Eye Toy Good

Open Day. We invite lots of people to roam around the university campus and we give them talks on stuff. Did what I thought was quite a good presentation about Computer Science, with a reasonable turnout who seemed to enjoy it. Then adjourned to the display area.

Then Number One Son arrived with a new toy which we set up on the video projector. He had brought along an EyeToy. This is a new add-on for the Playstation II which is a webcam and a set of image processing programs. It is kind of difficult to explain what you can do with it, basically it lets you play a number of simple video games with you in the picture. The ones that went down best were the window cleaning one, where you wave your arms to clean windows, and a "keep up" game where you have to bounce a virtual ball for as long as possible. I'm not sure of the long term appeal, but it was great fun for the kids there. It would also make a wonderful "after the pub" game for grown-ups in a dance mat kind of way. For only forty quid, including the camera, it is also pretty good value.

Then home. Last week I bought Twin Peaks, series one, at half price and so we sat down to watch a couple of episodes. Number one son is getting quite hooked on it, I'm a bit worried in case they don't tell you the murderer after series one. I've a horrible feeling that they took the marketing decision to spin it out for as long as possible after its success. I hate it when they do that, and it means I'll probably have to get series two. Very obvious from watching Agent Dale Cooper where a certain Fox Mulder came from...