Life at the Feeding Edge

Addicted to bass – Woojer haptics

No commentJun 17th, 2020 in games by epredator

Sometime last year I backed the second incarnation of a haptic feedback vest the Woojer Edge. Today it arrived and it is quite a piece of kit. No fancy unboxing video from me, not photos, though it was a nice box, but I just ripped it open like I was 5 and it was Christmas. Not please, I backed it, it means I paid for it, so there is no product placement or anything here. I like tech and gadgets and haptics it something I am very interested in anyway.

What does it do? I hear you ask. It turns sound into more of an impact on the body of the wearer. In particular the more bass notes and sounds, crashes and bangs. You wear it like a regular laptop back with a solid back panel, which can also incorporate a rick for a laptop to be work with it. I didn’t go down that option, yet. It connects to any audio source via a variety of means, bluetooth (which I have not used yet) 3.5mm or usb-c connectors. You attach everything to the small round control panel on the picture above. Then you connect your headphones to it, or you mirror audio, double bluetooth etc. Again I stuck with a 3.5mm connection to get to the experience.

Woojer have a calibration video on youtube which steps you through putting your audio source up to maximum, you don’t have to worry as the Woojer is the volume control for the head phones too and not a straight pass thru of the same max volume. I did this first on my mac and the range of impacts, vibrations and buzz it gave right away made me jump. It is not just a big single bass kicking you. They then direct you to a youtube playlist of tunes with a lot of complex beats that happen to drive the Woojer really well. You have, like any audio system, an up and down control on the impact and effect, cranked right up it can almost be painful, they suggest a lower value that is not a distraction, so you sort of blend to meet your ears and eyes. I had also gone full tilt in using my full over ear and in ear Nuraphone headphones that are balanced to my hearing profile by an app. They are always quite an experience in their own right. They balanced nicely with the bass they deliver around the ear and the body smacking of the Woojer.

Next up, it was over the Oculus Rift S and the PC. After the inevitable update to both oculus and windows I completely encased my head with the over ears and the VR headset and dived into the old favourite beat sabre. Wearing the Woojer felt a little more clunky as 2 of the 9 feedback speakers are in the should strap just above the armpit, but to be honest I forget that detail almost right away. The banging tunes and the frantic sabre action were awesome. Though, for beat sabre I think the beauty is the flow of the sword play almost without any resistance, but this was a borderline thing as it’s really rather visceral.

A couple of those levels and I swapped over to Pistol Whip. I deliberately put it on no fail so I could see what happened in various situations. I dived into the newest map, Religion, not even stopping to swap to the baba yaga guns from John Wick. It was eye blasting, ear blasting and chest lastingly good. The kick from shooting the guns of both the hand controller rumble and the boom the body feels combined with the music and also the definite impact if you get shot was very impressive. I have written a lot about virtual experiences and feeling and remembering them, and I certainly will not forget those first few shots in Pistol Whip. Then the gamer brain takes over, and I was lost in the level. Pistol Whip and Beat Sabre are great flow generators. I got to the end of the level (no other chose as no fail on :). I then had to figure out which bit to unlock and take off first to extricate myself.

I was not sure what the impact on the brain and body was for long term use. Just as some VR experiences can make you feel a little woozy (for many its a no go altogether) bass also makes your stomach rumble and nerves tingle. I remember when the original Battlestar Galactica film was show in sensurround in the cinema in the late 70’s. They used huge bass sub woofers to provide another kick (it was a great film but this was trying to out do the previous years Star Wars). Lots of people couldn’t cope and would leave the theatre feeling ill. I do remember the galactica flying slowly past on the screen as an 11 year old me felt his lunch gurgle, but stay put.

Post Woojer, I feel some tingly buzz, but it’s not horrible, more like one of those shiatzu neck messages have been at work. I will of course experiment on some more things. Looking forward to engines on spaceships in elite and no mans sky. Also there are some great games in my library that really need another look and this is a great excuse. I also will be seeing what its like being on the Oculus Quest and not tethered, probably using lighter in ear headphones. I think it might be cool to watch a few films, like John Wick, Star wars or even…. the original Battlestar Galactica… Ooooh! L8rs…..

Keeping sociable with tech

No commentJun 8th, 2020 in BCS, games by epredator

I was recently invited, as chair of BCS animation and games specialist group to partake in a BCS webinar on cultural enrichment and staying sociable with IT. Between us we discussed Art, volunteering and social engagement and of course games. Take a look, you may find something that interests you, helps you or your friends and family. I definitely need a haircut !

It felt very weird doing that podcast

No commentJun 1st, 2020 in future, history, metaverse, vr by epredator

Usually by this time of year I would have done several presentations on stage or a webinar or some such thing. This year of course we we have all been locked down. We got to 75 days on our chalk board before one of the predlets (following social distancing) walked into the park to meet a friend. That is a long time. We are lucky to have space in the house and garden and lots of things to do, but it clearly has a mental impact.

I have spent hours and hours walking around the garden listening initially to music, then getting really into audible books but also properly regularly listening to Games At Work.Biz pod cast on a Monday. The dulcet tones of my friends Michael Rowe, Michael Martine and more recently Andy Piper talking about all the things in tech that I love was like hanging out and shooting the breeze. Instead of talking I was walking, in order to maintain some level of fitness and get some vitamin d. I had been tweeting about the show and engaging in some extra conversation as thoughts arose so it was funny the last few episodes to get a name check.

I got asked to guest on the show last Friday which was utterly fantastic. However, I realised that I had not really been doing much public speaking so I started to doubt I had the words or thoughts worthy of the show. Equally, its about stuff I care about so there was no way I was going to say no. Instead I bought a new cardoid mic with a spring scissor boom and a pop filter. Yay for the tech. I have been on the show before, after I published the novels but that was November 2015 ! episode 126. It was part of a wide set of publication promotions I tried

I signed into Skype with my Audio Hijack app configured to send my channel of seeking to the communal drop box. We had a slack full of suggested news items (including the ones I added). Then we piled in recording having had a bit of a thread and final item in place. Four of us on a podcast might get tricky, but we all got to say what we needed to say. It was really good fun. It was great timing too as we all went through an amazing time with virtual worlds in 2006-2009 and I was attending Augmented World Expo and some of its events that week. So very fresh in the short term memory combined with long term memory 🙂

The time flew by, it was like the pub getting time called, but for the time I was on it was mentally refreshing. Of course then I was nervous about listening back to it, would it still give me the great buzz that I got to get me into the week. I am please to say it did, I sort of filtered out what I said and took even more notice of what the guys said. It is very different to be in listener mode as opposed to broadcast. Part of the reason Zoom calls are so tricky as most of the time we are receiving info, but we have open cameras so are in broadcast mode. That is tiring.

Anyway… listen to the podcast episode 275 Virtual Chickens, subscribe, checkout the back catalog.

Emotional impact of the virtual – all about the feels

No commentMay 12th, 2020 in metaverse, Uncategorized, vr by epredator

My participation, professional and social, in virtual worlds over many years mixes my tech geek inquisitive builder side with the deep emotional impact of how interactions feel. I still clearly remember events from 2006 that occurred in what we still call virtual. I also still feel the waves of joy and excitement as a fledgling industry grew and the pain of the inevitable bubble bursting. I remember the people who I have grown up with in virtual worlds, friendships that a transcending time and space. I also deeply feel the fear and jealousy that was directed at many of us despite attempting to be inclusive. It was shrouded in the apparent lack of seriousness that comes from games technology, but was really a fear of missing out in human to human communication and of power structures altering. I do think and mourn where we could have been with the virtual, right now, when we need it the most but equally we now have social media deeply adopted. The world is moving, and now everyone has to find ways to communicate that work for them.

I was honoured to be invited to gather around a firepit and chat in Second Life last weekend. It was at 2am my time on Sunday morning. If you were part of that great time around 2006 you will recognise these wonderful people from Billions of Us. I have remained an SL resident and island owner all these years so it was not a resurrection event to sign on and pop along. However, I felt… nervous… Why? I was just going to have a private chat with people who I share social media space with all the time. The reason was we were going to talk about the old days. I have all those emotions tied up in that period of time now also compacted with being locked down at home for the past 57 days.

In order to help deal with some of the demons I felt I needed to upgrade my avatar. My original predator avatar, with striped leather jacket and then a subsequent feeding edge t-shirt is from a very different time. SL has changed to be able to cope with 3d mesh models now, I was a collection of graphic primitive cunningly sculpted and scripted by Sythia Veil. However, I was a processor hog. I had visited a sim and a script had told me I was using up 4% of the processing power on the server, on my own! The client tells you your avatar weight (as in processing required) and I was bloated old and fat at over 50k. I went and found a new and brilliantly built predator avatar on the store, a detailed mesh, with a weight of just 5k. I adjusted it to have a feeding edge logo attached at low cost and also placed clickable versions of both Reconfigure and Cont3xt on my hips, like six shooters. Changing a long standing avatar is not without another range of emotions, but it helped me think about the future not the past, and damn… it looks good, with and without the mask. Well done to undercover for the build!

I had tweeted about this and was thrilled that Games at Work dot biz talked about it on the podcast. A link very much to the original eightbar crew in 2006 with Andy Piper, Michael Rowe and Michael Martine. Also great to hear Andy also headed into an avatar rebuild. You see its 14 years ago and still very relevant, very personal and are all very connected. Also a wonderful podcast and the Michael’s are now at episode 272 of the weekly event (I will let that number sink in!)

Anyway Sunday 2am rolled into play, I teleported to the fire pit and was there with everyone. It turned out I had not tested the avatar in public so I was over 8 foot tall, but I sat down rather than editing there.

We talked for an hour solid about the good old days and the future, the relevance of virtual worlds to our reality now. I shared how it all got started for me and the chain of serendipitous events and wonderful people that gathered around IBM eightbar. We then took a quick tour of some art installations on the fledgling Billions of Us islands.

Then we said our goodbyes and I returned home. Both to my own island in SL and then to my office.

That “returning home” is way more emotionally loaded that I would normally expect it to be. It was late, I was tired but…. unlike all this torrent of video calling (and audio) which being people to my screen into my office I felt that for the first time in 57 days I had been somewhere with people, friends old and new. When I woke up in the morning I still felt I had been out. It is this feeling that I have had a lot with virtual world and game experiences but the fact it happened under this crazy pandemic world times and was so liberating and so deeply felt I pity anyone still messing around trying to come to terms with those funny people with there funny avatars and crazy ideas.

Virtual worlds have not gone away. There are many more. Please consider this might be a great mental getaway for many of you. I don’t care which one, and I know community building takes time, but get in one take a look and really think how does it feel.

It was my tribe, it was on a subject we all knew but this is very very real. That one hour made me feel better, really very much better than I have for a long while. If it can do that for me, maybe it can do it for you. 1 hour respite just chatting or wondering around a virtual world. Let me know how you get on.

Animal Crossing Gangsta Rap Style

No commentApr 22nd, 2020 in Uncategorized by epredator

It’s amazing how quickly some things move in this time of slowed down everything lockdown. I have mentioned several times we are an Animal Crossing obsessed family. It is offering a zen like meditative experience to escape a little every day. Today I saw this and if you play or experience AC:NH it will certainly resonate. Its a properly good rap tune, hits all the right points and references, serious but tongue in cheek at the same time.

Enjoy

Video trickery – lockdown fun

No commentApr 21st, 2020 in augmentedreality, blendedreality, metaverse by epredator

Lots more people are playing with/using video now with the lockdown. Every conference is a video conference. We are communicating with friends, family, customers and colleagues in a variety of ways and a stack of different contexts.

I sparked up Faceapp on my phone, something I had tinkered with a while back and found that it now not only does mad crazy things with great accuracy to photos but can also do video for some of those effects. With still images like this before and after example, or they they the other way around 🙂 you decide.

Before/after face app — Before/after faceapp

The video though…. mind blowing stuff.

There is also lots of fun to be had with the snapchat virtual camera on PC and Mac able to feed into any of the video conference tools you use by diverting your main camera to it first then selecting the snap camera as your webcam.

Lots can be done in foreground and background replacement. I mean who would turn up at a meeting in a predator costume? (like its 2006)

Like my Second Life avatar (below) I cant claim to have created this one. But it was great to see it on the list of snap chat lenses. My SL avatar has a custom jacket (my original RL one) and a feeding edge T-shirt so there are always tweaks to be made. Yes SL is still there, yes I still have 2 islands, yes you should sign up/re-login.

Back in the UGC world of SL in 2006 we had lots of interesting uses for logos and brands, like the Wimbledon Tennis flying towel and Wimbledon contact lenses (Official sanctioned I should add). I dived into the Snapchat Lens Studio to see what I could quickly create. This was knowing full well there was a very rich 3d animation and code/no-code environment that could be a career for some talented artists. I used one of the base models and tweaked it a bit and gave myself some shades with a subtle mention of 451 Research (now part of S&P Global Market Intelligence). Obviously that would all not fit on the glasses, but you get the idea.

Snapchat lens - lenses — 451 snap camera lenses for video conferencing

I have always talked about putting logos and our own designs into game environments like my reconfigure car to advertise my novels. Before that back in 2006 putting eightbar into games too ( in the link above too). Now I have a feeding edge logo in Animal Crossing New Horizons. I am planning on doing a reconfigure one too. Only a few pixels to work but its fun to try. Our entire family is obsessed with this game at the moment, on top of all the other various games we play its a unifying experience as we tend to our islands, or live on one another’s. (Hmmm another SL like reference)

Of course this lockdown is driving us all crazy, but having a bit of fun is essential. Back to snapchat it was good to see the Trolls movie had some official snapchat lenses. When I tweeted this I was told I looked like Eddie Izzard 🙂

The family joined in too, but not posting them without permission 🙂

Having said that all this tech is great, but I also felt the need to try a real life filter and broke out this costume left over from The Cool Stuff Collective TV show (I didn’t wear it on the show, but at the wrap party). It was certainly a shock for my colleagues on video. The neighbours probably thought I had lost it too as I ran around the garden in it, doing a real life animal crossing manoeuvre.

Best snapchat filter ever, but it seems to have transitioned into the physical world. — Squawk

Stay safe everyone, have some fun with the tech and lark around a bit!

WFH – The past 20+ years – Metaverse anyone?

No commentMar 12th, 2020 in blendedreality, future, metaverse, Uncategorized, vr by epredator

The recent pandemic situation is causing many offices to suddenly switch from co-location in a building to everyone working from home. 11 years ago when I left IBM and started Feeding Edge I was immediately a home worker, but the preceding years, despite having an office and a base most work was effectively remote. Being a metaverse evangelist in 2006 was all about people using virtual world and game technology to be able to communicate and understand one another at distance.

The projects in 1997, in the early days of the web, were built as a team in an office but were clearly very much about interacting with the world at large. For those of us in these industries, building and shaping the use of the internet we did not face a big bang switch over from office to home. We tended to grab and adapt or write whatever tools were available to work across physical and digital divides. That of course is a typical pioneering spirit and having been an evangelist for change I know not everyone is comfortable with that, and nor should they be.

A sudden switch from one thing to another is bad enough, I recently had to switch from Mac to Windows for work, its annoying, and irritating at best and veer stressful at worse. Today we have the added external stress and personal worries about family and friends as well as the future of businesses layered on top.

The reality is, we do have the technology to communicate and share, we might not all have the right processes or social norms in place but the more we try, the better.

For many people teleconferences are a norm anyway, just usually they commute to a desk or office in order to have those. However many others will not. It is here we all need to be cognitive of how much the technology blocks and filters who we are. A voice only teleconference is great for a presenter, or for the alphas who thrive on talking, but many people will not feel comfortable to interject and cannot use body language to find a gap in a conversation. Video links are not really any better, for some that strips them of their normal behaviour as they attempt to stare at the camera or try and get a level of eye contact akin to the physical world. Some people engage in text chat alongside audio and video, though often those who are better at talking do not pay attention to the text, and sometimes the text just becomes chatter in the background. There is an art and style to all this and people will find what suits them, just as in a physical situation we adapt to one another’s signals.

It is these sort of difficulties that led to exploring virtual worlds like Second Life. Some of that is shown in the Album below of 600+ images 2006-2009. This was a long and varied journey and one I have talked, writes and presented on many many times. Happy to share the tales just ping me @epredator or the 11 years worth of posts here many related to metaverse concepts or even read my Reconfigure series and get the gist of of some of it in a modern sci fi context.

It acted (and still does) as a teleconference in having shared sounds in a space, but it has the presence of avatars to represent people, that get moved around even doing simple things like sitting or standing or hovering next to people you know in a meeting. Instant visual feedback, who is there, where are they, what are they representing with the avatar. We used text chat, group and 1:1 whilst also having voice. We were able to bring artefacts into the environment dynamically, whiteboard in a 3d space. All adding to the depth of communication. There is also, for those that can, ways to code, make virtual objects do something too. This is still entirely possible on Second Life and many other virtual environments. Now more than ever is time for people to experiment.

This is also without even bringing in the tech and immersion fo Virtual Reality or the potential for Augmented Reality to allow us to blend our physical and digital presences in physical space. That of course requires people to don headsets and have the kit, but virtual world interaction does not need that. A laptop/tablet and an internet connection is all that is required. Carry on with the frustration of teleconference and video conference by all means, sometimes they are the ideal approach, but just consider what is causing frustration of working remotely and investigate what might be a better way.

Good luck all, stay well.

World CKD day

No commentMar 2nd, 2020 in choikwangdo, ckd by epredator

It’s World CKD day and founder Grand Master Chois birthday so here are the bulk of a 8 years worth of articles about our family journey in the art up to now to celebrate. Not including all the flickr photos, tweets and facebook posts! http://www.feedingedge.co.uk/blog/category/ckd/ In this I use science and tech to help measure techniques, evangelise and show a passion to teach the art. Many long term friendships formed. Positive health changes. A real, we can do it together, family experience. Helped our kids with the house move and change of schools. It also helped me resolve a lot of things when I finally found the art. Even more importantly has been seeing the evolution of students confidence and abilities in all elements of life. Watching this growth is wonderful. The art and all the volunteers and students acts as a substrate or scaffold to achieve this. Just as we each strive for to improve, aiming at perfection we know we always will have more to learn, more to improve. The journey is never ending. The art itself, by its collective nature will also strive to be better, but it will also make mistakes, hopefully address them, learn from them, and correct as a whole, just as each student does in their own journey. Enjoy your journey everyone. Pil Seung!.

Worn out after Choi Kwang Do black belt tag grading, but feeling great. Now we have a 1st Dan orange, 2nd Dan blue and two 2nd dan brown tags (next grading for Predlet 2.0 and I is 3rd degree black belt !

Hands on with robot tech

No commentFeb 17th, 2020 in Uncategorized by epredator

I am a techie, always have been, but often my work is primarily writing and speaking about emerging tech, more than making it work. As you will know if you have read Reconfigure or Cont3xt I view everything as a fractal, so the level of complexity required to deal with code and hardware is often mirrored looking at the interaction between systems, companies, markets. Though as a programmer first and foremost, the patterns and the detail making things work (or not) is where the true art and beauty is. As they say those who can’t do teach, those who can’t teach write about it, I like to make that a full loop instead. Those who can teach and can write have to be able to “do” in the first place. Trust me I’m a doctor 🙂

This weekend I dived into a build of the Sparkfun Advanced Autonomous kit added to the Sphero RVR (already a well instrumented and interesting bit of kit that I was very happy to have backed on Kickstarter and mentioned in this post on Basingstoke Techjuice). I didn’t do any step by step images of the build as I spent a lot of the time trying to get my aging eyes to be able to deal with the tiny tiny screws, bolts and wire connectors. I was primarily following the guidance from SparkFun build tutorial

The additional kit comprises of a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a preconfigured SD card for its OS. A camera with 2 servos, 2 x time of flight sensors and a GPS board provide extra inputs and some connector boards to combine the inputs on a mux board and a custom serial shield for the Pi. The shield has a RVR/Serial switch to make it easier to plug directly into the USB port from another host computer.

The kit mounts on a plate that can be added too or taken off the RVR. The key advice was to ensure the UART power lead from the board to the RVR was connected the right way around, the red wire suggested as the 5V side to ensure no blue smoke.

Sphero RVR and SparkFun advances autonomous kit

The worst problem I had with the hardware, other then being so small and fiddly, was the ribbon cable to the Pi from the camera. I had managed to pull the small retainers out to put the new cable into the camera and push the clamp back down, but on the Pi I managed to pull the black retainer out completely and it was very difficult to get back in, and may even be a little broken, but seems to be holding. The camera already had a ribbon cable attached, which was initially confusing, but it was clear the one in the tutorial matched the one in the box as it needed to be narrower to fit on the smaller connector on the Pi than a standard one.

It was suggested to set up the Pi first, but also said it could be done afterwards, I went for the latter. Doing s/w config was not as exciting and interesting as building the thing. Once built it all seemed connected and I was getting a nice green light on the Pi. The SD card needed files edited on it to put in the network details, and one other config edit was required. I managed to find a SD card adapter and was able to edit the files on the MacBook Pro. I had thought I could do the setup via the iPad Pro as that’s where the RVR app is, but this is of course outside the normal RVR educational environment so the Mac was easier.

After several attempts and rechecks of everything it seemed the machine was not going to connect to the mesh network. The proxy file that it was supposed to copy over the details with was failing (or just not happening). So I fell back to option 2. Connect the Mac to the serial port board and SSH in. That did not work straight away, I did not see the device when plugged in via the shield, so I tried the usb ports on the pi itself. The one I could reach, as a sensor was in the way, didn’t see to work either. Then I read that is the middle port that needs to be used, and found this article (and the additional steps) very helpful to get it working and then to be able to switch back to the serial shield too. SSH into the device and ran sudo raspi-config and entered the network details remotely, I got a pleasing bing on my watch as a new device joined my mesh network. I was expecting to have 2.4/5ghz wifi trauma, but it all worked out.

It was not all quite as straight forward as when I started to put the thing together, but as I have lots of kit, cables, adapters etc, and residual knowledge of what remote connecting in to linux via ssh actually is it was like being back home. Though, again, as in my novels, my dislike of overly convoluted “all you have to do is type xxxxxyyy.xxx..xx..ss.www” remains. I can do it, always have to look things up, understand why I am doing what I do, but its still based on adjusting to the needs of the tech not the other way around.

Connected and seemingly stable I then ran through some of the Python based tests indicated on the article from Sparkfun. It was here I was brought back to our old favourites, permissions. I tested the servos, camera, gps, and time of flight and all had various permission errors. It may be I have not got something quite connected or ran something out of step, possibly missed some sudo prefixes and created some dodgy files. However, I am not overly worried, it is pretty much put together and now I am back in the s/w config arena, checking a few logs and hacking a few things I should get back on track next time I spend some time on it.

Then it will be into proper code again, with the Sphero Python SDK for the device. It looks as if there is enough stuff on the iPad Pro to be able to engage and code with that, which will be preferable. Stuck with a works windows machine now so the Mac won’t be travelling with me, my iPad Pro on the other hand will.

Wish me luck 🙂 I will try and not make it take over the world. Yes, doing this will inform something interesting in book 3, I am sure of it, as well as helping my analyst day job and any educational stuff I do for STEMnet and BCS 🙂 It also felt really good to be mixing with hands one hardware and software, especially that didn’t work first time.

Teenager bestowed with great honour from EA games

No commentJan 25th, 2020 in games, Uncategorized by epredator

Way back in the mists of time I wrote how utterly ridiculous the EA lock down of accounts was that effectively removed any parental control in favour of a lazy and restrictive approach. This post “A mess with Origin, EA and Xbox” has been the most commented and read post of all of mine here on Feeding Edge, it was in 2014, its now 2020 and still it gets comments from annoyed parents wondering what the heck is going on.

Yesterday Predlet 2.0 turned 13. He was both looking forward too, and then greeted by, a coming of age with the EA online system of bureaucracy. On sparking up Need for Speed he was informed he qualified for a magical teen account. After a bit of email address admin my side we managed to accept it.

It means I will no be able to validate easily if EA ever get off this blanket removal of any parental choice, which I should imagine forces many parent to help their kids lie about their age on online accounts. Simply to make life easier for EA.

Predlet 2.0 will remember EA doing this for a long while, whilst he is overjoyed at coming of age in the eyes of a games company, he, and his friends are not as big a fan of EA as a brand as they might have been.

All for controls on what can and can’t be used online by minors, but equally it is ultimately parental controls that should be the key, so that from an early age we can help kids come to terms with the online world through guidance and openness.

Good luck parents.