DSi XL Console Review

DSi and DSi XL showing the difference in size

It seems that the fashion is for making bigger versions of existing things. Apple come out with their iPad, which is very big version of the iPod touch and now Nintendo come out with the DSi XL, which is a very big version of the DSi. (Actually, you could probably accuse Apple of copying Nintendo here, since the DSi XL has been out in Japan for a while and I think it has been something of a success there).

You get pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, in that the new DSi is just bigger than the old one. But the screen is also a lot brighter (the photo above doesn’t really do this justice) and the extra size does make a difference to gameplay. I found I was suddenly better at Ridge Racer, in that I could spot corners from further away, and Zoo Keeper looks really, really good.

Along with a dictionary you also get a free “taster” version of Brain Training built in. This told me my brain was 80 years old. Perhaps I should take the console back to the shop.  In fact a potentially large market for this device is folks like me who are a bit more advanced in years and appreciate the larger screen, although I’m surprised they didn’t make the buttons bigger as well.

If you have already got a DSi then the new one doesn’t really move things forward much, unless you are a bit short sighted like me. But if you have yet to buy one, I reckon you should get this one, along with a jacket with slightly larger pockets….

Using a Webcam as an Elmo Display

 

For those of you thinking about the fantastic toys, I’m afraid I must disappoint you (although the toys are great). I’m talking about the digital presenter tools which you use during talks to show things to the audience. I’ve used them in the past when doing talks about mobile phone development or to show small devices like the Micro Framework ones.

I did a talk today about the .NET Micro Framework and instead of using an Elmo I used a webcam. I tried using them ages ago but the quality of the pictures was so bad that I ended up using a camcorder instead. But this time I had one of the new Microsoft webcams, the LifeCam Cinema.  This boasts a proper 720P resolution and an auto focus lens made of real glass. And it works a treat. The quality of the pictures was excellent and it comes with a neat program that just shows you the camera view that you can use on screen. It also has some nice adjustments that you can use to pull down the brightness so that display screens look good.

This is a completely un-retouched picture of the Zune HD homescreen. There are some more shots on Flickr.

All I need now is little portable tripod and I have my own Elmo, which is much easier to use than switching video signals over.

XNA at St Bede’s College

A good audience. (If you want to see a larger version of this picture, or to see the other  one I took, click on the images to get to my Flickr pages.)

I did  a talk at a college today. Not done one for a while so I was a little rusty. Fortunately I had a great audience and ended up really enjoying the visit. Thanks to the college for inviting us and to Dr Keith Porteous for giving such a good talk before mine.  I’ve put all the resources on the blog if you want to take a look:

• Presentation
• Hide the Gamepad XNA Game
• Bread and Cheese Complete XNA Game
• BedeCheese XNA GAme

You can find more links to XNA resources, along with my XNA ScreenCasts here: http://verysillygames.com/

Hull Girl Geek Dinners

The Girl Geek Dinners at Hull are going from strength to strength. We started them a while back and their next event is scheduled for next week on Thursday 11th March at Hive in our department. Girl Geek students from the university can even register at a discount. For the event details and a programme for the evening you can go here:

http://hullgirlgeekdinners11032010-rss.eventbrite.com/

Donate Somebody Else’s Money with Bing

Microsoft are doing this deal at the moment for where for every 10 searches you make using Bing they will donate 5 pence to Sport Relief. This means that you are doing good and raising money for charity just by searching the web. Which you would do anyway. Works for me, even though I had to download and install a little app to count the searches.

Amazing Sunset

Drove home into an amazing sunset tonight. Of course this isn’t a picture of it..

Letting the Smoke Out

An engineer friend of mine has this theory that electric things are really powered by smoke. He bases this on the simple observation that if you let the smoke out of anything electrical it promptly stops working. I did this today with our shredder.

I have a deep seated fear of Identity theft (along with a puzzlement that anyone would really want to pretend to be me).

Anyhoo, to deal with this I have a policy of never throwing anything away that might divulge identity type information. This is kind of futile I suppose, in that pretty much anything you want to know about me is out there on the interweb, but it keeps me amused. And shredding.

To keep things shredded we used to use this little shredder and I was happily shredding bank statements and the like when it suddenly stopped. And the smoke came out. And now it doesn’t work.

I was wondering if I could just use a two bins technique instead. Rather than shred things I could just have two bins. Anything secret is torn into small pieces, some of which go into one bin, and the rest into the other. Then I empty one of the bins every other week. This means that to steal my identity you would have to go through two lots of rubbish. Or perhaps I should just stop worrying…

Low Quality Pictures Look Better

I spent all this money on posh cameras, and have been obsessing about things like dust on my sensor. Then I find myself using a low quality camera in my phone and an application from Hipstamatic to make it look even worse. And the result looks great. Very strange.

Fez Micro Robot Bottom

If you are having bother positioning the support posts to hold your Fez Mini robot together you might find the above picture useful.  The PDF gives lots of good detail about how to fit the motors to the battery tray, but lining up the unit with the right screw holes on the base is a bit tricky. I think mine is right, at least the wheels seem straight enough for me. The back of the robot is at the bottom of the above picture.

Oh, and you don’t have to fit the line detectors where I have (just outside each wheel). This is part of an experiment I’m doing to find out how well grey scale line following can be made to work.

Dodgy Memory Chips

The thing that amazes me is that the memory card on the left has a thousand times the capacity of the one on the right. And this advance took place in five years or so. Amazing.

If you are interested in the slightly murky world of memory chips and hardware  manufacture you will find this post from one of the engineers behind the Chumby very interesting.

Geek Night Fun and Games

This is a still from a very embarrassing video:

http://www.devdays.nl/Video.aspx?pid=75

I’m doing it again. Geek Night at Dev Days. This time I’m taking my little robot Jason and a bag full of sensors and bits and pieces. We are going to create some embedded devices on the fly and have some good old .NET Micro Framework fun and games. If you are coming to Dev Days 2010 at the end of March, then it would be great to see you. You can find out more here:

http://www.devdays.nl/GeekNight.aspx

Windows Phone 7 Series Looking Good

I like the look of the new Windows Phone. I especially like this new blog from Charlie Kindel who sets out very nicely the priorities and the approach being taken to make this new device. It seems to me that the thinking behind this is very sensible indeed, and I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on a device.

Jetlag Levels

Jetlag Level 0: Normal amount of incompetence.

Jetlag Level 1: Forgetting things, but remembering you have forgotten them.

Jetlag Level 2: Forgetting things and not noticing.  Or caring.

Jetlag Level 3: Inability to do two things (such as walk and talk) at the same time.

Jetlag Level 4: Inability to one thing at the same time.

Jetlag Level 5: Staring at the PUSH sign on a door and not understanding its relevance to the problem that the door won’t pull open.

Jetlag Level 6: Can only recognise and use the simplest of things. Namely, a bed.

Missing Sunday

Not sure what happened to today. Bits of it seem to be missing.

Flying Home

Nothing like an 18 hour journey. Nothing. When we got to Amsterdam we found that the weather had laid on some special fog just for us.

With a two and a half hour stopover I had plenty of time to take pictures.

This is all we saw of the sun all day..

Final Summit Friday

Today was the last day of the Summit. It has gone by real quick. Amongst the final presentations was one by Satya Nadella who heads up the new Microsoft search team.

These are the people bringing you Bing. Personally I quite like Bing. I like the user interface, the pictures and the way it groups results. I don’t like the way that it doesn’t always find what I want though, which means moving over to Google for the more technical searches. Hopefully Bing will catch up in due course.

It was interesting to hear how Microsoft are trying to improve the “search experience” and are working on why we search, in a bid to improve the usefulness of the activity. The way I see it, they are changing Bing from “search” to a “research” engine. When you search for a place it will try to pull down travel and hotel details, along with pictures and links to official sites. Quite neat. This all needs some frightfully clever algorithms to recognise content, along with a fair amount of editorial input as well I would think. However, it is nice to see Microsoft not just trying to equal the competition, but to go beyond this and move the field on.

In the afternoon we had a final wander around Bellevue and then headed to a nearby place for tea.

..can you guess where?

After tea I’d booked seats to see Avatar again, at the local Imax cinema in 3D. Awesome.

MVP Summit Party

MVP Pool

Went out to the MVP party tonight at the Garage in Seattle. Free food and drink, along with pool and bowling. Worked for me.

..oh and cocktails.

Smashing Seattle Sunset

We are getting some lovely sunsets at the moment. I took this picture from our hotel window (lots of frantic setting up of tripod before the light faded). If it wasn’t for the crane this would be a perfect shot.

Hull Reunion

I met up with Phil, Andrew, Andy and James today for lunch. They are graduates from Hull (and three of them are also old hands at the Imagine Cup). They all now work for Microsoft on various development teams around the company. It was nice to see them, even though they made fun of my haircut. Or lack of it…

MVP Summit Sessions Again

I met another MVP in the lift today on the way to the sessions on the Microsoft campus. He asked me how I was getting on. “Fine” I said. “Yesterday they opened the top of my head and poured a whole bunch of stuff into it”. “Oh”, he replied. “With us they opened our heads and took a whole bunch out”.  Perhaps that will happen to me.today  Not sure what they will benefit from in my case though…

The weather is lovely again. Although we had some frost last night, the morning looks great.

Redmond Shuttle.