Kinect Augmented Reality Session

Some time last year I went down to London to give a talk about programming the Kinect sensor (and to gratuitously plug my Kinect Book) at an AR in Education Event organised by JISC.  The videos of the sessions have been available for a while and since this is my blog I thought I’d mention them….

Sunken Condos on Vinyl

Not my best record deck, but not bad for 22 year old plastic Panasonic device.

Donald Fagen, half of Steely Dan, has recently released a new album. Since he is the guy that made “The Nightfly”, one of my all time favourite records, I thought I’d celebrate by buying a version on vinyl. It arrived today. A three sided album. The fourth side really is just shiny plastic. I grabbed my little record deck back from Mike’s office, where it has been languishing for a while, took it home and fired it up.

It sounds great. Very much in the same style as later Steely Dan stuff, which is not terribly surprising I suppose. If you like complicated, laid back, jazzy sounds then you’ll like it. Not sure if It sounds better or worse than the CD version to be honest, but it really does sound good. I’m terribly impressed by the way that we managed to get such amazing sound quality from a plastic disk with a wavy line pressed into it.

When you consider the complicated processing power that is used to move music around today, it seems incredible that my stereo reel to reel (which I must get down from the loft some day) made do with 18 transistors. And my first amplifier didn’t have many more.

I’m not sure that I want to go back to the day when skipping tracks meant waving a needle around just above some very easily scratched plastic, and where every twenty minutes you had to get up and change the record, but just this once I reckon it is worth it.

Fun with Dancing on Ice

I was watching “Dancing On Ice” tonight (or at least it was on in the kitchen when we were having tea). I had a great idea. They could give the program a whole new feel by adding a different prefix to the last word each week:

• “Dancing on Rice” – dancing and cooking. Contestants slide around on a bed of rice while preparing a nice chilli con carne to go with it.
• “Dancing on Mice” – not real mice, of course, but computer ones. Contestants have computer mice fitted to their feet and must navigate a Word document and correct spelling errors whilst executing a triple axle (whatever that is).
• “Dancing on Price” – the contestants must find the cheapest ice rink in the country and then dance there using skates they’ve made themselves from trainers and old breadknives held together with second hand gaffer tape.
• “Dancing on Lice” – ugh. An “I’m a Celebrity” jungle feel where they must dance on horrible insects without the aid of hairnets. Extra marks for those moves where they spin round with their head inches above the floor.

Remember, you heard it here first.

Sticking Plugs on Saturday Night

There’s an old saying “Nothing like a sticking washbasin plug to improve a Saturday Night”.

It doesn’t get said very much though. And I don’t think it is true. Our sinks have these new fangled plugs. Rather than a plug they have a “push-down, push-up” design. Unfortunately, one of ours decided to get stuck down tonight. So, rather than watch the bounteous entertainment that is Saturday night TV (irony alert) I was instead dismantling waste pipes and wondering just what was that icky slime that my hands were now covered with.

The good news is that by judicious use of the hammer (i.e. not hitting it that  hard) I managed to free off the offending item and it now works fine. The bad news is that while I was doing this I inflicted a tiny scratch (which only I can see) on the fitting which is going to bug me for a while. A home tip, if you have one of these kinds of plugs, it is best to push them up and down a few times each week, otherwise they’ll do what mine did…

Shockingly Funny

I got this link via Ginny this afternoon, and I’ve been chuckling ever since. The guy has masterful comic timing and the whole thing is just wonderful.