And after a bit of cut 'n' paste magic we now have a very basic GlovePIE script that we can use to control our avatar in Second Life.

So, in summary we need to follow the following steps for it all to work together.

1. 'connect' the Wiimote to the PC via Bluetooth
2. startup GlovePIE
3. run our script and don't forget to fine tune it
4. startup SecondLife
5. and enjoy!

End of Part IV

So now at this point we start cobbling together the scripts we need, again, most of this has been hacked and pasted from other scripts I've seen around.

First we define some of the theshold values:

var.sense0 = 1000

var.thresh0x = 2

var.thresh0y = 1

var.sense = 300

var.threshx = 10

var.threshy = 5

var.sense2 = 100

var.thresh2x = 15

var.thresh2y = 8

var.sense3 = 50

var.thresh3x = 20

var.thresh3y = 12

You can play around with these values later on to fine tune the translation from Wiimote movements to mouse movements.

if var.x > var.thresh0x

mouse.x = mouse.x - 1/var.sense0

endif

if var.x < -var.thresh0x

mouse.x = mouse.x + 1/var.sense0

endif

if var.z > var.thresh0y

mouse.y = mouse.y - 1/var.sense0

endif

if var.z < -var.thresh0y

mouse.y = mouse.y + 1/var.sense0

endif

if var.x > var.threshx

mouse.x = mouse.x - 1/var.sense

endif

if var.x < -var.threshx

mouse.x = mouse.x + 1/var.sense

endif

if var.z > var.threshy

mouse.y = mouse.y - 1/var.sense

endif

if var.z < -var.threshy

mouse.y = mouse.y + 1/var.sense

endif

if var.x > var.thresh2x

mouse.x = mouse.x - 1/var.sense2

endif

if var.x < -var.thresh2x

mouse.x = mouse.x + 1/var.sense2

endif

if var.z > var.thresh2y

mouse.y = mouse.y - 1/var.sense2

endif

if var.z < -var.thresh2y

mouse.y = mouse.y + 1/var.sense2

endif

if var.x > var.thresh3x

mouse.x = mouse.x - 1/var.sense3

endif

if var.x < -var.thresh3x

mouse.x = mouse.x + 1/var.sense3

endif

if var.z > var.thresh3y

mouse.y = mouse.y - 1/var.sense3

endif

if var.z < -var.thresh3y

mouse.y = mouse.y + 1/var.sense3

endif

End Part IIIB

Now we need to look and see how to get and use the  readings from the RawForce sensors, first, because every set up is different we need a way of 'centering' the mouse. We do this by using some 'trim' variables:

var.trimx = 6

var.trimy = -31

var.trimz = 6

var.x = Wiimote.RawForceX + var.trimx

var.y = Wiimote.RawForceY + var.trimy

var.z = Wiimote.RawForceZ + var.trimz

debug = var.x + " " + var.y + " " + var.z

The last line will display the values in those variables, you will have to adust the var.trimx, var.trimy and var.trimz values until the displayed var.x, var.y and var.z all equal 0 (zero).

End Part IIIA

GlovePIE comes with a whole bunch of sample scripts which can be found in the installed WiimoteScripts directory. 

After spending a bit of time perusing through the many scripts I decided to throw something together based on 'WiiMouse 0.1' by WiiScript.co.nr

First the 'easy stuff' -- mapping the keyboard arrow keys with the cross-pad on the Wiimote like this:

Up = Wiimote.Up

Down = Wiimote.Down

Left = Wiimote.Left

Right = Wiimote.Right

Then we map the mouse buttons:

Mouse.LeftButton = Wiimote.B

Mouse.RightButton = Wiimote.A

I decided to map the '+' and '-' buttons on the Wiimote to the Mouse Wheel, and the 'Home' key to Escape:

Mouse.WheelUp = Wiimote.Plus

Mouse.WheelDown = Wiimote.Minus

Key.Escape = Wiimote.Home

End of Part II

.

I was looking around for alternative input devices for taking control over my avatar in Second Life, when I stumble upon an article about Nintendo Wiis and Wiimotes. A bit more reading told me that the Wiimote uses Bluetooth to talk to the Wii.

A quick trip to the local games store and we're in business! It was a no-brainer connecting the Wiimote to the PC. The only gotcha being that the Wiimote does not automatically connect to the PC after a reboot.

The next step was to find some software to translate the Wiimote's movements and clicks into mouse movements and clicks. A quick Google search yielded GlovePIE as glue I needed. Originally intended to be used with VR gloves it supports inputs from the Wiimote (and Nunchuk addon) but also a whole raft of other controllers including joysticks.

End of Part I

Being a big fan of GMail (and most things from Google) this article caught my eye (courtesy of Google Reader 8-) ). 5 GMail Lab Features

And hopefully this will encourage more people to switch to IPV6!

IETF working on making IPv6 and IPv4 talk to each other

09:40AM
Strong winds and rain lashing Wellington are wrecking havoc around the region, causing major disruptions to flights and damaging homes and power lines.

We’ve added support for 30 new mobiles

Adding to our original list of 50, we’ve updated the software so it’s compatible with the latest handsets – including the Nokia N82, Sony Ericsson w890, Samsung U900 and the Motorola Razr2 V9.

The newly supported handsets are:

Motorola v6maxx, L9, Razr2 V9
Nokia 5310, 5610, 6300, E61, N70, N72, N73, N76, N78, N81, N82
Samsung G600, G800, U600, U900
Sony Ericsson c702, c902, k660, k770, k850i, w580, w660i, w760, w890, w910, w980, z770

You can also check to see whether your mobile’s compatible on the Skype for your mobile page.

Make calls using Skype for your mobile in Australia and New Zealand

Great news for antipodeans – you can now make Skype-to-Skype calls and call landlines and mobiles around the world at Skype’s low rates from your mobile phone. From today, you can make calls using Skype for your mobile in Australia and New Zealand.

For the full list of supported countries, visit the Skype for your mobile page.

For all those Skype users out there the new beta version has been released and is available for downloading from http://www.skype.com

Now this guy has the coolest job!

Well, not quite a warp drive, but similar in concept.......

Relativity drive: The end of wings and wheels?

Well, on the other hand, I'm not really sure.......................

THAT’S what I call multitasking! (Possibly NSFW)">Now THAT’S what I call multitasking!

Just to make telling time more fun here are some really unusual clocks!

http://www.toxel.com/tech/2008/09/29/collection-of-unusual-clock-designs/

Now here is a really solar powered cool night-light!

ECO NIGHTLIGHT: Moon Jar Solar Powered Lamp

Cut 'n pasted from an e-mail I got! ;-)
"

	Now online: the latest Mixed Tape releases
	Hungry for new tunes? Edition #8 of Mixed Tape Music Magazine is now available from our dedicated online TV platform. Also online: Mixed Tape 22 with a cool selection of brand new tracks. Every eight weeks, Mercedes-Benz not only presents ten handpicked tracks by international newcomers for you to check out and explore as a free download compilation at www.mercedes-benz.tv/mixedtape. For added visual delights, visit Mixed Tape Music Magazine, an innovative monthly online TV show featuring audio-visual highlights from around the world. This month's theme is 'Latin Vibes' with a vibrant, hip-swinging mix of the latest videos, newcomers and classics, our album of the month and the remaining five artists of Mixed Tape 22.

"
Check 'em out!

And just to make housing more interesting someone has come up with layered fabrication on a grand scale called Contour crafting.

Contour Crafting technology has great potential for automating the construction of whole structures as well as sub-components. Using this process, a single house or a colony of houses, each with possibly a different design, may be automatically constructed in a single run, embedded in each house all the conduits for electrical, plumbing and air-conditioning.

Now this is really cool! Solar powered night lights that look like trees!

I'm not one to get excited about solar powered thingies, but....this one really appeals to me!
This really Photosyntheseeding!

After getting all of the service packs and patches to my fresh install of Windows XP, I decided to try out the new Google Chrome browser. So far so good, definitely a replacement for IE 7.9, but will it be as good as Firefox?

Google Chrome

Well...after a lot of messing around I finally found the solution to installing Windows XP on a laptop without a CDROM drive! I found this post on EZB Systems which, after trying a lot of others worked the first time around! The only annoyance was to have to re-validate my copy of XP, which fortuneately only required a 10 minute phone call to Microsoft.

most specially if you're trying to smuggle one into prison!

7 Prisoners In Hospital After Hiding Mobile Phones in Their Bodies

here's a link to a very, very useful article about everyone's favorite search engine

101-google-tips-tricks-and-hacks

Its been a little while since I posted anything here!

At the moment just updating some documentation which should really be updated on a more regular basis.

This is what the Internet looks like under the sea.

UnderSea Internet

Someone actually wrote a best seller on a mobile phone! That story and nine other stories about mobile phones that you didn't know about!

10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Mobile Phones

The Baby was the worlds first programmable computer (by todays standards) not only could it store the programs it ran but could store and process data internally. It ran for the first time on June 21, 1948

As it did not have a printer, results had to be read of the CRT (cathode ray tube) aka ancient monitor. Equipped with 1024bit of RAM it could perform an instruction in 1.2 milliseconds.

More Info

The latest and greatest pre-release version of the most popular free VOIP client Skype is here:

Smooth instal under Window Vista (so far), and a nice new user interface. Which at first glance looks very clean and easy to use.

Will post anything we might find!

There comes a time in every mans life when he has to get rid of things. Things in this case being dozens of hard drives from years gone by. But what a waste of lots of 'good bits'! And then I found this very informative article, How to use disk drive stepper-motors.

Now I can start re-cycling at home! 8-)

Echelon: The Most Secret Spy System

The United States, England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand all have laws that prevent them from spying on their own citizens. But that doesn't mean that other nations can't do this work instead... ECHELON: THE MOST SECRET SPY SYSTEM reveals the details of the information sharing system developed by these five nations to get around the prohibitions on internal surveillance. Highly placed insiders, including National Security Agency Director Gen. Mike Hayden, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Representative Peter Gross, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, talk about how the system works, why it was put in place and the results it has generated, while a different perspective is offered by people like Jim Bamford, the author of Body of Secrets and Wayne Madsen of the Electronic Privacy Information Cente
Watch this video on www.youtube.com

This is a really cool video ad for Mercedes Benz shot in New Zealand.

The latest version of the MercedesBenz Mixed Tape magazine is now available at www.mercedes-benz.tv. Mixed Tape 20 is also available for download, featuring 10 tracks of Electro Pop music.

In making use of the technologies around us, NASA have now gone and created a rover in Second Life, which mimics the real world Phoenix.

Explorer Island, in Second Life has been around for a while and hosts a variety of space exhibitions. Ranging from a virtual copy of a space shuttle to a replica of the desert weather on the Martian surface.

See: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9960846-7.html

Art Eggcident! Giant eggs fell out of the sky!

Here's someone who definitely enjoys his job! Meet Eric Harshbarger, the Lego man himself. This guys creates things from Lego like you wouldn't believe!

Professional LEGO Sculpting and Mosaic Building

More stunning Lego Art

Here's some cool music to sit back and listen to. The artist is a very old friend of mine from my high school days in Rome.

"Jayd has been writing and composing songs for quite some years, but it wasn’t until he purposely withdrew from listening to mainstream music for a period of about 7 years that he was able to create his own personal style and musical signature. He has been inspired by many artists over the years nontheless."

Click on this Link to check it out.

There is a saying that goes along the lines of '..you can try to forget your past, but it'll always come back to haunt you'. This morning I got a call on Skype which just blew my socks off, it was a call from Robert, whom I haven't seen nor heard from in close to 29 years! The icing was to hear Flavia's voice on-line as well, although I've e-mailed her in the (recent) past it we had never talked on Skype before this day.

Just to add a bit of strangeness, they were in fact calling me from the 'past'. Let me explain, Flavia is in New York, Robert in the Netherlands and me in New Zealand, so Wednesday 6:20AM my time is Tuesday 8:20PM for Robert and Tuesday 2:20PM for Flavia, and since Robert initiated the call...................my past was indeed calling me! :-) ;-)



Ah, the Internet is a wonderful place indeed! I had never before imagined that we'd ever be conversing across the world, in different time zone in different countries at the same time!

On Sunday, out of the ether I got an e-mail from an old classmate of mine, Robert. He managed to track me down thanks to our AOSR (American Overseas School of Rome) coordinator, Flavia. Utterly unreal, man! Who would have ever imagined that after all this time we'd hear from each other? Hmm......makes me wonder who else will emerge from that vast ether of the Internet next!

Remember not to forget thatwhich you do not need to know.

and

Good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgement.

Finally got a new laptop, the last one, a Dell Inspiron 5150 finally died a horrible death, the hamster finally kicked the bucket..........

So I ended up with a Dell XMP M1530, 4Gb RAM, a 320Gb hard disk and Windows Vista Ultimate. After hearing all the horror stories about Vista I was a like warry of what it would be like. But you gotta take a chance sometime and try something new.

It came pre-loaded with Roxio Creator, IE 7.0, Windows Media Centre and a suite of Windows applications So far I've installed:
- Google Earth
- Skype 3.8.0.115
- SecondLife
- VLC Media Player 0.8c
- Putty 2.0
- Adobe Acrobat Reader 8
- Adobe Flash Player
- Wireshark

So far so good! No crashes yet!

Darn, have been busy lately, so busy that I've neglected to update this blog! Lots of things have been happening on both the technical and non-technical fronts.

A while back I decided to get a dog, a black labrador-retriever to be precise. Well, it happened and on March 17, I picked up Betty. And of course being puppy, toilet training was the top priority (over anything else of course).

Betty, being a labrador she is a quick learner, in fact it only took her less than a week to figure out where she's suppose to leave her deposits. And like all dogs, she's make a good companion even if she smells of dog food! Nothing like the sight of coming home and being greeted by a wagging dog tail!

Betty, being a labrador is a quick learner, in fact it only took her less than a week to figure out where she's suppose to leave her deposits. And like all dogs, she's make a good companion even if she smells of dog food! Nothing like the sight of coming home and being greeted by a wagging dog tail!

Secret codes:

• To check IMEI press *#06#.
• To check the Software Version press *#170602112302#.
• If Imagine the cell battery is very low, and an important call is expected what to do there is a a reserve battery in the absence of the charger then to activate the key and recharge the cell again is to press "*3370#".
• #3370# To deactivate Enhanced Full Rate Codec( EFR).
• *#4720# To activate Half Rate Codec.
• *#0000# It displays the software version of the phone.
• #pw+1234567890+1# To check the Provider Lock Status. ( "*" sigh to obtain the "p,w" and "+" symbols). ERROR CODE
  
• #pw+1234567890+2# To check the Network Lock Status. ( "*" sigh to obtain the "p,w" and "+" symbols).
• #pw+1234567890+3# To check the Country Lock Status. ( "*" sigh to obtain the "p,w" and "+" symbols).
• #pw+1234567890+4# To check the SIM Card Lock Status.( "*" sigh to obtain the "p,w" and "+" symbols).
• *#147# vodafone this lets you know who called you last time *#1471#.
• *#21# Allows you to check the number that "All Calls" are diverted.
• *#2640# It displays the security code.
• #30# It lets you see the private number.
• *#67705646# It removes operator logo on 3310 & 3330.
• *#73# It reset the phone timers.
• *#746025625# It displays the SIM Clock status.
• *#7760# Manufactures code.
• *#7780# Restore factory settings.
• *#92702689# (to rember *#WAR0ANTY#).

Hmm...must make sure I spend some more time here documenting things 8-)

Have spent some time playing with bluetooth and the vodafone Nokia 6288.

Specs for the Nokia 6288 are:
Features:

• High speed connections with 3G and EDGE.
• MP3 Music player with stereo audio.
• Compatibility of Bluetooth for Connectivity.
• Display: TFT, 262,144 colours, 320 x 240 pixels.
• Card slot MiniSD, 512 MB card included, hotswap.
• Camera resolution 2-megapixel(1600x1200 pixels).
• Triband GSM 900/1800/1900MHz, WCDMA 2100MHz.
• Wireless technology Bluetooth and Infrared.
• Interface USB2.0.
• Data services EDGE, GPRS and WCDMA.
• USB connectivity, Music player, Voice recorder.
• Ringtone MP3, AMR, AAC, 64-chord voice polyphonic MIDI, video ringtones.
• Weight 115 g.
• GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps.
• EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps.
• 3G: 384 kbps.
• Bluetooth: v2.0.
• USB v2.0, Pop-Port.
• Colors: White, Black.
• Camera 2 MP, 1600x1200 pixels, VGA video, flash; secondary video call VGA camera.
• Stereo FM radio (visual radio).
• Built-in handsfree
• Messaging SMS, MMS, e-mail SMTP, POP3, IMAP4, APP.
• HS-23 headset, miniSD card, CA-53 USB cable, CD-ROM.
• Talk time 4.5 hours.
• Standby time 280 hours.

A very cute piece of tech, and so far I have it paired up to the Plantronics 390 and the Plantronics 590 stereo headset. And as can be expected, the use of the bluetooth really shortens the battery life! No real surprise here!