My latest Coding4Fun article on the creation of my game MindBlaster is now available!  This is a game I wrote using XNA Game Studio 3.1 that combines a Nintendo Wiimote and a Neurosky MindSet headset to create a game you play entirely with your head.  If you were at PDC09 and stopped by the Coding4Fun area you may have seen it, or, if you’ll be at MIX10, please stop by the Coding4Fun area and see this and 3 or 4 more even better projects by Coding4Fun authors.

Links

• Coding4Fun article
• Download source and binary
• Support Forum
• ThinkGearNET library – a wrapper library for using a MindSet headset in .NET

Download: SDTabletPCFix_1.0.0.0.zip

I wasn’t lucky enough to receive the Acer 1420P laptop given out at PDC this year since I was “staff”, however I wound up picking one up on eBay for a very reasonable price. I received it last week, added an additional 2GB of RAM, used my Windows Home Server to save off the original hard drive image, and then repaved the machine, installing Windows 7 Ultimate x64, drivers, and applications from scratch. Earlier this week I noticed the machine was consuming over 3GB of memory with only 1 or 2 applications open. Looking at Task Manager, the RAM usage by process looked normal, which didn’t match the total memory usage. After reading the Performance tab a bit more, I saw that the operating system had over 5 million handles open!

Back on the Processes tab, I turned on the Handles column and saw that a process named SDTabletPC.exe was consuming 5 million handles, and it was growing by 10 handles per second. Check it out for yourself.

SDTabletPC.exe …

It looks like all of the Coding4Fun videos pertaining to PDC09 have been posted along with most (all?) of the Channel 9 Live videos.  For those interested in the Coding4Fun recap vids, have a look…

Channel 9 Live at PDC09: Coding4Fun
Clint Rutkas, Brian Peek and Tim Higgins with Scott Hanselman
Recorded Live, November 19th 2009 at 11:00AM (PST)

Coding4Fun at PDC 2009
With our lab coats in hand, we brought Drinktendr, Mind Blaster, Laser graffiti, Wi-Fi Warthogs and finally Goblin XNA (augmented reality)!

Another PDC is over and I’m happily relaxing before work starts again on Monday.  Lots of announcements, free laptops for attendees (not me, sadly), and plenty of time spent in our Coding4Fun area with my project.  We even had the opportunity to take part in a live broadcast on Channel 9!  The recording for that show should be available shortly.

We had 5 fantastic projects in the Coding4Fun area this year:

Drinktendr by Clint Rutkas	Laser Graffiti by Jeremiah Morrill
Goblin XNA by Ohan Oda	Wi-Fi Warthogs by Tim Higgins

And what was my big project this year?  A fun little game titled Mind Blaster, a space shoot ‘em up game played entirely with your head!

How does one do that? Well…

This past July I found a brain-wave sensing headset from Neurosky called the MindSet.  They are now shipping headsets at $200 each and provide a free …

PDC 2009, starting November 17th, is almost upon us and I’ll be heading out to the conference once again with my Coding4Fun/Channel 9 playmates.  Anyone else heading out to the big show?

We won’t be doing a Coding4Fun session like we did last year, but I will have another fun project for people to check out in the Coding4Fun area.  I can’t give out details until after the show begins, but you can probably guess there is a Wiimote in the mix somewhere.  And some spiffy new hardware.  And maybe some XNA.  Look for the details here after the show, and an article with full source code shortly thereafter.

We also have 4 or 5 other developers with their latest and greatest projects, all of which are nothing short of incredible and put mine to shame.  I will likely be doing a compendium Coding4Fun Show with all of this year’s project authors so those not in attendance can see their incredible work.

I will also be hosting a table during lunch on Monday, …