(Nicked this picture from Stevecla – looks like an advert for Cyberdyne Systems. I’m going to put a chain lock on the TV stand just in case..)

I’m back at work tomorrow after a few days off recharging batteries/dumping the kids with the grandparents. This afternoon I managed to get a couple of hours to continue tinkering with the tech set-up at home.

Mainly this involved downloading the new blades for the XBox (looks very metro-y now) in preparation for the arrival of the Kinect(which means my kids will be able to do video calls to the Grandparents really easily too!) and hooking up the new laptop to the Windows Home Server via the Zune software and Windows Live Photo Gallery in preparation for the arrival of my Windows Phone 7.

Man, I think I just geek bloated on all of the upgraded stuff that’s happening. It’s nice, not least because it means I can ditch iTunes and all things “i*”, but also because it feels just a bit “meh” now.

Oh – also squeezed in an order for a Kindle. I know, I just had to have that second slice of pie. Burp.

Our man @odedran points us to a Windows Phone 7 advert that was shown at #SecretCinema.

As we inch closer to the release of Windows Phone 7 then it’s worth recapping on some bits and pieces. Firstly, in the UK both @MikeOrmond and @PaulFo are out and about looking to help you with application testing and deployment. Take a look at this post for details of the drop in clinics. Mike’s blog is also the place to be this year for information on Phone development.

Mike also points at this post by Brandon Watson on the Windows Phone Developer blog.The main thrust of the post is to announce the final release of the developer tools (16th September). There are some other useful resource links in there too.

If you’re one of the people representing the 300,000 downloads of the developer tools so far and thinking about releasing your application into the wild (well, the Marketplace) then the following points from the post will  be highly relevant:

1. Register at the marketplace today

2. Finish you application or game using the Beta tools

3. Download the final Windows Phone Developer Tools when they are released on September 16^th

4. Recompile your app or game using the final tools

5. Have your XAP ready for ingestion into the marketplace in early October when it opens

If you’re a student you can take advantage of the DreamSpark offer to submit and deploy apps for free on the Windows Phone Marketplace (alongside getting access to the professional development tools in the first place).

This video is worth a look in which they say “We’ve been working on our android app for two weeks, been working on this one [wp7 app] since 3pm [3 hours] and we’re at about the same stage.”

Mixest XAP #gdgtseattle from Anand Iyer on Vimeo.

It’s been a long week, and I’ve got an hour or two left before the weekend so it’s time to catch up on some noteworthy stuff. First up is this quite exciting release from the XNA Creators Club with a whole slew of tutorials and examples for building games on Windows Phone 7.

Tutorials range from basic programming techniques to gestures, to particles, to physics and sprites. Great resources.

You too could build something as cool as this.

Great news via Paul’s blog that Mush – a Windows Phone 7 game developed by Angry Mango that has just won at Dare to be Digital has been nominated for a Bafta. The video above shows it off a little – very Loco Roco – and weirdly hypnotic.

Fantastic achievement – well done to the Angry Mango team.