Quick Start for Kinect: Setting Up Your Development Environment

The original link is here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/KinectSDKQuickstarts/Getting-Started

This video covers how to set up your development environment. You may find it easier to follow along by downloading the Kinect for Windows SDK Quickstarts samples and slidesthat have been updated for Beta 2 (Nov, 2011).

• [00:35] Sample Requirements
• [02:13] Adding References
• [02:45] Coding4Fun Kinect Library
• [03:23] Initializing the Kinect Runtime
• [05:41] Uninitializing the Kinect Runtime

In my experience, if you install Kinect for Windows SDK then it will set everything done because it only can be used in Win7 + Visual Studio 2010. If it did not work, you should add something by yourself.

C++ - From the Property Manager, double click debug/release and add kinect sdk directories to it.

C# – From the Solution Explorer, right click on References and select Add Reference as shown below

Visual Basic – From the Solution Explorer, right click on the project name and select Add Reference as shown below 

Quick Start for Kinect: Installing and Using the Kinect Sensor

The original link is here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/KinectQuickstart/Installing-and-Using-the-Kinect-Sensor




As Kinect developer, I had used openNI and Kinect for Windows. In the step of installation, Kinect for Windows is much easier than openNI. You just need to prepare a Win7 OS and Visual Studio 2010 then click the installer. You can have a tea for seconds and everything will be OK. If you did not have them and you would not like to install win7 and vs2010 forever, you can find how to install openNI! Complex steps!

Ok, about this video, it covers the basics of installing and using the Kinect sensor using v1 of the

1. An overview of the Kinect for Windows Quickstart Series
2. An overview of what sensors and information you can use with the Kinect hardware
3. Demos: We’ll show what gets installed on your PC when you install the Kinect SDK and how you can use your Kinect as a microphone using Windows Sound Recorder.
4. (Important)If you have an Xbox 360 Kinect with no dedicated power plug or USB cord, you can order a Microsoft Xbox 360 Power Supply cable from sites like Amazon.

Reasons Kinect sucks? It's also AMAZING

1.Buy a bigger house
Microsoft is a big American company for people with big American houses and big American hands. Just like the original Xbox controllers that were too large for half the world to use, Microsoft seems oblivious to the space available to Europeans and Asians in their homes. The solution? Buy a bigger house dummy! It’ll be worth it when all those triple-A Kinect titles hit the market.

2.Buy new lights
Kinect wants to see you clearly, so you better make sure it can. Some types of strip lighting won’t work and although it uses infra-red to detect your movement, the facial recognition needs light.

3.Don’t slouch
You may remember all the fuss about Kinect use while seated. Basically, they never thought about gamers who play on the sofa. It seems that Microsoft has fixed this problem now, but come on. Who wants to sit while playing games when they could be standing up in a cavernous, well lit aircraft hangar?

4.Move your speakers/buy a new telly
The layout of your television speakers affects whether you play Kinect on top of or below your TV. If you get interference, just buy a new TV or speaker system. You might as well splash the cash. After all, you’ve already invested in a big house and new lights and as such, presumably no longer have a girlfriend or wife to anger with your extravagant purchases.

5.Move everyone out of the way
You've already seen the videos online of people hurting each other while playing, so move your friends out the way. I mean completely out of the way. Idealy they shouldn’t be on the camera but to be safe, just don’t tell your friends where your new house is. You don’t need them any more anyway, you have Kinect!

6.Get saving
You don’t get Kinect for free you know, bringing you the f*ture today costs money. Its gonna cost $150 or £130 (Kinect cares not for fair exchange rates). Then you have to buy the games. Don’t worry, they cater to the hardcore gamers as much as the casuals. Check out those pics!

7.Change your wardrobe
You’ll have to wear clothes that Kinect can pick out from the background. Once again, Kinect gives you fun but makes you a better person too. Its Queer Eye insists you dress brightly, no more black t-shirts and dark gaming rooms for you tubby, time to fashionize!

8.Uh-oh, are you even Kinect ready?
The newest Xbox’s describe themselves as Kinect ready. What does this mean? Simply that they don’t require an additional power supply for Kinect. What if you’re not Kinect ready? Well its back to the power block of doom for you!

9.Tidy your room
Kinect despises mess! Clean up your floor or Kinect will be unable to find the ground level and the game won’t work. Kinect: the Mary Poppins of consoles. Only less British, and more demanding.

Everything listed above is right, defenitely right. But it can't change the truth, which kinect is amazing for everyone and open a gate for a new world. One point, Kinect can estimate low accuracy depth its cheap price. If you want to one more accuracy equipment, it will cost you 10,000$ to purchase a time-of-flight camera. This is for developer, however, this is for all because developer can do many interesting things with it so everyone could enjoy it, like "Build a buddy". Ok, I forget you also need a XBox...

Toefl Writing: Parents should let children make mistake and let them learn from their own mistake

Do you agree or disagree with the parents should let children make mistake and let them learn from their own mistake.


If there is anyone out there who still doubts that making a mistake provide children useful experience, who still wonders if making mistake would lead children to deterioration, who still questions the power of making mistake's positive effect on children, this essay is my answer.

First and foremost, there isn't anyone could not avoid making mistake in the world. Everybody will mistake, even the god. The most important thing is correcting the mistake and learning from it, rather than trying to avoid it. Taking Jobs Steve as a good example, he has ever lost approaching two hundred and fifty million dollars in one year and has been fired by his own company. But he holds his belief that he loves what he does, and tries it once more. In his eyes, there would not be a successful people has never made a mistake or failed, but in contrast, almost all of the successful person do make a mistake, and correct it, then they could ensure that never commit a same error, at most time they treat mistake as a warning rather than a beyond repaired failure. Never making mistake nearly means never truly alive. In this point, making mistake equip children a meaningful experience.

Second, does mistake lead the child to deterioration? Actually, this situation just depends on the person's attitude to the mistake. A social institute has ever made a survey on several families, and those families were grouped in two groups. One group is consist by those parents who are insisted that their children can never make any mistake, and the other is consisted by those parents who help their children to realize the reason that cause the mistake and help them to avoid make a same mistake. The children from those two groups have two different attitudes when they make a mistake. Those children, from the first group, usually lie to their parents when they make a mistake, and make more and similar mistakes in their following days; while in contrast, the second group children usually make fewer mistakes and almost never make similar mistakes. This research suggests us that a positive attitude to the mistake can effectively reduce the chance that children commit the same mistake. Nevertheless, a negative attitude can just lead the children commit more mistake and never learn any useful experiences. In the sense, the attitude rather than the mistake is the important thing that leads the children to deterioration.

The social institute has made a sequential research on those group children's development, they find that almost all of the children of the first group serve as the management of company or the leader of the government, however, children, from the first group, nearly none of them can get success in their career, what worse, some of them become a liar, a thief or some other criminal. This research indicates that making mistake has positive effects on children.

In the nutshell, making mistake provide children useful experience; a positive attitude to making mistake lead children to success; the effect of making mistake is benefit to children development.

Toefl Writing: it is more important to work quickly and risk making mistakes than to work slowly and make sure that everything is correct

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

In today's world, it is more important to work quickly and risk making mistakes than to work slowly and make sure that everything is correct.

If there is anyone out there who is still doubts that a careful working provides us a good effect, who still wonders whether a sophisticated thought equips us with a better result, who still questions that the correct choic contributes us to realize our goal. This essay is my answer.

A careful working means that people pay more attention on their job's details, such as accountants' attentions on those numbers especial on the points of decimal, programmers' attentions on the usage of RAM, or investors' attentions on subtle economic changes. With careful attitude, a programmer could design a well-running project with less bug in it; with careful attitude, an accountant could do a precise account without any error in it; with careful attitude, an investor could do a successful investment. Jobs Steve, a careful and wisdom person, is a good example. He made lots of investments, such as iPod, iPad, iPhone etc. All of those earn numbers of money and make he get what he want-the fame, the wealth and the success. While, before he made a decision to invest lots in those projects,  he did lots of researches in the customers' perference; he investigated the market requirement; he also studied the economic development. Then he finally got a careful and detailed blueprint of Apple's development, leading his eventual success. Just take an assumption that Jobs made a quick decision without any researches about the market and the customers' requirement; or made a risk investment on other thing without investigation about economic development in America. He might not be able to acquire the development trend of the electronic equipment, as a consequence, he could not make a right decision on investment. Maybe he will develop electronic dictionary or other electronic equipment. Then  he would not get so much profit from those equipments and people would not have the iPhone, iPad and iPod to use, today. In this sense, careful working is very meaningful to people.


A sophisticated thought means that people will think twice before they make a decision. As the Confucius says, "Look before you leap.", think over before you make a decision is so important that will lead you to success or to failure. For instance, once my mother made a quick decision to buy a cyclopaedia in an amazing high price, when she heard that a book store was selling a kind of limited edition cyclopaedia. This book had been described as the one and the only one which contains most detailed information about china ancient document. At last, she found it was sold abundant in another bookshop in a low price. How harmful it is to make decision quickly without a sophisticated consideration. There is an assumption that if my mother takes more time to go around to do a investigation or to think over about the whole thing, she would find the book store's advertisement is exaggerated, and she would not be cheated. In this sense, a sophicticated plan is more important than a quick and risk decision.

In the nutshell, a correct and sophsiticated decision is more important than a quick response for either people's career development or their life.

Toefl Writing: What is the most important quality for both political and commercial leaders

What is the most important quality for both political and commercial leaders? Is it the creativity, the openness, or the responsibility? In fact, all of those qualities are important, but the most important quality, I believe, is responsibility. This essay is the answer.


Creativity, one of the important qualities of a leader, is the ability to think differently, to get outside of the box that constrains solutions. Creativity gives leaders the ability to see things that others have not seen and thus lead followers in new directions. While not all of those new ideas are correct, there might be some errors come from a wrong decision made by leadership. For instance, the leadership of our country once made a decision that led people to commit to produce more and more porn during the time of natural disaster, without considering about the capacity of farmers and soil. This decision resulted our country into a Great Leap Forward Time, when all of leaders in villages reported a false and large number of the crop to the central management, while, in fact, there didn’t have so much crops could be used as food in the natural disaster time. Then, there were lots of people had been starved during that time. Therefore, although a creative idea is very important, the leader should also consider about the realistic and do an appropriate policy or response to their mistake. Just as our following leaders – Deng Xiaoping made a new policy to develop our economy, which lead us could live a well life. In this sense, creativity does not as important as the responsibility.

Another vital quality of leaders -- openness means being able to listen to new ideas, even if they do not conform to the usual way of thinking. Good leaders should be able to suspend judgment while listening to others’ ideas, as well as accept new ways of doing things that someone else thought of : Openness builds mutual respect and trust between leaders and followers, and it also keeps the team well supplied with new ideas that can further its vision. Actually, the openness is another form of responsibility to their fault. Every people would make a fault whatever he is a staff or a manger. So the openness becomes more important when the manger makes an error decision and his employee proposes a correct method, the manger should adopt the employee’s proportion and do a responsibility for his fault. This suggests the importance of responsibility.

Responsibility, another vital and the most important quality of leaders, means taking personal responsibility for failures. A good leader should be magnanimous to his followers, and severe to themselves. This sort of reverse magnanimity helps other people feel good about them and draws the team closer together. To spread the fame and take the blame is a hallmark of effective leadership. So the responsibility is the most important quality of leaders.

In the nutshell, the most important quality of leaders is responsibility to their own fault.

Toefl Writing: Should people live in a same place or move from one to another

While many people advocate that they are prefer living in a same place to moving to other place. Although living in a same place is expediency, there are myriad people are always living and working in different place. What is the reason?

The first reason involves external pressure that comes from lives and social. These people who need to earn to feed on themselves and to support their families, have been exposed to lots of pressure from different directions, especially in those remote developed place, which provided limited work opportunities and source. In such tough economic situation, those who cannot earn themselves, naturally decide to move to a new job market to find more work chance in order to undertake the responsibility to support their family. This explains the immigration tendency in some place. In this point of sense, moving to a new place is necessary and inevitable.

More important, there might be some internal factors. Migrating to other city or country for some people, is considering a new studying and working circumstance, and some new experiences. For example, studying abroad is a fashionable tendency in China. It is estimated that approximate 20 percent of Chinese students are willing to visit a foreign country for their further study. They can not only gain cut-edge knowledge, but also share different experiences and culture with them, both of them is helpful for their development.

Moreover, the increased number of various work emerge in the whole world, one of five workers would be with their employers less than one year. The desire for new job market and high salary drives people for new job, and this would not be limited by geography factor. As a consequence, there are more and more people moving to other place to chase their dream.

However, for most people, it is unrealistic that always moving from a place to another. One who need comfort and security, which derive from human natural ability to some extent, chose a place for stable life, especially for those people who have children. Moreover, homesick would be another reason driving them back home.

In the nutshell, it is positive for people's development, on either study and work, and necessary for some external reasons. Nevertheless, people cannot always moving from one place to another, just like those people who cannot always living in a same place.