Kinect on Windows v2 keeps restarting

nguyenquyhy 13 Comments

I have been playing with the Kinect for Windows v2 for a while, but I met a strange problem in the recent months: the Kinect kept restarting after 5 or 6 seconds. The RBG and depth channel looked fine in the Kinect Studio and Kinect Evolution, but the video stream kept running for 5-6 seconds then hung for 1-2 seconds (i.e. no new frame was received and the connection from the Kinect was actually lost). I have tried to reinstall the driver and SDK several times without much lucks. I though that it might be a problem with my Kinect, so I left it there until I can test with another Kinect.

Yesterday I tried to search for that problem on the Internet and found that several people also got the same issue. Someone on Microsoft’s forum suggested to disable Kinect audio and some other suggested to enable the audio device, so I decided to give it another try. It turned out that I have disabled Kinect Microphone Array. Re-enabling it fixed the strange problem.

It is a weird issue and does not seems to happen on older driver, and it is unfortunate that Kinect Studio could not give a better error message. I really hope that Microsoft would address that in a later version of driver and SDK, although I doubt that they will do that anytime soon.

First take on MongoDB

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Recently, I have looked around for a good NoSQL database for my new project. I have been using MSSQL for a while but there seems to be more and more complexity as the data models are no longer table-compatible with sub-items and array and a volatile schema.

I have considered DocumentDB on Microsoft Azure on its very interesting indexing capability and the fully managed environment of Azure. However the current price is too expensive for me: 20 USD/month/collection. Some people suggested to put every type into a collection and use a field to distinguish them, but I feel that it is quite messy, especially for NoSQL starter like me. So I went back to some other popular choices such as RavenDB and MongoDB. RavenDB seemed to be a great fit at first as it seems to have very good interface for .NET (C# is my language of choice at the moment) and an awesome web interface, but I then realized that the free version actually has a lot of limit, and I did not plan to incur too much cost on this project.

So I decided to go with MongoDB, which is hugely popular NoSQL database, and seemed to be totally free for my need.

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Error! Can’t initialize plug-ins directory

nguyenquyhy 14 Comments

I tried to install the new version of IntelliJ IDEA today and I got this strange problem.

Error! Can't initialize plug-ins directory. Please try again later!

Some searches on the Internet made me think that the problem was not from IDEA installer, but from Windows itself. I could later confirm that by fire up the installer of Format Factory and got the exact same error messages.

I took me an hour to try out different things until I got this forum thread: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/544157/error-cant-initialize-plug-ins-directory-please-try-again-later/.

Basically, the permission settings on the Temp folder of my user profile was messed up, and my account did not have any permission on that folder at that moment.
In short, the fixed is simply go to the Properties of that folder (you can type %temp% in Run to go to the folder directly), jump to Security tab, choose my user account, press Edit, and put a tick on Full control.
There were several error messages saying that I could not change the permission of some subfolder, but ignoring those folder does not causing me any problem till now.

I hope it help if you are having the same problem!

Surface Pro 3 – One and a half week later

nguyenquyhy 2 Comments

Update: Some tips in the work section about using Adobe CS6 Collection with the high DPI screen of Surface Pro 3.

I have just bought a Surface Pro 3 for more than a week to completely replace my laptop, and I would like to give some reviews on my experience so far.

TL,DR; version. Surface Pro 3 is definitely NOT a one-device-for-everything-in-life thing (at least not my life). However, it is a perfect replacement for my laptop and also provide so many other convenience from a portable form factor.

Surface Pro 3

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Random thought: What Windows 10 needs to have to create a better connected mobile platform

nguyenquyhy Leave a comment

I have been using smartphones and tablets a lot for the recent years, including several years using Windows Phone and a year using a Windows 8.1 tablet: the Dell Venue Pro 8. I would say that Windows 8.1 works great as an OS for both consuming and occasionally producing content on the tablet; however, it is not excellent as an OS for connected consumer devices.

Below are several things that I hope Microsoft will sort out before the launch of Windows 10 next year. Those are also the features that have not been introduced or those that I have never heard any rumor about on Windows 10, so Action Center (coming for sure) or Cortana (definitely coming sooner or later) will not be included here.

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