Team Blog

For many years now I have been heading up the Windows Mobile® development within Astraware and it's been amazing to watch the Windows Mobile® operating system evolve from the early Orange SPV Smartphones to the modern wonders of today such as the HTC TyTn and s710.

Last week John and I were lucky enough to attend MEDC in Las Vegas. This was my first visit to Las Vegas which was an interesting experience. Sadly I spent most of my time around the Venetian hotel and only had a brief chance to explore the local area which turns out to be full of casinos and very warm. It's interesting to see the different themes and styles of hotels although I was surprised to see people endlessly playing on the machines like zombies at all times of the day.

For those who have never heard of MEDC it is the Microsoft Mobile and Embedded DevCon which involves lots of interesting sessions about the Windows Mobile® platform. Although I have attended some of the European events in the past this was my first time at the US event which proved to be very interesting and enjoyable.

The event started off with a great keynote which covered some fun topics such as the 'oFone' along with more serious topics such as SilverLight. Overall it was a great chance to learn all about the recently released Windows Mobile 6 operating system which now comes in three variations which are Classic, Standard and Professional. It also provided plenty of chances to catch up with the great people responsible for putting it all together.

For anyone who is a fan of Windows Mobile® or wishes to develop for it I would highly recommend attending one of the future MEDC events as it is certainly one of the best conferences I have had the pleasure of attending.

Back in 1982, Clive Sinclair (founder of Sinclair Research, and now "Sir", although some of us use the name "Uncle Clive") launched the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Home Computer. It started a revolution, or at least if it didn't start it (and many who owned its predecessor, the ZX81 may say that it didn't) it kicked it into a high gear, and a whole generation of British youngsters began playing games and writing their own programs.

Amongst them, along with many leaders of games studios worldwide now, were Howard and I, who back in 1982 were just 9 (Awww!) and like everyone at that age, highly susceptible to having our fragile minds warped by the evils of computers, games, and worst of all.... BASIC!

This year marks 25 years since the Speccy was launched in the UK, and you can find out more at this BBC News article.

We've taken a moment to reminisce and make comments.

Read more of this post...

Over the Easter holiday - while our children were off school, Kirk noticed that Warwick Castle was advertising a number of events over the holidays, including firing of a large trebuchet. For those that don't know, a trebuchet is a siege engine built for throwing rocks at castle walls. Here is the Warwick trebuchet wound up and ready to fire!

I've always loved anything that fires or shoots things through the air... right from an early age, from far before I knew that this was called "ballistics". From making long ramps to launch toy cars, to shooting rubber bands, from catapults to making simple bows (called "self bows") from sticks, I've always been fascinated.

Here's the magnificent Warwick trebuchet up close, after it has done its work.

I've always had a leaning towards science, with great TV shows like Tomorrow's World, Horizon, and especially The Great Egg Race being essential viewing for me. As I got through school, I discovered that Physics was the branch of science that dealt (amongst other things) with ballistics, and incredibly there were formulae that described how things fly through the air, how far they go, what the forces on them are... and that was my hook into the subject. (I went on to study more, but that was definitely the start!)

This idea of things being deterministic - that is, predictable from their launch conditions, really fell neatly in with computers for me. Providing you set up the instructions right, computer programs are predictable, and in just the same way I enjoyed computer programming, writing all kinds of computer simulations and games that involve things moving and flying. The game Bzzz! was one of these - my first commercial game, and still popular now!

Since watching the trebuchet, I've been feeling inspired to do some more ballistic things... I've been getting out my archery kit and making repairs and adjustments, I've been helping Kirk to make a set of arrows for her longbow... and I've been eyeing that pile of wood in the corner of my shed, just wondering if it could be fitted together to make something interesting...

Yesterday evening, WikiMonkey ventured off to the capital. He was there attending a London Girl Geek Dinner as Alison's guest - and I got taken along to look after him this time. Since he's currently busy with more travel plans, he's sent me to tell you about his evening.

We had a long drive down and then settled down with the guys from Fancyapint.com to listen to two speakers about Wikis - a subject close to WikiMonkey's heart! But no sooner had WikiMonkey got his badge and sat down than he was being interviewed by Angela Saini for the BBC! Alison was ready with her camera to record the moment and also snapped him posing with the London Girl Geek Dinners' founder, Sarah Blow. Sarah was so impressed, she insisted he give a bit of an impromptu chat about himself and his work after the other speakers.

We all had an interesting time, hearing about Wiki Wednesdays (a chance to share experiences with Wikis) from David Terrar and about Wikia (a more specialist development of Wikipedia) from Angela Beesley. It was nice to see the interest that Wikis are attracting from all sorts of people.

Unfortunately, WikiMonkey was struck down with a bit of Laryngitis and couldn't speak - so I had to fill in for him! I gave a short talk on how we use the Wiki here at Astraware, what it is like to run a Wiki in a company and answered a couple of questions about our experiences.

It was a good evening and I'm sure that we'll see Astraware Staff attending more London Girl Geek Dinner events in the future.

Halo 2 might seem like a bit of an odd choice, since it's quite an old game, but it's held its age well I feel and is great fun with groups of friends. I had the opportunity to visit a friend's house for one of their semi-irregular fragfests, where we connect as many consoles together as we can and then proceed to blow the living snot out of each other in games like Halo 2...so I've spent the week practicing my "skills".

I say "skills" in quotes here, because we don't exactly play normal matches here, we usually prefer to do crazy things like rocket launchers only on tiny maps, and last weekend was no exception. This time we went just one step further, and everyone donned a blindfold to play.

3 minutes later the match was over, and one guy had killed himself 5 times (he never made it out of the first room), one person had managed a kill, and most of us had blown ourselves up at least once. Oh, I forgot to mention that one person wasn't blindfolded. They were our camera person, wandering around the map trying not to get killed and recording the mayhem, so we all had a good laugh watching it later.

It seems UK children's TV has much to answer for, as the old program Knightmare became our inspiration for the next match. Teaming up in pairs, the one with the controller was blindfolded, and the second person would guide them. Sounds easy doesn't it? Well, it's not, but the results were hilarious as people tried to guide their blind companion with their Needler towards the enemy (for reference, the "Needler" is a fun little homing weapon in the game, not very powerful unless you can hit with a lot of shots).

With a game like this it's all just for fun, so we weren't picking out winners or anything. However, if you're interested in some statistics:

• Blindfolded with Rockets: I killed myself about 3 times, one person actually managed a kill, another person never made it out of their tiny starting room alive
• Blindfolded in pairs (me being guided): My "team" came third with 1 kill, the highest had 3 (I think)
• Blindfolded in pairs (me guiding): My "team" came first with a monstrous 4 kills, and were seconds away from the fifth and final kill when the timer ran out.

Expect more blindfolded game antics in the future...Blindcaliber 2 anyone?