Kinect

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: November 20th, 2010 | 0 Comments

First off, I meant to get this post up on Thursday, but as I have said in previous posts, work seems to be taking up a lot of my time. So Kinect came out here in Ireland last Wednesday (November 10th) and I had planned on getting it that day, it didn't work out that way so I ended up waiting another week and I got it this Wednesday (November 17th). I also decided to get the new Xbox too, my old one is four years old and I am actually surprised it is still going, it also only had a 20gb hard drive! So I got a huge upgrade on Wednesday in terms of gaming power, I now have a 250gb hard! The main thing I notice are how quiet the new machine is compared to the old one, I actually have it on in the background now and I can't even hear it, my old one was quite loud! Another thing that stands out the most is the size difference, it is so small compared to the old Xbox and the POWER BRICK its to tiny and light compared to the old one! Below is a picture of my old and new Xbox, side by side! And now onto the main part of what I bought, Kinect! When I first took it out of the box, it was definitely a lot bigger than I had thought, when I was in Dublin a few weeks ago at GradIreland I saw it there but didn't get to see it up close, and even though it is fairly big, it's not that heavy. Something that freaks people out is that the head of Kinect is motorized and moves about, I think it's strange but interesting! So once I finally got my old Xbox Live account transferred over to the new console I finally switched on Kinect and it was unbelievable. The setup was quick, and then I was straight into the game that came with in 'Kinect Adventures'. This games is great crack, it has games from white water rafting to football like games and my favourite which makes little opstacales for you to doge and jump over, it is good fun and is tiring after a few hours of playing, at least I was :). I still can't believe how responsive Kinect is, and I can't get over the fact I am using my hand to move stuff on the screen, it's just seems unnatural, but it is fun all the same. I am looking forward to seeing more games take advantage of Kinect, and I am now looking forward to the next star wars game coming out because I understand now how useful Kinect would be for it! I also bought the new Harry Potter game today, it too has implemented the Kinect sensor, I haven't played it yet but I was looking though the Kinect features in the booklet and it looks like casting spells is where Kinect will be making the appearance, definitely looking forward to giving that a go! Something that annoys me about Kinect though is that its advertised to have voice control, however what they didn't say is that Ireland wont be getting it until spring 2011! Like we speak English, so does the UK and US and yet they have it and we do not, I do not understand it at all, surely they could just let us use it but instead we have to wait! Something to note if you do get Kinect, I have a flat screen, the back is fairly big on it, at least as thick as the Kinect base, so I thought it would be fine to place it there, do not do this! I learnt it the wrong way! My Kinect sensor was calibrating when starting a new game and then the head on it went right back and tipped it over and it hit the ground, I nearly died when it happened, just spent a small fortune on it! Wasn't going to have it break within the first few hours! So I now have it below my TV and it works fine there, although you need 6ft for one player and 8ft for two player so make sure you have a nice big room! here is my setup of my Xbox and Kinect below!

Kinect – why are we waiting?

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: November 4th, 2010 | 1 Comments

Xbox Kinect officially comes out today in America and we here in Ireland have to wait another week for it to be released which is next Wednesday (November 10th). It's kind of ridiculous if you ask me! Nowadays you would think that they would have a worldwide launch instead of incremental launches. I am really looking forward to the date it is coming out, I am thinking get it in the morning, and perhaps take the day off college, sounds good! Yes? of course it does :) , it won't matter too much anyway because on Wednesday I only have 2 hours of actual lectures and they are boring to say the least! I have decided that I will also invest in a new Xbox while I am at it, my current  Xbox is 4 years old and I am actually really surprised that it has lasted this long! I figure I might as well shell out the extra bit of money and get the new console, I will be getting extra hard disc space, which is really useful now that you can buy games and films from Xbox Live and it also gives me the assurance that it won't be breaking anytime soon. I am still unsure as to what I will be doing with my old one. I am also thinking of buying 1 or 2 games for Kinect when I get it too, I know 1 comes with it but I can imagine it will become boring / repetitive if I play the same game over and over again! So next Wednesday, it's  going to be a great day, and if there is a midnight launch, sure I may even go to that! Anyone else going to be getting Kinect or already has Kinect, what are your thoughts on it?

Clean slate

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: May 26th, 2010 | 0 Comments

Over the last 24 hours I have been busy with getting my computer into a good performance level for this summer. To do this I decided to fully format my computer and start fresh. Since I have a lot of files on my computer, I knew the longest part of this would be backing up what I need. That took a while, I ended up keeping about 90gb of files, this included some programs that I needed. I also had to backup my iTunes library this was really simple, I just copied my music folder and then exported the iTunes library file and that was it done! Since I am working on a few websites, some for myself and some for clients I backed up those files into a few different places just in case the hard drive I was using to back up the files managed to fail, it would be just my luck that it would and I would have to work my ass off to recover what I lost! I backed up all my files onto an internal hard drive which I actually keep outside of my computer, it is just a spare hard drive I have lying around that comes in useful for doing just this thing! To get my files onto it I used a set of cables I bought a while back which provide power to the hard drive and also has a usb cable for transfer! The next step was just to format the hard drive, I always worry after I just push that format button, in case I forgot to back something up, it would be lost forever, luckily it hasn't happened to me yet, and hopefully it never will! I reinstalled Windows 7 onto the computer once the format was complete, it took about 20 minutes which is not a bad time for installing it but usually I would install it from a usb key, which only takes about 10 minutes, that is a much faster way of doing it however I didn't have a spare usb key to put Windows 7 on so I had to do it using the disc. I worked on this from 11pm last night to about 2am, in that time I backed up all my files, formatted and reinstalled windows and then once all that was done I started on getting all my files back onto the computer. Putting the files back onto the computer was actually pretty fast and while the files were copying back on, I installed a few of my programs including my anti-virus suite (Pc-Tools Internet Security), iTunes and Tweetdeck. Once the files were back on the computer I organised them into a better order than I had them before. I used to have my pictures, videos and documents all mixed together, now I have them in separate locations, that should help me find things quicker in the future! I decided that was enough for one night, which was actually the bulk of the work complete. Today I just added on the last of the programs I use regularly, such as Microsoft word, FileZilla (ftp program), Gtalk, msn, Photoshop and Dreamweaver. The reason I wanted to reinstall my operating system was because over time your computer tends to become slower than usual and doesn't perform to its best abilities, this can happen from parts of programs being left behind when you uninstalled a program, it also frees up space. Also any entries in the registry that are not needed are completely gone now so the registry is smaller now since there is basically nothing on the computer. Now my computer is working much faster, I do notice the difference. The boot speed has drastically increased, which is great! :)