Showing posts with label laptop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label laptop. Show all posts

Wednesday, 6 March 2013

Kinect gaming, new drawing and other stuff

Me and pixelamy wanted to get a Kinect to try and be a bit healthier so we set about researching how much we should expect to pay for one then split it down the middle. Second hand we were looking at about £80, new was about £110. Luckily, we had a look on Gumtree and someone was selling one for £25! We instantly assumed that there must have been something wrong with it and after inquiring  it turns out that the owner had just forgot to sell it when he got rid of his Xbox 360. It was still in its box, barely used and he even said he would refund is if it stopped working, and it was in driving distance. So we headed over there, paid and it has been working perfectly since.

For those of you that read my post yesterday, I mentioned that I was at a friends house on the weekend. A couple of months ago I got a text from him saying he was board so we offered to take the Kinect round to his to give it a try. Now we have a Kinect night every couple of weekends and it's really fun. At the moment we have Kinect Sports 1 and 2 and Kinect Adventures (which cost a whopping £1.50 from CeX..) which all work really well with the sensor. The sports games are definitely the best, turns out I'm terrible at bowling. The other two were really good and are both left handed so I'm sensing a little bias there.. Competitive tennis and table tennis is good but every now and then you get a little slap from you opponent from an over aggressive swing.


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So I have got my old laptop out. I haven't used it in a couple of years so I knew there would be a lot of updates from windows for it to catch up on. I just really didn't there would be this many! Especially as there really doesn't seem to be any difference to windows at all. With 91 updates to do, I really would have thought I would have noticed something. I also would have hoped that it would have solved the problem with the outlook calender which used up to 50% of the CPU. This must be one kick ass calender that is already planning your life out before you even know about it. All of these updates took about 3 hours including configuration upon rebooting it. It did make a fun guessing game for the time trying to guess which update it was on. Glad that they are all done now though because I can use it without having to wait 3 hours!



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I've mention my cat before. He's pretty normal for a cat apart from his choice of sleeping position. He likes to sleep in places where he will get really dirty and then expect to come straight in the house. Like for today for example - his choice was on an old piece of polystyrene. We used the polystyrene to cover the rabbit hutch so that snow wouldn't get in. As he is a black cat he looked like someone had flicked white paint all up one side of him. I know this picture doesn't show a lot of it but it was all up his back legs and over his face. Unfortunately when I opened the door to get this picture he managed to sneak in and get it everywhere. That was not so much fun to clean up. He is also one of the only cats I know that will walk on the paving slabs down the middle of the garden. Any other cat that ends up in the garden walks everywhere. Then again, he eats a lot of grass so maybe he doesn't like to walk on his food.


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Last thing, I've also started another drawing. I've chosen to do the Legionary Suit from Dead Space 3. I'll leave the link to it below if you'd like to see. It'll probably be a 10 hour drawing so it should be up in the next 1-2 weeks depending how often I'm in the mood to put pen to paper.
Legionary Suit - Dead Space 3 on Creative Uncut

Thanks for reading! Leave me some comments about something you would like me to talk about. Share in any way you can, helps me out a lot!

Tuesday, 5 March 2013

Changes and some old tech

First things first, I was running two blogs. This one and another about gaming but I decided that I would consolidate them both into one which is what all the posts from the other blog are now on this page. I just thought it would be easier for me to keep track and for anyone that wants to read them as they are all now in one place!


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It's safe to say I felt like I woke up in a different country today. The weather is perfect for me, not too hot with a nice breeze. It seems to have put everyone in a good mood today and I can definitely say the same for myself.

Started off as a normal Tuesday heading to the shops to get magazines for people as it is magazine day. Had an amazing lunch prepared by my wonderful girlfriend - pixelamy - toasted ciabatta bread with diced tomatoes and onions with sweet chili sauce. That went down a treat and I even managed her left overs so I was feeling rather greedy. I know it doesn't look like the most amazing thing in the world but it tastes so good. It's basically our own twist of bruschetta just with less olive oil and sweet chili instead of vinegar.


Ant and Dec's Saturday night take away has returned but we missed it this weekend as we were at a friends house which I will talk about further down or in a gaming post.. Whichever seems more appropriate. We thought we would have a look at the undercover as it looked amazing from the preview the week before. Even if you don't watch the show, you've got to watch this as it's just brilliant!

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I first started posting to blogger on my netbook which I bought during sixth form for school work. It runs well and does what I want it to do but for my 14th birthday I decided to by myself my first laptop. I am posting from this laptop right now after giving it a good sorting out last night. I spent about an hour uninstalling programs that were useless, deleting old files and pictures I didn't need and tweaking with settings to make it run faster. Now it seems to be working pretty well which I am very pleased with. It lets me run Minecraft (very slowly) which I bought in 2010 and have never been able to use properly. I'm hoping that it will have enough computer power to run a capture device for when I start a YouTube channel. I remember the day I bought it because my brother kept telling me to make sure I didn't get the bad version of Windows Vista loaded on to whatever I bought. My Mum and Dad took me to PC World and I bought this laptop for about £350 down from £500. It's not too powerful in terms of what £350 could get you today but it has always served me well. You can see in the picture that I was actually typing this post at the time. It feels massive at the moment because I am so used to a 10" screen and this has a 17" screen. The battery life is only 2 hours which sucks a bit, I blame the screen.


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I would like to quickly touch on the Blogger App which I have found to be a great help. It's very simple and allows you to post from anywhere with an internet connection. I mainly use it for adding pictures in as you can literally just add a picture and it will upload it to the web. I can then easily edit the pictures size and placement on a laptop to create the finished product. For anyone planning on blogging, I would definitely give the app a go as it helped convince me.

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Fact Sheet:
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=16
If you haven't guessed already, I'm quite interested in space. Upon visiting the BBC News science page today, the space telescope Herschel is expected to go blind sometime this month. The telescope has been taking pictures of far off stars and galaxies since 2009 and has helped scientists to learn about star birth. The equipment on board needs to be super cooled to work effectively and the helium coolant on board is expected to run out this month which will stop the telescope working. It's a great shame that this vital piece of equipment will be going out of service, especially as the launch of another isn't likely with Herschel costing a hefty 2 billion Euros. Despite this, the telescope has already taken thousands and thousands of pictures which will keep those looking up very busy for now.
BBC News article
ESA

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