Last year I borrowed my brother’s Wii for our family vacation and had a blast.  Late for that bandwagon, when I heard about Microsoft’s plan to take game technology a step beyond the Wii I jumped on. Last Thursday our Kinect finally arrived.  Since then our family has spent as much time as possible having a wonderful time with our new toy. My glowing review of Kinect and Kinect Adventures follows:

What is Kinect?

In case you haven’t  seen any of Microsoft’s 500 million dollar advertising campaign, here’s the short of it. Kinect adds a comprehensive motion control system to the Xbox.  New games have been written specifically for Kinect.  Your body is the controller for these games.  This means that Kinect is a very active experience.  You are never sitting, watching.  You are always doing.  The Dance Central game does a great job of showing off what is possible when a system tracks your body (as Kinect does) rather than tracking a motion detector in your hand (as with the Wii). Even if you could strap a motion controller on each limb, you still wouldn’t pick up all the body movements Dance Central scores you on. All that said, there are still improvements Kinect should make.

                What matters more though than whether the technology works (it does) is whether you actually want to play it. So on to the game review itself:

Kinect Adventures

Kinect Adventures shows off the wow factor of Kinect. The five different games within this game each have a fun theme. My favorite at first was Reflex Ridge.  Here you are on a conveyor belt and have to jump and dodge obstacles that come toward you. As you move to harder levels, the game requires a lot of effort ducking, dodging and jumping. This game was my favorite because it requires so much attention and effort that the resulting experience is the most immersive of all the five mini-games. Warning: if you don’t want a workout, you may not like this game for long. I put on my heart rate monitor to see how this compares to other exercise I do. When playing Reflex Ridge at the intermediate level my heart rate was the same as it is when I jog at a comfortable speed (about 150 bpm or 85% of my max HR).  After playing this one and then catching your breath on the couch, you may want to go for something on the opposite end of the exhausting vs easy-going scale: 20,000 Leaks.

In 20,000 Leaks you are in an underwater glass room surrounded by mean fish who keep breaking holes in your glass compartment. Your job is to cover up the leaks. The result is a fun twister-like experience (though you don’t end up with your arms entangled in your companion’s—good or bad depending on who you are playing with). 

The rafting game is my current favorite. Careening down an impossibly crazy river gives the game a great theme. The many different routes and obstacles makes the game playable over and over without getting boring. And what I think is this game’s best feature is how two players can work together to make the game so much better. Amelia had a friend over and they played this game almost exclusively. I didn’t realize how far the raft could jump until I watched Amelia and her friend play together with perfectly synchronized jumps.

The last two games are a lot of fun as well. In one you are popping bubbles in outer space. This game is closer to 20,000 Leaks on the relaxing vs exhausting scale. The last, Rally Ball, I haven’t spent as much time with but it looks like it will be a lot of fun too.   

Sum up

                There’s lots to love about Kinect. Wow. Though the wow-effect will surely wear off soon, the technology really is neat. Fun. The games are really enjoyable to play. Exercise & coordination. For our family, having a reason to exercise and practice coordination is great. Together. The highlight of Kinect for me was watching my 11 year old daughter and her friend work together to do better together than either of them could have done on her own.

                This over-the-top-positive review of Kinect reflects how I feel right now. I also wrote a post about Kinect’s shortcomings.

 It’s no fun when someone tells you how great a movie is and you get excited to see it and then it turns out to be good, but not excellent. You walk out of the movie disappointed when you could have spent the same money, the same time, seeing the same movie and enjoying it—if only you hadn’t gone into it with such high expectations. Am I the only one that this happens to? With that in mind, have you read my over-the-top positive review of Kinect? If you haven’t, go read it because that review reflects how I feel about Kinect. It’s great! But I don’t want to be to blamed for creating unreasonably high expectations. So with that in mind here’s every reason I can think of NOT TO LIKE IT.

Kinect doesn’t detect motion nearly as well as a person can.

We take it for granted of course, but it is amazing how well humans can interpret the movements other people make. Though Kinect’s motion detection amazes me because I’ve never seen anything like it, Kinect can misread your movements in ways that a friend never would.

Example: During the setup phase Kinect interpreted children who were standing as if they were kneeling. This happened once to Amelia and once to Duncan. (Could this be related to the fact that they have such long torsos?)  This misinterpretation didn’t cause any problems but it did show that the system isn’t perfect.

Another example: if I put my arms above my head and cross them, I can fool Kinect into thinking that my arms are not crossed but that both arms are straight up.

The examples above don’t bother me. Kinect’s motion detection has worked extremely well for us in the games we have. The one detection issue I do find frustrating is the difficulty with helping a young child learn the system. If I help my child by putting her hand in the correct spot, more often than not, Kinect becomes confused. Instead of seeing two people, one helping the other, it sees a strange multi-armed creature and loses track of the hand that was doing the pointing. That’s a big negative because it interferes with your ability to help your child in the most natural way. As you can guess this is a bigger issue for smaller children. Standing on the sidelines saying “move your hand up a little” to a 3 year old doesn’t work particularly well.

Kinect requires a lot of space to play

We have Kinect set up in our family room which is 22 feet long and 14 feet wide. Our Kinect setup for that room has the place you play starting about 7 feet back from the screen and Kinect. The play space extends 5 feet back from that point and is 7 feet wide. The result is a very nice play space for 2 people to play Kinect Adventures together.  A lot of people have their TV in a room that isn’t that large, or have it arranged in a way that makes devoting that much space inconvenient. According to the instructions, it is possible to play in a smaller space. My guess is that that won’t work as well. 

Kinect requires a large screen

Our Kinect screen is borrowed from our computer. It is a 24 inch diagonal HDMI monitor and works great with the computer. I am using that monitor now and I just measured how far I keep it from my face: about 2 feet. At 2 feet away, it is a wonderful monitor. When I’m seven feet back, that nice large monitor seems pretty small. We certainly can see well enough to play, but the screen size makes you want to move closer to the screen. Especially as you get into an intensive game, the kids move closer and closer to the screen until the Kinect can’t detect them any longer.  To deal with the problem of the kids moving out of the Kinect’s detection range, we placed the 5  foot wide rug we already had in the room so as to match the Kinect’s play area.  This makes it easier for the kids to stay in the right place. Still, a larger screen would be nice. According to this online viewing distance calculator, we need a 50 inch screen for viewing 7 feet away. I see a new screen in our future.

The Xbox with Kinect is still not controller free

If you want a true controller-free game experience, Kinect delivers. You wouldn’t want a controller in your hand to play a dancing game and you don’t need one. But your family will enjoy those games best if Kinect can recognize you, and in order to do that you need to each have a profile, and in order to create a profile you need to use a controller.

Some people may find this bothersome. I don’t. If over time Xbox makes it easy to create a profile without a controller, great. But I’m not pining for that feature. In fact, see the next section, if I want to navigate the gazillion options to try to make an avatar with some resemblance to the person, the controller is likely faster and easier.

Xbox, allow me to use the controller if I want to.

Microsoft’s slogan  for Kinect is “You are the controller.” In fact though, when you do use your body to do controller-like activities, Kinect is at its weakest. I’m not talking about playing the games. There you are moving your body in ways that wouldn’t work if you tried to reduce it to a simple left, right, up, down, button A, button B type input. Microsoft is right to keep that experience entirely controller free. But for navigating menus, you don’t gain much by using your hand (except it’s cool). When selecting options in game, I’m glad you can do so without the controller. Not requiring a controller means you don’t have to walk over to get the controller every time a game ends and you need to tell Kinect whether to play again, go to the next level or go to a different activity all together. But sometimes you are doing a lot of in-game navigation and a controller would make more sense. It would have been simple enough to program the game to allow you to use the controller in these navigation/option screens and Microsoft should have/should still enable this.

Kinect, don’t make me break a sweat

After having played Kinect for a while I sympathize with this criticism. Even the simplest games make you stand up. And sometimes you don’t want to work for it. You are in … let’s call it … a Bejeweled mood. So there you have it all Bejeweled players, you are forewarned. For the members of our family, having people get up and do some active, coordination-improving tasks is good. I don’t see us buying any traditional Xbox games.

Hey kids, don’t have the energy to stand up and move around anymore? Go read a book.

You can buy a 5 crayon pack from  ToysRus for $3. Don’t confuse these with the window markers also by Crayola.  Surprisingly, they aren’t nearly as good!  The caps don’t fit the markers very well.  Then the marker dries out and your money is wasted.  Also, the marker colors are pale and harder to see, while the window crayon colors pop!  The slightly tinted windows on our van are the perfect background.  The crayons go on really smoothly and the colors are bright–messages can be read from many yards away.  Cleaning the crayon off the windows isn’t hard–it just takes a moist paper towel.   

*I bought the crayons with my own money.  No one encouraged me to write this review, and I haven’t received any compensation for it financial or otherwise.   

P.S. Amelia achieved two personal best times at her meet this past weekend.  Hip, hip hooray!  Yea for personal bests!  Go, Amelia, go!

My highest recommendation goes to Bananagrams: Also, Best Word Game.  Bananagrams is basically a set of Scrabble tiles in a bright yellow fabric banana.  If you don’t like word games, you won’t like Bananagrams.  If you do enjoy word games, this will probably quickly become one of your all-time favorites.

Why Bananagrams is so great: You can play with only 2 people or a larger group.  You don’t have to wait for other people to take their turns; everyone plays simultaneously.  Both luck (the draw of the tiles) and skill (not just vocabulary but also skill in using tiny words to connect bigger ones) are part of the game.  Although I do not consistently win at Bananagrams (I am not interested in memorizing all the possible two letter words, unlike some people I know–Pdad!), I enjoy it because it is fun and quick and you do it with words.  The package claims that Bananagrams can be played with children as young as 7, but I think most 7 year olds would find it difficult.

Pmom’s favorites

1. Bananagrams

2. Taboo

3. Conspiracy

4. Settlers of Catan

5. Monopoly

6. Pit

Pdad’s favorites

1. Bananagrams

2. Balderdash

3. Pit

4. Rummikub

Pmom’s favorites to play with children

1.Sorry!

2.Perfection

3. Cooties

4.Go Fish

5. Chutes & Ladders

6.Zingo

Pdad’s favorites to play with children

1. Stratego

2. I Can Do That

3. Sherlock

4. Zingo

5. Jenga

Amelia’s favorites (10 yr old girl)

(Amelia had trouble with the rank ordering so she has a first favorite group and a second favorite group).

1. Bananagrams

1. Chess

1.Colorforms

2. Stratego

2.Rummikub

2.Scrabble

Duncan’s favorites (5 year old boy)

1. Candyland

2. Silly Faces Game

3. Build a Robot

4. I Can Do That

5. Perfection

6. Operation

Best Larger Group Games:

Balderdash

Pit

Taboo

Best Games for Two

Bananagrams

Chess

Jenga

Monopoly

Best new games

Bananagrams

I Can Do That

Sherlock

Zingo

Classics that haven’t lost their luster

Chess

Monopoly

Pit

Stratego

Nothing beats fresh garlic.  If you are using powdered, jarred, or pre-peeled garlic, you are settling for less. Try fresh garlic again and see whether it isn’t a sensory experience you need in your life.

Given my penchant for fresh garlic, I see the garlic press as a must have item. If you are a garlic press newbie, you need to know that garlic presses are not created equal. Not even close. Many are flimsy, most are inefficient, a lot of them are hard to clean, and some require too much hand strength. None of these negatives is true of the Kuhn Rikon Easy Squeeze.  If you have ever tried a garlic press made by another company, when you try this one, you will quickly recognize it as an engineering marvel.  It really works well and it is much easier to clean.  I don’t think the Easy Squeeze is the best looking press.  Kuhn Rikon’s similar stainless steel model is absolutely beautiful.  I own it too and it is a work of kitchen design that is truly art. But for those of us with weak hand strength, the less sophisticated easy squeeze model (available in black, red or blue) is both easier and cheaper.  I first read about this model at Cook’s Illustrated where it was rated number one out of a field of thirteen presses.

Do you know of any Stuff Worth Buying?  I would love to have you guest post.  Write me at ChocolateandGarlic [at] gmail.com.

*I have received no financial or other benefits from the companies affiliated with this product.  See my review policy at the bottom of my About Me page.

Consumers of the world unite! We need to ask cookbook publishers to include weights in all their cookbooks. It is crucial for baking and it makes sense for other types of cooking as well.

I, for one, prefer measuring three ounces of onion to making myself crazy with internal debates as to whether a given onion qualifies as medium size or not.  For ingredients like Parmesan,  where how you grated it makes such a big difference to the volume, weighing just makes a ton of sense.

What doesn’t make sense is to bake without referring to weight, because weighing is so much more accurate. If you are stir frying—a little more of this, a little more of that—accuracy isn’t a big deal (unless you have OC issues : ). But if you are making a cake, accuracy is key.

2) Weighing is also much faster. Instead of dipping and sweeping multiple cups, you just pour your flour slowly into the bowl until you hit the magic number on the scale.

Which scale?  I am sure many scales would work fine, but I love my MyWeigh 7000 (click the picture to visit their website). It is a little bulky, but so much sturdier than my previous scale. This thing has stood up to considerable abuse by my children, and it still works great.  Also, it has a higher weight capacity than most scales (almost 15 1/2 lbs), so I don’t have to worry that if I put that fully-loaded heavy bowl on it it might break. Also, with the multiple modes and high weight capacity, the MyWeigh can be used for calculating postage or all sorts of crafts and hobbies.

Read my review policy on the About Me page.

Fingerless Gloves by Lis--Alpaca Yarn

Do you think of your review more as a recommendation of a cool place to visit or as a recommendation of some really great yarn?

I think it is both a really cool place to visit if you’re interested in alpacas, yarn, or both.  I can’t get enough of the yarn.  If I felt like it were feasible to buy this yarn exclusively I would.  This yarn is 5 or 10x better than traditional sheep’s wool because it isn’t scratchy, is softer, and is hypoallergenic.  The only advantages to traditional sheep’s wool are that it felts easier and is also water resistant.

Have you tried the yarn?  What did you think?

I have tried the yarn.  I knitted a pair of fingerless gloves.  I loved knitting the yarn.  It is amazingly soft, and I love the fact that the yarn is un-dyed yet you get rich full color.  Also, alpaca don’t have the oils that sheep have.  The yarn is hypoallergenic.  So people who are allergic to wool can usually wear alpaca.

How does the cost compare to other yarn? 2x 5x 10x?

NO!  its $9 for a 100 yard skein.  That is a very reasonable price for a pure fiber probably cheaper than you would find at a yarn shop.

About Blue Moon Ranch: Whereabouts is Woodland, UT?

It is sort of between Kamas and Park City.

This was a day trip, right?  Am I right that you didn’t actually stay overnight at the ranch, you just visited?

It was a day trip.  We stayed the night at a nearby B&B though.

Did you have to pay anything to visit the ranch?  Were you able to buy yarn while you were there?

The visit was free.  At the end of the visit she took us to a tiny little store she has off her garage where she has what is left of her yarn.  Like I said in the write up, she sells most of her yarn the last weekend in September so the selection was limited.  That being said, I was able to buy several skeins of yarn.  I bought one skein from various alpaca.  I plan to knit more fingerless gloves (one of my favorite things) out of the various yarns so I’ll know which I like best when I go back in September.

Lis blogs at Visual Anarchy

Lis from Visual Anarchy

Lis from Visual Anarchy is the first guest reviewer for Stuff Worth Buying.  Lis is one of the most talented people I know.  From stained glass to knitting, both a mom and an artist, she excels at the beautiful and the clever.  It did not surprise me to learn that she was reviewing yarn. Read her post below.

“Alpaca don’t really like to be hugged, but mine learn to deal with it because I love to hug them.”
– Linda Gardner, Owner of the Blue Moon Ranch in Woodland, Utah

Picture courtesy of Linda Gardner.

This weekend my husband and I had the pleasure of visiting Linda Gardner’s Blue Moon Alpaca Ranch. Linda has been running her ranch, which currently houses 50 or 60 alpaca, for eleven years. Within spending five minutes with Linda you’ll realize she is quite possibly the most passionate alpaca owner you’ll find. She knows the name and personality of every alpaca on her ranch. As we walk around she talks to them like they are her children, “Willy. Get over here. You know I’m talking to you. Come on, get over here.” Willy stands up and comes over.

She also knows the quality of each alpaca’s fleece. She keeps track of this so she can decide which alpaca to breed to get the softness and colors she is looking for. Even though she clearly sees her alpaca as an investment she also has a few “hay burners” she keeps around simply because she’s grown attached to them. “Look at him.” She says pointing to an older alpaca, “He’s an old man, he’s got his easy chair and cigar. I couldn’t make him leave. It just wouldn’t be right.”

She gets approximately fifty skeins of yarn, one hundred yards per skein, per alpaca each year. However, not all of the fleece is worth spinning into yarn. In fact she showed us a bag of fleece she uses as insulation around the windows in her home.

Each summer she flies in a specialist who can shear an alpaca in four minutes. He and a team of helpers can shear the entire herd in a day. The fleece from each alpaca is put into separate bags and labeled with the alpaca’s name. The fleece is then sent to a spinner who also keeps track of what yarn came from what alpaca. The result is amazingly soft yarn with rich, natural, un-dyed color. Each skein is labeled with the face and name of the alpaca it came from, and even has an occasional bit of hay still in it. This is how yarn is meant to be.

If you are interested, she sells most of her yarn at her ranch on “open farm day” which she holds each year during the last weekend in September. She may also have a booth at the Great Basin Fiber Arts Festival.