My mom desperately needed a new computer (she's still running XP on a very old Dell), so I decided to pick up one of HP's new TouchSmart 420t machines for her, thinking it'll also be a great machine for Windows 8 when it arrives.

HP, in their infinite wisdom, decided that, among other annoyances, one can only create a single set of recovery media from the included Recovery Media Creation application.  Once you make the set, that's it.  If you lose the media, or if you want to make a second set on USB instead of DVDs, you're out of luck, short of ordering the media from HP for a price.

If you are stuck in this situation, there is an easy fix, assuming you still have the Recovery partition available on the hard drive.

1. Open up an Administrator command prompt window
2. Change to the D drive (D:)
3. Change directories to D:\HP\CDCreatorLog (cd \hp\CDCreatorLog)
4. Delete the ResumeSnapshot.xml file (del ResumeSnapshot.xml)
5. Restart the Recovery Media Creation application

Alternatively, you could try downloading, saving, and running this batch file as an Administrator: HPRecoveryReset.bat .

A second issue I have is that they don't have their TouchSmart software and other client-side pieces on the driver and software support page on their site.  So, if you want to do a clean install of Windows and then selectively add back certain features, such as the HP TouchSmart shell, or the HP client utilities, you are, once again, out of luck.  However, there is a bit of a workaround.  On the C: drive in the SWSETUP directory, you will find a number of these applications in their installer state so they can be put back on the machine.  Simply copy this directory off somewhere safe, clean install Windows 7, restore this directory, and then install the software and drivers you need/want.

This may (and probably will) work for other models of machines from HP that use the same recovery software and drive setup.  Of course, this is a YMMV fix, but it has worked here without issue.  However, it does make me question purchasing another HP machine in the future.  If anyone from HP happens to stumble upon this, please take this into consideration.  Don't make it difficult for users to restore their machine and/or do a clean install of Windows.  You're not winning people over by making things cumbersome.  Then again, you're out of the hardware business so I suppose it doesn't much matter.

I hope to throw Windows 8 on the machine for a quick spin before I remove it and hand it over to my mom and will report back here if I find anything noteworthy in the install/usage of Win8 on the machine.

Hooray!  I can finally talk about this!  As I've alluded to previously, I had a hand (one of many) in the managed portion of the SDK and what was originally shown at MIX. Since then the SDK has changed a bit but it's finally ready to go!

The Kinect for Windows SDK is now available for download on the Microsoft Research site.  We have also launched several samples over at Coding4Fun that you can begin using immediately:

Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit

You definitely want to download this one when you get started.  This toolkit contains a variety of extension methods and controls to make using the Kinect for Windows SDK even easier to use.  Some of my code appears in this one. 

Kinect Mouse Cursor

This sample is entirely mine.  Kinect Mouse Cursor is a demo application that uses the Kinect for Windows SDK and its skeletal tracking features to allow a user to use their hands to control the Windows mouse cursor.  Use your right hand to move the cursor, and raise your left hand to press the left mouse button.  Use the check box to switch hands…

Kinect Paint

Kinect Paint is a skeleton tracking application that allows you to become the paint brush!  IdentityMine built this for us.

Kinect for Windows SDK Quickstarts

This is a series of quick start videos starring the lovely and talented Dan Fernandez, who walks you through the basics of Kinect development from the very beginning.  Don't miss these!

Coding4Fun's Kinect for Windows SDK Blog

Add a bookmark to this now.  Coding4Fun will be tracking awesome projects using the new SDK here.  Have something to show off?  Tell us!

Kinect Hack-a-thon

In coordination with the Kinect launch, developers were invited out to the Microsoft campus to develop applications in a 24 hour "code-a-thon".  Some health issues prevented me from attending this event, but I'm looking forward to seeing what these people came up with…

We will have more samples and fun projects at Coding4Fun soon, so be sure to check back there (and here) regularly for more Kinect goodness.  Until then, enjoy the new SDK, our new samples, and see what you can build!  I'd love to hear about any projects you create with these tools…

It's almost time for another MIX conference! Once again I'll be there with the Coding4Fun crew showing off some spiffy new projects for attendees to play around with, along with a few other surprises. I'll also be taking part in John Papa's Open Source Fest on Monday evening, demonstrating WiimoteLib and my MJPEG Decoder.

Anyone else heading to the conference? If you are, be sure to stop by the Coding4Fun area in the Connect Lounge and say hello, and stop by the Open Source Fest on Monday night to take a look at over 50 great open source projects and vote for your favorites. I'd say I'd trade drinks for votes, but those are free, too.

And finally, if anyone attending is working on a fun or interesting project and would like to do an interview for my Coding4Fun Show on Channel 9, please let me know.  Almost anything goes, so I'd love to see what everyone out there is working on.

Hope to see you there!

My latest article and library is now live on the brand new Coding4Fun site, now on Channel 9, and over at CodePlex.  This project allows you to very easily decode a MJPEG (Motion JPEG) stream from a network camera (or any other source) into a consumable type for WinForms, WPF, Silverlight, XNA and Windows Phone 7 (both Silverlight and XNA).

The MJPEG Decoder library started life as a project for the t-shirt cannon built for the MIX10 keynote.  The original plan was to have an IP camera attached to the robot for a real-time video stream from the bot's perspective, but the feature wound up being cut for time, and due to some issues rendering the video on the very early Windows Phone 7 tools.  The library has been sitting around a while, has gone through several rewrites and now supports almost every platform I can think of.  With the new Coding4Fun up and running, it was time to polish it off and get it posted.

Take a look at the article, download the binaries and source, and let me know how it works!

I released version 1.1 of ThinkGearNET over at CodePlex last week.  ThinkGearNET is a library that allows developers to easily use the Neurosky MindSet device with .NET.  This version now matches Neurosky’s latest SDK and supports eye blink detection.  Nothing else has changed.  If anyone has used a prior version of the library, please give the new version a try and let me know if you have any problems.  Thanks!