Every. Demo. Failed.

A big audience to fail in front of….

What do you do when you present a session and every demonstration fails? I didn’t know this until today. The answer is that you reach the end and then you go and find out why.

I was doing a Kinect session for Geek Night today. This was kind of ambitious, what with carrying the sensor around all over the place. So I’d tested everything before I set off, and I was confident that it would all work on the night.

It didn’t.

I was very happy when the first demo worked, but I can’t take too much credit for that because it was the demonstration application that ships with the SDK. As soon as I moved onto my code that problems began. Programs that just worked suddenly locked up before my eyes. All of them.

It took me a while to figure out what had happened. As in the case of most big failures, it was a collection of little things that added up to make a catastrophe. First thing was that I was using my lovely little Alienware netbook rather than the “Big Ole Dell” that I usually use. The main reason I took the Alien was that it made room in the case for the Kinect sensor. That and the way the keyboard lights up. It is just powerful enough to run the demos, but just powerful enough is fine. Except today it wasn’t.

Something has mysteriously turned all my overclocking settings back down to normal. I turned them on ages ago when I got the device and forgot all about them. Today, after a lot of head scratching, I checked in the BIOS and there they all were. Back where they shouldn’t be.

A bit of tweakage and all is well. I’ve even tried flipping to the built in high performance graphics, which also helps (but also breaks the Windows Phone emulator – so I don’t usually use it).

I’m kicking myself for not testing the demos on site this afternoon when I had a bit of free time, but I assumed that since they worked before they’d work again.

Oh well. Everybody at the session seemed to have a good time. Except me.

Comments

[Richard Oppenhuizen]

But somehow it didn't ruin the session !

[Jan Willem]

Indeed! The "how this thing works" part was interesting. Seeing code is always +1 (on devdays).

Hope to see you again next year.

[Jochem]

I'm suddenly very sad about my decision to go to gymnastics practice tonight instead of seeing the famous mr miles on stage. Must have been a great session, no matter if the demos worked or not.

[Marijn]

At least now I know what to do if the car breaks down.

[André Geuze]

Shame the hardware failed on you, though you were able to forge it into an interesting presentation. First part wasn't anything new since the Kinect Quickstart Tutorials kinda explain the same things.

[Adam Cherbetji]

In my first job interview, towards the end of the MSc course, I took a laptop to demonstrate some of my portfolio. I was horrified to find that the demos only ran at 1fps, which it soon dawned in me is because I whilst running from battery, the laptop operates in low power mode with no obvious way to override this. I had left the power supply at home.

[Frans Stapff]

Eventhough some small and inconvenient setbacks in the demo department (these where barely noticable if you ask me) , it was a great success. Having said that, i was still wondering, are there video's somewhere of how the demo's should have worked? Just for the fun of it.

[peSHIr]

Agreed. Even though it sure mustn't have felt like it, the session strangely did not really suffer at all. Kudos, and well played, sir.

[Franchesca]

This was my first Tech Days (and my first geek night) and this was probably the most entertaining talk. I still got a lot from it even without seeing the code actually run.

I can't believe these people haven't seen Father Ted!!!

[michael]

although all of the demo's fialed the session was great like the years before. i'll be comming back next year anyway :D