Frozen Monday

I’m bored with winter. Particularly if I’m still scraping ice off the car each morning.

Windows Phone and Twitter

I’ve started using Twitter a lot more. Some might even say properly. The thing that has got me into the swing of things is the ongoing buzz surrounding Windows Phone. I’m using the #wp7dev tag to find out what is happening, and following Michael Klucher (@mklucher) and Charlie Kindel (@ckindel) to keep up to speed. It really does feel like being part of a breaking news story, which is great.

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/