles in a weekend. I know that for our American cousins 600 miles probably equates to just a trip to the chemist and back, but for me in my little car it was quite hard work. I reckon of the last 36 hours I've spent around
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One Less Towel
Saturday, October 02, 2004 3:31 PM
We now have one less towel in the bathroom. Each person in the family has their own and now number one son has taken himself plus towel off to university in Durham. Actually we took him and we've just got back. I've never been there before,
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Baby Steps
Friday, October 01, 2004 8:19 PM
I really enjoy teaching programming. It is interesting to see how people react to problems. Every year some people do the job in an entirely new way I haven't seen before, and then again some things crop up time and again. I gave the first year C#
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