Yesterday was the final of the UK Imagine Cup, in which Aberystwyth had 3 teams. Comp-U-Teach, I.C.E. and Aperio presented their posters to the judges before I arrived yesterday, since I was really only there as a "groupie". After a quick look at a couple of the other posters, followed by a couple of presentations about what the Imagine Cup is about (including a talk from two of the guys from last years winning team, Three Pair) eventually we learned the top 3. In no particular order, these were -

Comp-U-Teach from Aberystwyth

Herts of Code from Hertfordshire

The Seedlings from Hull

Excellent, Aberystwyth had a team through and for once it looked like Hull could be beaten (previous winners of the Imagine Cup include Hull, a Team from Microsoft, Hull, Hull, a Team from Microsoft (with a member from Hull) and Hull). So for those three teams it was off to prepare for their prestentations and for the rest of the audience it was time to watch Jon Harris and Mike Taulty do an excellent presentation on User Experience. I do like watching those 2 at work.

Eventually, after a short Korean lunch, the three teams returned to give their presentations. The Seedlings went first and presented an idea called My First Programming Language which would help teach school children to solve problems and to program. In all fairness, the microphones didn't seem to have been set up quite right, as there was an annoying squeaking coming from the speakers throughout the first 10 minutes of their presentation - I can't imagine how off-putting that might have been.

Next up were Comp-U-Teach (Matt and Simon) with their presentation about World Class, an application which uses video conferencing technology to enable children in one country to learn from those in others whilst giving the teachers in either class the ability to fully control the classes.

Finally, Herts of Code (sorry, I only know Ben on this team) presented weLearn, an interactive reading application which allows the user to read text and highlight it, add text or "ink" notes to it, or search wikipedia for it. Obviously being used on a computer the pages of these interactive books may also include pictures, video or many other kinds of multimedia (like an embedded map from Windows Live Local).

 

A short break later and we're sat down again awaiting the announcment of the winners. The prizes awaiting the winners included Creative Zen's for third place (originally they were to be Zune's, but since they aren't out in the UK yet...), XBox 360s for the second place winners (with Gears of War and a few other games) and the grand prize were HP Laptops and advancement to the Imagine Cup World Final in Korea. So, the winners were...

 

3) Hertz of Code

2) Comp-U-Teach

1) The Seedlings

How the Hull do they do it?

 

Well it was a fun day for all and I think everyone can be pleased for making it to the final. On a personal note (and something a few other noticed as well) the whole event seemed a little scaled down this year, even though the prizes themselves were more evenly spread. Slightly embarrassingly I already had most of the swag that was up for grabs, but I still needed another Vista/Office bag to carry the things I didn't have. And I'm not entirely sure why the water bottles have the Windows Embedded logos on them, but I'm sure it'll come in handy somewhere. :-)

So, my remaining things are packed into boxes and an awful lot of those boxes are now in the car. However, it's now time to pack the laptop, so this is officially my last blog enty from Aber.

 

To everyone in Aber - Bye. I would miss you if it weren't for the fact that I'm seeing some of you next week in Reading, some of you in Budapest in September, and the rest are equally allowed ranom visits whenever they fancy a night on a couch. And there's always messenger making the world smaller.

 

To everyone in Reading - Hello! Hope to meet you soon if I haven't already and if you come round, try not to throw up on the couch.

 

To everyone in America - Just to explain, Reading and Aber are about 4 hours away from each other, so in your terms I'm only moving next door. And since I can only think of one person I know in America (hi Huw) I don't know why I'm explaining that.

 

Needless to say I'm looking forward to the next few months. I don't plan much further ahead than that, but I'm sure the rest will be fun as well.

 

Bye Aber!

I don't really know what happened to February, but suffice is to say I've been a little too busy to blog. So, the big news would be that I'm moving to Reading. In 11 days (8 working days). My new place of work shall be Reading University, the IMSS lab where I'll be a Research Assistant. We'll ignore the fact that Joe got there first.

Partially due to that and partially due to the many Microsoft Events that went on at the beginning of the year, I've spent about 6 (maybe 7) weekends in Reading already this year. It's been getting ridiculous, but as of yet I have no plans to spend the coming weekend sleeping anywhere but Aber.

A few days ago when I was originally going to write this post I had lots more to say, but Spaces was suffering from (yet more) problems and I've forgetten it all. Oh well. Take a look at the new photos instead and I'll try and think of what my next post will be about.