Author Archive
Wii (include pun here)!
The Feedback
My response for just a few days has been pretty positive by the wii community. After posting my problem video, over night I received three responses: http://www.wiimoteproject.com/wiimote-whiteboard/needs-pen-advice-for-class-demo-t717.0.html
A few people say my main problem is the switch I used. I used a different model from the one that was suggested, however it was the closest one I could find at Radioshack. Perhaps before class I will exchange it so I could possibly show everyone in class. My main problem is actually connecting my laptop to the projection… It always has problems. As for the demonstration itself, I think another issue I’m having is that I need to have the wiimote facing the screen/projection at a 45 degree angle in order for it work.
Wii did it! (part 2)
This post is just showing the two videos I uploaded to the wiimote project community, you can see the original post here:
http://www.wiimoteproject.com/wiimote-whiteboard/needs-pen-advice-for-class-demo-t717.0.html
This video is basically a troubleshooting video which is commonly posted on the board in hopes of someone helping out. I followed the advice that was provided to me (sort of, I found better advice) and made an infrared pen that actually works and is detected by my wiimote and computer. You can tell because in the video you will see the infrared bulb glowing, something that is invisible to the naked eye.
My second video I submitted to the videos forum of the community to show my amateur demonstration of a few simple wiimote hacks. I posted it in the community here:
http://www.wiimoteproject.com/tech-chat/amateur-video-by-me-t729.0.html
You can download the wii play the drums app here: http://www.thisisnotalabel.com/My-Wiimote-Drum-Kit.php
Wii did it! (part 1)
After a few failed attempts and much help from the wii hacking community over at wiimoteproject.com, I was able to essentially hack my wiimote. I can only hope to move forward from where I am. I will describe what I did towards the end of this entry.
The Community
First I want to try to anaylze and decontruct on an semi-anthropological level the wiimote hacking community. It all starts, of course with google and the words “how to”. Eventually, you’ll discover Johnny Lee’s website. From there, you’ll find a message boards which constantly grows in number filled with people who are interested in finding unique and simple ways to use their wiimote for different purposes. Like many websites, it contains a message board filled with various topics including project ideas, hardware support, a number of discussion topics on Johnny Lee’s projects (including how to make an IR pen which I contributed in), videos, etc… The site is updated daily by individuals who usually need help figuring out how to use the wiimote in different ways. The posts are answered usually by experts who also contribute clever or alternative ways of using software or hardware related to the project. An example I have concentrated on is how to make an IR pen (light pen) that you can use with the wiiwhiteboard software that Lee created. I posted a question on how to make a pen in the wiiwhiteboard subject, even though there was a IR Pen section because there were more posts in this new section. I did this of course because time wasn’t on my side and I needed someone to respond. Luckily for me, someone did.
The Posts
Xbox takes a hint…
Before I make my post of the week…
Updates: I bought a bluetooth usb adapter yesterday, Pens should be here by Monday (I really hope), My laptop is having trouble hooking up to the projector so it anyone wants to vonunteer installing a couple programs I need to use, let me know, although I’m not even certain what experiment I’ll be doing if I do it.
In recent news, Xbox 360 is stepping it up with their functions. After blu-ray took over, looks like they felt like they needed to do more. So, they decided to use similar technology the wii uses in motion detection:
Wii can do it!
First off I want to say that I use the word hack loosely. What I plan to do with the wiimote is to manipulate and control devices that are unconventional or at least different from its initial use of playing video games. I do not plan on opening my wiimote and changing stuff around, although it may be fun to try and from what research I have done so far, doesn’t seem too difficult. This is with exception of actually ripping apart the wiimote which is harder than it looks.
Here is what the inside of a wiimote looks like anyway:
The accelerometer contains a silicon weight—less than one millionth of a gram—connected to a chip by minuscule springs. When you hold the controller still, the weight sits between sets of silicon plates. A current running through the weight sends equal voltages to all plates. As the wiimote is moved, the weight slides to one side, increasing the voltage at the nearer plates. The accelerometer measures this change in voltage and uses it to calculate the distance the weight has traveled (very small)
Tired of Trees: Questioning Internet Protocol
Galloway and Thackers intro of The Exploit conducts a political philosophy within the nature of networks. There has been a developing relationship with the technological advances and the sovereignty that is said to control them. This would oppose the belief held by Geert Lovink who proclaimed that internet protocols are not ruling the world, but simply the government is. Upon examining this proclaim, Galloway and Thackets would argue that political formulas could not elucidate networks because it fails to analyze from a articulate level–taking into account the existence of their intricate qualities and extent. Instead this section introduces an idea about the nature of networks from an anti-code of thought which considers the relationships between biology and technology.
Their approach begins by debating whether or not America is a sovereign power or a network power. After a small collection of complicated questions such as “Does the policy of American unilateralism provide a significant counterexample to the claim that power today is network-based,” they suggest that the juncture between sovereignty and networks is the place where the apparent contradictions can best be understood. Such a contradiction that they come to find is how the American unilateralism counters the notion that we live in a global network society–”How could there be a global system of distributed control if there also exists a single superpower?”
Galloway and Thacker hint for a new method of control that is instead entirely innate to networks. They form a question that comes from the assumption that the present day American regime is in the political vanguard that aims to establish sovereignty in a new political structure that is antithetical to traditional modes of control. They ask the nature of the current geopolitical struggle and believe it is necessary to reach beyond a theory of power law distributions to a theory of political action rooted in networks.
Their argument has three steps, which are:
1. The modern period is characterized by both symmetrical political conflicts waged by centralized power blocs, and also asymmetrical political conflicts in which netwroekd actors struggle against centralized powers.
2. The present day is symmetrical again, but this time in the symmetrical form of networks fighting networks.
3. In order to be effective, political movements must discover a new exploit.
Examples of asymmetric conflict that exist today that shows a historical response to the centralization of power include the suicide bomber vs the police, peer-to-peer protocols vs music conglomerates, guerillas vs the army, netwar vs cyberwar, and subcultues vs the family.
The new exploit which is suggested would have to be a form of “anti web,” as they coin, which would be as asymmetrical in relationship to networks as the network was in relationship to power centers. It would have to consider the intricate unhuman elements of all networks and would later be called an exceptional topology. This exploit hasn’t been invented, as they conclude, and probably will fail to begin and the sovereigns will again breed their own demise.
The Wiimote, not for playing video games.
I typed up this entry last week but never posted it. I typed it thinking that I wanted to do this as a third travelogue but seeing as it may be pretty similar to Jacob’s previous travelogue, I have decided to focus on the Turing test for my next few entries. However, at this point I feel I can venture off in my own category so this will remain my third travelogue. The online survey idea I dropped as well. Anyway here’s a post from the dead:
Ok so I’ve attempting doing research on opinion surveys and how they effect popular culture (with the college demographic finally being noticed) but discovered that it would be difficult to engage myself in the environment. And I didn’t want to do something I particularly liked, like everyone’s favorite–video games, so I thought I could talk about something that could challenge me. I want to discover what Nintendo’s newest gaming controller can do serving as a mechanism for other appliances and how it can be used to enhance gameplay. I also want to examine the effect the technology will have in our society, giving us new ways of not only gaming, but communicating. In the end of this journal, I plan on making a full attempt of hacking a wii controller/system on video and using it for something else other than playing a game. Crossing my fingers of course.
Nielsen measures up
Trying to stay somewhat related to my last post. Focusing on television viewership–primarily on measuring tactics and techniques done by Nielson.
Out of the 32 million people that watched the Oscars (which according the most was the worst ratings ever), 2 million didn’t.
These 2 million people used their DVR recording device so they could watch it at their discretion. While Tivo and other similar brands are already changing the face of advertising, leaving shows with a higher option of product placement and alternative media outlets (such as internet streaming), Nielson is keeping up figuring out how to measure this new audience along with the young adults audience who have been enjoying their content online.
Besides the 32 million who witnessed the oscars on their couch, many others viewed it later on their chair. Nielson’s online research indicated that traffic to Yahoo’s increased 201% the day after telecast from 750,000 to 2.3 million viewers. Interestingly enough, even still this was a 26% decrease from last year (Nielson monitored content on approximately 70 million blogs).
Nielson, however, is unable to measure content uploaded without ABC’s consent by the thousands of users on sites such as youtube and dailymotion.
Statistical source - Indiantelevision
Harold and Kumar Goes to… your youtube video!
I’m having trouble trying to figure out what I want to do for the next travelogue, so I’m going to post a few topics and decide from there, maybe based on what others think.
One of my ideas were to explore the business and cultural impact of television on the internet. This includes, but not limited to, copyright infringement issues with major network or cable shows via community video websites such as youtube or dailymotion.
This video posted by a member of youtube, had this to say to the reaction of the pull of SNL’s breakthrough digitial short “Lazy Sunday” from youtube:
 ”Dear NBCUniversalGeneralElectric,
Your site doesn’t list a general comments location, so I guess webmaster is it.
I just saw this blurb over at youtube: http://youtube.com/blog
Bad Form. Really, Really bad.
Lazy Sunday is one of the most virulent of viral media I’ve seen in years. It literally was on nearly every site I frequent. I watched it at YouTube, and went back to view it on YouTube several times and gave the URL to friends.
This sparked the discussion of whether SNL was finally “not sucking” anymore.
Get the idea? People were talking about one of your shows, one which hasn’t been, you know, funny in years.
And lest you say you have to protect copyright violations, by law, or you could lose your claim, yes, you’re right, you do.
But think about this; you lost nothing by having that video out there. Sure, YouTube gets a bit of cash to defray hosting by putting a few google ads. But you only gained from the transaction.
You could have protected your copyright by granting a free license to YouTube and asking they display a copyright notice on the page. You’d have gained considerable “cred” with tech savvy people who are starting to move away from television as the primary source of their media.
-Chris Thompson”
Of course, this was back before YouTube got really commercial with Google’s purchase. If you notice now on youtube, major companies serve as partners to “Googtube” promoting their company through their videos or advertising during the video. Has anyone noticed the semi-pro banner floating above your favorite video lately? Well, how about Harold and Kumar?
My main focus would be to investigate what the deals are between partners and your average user trying to make a name for himself or herself and their relation to advertising. How far can they go?
And of course… one of the main arguments after the NBC’s involvement… Would Lazy Sunday be as popular without youtube? Why would they take it off? And where did it go?
What is a Cluebot?
If you read my last concluding post, I discovered a little thing called a Cluebot when I attempted to spam on a south park wikipedia article. Just wanted to quickly describe what a cluebot is and how it helps prevent spam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CLUEBOT
In relevence to my spamming attempt, this is what basically happened:
“Scoring system
For pages which have had a lot of text added in the last change, the bot will score the additions based on this list, and then score the removals on the inverse of that list. If the overall score is greater than -100, the bot sees the edit as constructive and does nothing, if it scores less than -100, the bot sees it as destructive, reports it and possibly reverts it.”
If you click “this list,” you will reach a page of code that contains a bunch of vulgar words that each have a set amount of points. If the score is more than 100 points, the cluebot will automatically revert the page (within a second). It’s way more complicated that what I am saying here. The page is basically a new language for only the cluebot to understand.
The cluebot, also, has the ability to report open proxies found on vandalizing IP addresses.
If a page has been vandalized more than 30 times in 48 hours, it will request an admin, who also has the option of turning the cluebot in case it malfunctions.
I tried to find a video of a similar example of something like this occuring, but here’s an article instead about Steven Colbert and the Elephant incident:
(his account named stevencolbert was banned from using Wikipedia since)
Just thought this was interesting, if you go to the elephant article today and look at its history you will also notice that people are still vandalizing it thanks to Steven Colbert.
