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

March 2005 - Posts

Broadcast Media
Tuesday, March 29, 2005 7:02 PM
Had another weak moment on Saturday and bought a media streamer thingy. It listens to my wireless network and receives streamed audio files from my server PC. It is the Netgear MP101. I got it cheap, with some nice speakers thrown in. I've upgraded my
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Carlton Game Fair
Monday, March 28, 2005 7:44 PM
In a truly british manner we spent our easter day going out and having fun. Whatever the weather. We went to the Game Fair at Carlton Towers, a little country house near where dad lives. I'd never been to a game fair before, I was expecting anything,
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Mud Plugging
Sunday, March 27, 2005 10:15 PM
Went out for the day today to a Game Fair at Carlton Towers. Lots and lots and lots of mud. With mud on. I'll post some pictures tomorrow when I've got them out of the camera.We had a nice Easter Sunday. Hope you had too. But pehaps with less mud.
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Plasma Plugging
Saturday, March 26, 2005 10:46 PM
Whizzed over to dad's today and plugged a few things into his big plasma telly. Tried Gran Turismo 4 with a force feedback steering wheel and it is great fun. Even though I lost every race. Then number one son plugged in the XBOX and fired up Steel Batallion,
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Media Conversion Magic
Thursday, March 24, 2005 10:52 PM
You've got number one son to thank for this one. I've been trying to convert some media files to play on my Portable Media Centre. Whilst I can play them on the PC; when I try to transfer the using Media Centre it seems to reject the files and just transfers
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UK Student Zine
Wednesday, March 23, 2005 9:06 AM
If you are interested in what is going on in this business you should take a look at a new student Zine (I think this is a trendy name for a magazine) which is being launched by Microsft UK for young developers. I've signed up (possibly to try and make
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Goldilocks and the Three Versions
Monday, March 21, 2005 10:27 PM
I'm coding again for a while. A little project which looks fun. Some user interface stuff, some XML and probably a bit of database backend. Lovely. I've just about finished the user interface bit. I've just reached the "feels right" part of the code
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Sons, Cars and Puddles
Saturday, March 19, 2005 11:12 PM
Oops. Missed a day. That is going to bother me (although I've no idea why it should really). Picked up number one son today from uni. He is home for a five weeks. So there goes all the bandwidth. As I write this the hub lights are flickering merrily and
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Back To School
Thursday, March 17, 2005 10:53 PM
Went back to school for a day. I did a presentation at Baysgarth school, just over the river. The audience was polite and attentive, and I think they enjoyed the talk. Of course I took the dog, and of course he stole the show. This time, for some reason,
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Towards a Quieter Office
Wednesday, March 16, 2005 11:09 PM
We've moved three servers out of my office today. The place is scarily quiet. I'm wondering if I'll still be able to function without the hum of all those fans and disk drives. Perhaps I'll have to have a sound effect playing just so that I don't get
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Irons in the Fire
Tuesday, March 15, 2005 7:52 PM
I've applied for something today which probably won't come off. I've now got a new policy on this kind of thing. From now on I'm trying to make sure that at any one time I have at least three things "out there" which would be really
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Leaves
Monday, March 14, 2005 9:54 AM
Whilst I was pulling Red Nose Day pictures off my phone I found this one I took in autumn last year. I've tinkered with the colours ever so slightly, but I think it is still a good testament to how good phone cameras are these days.
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Comic Relief Relief
Monday, March 14, 2005 9:51 AM
Well, the lecture has been and gone. At the end of the day we raised over 500 quid. The only problem was that fifty of that was payment to paint my hair red. Again. Many thanks to Paul Chapman for setting that up, which meant that I had to spend the whole
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Things that make you go arrrrgh!
Sunday, March 13, 2005 11:12 PM
I hate seeing other people's badly designed software. It makes all of us in the business look like fools. Next door have been having problems with their computer. They have got some educational software which for some reason requires the user to log in
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Writing Poetry is Hard
Thursday, March 10, 2005 10:53 PM
If there's one thing harder than writing exam questions, it's writing poetry. I've just about finished all the linking stuff and some new material for the lecture tomorrow. I never have it all done until around half an hour before the event starts, it
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Swapatorium
Wednesday, March 09, 2005 11:06 PM
Isn't the internet a fascinating place. Take this site. I just love these pictures.
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Red Nose Day On Friday
Tuesday, March 08, 2005 9:15 PM
In the UK we have a charity thing called Red Nose Day. I've been involved since forever. Each time it comes around I dust off my dictionary and put together a lecture in rhyme. I'll be doing another one (based a bit on the one I did last time about .NET).
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Don't be so quick to be convinced
Monday, March 07, 2005 2:43 PM
Helped a student out today with a bug in their Java. The compiler was doing the impossible, complaining about something which was obviously not true. Now I have a really strong policy in this area, in that I reckon if you let the person with the bug convince
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Borg Charging Station
Sunday, March 06, 2005 10:54 PM
These used to be where the Borgs used to stand to charge up. And now you can get them from Gadget shop. Cheap. Wahay!
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Petals around the rose
Friday, March 04, 2005 10:34 PM
This puzzle has been driving students on the forum absolutely bonkers. Not me though. Ten seconds.http://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-bg.htm
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You must read this
Thursday, March 03, 2005 8:47 PM
This is something else that Don Box's blog put me on to. It is a web based version of a history of the Macintosh. Linked together as a series of posts from the folks who actually built the beast. It is a very interesting description of how a small
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Will we always need to know about abstract classes and interfaces?
Wednesday, March 02, 2005 7:53 PM
I've been reading Don Box's blog: http://pluralsight.com/blogs/dbox/Well worth a visit. He has been debating which programming languge to teach his kids (he wants them to have an appreciation of the issues, but not end up as programmers). He made the
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Trapped in Animal Crossing
Tuesday, March 01, 2005 9:00 AM
I meant to post a blog entry yesterday, but I was in Animal Crossing (a Gamecube game) for most of the evening. And when I say "in", I really mean it. You go and live there. It is a bit like being inside an episode of Postman Pat. People need their glasses
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