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Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category

DDD North – My Session on Kinect – Feedback

13 Oct

Thanks to all of you for the great feedback on my session about Kinect. I’ve shared the feedback I got on this post, but you might need to click on the picture to make it big enough to read, but I wanted to share it in the same format as I got it.

Looks like I need to work on the abstracts a little, but overall I’m pretty damn chuffed – thanks.

 

 

 

Vote for DDD North sessions

31 Aug

The voting for DDD north is currently open and will remain so until Saturday.

I’ve got a couple of sessions submitted, including one on the Kinect SDK which a blogged about a earlier this year.

If you’d like to see that session, then you need to vote for it.. It wont happen without your votes!

Head on over to http://www.developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/north/Users/VoteForSessions.aspx to vote.

 

Update: I’m now speaking at DDD north. Hope to see you there!

 

When I was a lad…

13 Mar
Sinclair ZX81

Sinclair ZX81

A couple of days ago, I noticed an article on the BBC news website, that talked about the birth of computing
in the UK. It featured a picture of a ZX81.

Seeing the picture brought back memories, because this was the first computer I actually purchased.

With its 1K (yes thats kilobytes) of ram, people did amazing things. It taught me to write code in an efficient manner, otherwise it wouldnt fit. It taught me to focus on providing a solution (which was usually a game!) rather than worrying on it being pretty. These are skills that programmers new to the industry have a hard time understanding as they write code thats way bigger and more convoluted than they need to be, with way more style than substance.

Heres a link to the original bbc article. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12703674

 
 

Microsoft to release SDK for Kinect

22 Feb

When I did my DDD9 talk on Home Automation, I suggested that the Kinect device would soon be included into the Home Automation space. Adding natural gesture recognition sounds like a good fit in this market space. Well, yesterday this took a step nearer when Microsoft released an SDK for Kinect on Windows.

With the initial release expected in the spring, the first version will aimed at the hobbyist developer and non-commercial uses. It will however, allow access to all the fun stuff in the Kinect, such as Audio, 3D cameras, range finding etc. A commerical version of the software development kit will be available later on in the year.

Heres a link to the official release from Microsoft Research Labs in Cambridge.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/kinectforwindowssdk-022111.aspx

 

Push2TV – Intel Wireless Display TV Adapter

21 May
These look really cool. Not got my hands on one yet, and even if I did, I need a laptop that has Intel wireless display support on it, But I love the idea of working on my laptop and then connecting to a large screen projector or TV to share some stuff with the room or watch a movie.

Might even convince me I don’t need a PC permanently connected to the TV (That’ll please the wife!)

http://www.netgear.com/ptv

 

Ever struggled to find a socket?

24 Jun

We have all seen the spaghetti under the desk where we need to plug in 5 pieces of kit, into 4 sockets. So we add a trailing socket, and the spaghetti grows.

I came across this photo looking around the IWOOT site, that has a whole new take on this! I thought is was cool so I would like to share it here..