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

January 2005 - Posts

London Calling
Monday, January 31, 2005 9:43 PM
Went to London with David Grey to give a paper to the JICC conference. We were telling them all about the .NET MSc course and the horrible things that we do to the students. They seemed to quite like it, and there were some interesting papers on teaching
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Plasma Madness
Sunday, January 30, 2005 7:55 PM
Went over to see my dad yesterday. He has just bought a big plasma telly and had a man come to install it. Well. Very nice telly, somewhat botched installation. The reason that he got the big screen was to watch stuff through the satellite decoder. So
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Meet The Fokkers
Saturday, January 29, 2005 9:20 AM
Went to see Meet The Fokkers (MTF) tonight. Not really my kind of film. Meet the Parents was ok in a toe curling kind way, with one or two set pieces almost as good as the ones in, say, Home Alone II. MTF is different. Good things about the evening: the
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Return of the Thursday Puzzle - Crisp Selection
Wednesday, January 26, 2005 9:47 AM
Hmmm. Just as I got all formal with the Puzzle thing, with certificates and everything, the puzzle side of my brain shut down. Never mind, I think I'll make this a more informal, freewheeling, type of thing from now on. Maybe there will be a puzzle on
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Journey into Spaces
Tuesday, January 25, 2005 10:51 PM
I was talking to Paul yesterday and he asked me about blogging. He was wondering if it was a good way to keep in contact with project students. Good question.The problem is that normally what you blog is put up there for all to see, which a student might
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Busy Days are Best. And teaching is sometimes strange.
Monday, January 24, 2005 9:17 PM
I don't know about you, dear reader, but I like busy days. Today I've given a couple of lectures and written a whole bunch of stuff for the C sharp course. The lectures were fun, although trying to make bound and constrained properties interesting to
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1000 Watts and Eternal Sunshine
Sunday, January 23, 2005 10:10 PM
Yesterday I helped Dad set up his new surround sound system. The box says 1,000 watts of sound power. I've seen electric fires with less ouput. I reckon that you probably only get that kind of output for a tiny time interval, but it does seem rather
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Friday Blues
Friday, January 21, 2005 9:58 PM
David's hard drive broke today. And Richard's keyboard. And the Friday before last I had my, ahem, little local difficulty with my disk too. We are starting to wonder if there is something about Friday itself. I think that next Friday I'll use pencil
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Seventh Heaven
Thursday, January 20, 2005 8:49 PM
I've got a digital radio. (my wife reckons that if there was a digital toothbrush I'd get that too). They are jolly good, but the sound quality is not as wonderful as they might have you believe. But the things I listen to don't have ultra high quality
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Computer Juggling
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 9:04 PM
I looked around my office this afternoon and was surprised to find that I have four computers humming away in the room. Plus my laptop and a couple of other machines which are very old and never powered up.This cannot go on. I'm embarking on a rationalisation
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Low Sun Pictures
Tuesday, January 18, 2005 12:17 PM
I love this time of year for photographs. The low sun makes for some nice colours. If you were on campus first thing this morning you might have seen me scurrying round with my camera. I like sunshine on brick. This one came out quite well:Oh, and if
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Another Book to Buy
Monday, January 17, 2005 11:15 PM
I bought another book last week. This one has nothing to do with computers though. A chap called Nick Wood has taken a whole bunch of panoramic pictures of New York. He sets down a tripod in the middle of somewhere interesting and uses his Nikon to take
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Smartphone Sunday
Sunday, January 16, 2005 10:27 PM
Spent a big chunk of the day playing with code. Not done that for a while (and I did wash the car too). I'm messing around with some Smartphone stuff which might see the light of day as more Cheesy articles. You never know.... I've also been playing with
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Got My Bandwidth Back - and flying with The Aviator
Saturday, January 15, 2005 8:33 PM
Good News: I've got my bandwidth back at home. Web pages whizz down and the whole feel of the internet is splendidly snappy. Bad News: Number one son has gone back to his university. We took him today. Filled the car with PC, monitor and just about everything
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Buy This Book
Thursday, January 13, 2005 10:47 PM
I've long had an ongoing relationship with "Code Complete 2" by Steve McConnell. But now a new suitor has come along and quite taken my fancy. This is not because I am fickle where Software Engineering texts are concerned, but because I'm always
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One Last Picture
Wednesday, January 12, 2005 11:16 PM
One last christmas picture.
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Late Christmas Pictures
Tuesday, January 11, 2005 8:51 PM
I thought that, now I've finished my marking (did I mention that before), I'd post some pictures I took over christmas:Cottingham LightsSunset at the Humber Bridge ParkSlippers and socks for christmas
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I've finished my marking
Tuesday, January 11, 2005 8:21 PM
It seems like I've been marking for ever. What with a bunch of exams and practical work to wade through it has taken me the best part of a fortnight to get it all done. But now I've finished. I'll have time to play with computers, write the blog and generally
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Taking My World With Me
Monday, January 10, 2005 10:30 PM
Rather than spend too much time rebuilding my office PC I've instead transferred everything to the new notebook (I know that you are all very keen to hear how I do my computing). I plug the notebook into my big monitor and bendy keyboard in the office
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The Big Yellow Taxi of Disk Drive Failure
Sunday, January 09, 2005 10:45 PM
"Don't it allways seem to goThat you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone"One of my favourite lines from the Joni Mitchel song. I had all the important stuff on my hard disk backed up. So when I lost the drive last week I had no problem getting
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Today has not been a good day
Friday, January 07, 2005 9:03 PM
This morning wasn't too bad. But this afternoon has not been good at all. Some time ago I got a new PC and I've started migrating over to it. I was going to move all my files by the simple expedient of transferring the hard disk. I've done this many times
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Meetings, Marking and Name that Film
Thursday, January 06, 2005 10:42 PM
Started the day with a staff meeting. Booo. Which only lasted an hour and a half. Yay! Then on to marking exams. Booo. Which I've now finished. Yay! I've got a lot more to do. Booo. But I'm leaving that until tomorrow. Yay!Then watched a naff film on
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Marking Time
Wednesday, January 05, 2005 8:10 PM
Spent most of the day marking. The pile on my desk is now a lot smaller (but this is mainly because I moved a big chunk of it onto the floor to avoid depressing myself too much). My aim is to get all my marking done this week so that I can get on with
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This time I really am back
Tuesday, January 04, 2005 11:06 PM
I've been somewhat remis lately. I've been not blogging. It started when my computer room was taken over as a bedroom over the christmas period (this is of course not an excuse really - but it will have to do I suppose). Then, lacking the rhythm of the
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Just as you thought it was safe...
Saturday, January 01, 2005 9:09 PM
And here we are again. Had a busy week, probably too busy to blog. I could have written about the Media PC I've built, the fun I've had with the dotnet cpu or my camera capers. But all these will emerge over the next few weeks I'm sure. Anyway, I'm glad
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