Friday, January 20, 2006

Eye Toy: Day 2

Last night I went through the first of the actual sessions from my twelve week Kinetic workout program. I am really feeling it today.

Kinetic does seem a bit more sensitive than the Play mini games, but the only problem I had was my dark coloured sweat pants. Once I changed those, it worked fine. Also, I'm going to have to push the sofa back a few inches to get my entire upper and lower body in range for the camera.

The workout was well-balanced. It began with a warm-up (a slightly fast-paced Tai-Chi routine). It then moved into two separate segments (games). The first game was from the cardio section. It had me doing sweeping motions, following arc patterns on the screen, gradually increasing in speed. My heart rate was higher by the end of the timed "game". My score was based upon how many trail segments I correctly followed.

The second game was from the combat section. A circle covered the center of the screen (roughly the area occupied by my body) and four padded stick swung down from the four corners of the screen. If I allowed a stick to touch the circle, I lost points. I could disable a stick (and score points) by punching the two uppers sticks and kicking the two lower sticks back to their starting positions.

Finally, the workout ended with a warm down- a guided stretching routine. My progress was saved and I'm due for my next workout over the weekend.

So far, so good.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Eye Toy

Six words for you: Eye Toy Rocks.

I know, that's technically only three words, but each one of them should count double.
I finally got to use those USB ports on the front of my PS2. The time from opening the box to actually using the product was around forty-five seconds. The lighting in my apartment is not very bright, but I had no difficulties whatsoever.

We picked up Kinetic and Play (the first one).

Writing this the following day, I'm already a little sore from Kung Foo. I'll start my Kinetic 12 week workout program tonight. What a great use of the technology!

Even my wife was jumping around, playing the mini games. I thought my cats my jump in there too. It's the first time they've possessed the manual dexterity to play one of the games. (Dual shock = difficult to use for cats).