Hello everybody! I thought I’d quickly type up how my first Gadget Show Live was was, what I saw, what I bought and lots of other bits.

So we got there bright and early for the doors opening at 9am (not because we’re sad but because we were only attending for the morning and a little of the afternoon) which gave us about an hour & half to wander about before the Super Theatre show at 10:45..

We went straight over to the booth that Dion Dublin was running because the 2 people I were with (a father and son) were personal friends of his. I knew my old man would be jealous because Dion’s a footie legend! We got to chatting and I told him about what I do and he understood all about turning a hobby into a job so we were on the same wavelength. Then I had a go on his project, The Dube. It might just look like a box but it’s actually pretty clever, the science behind it makes each side a different tone & depending on where you whack the thing deepens or heightens the key! I’ve seen these for years used in Live Lounge sessions on Radio 1 for acoustic sets & now I know where they come from lol

We dropped some baggage off at that booth then started to explore! Right nearby was an iPhone accessories for musical / audio pieces booth which had everything from guitar plugin to roaming microphone capabilities which intrigued me as a good mic on the move is always a plus for me, for interviews and such. Decided to leave it and come back after walking the whole floor.

The simulator for The Stig (from Top Gear) was just nearby & we decided to have a go! It was pretty fun, we were on the back row and not holding onto the handlebars (like you’re supposed to, PFFT!) and ended up getting flung all over the place. The bag I put on the floor was just in pieces afterwards it was hilarious!

Next door to that was a Kick energy drink stage where they were giving away free drinks and other goodies all day round. As well as that, this guy playing Guitar Hero ended up setting a world record on stage getting 100% on a song. I think it was Dragonforce but it definitely wasn’t that Fire & Flames one, I’d never heard it before. I could’ve sworn you have to hold the colour & strum to get the hit but he was letting go of that and using 2 hands on all the colours at some points, can anyone explain that one to me?

There was a booth further down the hall towards the Super Theatre that looked impressive on face value but when you tried their stuff, just wasn’t.. The augmented reality, in my opinion seemed VERY alpha. The glasses weren’t comfortable, the graphics were pixelated & the detection took a while to kick in. Although I do have to give ‘em props on being able to look around once the poster comes to life and it renders the layered animations at the angle out of your vision, more realistic. I also had a dabble on their ‘virtual reality’ game of Call Of Duty which wasn’t really that.. It was a pair of glasses with screens inside which I think aimed to give a 3D effect with left & right visuals but it was nothing but bulky and stupidly blurry to the point where I couldn’t make out a crack in the wall from a hostile NPC. The idea was you look around to control the game, so on the menus you see that essentially all it probably is, is a little gyro in the glasses that moves the mouse on the screen so in games like COD or even Minecraft where vision is guided by that it can loosely be called VR.. Meh.

Probably one of my favourite areas was the ReplayEvents team’s setup with low to the ground sofas & 2 rings of classic gaming consoles with stuff ranging from Goldeneye battles, to Mario Kart 64 races & even some VERY early football action on the Sega Megadrive! I may have played against a young girl (early teens) and destroyed her at MK64 whilst only JUST holding back trash talk! (gaming habit!) Either way, I took their card as I think it would be quite cool to host a LAN party or just some good old retro multiplayer fun some time.. Their site is http://www.replyevents.com if you want to cehck them out.

The highlight of the day was most definitely the Super Theatre stage show with the entire Gadget Show team taking to the stage & showing off a ton of awesome stuff from vehicles to projecting their faces onto a mould used by the Blue Man Group during their on stage performances.. My old problem with it is that the eyes & nose don’t move but the mouth dose, so why have the mouth pertruding on the mould? When they talk, it breaks the illusion. Other than that it was a solid show with audience participation with the BIGGEST KINECT I have ever seen! As well as bunny ears that pick up brainwaves, so the girls went out and stood on peoples knees hoping that only their eyes would wiggle and nothing else in the area would.. It was very suggestive, like Suzi said, there were 2 layers of comedy going off at the same time.

There there was this thing above, none of the videos I’ve seen on YouTube do this thing any justice.. In person it was the most elegant and smooth flight I’ve ever seen! I’m talking by the way about a robot bird developed by the German company Festo. I wanted to record some footage but I just couldn’t take my eyes off of it, I was in awe. On video it looks like the thing struggles to stay up and is jolty, you’ll just have to take my word for it, it’s not!

There were also performances from Addictive.TV who mashup real life things in a similar fashion to Pogo (Upular maker) and Madeon (French DJ) but with visuals too. Just before them too, I finally got to see Laserman LIVE after seeing so many videos from him & it was bloody brilliant!

After that we just explored the rest of the hall where 3d / realism was the strongest theme throughout but also mind control and brainwave detectors seem to be making more and more appearances. Not only did they show off the ears in the super theatre but there were tug of war games going off with these headsets & people exploding cans of red bull (not irl, on an iPad) which worked in some cases but is still in the early stages. Not the point at the moment where I think it deserves to be sold, you’re not getting much for your money.

Then of course there were the bad ass moments where I got to meet a lot of Saplings! There’s a full gallery from my own phone on the Facbeook group (VIEW ALBUM HERE) and I’m still waiting for people who took them themselves to appear online too.. So glad that you were all cool, that’s the kind of community I’m glad to be an integral part of.

Oh and bad ass moment of the day? Walking through a REALLY lively crowd jumping in the air to grab T-Shirts, I’m there, casually checking my mobile phone, I look up, see a shirt coming toward me, grab it and carry on walking. All one fluid motion, was sick!

That’s my day in a nutshell really, there were a few other little bits like the man with the gammy hand selling hardware (which I thought was an odd choice for marketing / perception reasons, I’ve nothing against anyone with a disability but a lot of other people aren’t quite so understanding), robot wars in a plastic cube and the words smallest zipline.

It was an awesome day out and I’d definitely consider going again next year! Unless I can get to CES, that looks even more magical

So the vlog rollercoaster is off and running, not like this video, but you know what I mean!

I realized last night that I share a good 4/5 videos a day on my Facebook & Twitter so why not throw them into a little playlist to accompany my vlogs?

It’s 2 of my idols formats crossing over, Lazy Vlog from Toby and SKL from Kevin Brueck.

Click the annotation or this link to start today’s playlist: http://bit.ly/yGXxau

BYEEE!!!!!

So this information is on my FAQ’s page and channel description but people still seem to ask me all the time what computer, equipment and software I use.

Since I cleaned up my room yesterday, it was now or never to record this!

So much fan mail to go through and such little time, GAAAH!!!!

Anyways, have a sensible St Patty’s evening, don’t drink too much (responsible quantities and all that) & have a lovely Mother’s Day tomorrow