Congratuations to Abi and Neil!
Congratulations to both of you on your engagement, we’re really happy for you and I hope that you get everything that you want for the wedding whenever that is and live happily ever after…
Good Hunting
PS - Although technically I still got into trouble as you guys have been going out for fives years whereas I only proposed after five and a half!
Playing in the snow with Mia
After Charlotte getting a snow day today we were in Braintree at 8.00 this morning so we popped round to see Mia and have some fun in the snow! Here’s some pictures of the fun - Mia in the snow.
Somehow Charlotte has managed to stay out of all the pictures, I wonder how that has happened!
Good Hunting
Vista - half term report
I’ve had Vista for nearly a week and I’ve had time to try out some more of it’s features, so here’s a quick round up of what I think so far. I couldn’t think of any other aspects to comment on at the moment but if you’ve got a question then feel free to ask!
Look and Feel
Well I think it looks awesome, now I’m pretty sure that Mac users will hit me very hard, but, I think I prefer it to the mac interface - I said think! I did somehow manage to uninstall the aero theme though - it was my fault, not windows, but still, it was annoying that the only way to get it back was to reinstall the whole thing again.
Ease of Use
It does work nicely and it does make everything just that little bit easier than XP was. The file navigation is smooth and somehow you just find things quicker. It makes me realise what a state my files are in!
Ease of Setup/Configuration
This is the bit where it takes XP and sends it to the corner. Setup and config are so very easy in Vista, everything is a few clicks away and (so far) there’s none of that seventeen option pages deep settings that you need to tick just to get something simple working that we had with all other versions of windows.
Restore/Upgrade
Well it doesn’t give you back a theme you’ve uninstalled! Apart from that I haven’t used them - and hopefully won’t.
Compatibility
Everything but Nero, and that’s to do with the way it runs video now. Something called Com Surrogate crashes instead of explorer now but this means that a lot of the video codecs don’t work with Vista. It also switches back to the basic theme when DVD’s are being played - however this is because I’ve got business which doesn’t come with a decoder and so I have to use one that doesn’t use the Comm Surrogate thingy. Once there’s a nice free decoder out there everything will be fine.
I have also heard that itunes doesn’t work properly yet - come on Apple! Catch up, it’s not like Vista surprised us all!
Speed
With all the hype surrounding this I was waiting for a big slow down, but nothing, in fact I would say that it runs faster!
Conclusions
So far so good, apart from the DVD issues there’s not really been any problems and although I have cursed at it - ask Charlotte! - it is better than XP. As for the security issues we’ll have to wait and see, although it’s not like hackers won’t see it as a challenge so I’m sure it won’t be long. Is it worth the money? Not the amounts that windows charge but it is a step in the right direction.
Score
4/5
Good Hunting
So we are destroying the world!
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change humans are “very likely” to have caused the changes in our planets climate [BBC]. Now whilst this is no suprise to most of the planet maybe some of those policy makers around the globe who have been waiting doing nothing for some of these reports will actually do something.
Very likely in this context apparently means a certainty of more than 90%, so there is still room for the 4000 year cycles and the second coming that seem to be the main contenders for why the world is warming irreversably. The report also says that the changes will be irreversable if nothing is done in the next fifteen years. And that the temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4 degrees by 2100. So this would mean no polar ice cap, and more extreme weather. Surely it’ll be cheaper to combat this now than have to reprint every school text book?
I feel a little hypocritical as my exhaust is broken and I haven’t fixed it yet! Although I think that there are larger scale projects that would benefit the environment a little more.
Good Hunting
Teaching (Again)
Each year I put myself through the same experience, teaching at Uni. It’s good money but normally it’s quite dull and the undergraduates seem less engaging each year, more and more willing to just sit there and stare at the screen not really caring if the robot moves or not. This year marks a notable improvement however and they are actually interested in the module, to the point where several of them have been into the labs before their classes and started work to ensure that they know what they are doing!
For those of you who’ve been through the Essex Computer Science degree scheme I’m talking about 161. I’ve been teaching in the labs for the last three years now and this is the first time that the students have been looking forward to the assignments. Now this may be because Martin (The lecturer) has made the last assignment way more involved and exciting than before - you now get to drive the robots around by tilting a remote control made from a SunSPOT board and program the robots in a proper language, Java.
They are some obvious exception to this but I think that here is not the correct forum to discuss those in my labs who are annoying! Although I’ve never had to tell the students not to make a wooden ramp with which to launch a ROVa into the air before.
Hopefully this means that the results will be up, everyone will enjoy it more and… I’ll get paid more? I don’t think so! All of this does mean that I’ve got to learn a whole new assignment, but then it’s only the code as I’m already using the SPOTs in my PhD project.
Good Hunting