This is my first gaming console ever. It's an Xbox 360 Slim with Kinect. And it was really cheap! I have installed it and tried it out, and it is awesome!
I also got a bunch of games for it.
At first, I tried Forza just to prove that the console worked. And yes, it is in perfect condition. Then I wanted to turn off the game and try a Kinect-controlled game.
The first problem arose immediately. It wasn't with the console, but with me. I had no idea how to turn the game off! After some research, I discovered that the Xbox logo on the gamepad is not just a decoration, but also a button. This brought up a control menu, but I was still unable to figure out how to shut down the game. After some more googling, I was finally able to return to the "Launcher" and change the DVD.
I tried out the Kinect Sports Collection. I immediately found out that my living room is too small for comfortable play. Even the calibration, which requires quietness, is a bit tricky when a small child is watching what is going on. However, after ...
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I played a couple of leagues in career mode on Real Racing 2, and the game is really good. It features many licensed cars from brands such as Volkswagen, Volvo, BMW, Lexus and Nissan. New tracks also appear as you progress through your career, which is great.
However, I also found out about one really annoying thing. The requirement for races. Each race has a requested performance rating window. This means you can only join a race with a car that has a suitable PR. I can understand why the developers added that. It is meant to keep the races challenging and prevent players from simply buying an overpowered car. However, the performance rating requirements do not just rise; they also vary up and down. This means that when you sell your old car to buy a new one, you may find that you cannot progress because your car is too powerful for the next race.
Even worse is when you have a car that was almost suitable a moment ago, but then you buy a small upgrade that increases your performance rating by one, and the next race requires a slightly lower performance rating than the ...
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This one was fully functional. However, for some reason, it is only available in English and Spanish. I do not know why. It has the biggest drive space for games though, so it could fit a lot of them, as well as the best ones in my archive. I am going to spend some time with this one and play a few games.
For these old-school titles, there's Earthworm Jim. It's a really old game that has been ported to Windows Phone. It's a silly shooting platformer based mostly on fun and absurdity — it's fine, relaxing and funny. I would definitely give it a try!
The next game I got working is Rayman. It's not the classic Rayman, but a kind of runner platformer. The player has just one button to control everything. The principle is the same as in the newer games Manuganu 1 and 2. I quite like it; it's a really relaxing game — nothing sophisticated, just pure fun.
But when it comes to old games, my favourite is Sonic CD. It was the first time I could play a Sonic game on my phone. I mean, yes, ...
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I was warned that one of the Lumias in the box is bricked. It immediately gets stuck in a boot loop when turned on. So, I counted it as dead. Yes, I tried some resurrection tricks, but nothing worked. I wanted to give up and just throw it away.
However, my colleague wanted to try it out. He succeeded using a very interesting method that he discovered by accident. He downloaded the same recovery/firmware flashing tool as me, but he downloaded the operating system for the phone from a different page. It appeared that the only OS that worked was the Russian ROM. He downloaded it because it was the only one he could find. And it worked. The phone booted on the first try without any problems. I am really happy it works, even though it is a Windows Phone.
As usual, I have installed enough games to fill all the available memory, and I am going to try them out.
I tried a Lara Croft-based endless runner, but it just displayed some cutscenes with a book and then crashed immediately after the gameplay should have started. I also took some stupid games from ...
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Every time I get a new Windows Phone device, I'm amazed at how annoying the system is.
I can understand that some people like the GUI, even though I think it's really ugly and unintuitive. However, the controls of that system are terrible.
I found a few examples just by taking screenshots. To be honest, taking the screenshots was easy enough, but then I wanted to share them with a PC or phone. I decided that the easiest method would be to use Bluetooth. I opened the gallery, saw my screenshots and tried to select and send them. Yes, mark them. I tried my best with gestures, holding the thumbnails and various combinations, but nothing worked. Then I realised there were two icons at the bottom of the screen. One was a kind of hamburger menu and the other was an icon with a tick. I clicked on the checkmarks, thinking it would turn on the 'select' mode. Nothing happened. I tried it many times and still nothing happened. So I tried clicking the menu button. The only thing that happened was the bottom bar enlarged to show these two icons in a larger size with descriptions. Now ...
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PHP, the scripting language that helped shape the modern web, celebrates another milestone this year. Thirty years. From its humble beginnings as a set of simple tools for tracking personal website visits, PHP has grown into one of the most widely used server-side languages in the world.
During the fifteen-odd years that I have been using it, I have heard countless announcements that it is dead and that we should use a newer, cooler language. The 'cool' language has changed over the years, while PHP has stayed the same. With an estimated 80% market share on the web, I would say it is still not dead and will not be in the near future.
It has changed significantly, especially since version 5.6, and, to be honest, I really like it. Since version 7, I have had hardly any complaints. It runs all my websites.
Does anyone still remember ColdFusion, ASP.NET or Django, which were supposed to replace PHP? I don't know of any websites that run on any of these, and even Microsoft, the creator of ASP.net, recommends against using it for web development.
So, what should we do? I guess we should still use PHP. It still has something to offer, and it ...
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In addition to the phones, there was also a tablet in the mystery box I received. It's a Galaxy Tab 3. It's quite old, but I like the size of the screen, and so does my son.
Unfortunately, the tablet was dead when it arrived, and nothing happened even when it was plugged in. I plugged the detector into the USB charger and it detected zero current. I therefore concluded that the battery was dead. However, I tried the donor to see if it worked. He replied that he had powered it on just before packing the box. I tried to disassemble the back, but I was a bit nervous about the plastic. My colleague did it for me as he had more strength and it wasn't his device! So, after that, I found a battery connector with doubled wires connected by an unusual connector. I plugged the testing wires from my multimeter into the wires of my laboratory power supply, carefully pinning the needle directly to the battery connector, and started to charge it slowly. The voltage was under 3 volts at first, so the reason it wouldn't charge via ...
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I really wanted to try programming something using an Android accelerometer, and I recently found some CC0 starter assets for Arkanoid. Coincidence? I don't think so.
So... One of the hardest parts is done. I have some starting assets. I've started the second boring part: designing and creating menus. That seems to be finished, too. Now, the exciting part is finally beginning!
I have already initialised and handled the accelerometer. It's basically just the tilt function for now, but it will be improved later. However, I am really looking forward to programming the physics and mechanics. I would also like to introduce more game features and experiences, and maybe even some minigames. We'll see how long I'll be able to work on it. It looks really interesting, though, so wish me luck!
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To write about something more interesting, I got an Honor X5 in a box from a friend. The interesting thing is that the phone was bought in China, so it comes with Chinese software, which might have some interesting features and functions.
So, I unpacked the phone. Even though its dimensions are quite standard and it's the same width as my everyday phone, it feels too wide when I hold it. I do not know what the cause is, but it feels weird. The body, however, is really well manufactured. The phone has an aluminium frame and back, which makes it relatively heavy.
It has a 5.5-inch screen with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels, which is impressive. The screen is sharp, and I really like it. The Octa-core CPU (4x1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4x1.5 GHz Cortex-A53) is powerful, and my model has 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of ROM. It seems that nearly 10 GB of the ROM is still available for the user, so that should be fine.
The screen looks great and has excellent colour ...
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I took another phone from the mystery box. It's a Chinese Samsung Galaxy clone running Android 4.1.
To be honest, there isn't much to write about. It's just a standard Chinese 'shitphone', which were really common years ago. It's impossible to find any information about it.
However, it is really impressive hardware. It has an unknown ARM processor, 256 MB of RAM and incredibly small storage. This is a common problem with old Android phones, especially Chinese ones. This restricts its use to making calls and sending text messages. I could only fit four small games on it and it is absolutely full!
The only advantages I have found are that it is less laggy than these phones used to be and that it is fully translated, which is more unusual than it sounds. But what good is smoothness when you can't install apps because you don't have the space?
So I've only installed Candy Crush and Slingshot Racing, which is a really nice game that was deleted from Google Play many years ago. You can see them on the following screens:
Also, here is ...
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