A couple of months ago, my friend and neighbour Andrew, of 303s.com fame, gave me a Hauwei U8220 (More commonly re-branded as a T-Mobile Pulse, among other names.) on account of it being admittedly a bit on the slow side.

After about three months, a new microSD card and some extensive investigation into different firmware implementations, and I have an Android phone that runs light and smooth.

I’m not going to go in-depth with instructions, as most of the places you can download firmware will also provide the instructions for implementing them.

Major modifications include:

• FTB-Mod firmware from the guys over at Modaco’s T-Mobile Pulse forum.
• While not running the most up to date Android kernel, it is smooth and stable.
• Class 10 (Actually 8.) 16GB microSD card.
• Tested with H2TestW 1.4 and came out as being 8MB/s write with 15MB/s read.
• As 6MB/s is the minimum, it works alight.
• Pretty cheap from Ebay, can get an official Samsung 8GB class 10 for about the same.

Preparing the MicroSD card.

Downloading and installing firmware.

Once you have your SD card set up, plug it into your computer via an adapter or the phone itself and download the firmware file (Or do it directly from the phone, with the handy QR code on the right.). I am assuming you have already read one of the upteen rooting and installing Clockwork how-tos littered across the internet.

App it up!

The Blimp’s aim is to take existing technology and make it far more accessible by taking care of problems, both in terms of utilization and management, making itself as invisible as something like Flash or HTTPS.

Currently looking at Webkit and Libtorrent for candidates to build from, but I’ve only got a bit of C# experience, so it’s going to be a while to re/learn, in which time, I thought I’d get some feedback on the idea. If someone wants to take this over, you’d be doing great work (And I got vidjagaems I’d rather be making.).

First Phase: Prototype/Proof-of-concept.

My first idea of a way to better utilize bittorent was by making a deamon, instead of a client, that any program on the computer could ask to fetch files. A good showcase for this would be by rendering the following code, consisting of HTML5 video tags and Magnet links (Expanded to make it more readable.).

<video width="1024" height="720" controls="controls">
  <source src="

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:54dec3e7b1169fad5587d5a9e30fafa92097eab7
&dn=Big+Buck+Bunny+%282008%29+BRRip+720p+x264+-MitZep
&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80
&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80
&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80

" type="video/mp4" />

  Your browser does not support the video tag.
</video>

Side note: For those of you unfamiliar with Magnet Links if you click this version of the above Magnet URI, it will download the link through your torrent client of choice.

Without any complication on the part of the user, when the browser loads the page, it immediately sends the relavent info onto The Blimp which looks up peers ready for the video being clicked. If a click comes, it downloads the file, grabbing chunks in order, and passing them back to the browser to render.

As part of the prototype phase, making this work with with the audio tag and anchor tag (E.g. Clicking to download an Ubuntu ISO.) would be useful to give an example the final project’s uses. Though just having a video playing from no fixed source would be a great achievement.

Second Phase: Core features.

A feature I’ve nicknamed Fleeting, Blimp deamons on the same local network can be told to work as one. Either by having a single computer (E.g. A large desktop or server with CAT5 connection.) do all dealings with the internet at large or a redundant cluster of deamons which, when they realise one of their number has gone offline, will download and upload chunks on behalf of their counterparts, making it easier to utilise upload bandwidth at times of day not usually busy.

In addition to programs being able to ask for files, they can also place a temporary restriction on all deamons on the network, for instance when a Skype call comes in or you connect to a game server, downloads would be reduced to half and uploads could be temporarily stopped (Some of us only get 50kB/s up.) to make way for more latency crucial tasks.

Enough for now.

I’ll stop there before I run out of steam. A high quality user interface (Those bittorrent links are a pain to copy.) could be provided by some kind of extension and, though I’ll probably save it for another project, once storage has been separated from location, some use of authentication technology could be used to make entire websites distributable without any central location.

First of all, can you see the printer?

Specifically, can you go via, network places (My Computer –> Network), locate the computer the printer is connected to and open the computer’s shared folders and printers in order to have the printer icon with the little pipe under it appear on your screen?

A common problem for this is having different workgroup names:

• In XP, right click My Computer and go to properties at the bottom of the right-click menu then over to the second panel (Who’s name I can’t remember, please post in the comments.) and look for it in the lower half.
• In Windows 7, it’s in the System Properties window found by opening My Computer and clicking the “System Properties” link below the address bar.
• If they don’t match, you can find the relative buttons pretty easily.

Once you get those matched up, you should be able to see each other, if not, post a comment and I’ll get back to you.

I am assuming you can now see the printer over the network, but trying to connect to it will give you a driver not found error no-matter what to try and do.

First USB, then network.

Before we continue: If you can extract the driver and have the installer manually find it, you will probably be better off that what I am about to outline as this method will break if you change the XP machine’s network name. Though this may break it either way.

First we’re going  to plug the printer in and have it automatically add the printer. It may handle this with the in-built drivers, or you may have to download and install them yourself. In your own time, plug in and install the printer to your Windows 7 computer as you would normally. You can print off a test page if you’d like.

Then, unplug it and plug it back into your XP computer.

Next, go to the “Devices and Printers” window (Find it in the start menu.) and find the printer, it should be greyed out. Right click on it and go to “Printer Properties” and head over to the “Ports” tab. This is where the magic happens.

You want to click “Add port” and then “Local Port” (Not “Standard TCP/IP Port”.) and then click the “New Port..” button.

What you want to ender in the text field is an address that will look like “\\computer-name\printer-name”.
For instance, “\\fred-desktop\CannonIP4500″, this is not case sensitive and you get the names as follows:

Start –> Computer and click Network in the sidebar. The computer name, as it appears here, is the target computer’s network name, the first part of your printer’s address. If your computer’s name has spaces in it, you can find the “%40″ or similar used to replace a space.

Open up the target computer by double clicking it, and find the printer’s name, as it appears there, is what you want for the second part of the address.

Clicking “OK” should give you a new port in the Ports tab of Printer Properties. If it isn’t selected, select it, and you should now have a networked printer, just print a test page to find out.

If you found this useful..

please leave a comment. If it didn’t work or, better still, you found a better solution, please leave a comment and I’ll look into improving this for guide for everyone to use.

What if it were possible to embed a video, music or any kind of file, into any website, and have it load every time, without restrictions or technical limitations other than raw hardware capability.

Bittorrent has come a long way since it’s beginings as a replacement for older P2P networks like Limewire. Over the years, we’ve seen Mainline DHT become much more useful while consuming much less bandwidth, thus phasing out trackers as an absolute necessity and the addition of magnet links mean we no longer need to host torrent files anywhere.

In short, we are now at the point where being able to insert a file by URI is within our grasp. What does this mean in practical reality?

Files no longer need to exist in a set location, instead being stored by a swarm of it’s viewers but can be augmented by servers if you want. Each person who watches a video acts as a host for that video, meaning that you are no longer restricted by Youtube’s 10 minute limit, it’s resolution limit or it’s slowness on congested days. Files will stay up as long as people are interested in them (Servers can also be added via magnet link’s “as” locator parameter.), and no longer will half the videos from yesteryear 404.

Major problems faced:

1. Building it in the first place: Some combination of Chrome/Chromium + MPlayer (Built in.) + LibTorrent should be enough for a proof-of-concept.
2. Specifically for video: Not having people use insane codecs, encoding and subtitle formats.
   1. I’m not holding my breath for a single standard, hopefully WebM and H.264 will cover most video.
3. Unsure whether having different video resolutions rolled into a single link (Entirely possible.) would be a good idea.
   1. Leaving the option in would work.
4. Links you click on are no longer checked by anyone, so you have to trust the person linking you to/embedding a video.
   1. This is how most content on the net works, no big problem.

I hope this gives you something to think about. While you’re thinking, give the Wikiepdia article on the Magnet URI scheme a look, it’s quite fascinating.

First and foremost, giving enemies a basic sense of self-preservation opens up a whole range of dynamics. In a basic form, the enemy is given a health bar and some kind of panic meter. As the panic meter increases, the enemy’s program is changed to respond differently.

What kind of events affect the panic meter?

• Death of a teammate with no player in sight (Stealth kills.).
  • Discovering a body.
• Taking non-fatal damage.
  • Could even take effect when enemies feel bullets hitting around them.
• Explosions, fire and destruction.
• Being aimed at (Mexican standoff.).
  • Seeing squad member being aimed at.
• Player neutralising or incapacitating either a number of the enemy squad and/or it’s leader.

Other factors to add in:

• Is the enemy facing towards or away from the player?
• Do they have their gun ready?
  • Can they hit the player reliably (Shotgun vs sniper situation.).
• How notorious is the player?
• How far are they from help or cover?
• Is shooting already happening (Calm before the storm.)?

What does this open up?

• No longer is gunning down hordes your only option.
• Enemies value their own survival over killing you.
• Scaring enemies away through shock and awe tactics gives the player a way to feel even better blowing things up.
• Being able to take on a much larger threat using thinking instead of just more force.
  • Feeling bad ass.
• No need to mop up after a fight. Killing the majority of a force will cause a retreat.
  • Giving you time to loot and go before reinforcements show up.
• For a real challenge, players can attempt non-violent resolutions.

Note: Enemies should probably drop their weapons when running away.

Leaving you with these things to think about (Feel free to leave a comment.), this is Fred, signing off.

Earplug mix arrived today and I’ve already got them curing away in my ears. The process was pretty straight-forward, though there were a few things I had to keep in the fore-front of my mind, coupled with some things I had to work out as I went along.
My main concern was the design of my ER6i earbuds gave the foam very little to hold them in, though ,worst comes to it, I can salvage the plastic tubes from the inside of the foam eartips and superglue them in place.

Method

Mixing the earplugs was simple enough, while the video posted only used 1/2 of the mix, due to the ER6i’s small size and my large ears (I’m big all over.) I ended up using about 3/4 and could have probably gone with the whole mix, providing some extra to cut away.

Before I started, I made sure to wash my hands and used some wet cotton wool buds to wash out my ears, and then some more to dry them. I also made sure to have on hand a mirror (Shaving mirrors are good for this.)

Kneeding was simple, though the mix starts hardening fast. I had to mix twice (Once for the first half and as second time for the extra quarter.) and by the time I’d done my second mix, the first had already begun to noticeably harden.

When it came to pressing, I started with most of the mix into the ear (With the aid of the shaving mirror.), followed by the earbuds and then pressed around with the rest of the mix filling up the top half area of the outer ear and covering some of the headphone. Given their small size, the earbuds are now mostly absorbed into the blue mass.

Once the 15 mins of waiting was over (Instructions say 10 but I suggest you also play it safe.) the mix had hardened nicely and it was just a case of slicing the in-ear section down to the opening, smoothing, re-attaching the filters (More on those later.) and testing.

Results

The biggest improvement over flanged ear-tips is in comfort, the light weight foam and ear-bud, combined with vastly improved weight distribution and no more pressure on the inner ear mean I should be able to wear these for hours on end without any dis-comfort. They do feel a bit strange, but I’m already getting used to that.

They hold in place very nicely, accidentally tugging in the cable no longer results in sharp pain but instead a gentle pressure. The foam, while not heavy in the ear, adds a lot to the size of the earbud, having it dangling from your t-shirt might no longer be a good idea.

The fit is very good, not on the air-tight level of the flanged tips, but that’s what you pay for comfort. The ER6is’ already somewhat weak bass seems to suffer, though this isn’t hard to ignore. The slight loss in attenuation is something I actually welcome, the flanged tips effectively render you deaf to the outside world, whereas these foam pieces block out background noise, while leaving someone talking directly to you at least noticeable.

Oddly, the fit seems to improve after you put them in and leave them for a while, probably due to some combination of heat expansion and them just settling in through small movements.

Filter Problems

One of the biggest reasons I’d recommend against doing this with Etymotic earbuds is the fact that the filters are now exposed completely and have long been one of my least favorite features; One dot of water or earwax and you have to replace them. The earbuds can’t be used without the filters as the earbuds are tuned specifically to compensate for the way the filters effect the sound (It becomes tinny without them.).

In short, use earbuds that don’t use filters.

Conclusions

I’d recommend using bigger, bassier headphones for this modification. As long as you make sure to read the instructions and think through what you’re going to do before you do it, you should be rewarded with the most comfortable earbuds for such a good price, offering good noise reduction and all in, a great project.

Before we start, I’m defining a communication game as a game where, in order to complete a task, players have to communicate information or instructions to each other. In these examples, I’ll be talking specifically about games where one player is presented with information that they need the other player to act upon. A good prior example would be Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicals when played with the GBA kit, as each player’s GBA screen would have things like a map or motion sensor that they have to communicate to the other players. Another example would be the ill-fated mod NeoTokyo which gave the flag carrier the perk of being able to see any nearby enemies through walls but at the cost of being able to use their weapon, requiring them to rely on their team for defense while aiding them with information.

Can you see them too?

My first example [Which ran a bit long so it's going to be my only one for today's post.] is a game that focuses strongly on this core mechanic (A mech-demo, if you will.) and ties it into modern action-horror games (Though it could be more old-style suspense-horror depending on how you set pace and atmosphere.). Set in your classic abandoned secluded village, Sarah has come across Morgan, who is unable to leave an area due to the ghosts (Or other apparitions.) in the surrounding area. As you may have guessed, Sarah is unable to see the ghosts, but, should she swing a stick at them, they disintegrate, leaving Morgan alone for a while. Morgan can also hurt the ghosts, but it is much more risky for him to do so, as being able to see him also renders him vulnerable to their attacks, of the disorienting, paralyzing variety.

It is now upon the players to get both of them to safety by having Morgan communicate where the ghosts are and Sarah take care of them. Working in other differences (Such as size and athleticism.) to allow for puzzles where they have to work together, breaking up the platforming and running around.

Now, to tie something else into this, there are a series of books by famed children’s author Phillip Pullman called the “His Dark Materials” trilogy (With supplementals.) where, in one of the worlds visited, the populace of the cities are marauded by ghost like beings called specters which, to keep this brief, eat your soul/active mind if they get near you, they, however, have no effect on, and cannot be seen by children, this ties into the books’ overall theme The Loss of Innocence.

The reason I bring this up, is that, having a child protecting and adult (Or just an old teenager, mid-puberty seemed to be the time of change.), makes for some interesting dynamics. As one player is more physically able, while the other can better defend against the ghosts, neither player is made to feel like the useless princess/Yorda in the relationship (Something to sit around and be defended while not doing much to help.) though this relies on setting up scenarios where each player’s strengths get to shine through.

Why would you leave me behind?

How you choose to allow communication in this game will lend a lot to the overall experience. Having players voice chat may work but breaks the illusion somewhat (A 20-something’s voice coming out of a child’s mouth is going to really jar.) though this may not be such an issue in same-room multiplayer.
Just to throw this out there, but having the game intentionally match you up with a stranger and then limit communication is something I could see working well. This way, it becomes very easy to become attached to the other character as though they were a well done side-kick AI, being at once helpful and intelligent.

As the players connected to each other are anonymous, a mechanic could be added, whereby when one of the players dies, they are both disconnected and paired up with two other random people. This mechanic comes into it’s own when you offer players an improved chance at success if they betray their partner, as the betrayer goes onto the next level/checkpoint while the betrayed is sent back. They are then paired up with other random players, who have no idea if they were the betrayer or the betrayed (A betrayer could simply pretend he’d been betrayed on the part coming up.).

However, this would need to be carefully balanced and monitored, making sure the puzzles and scenarios are hard enough to where betrayal becomes a serious temptation but the players can endear themselves to each other so that people aren’t just betraying each other constantly.
Alternating the chance for betrayal between Sarah and Morgan could work well, as a player might spare their partner as a sign of good faith so that they may in turn be spared when it is their turn. The trust builds up as the levels get harder wherein betrayal becomes more advantageous, but so does having a reliable partner.
Side-note: If you get betrayed once, you go back to the last checkpoint, betrayed twice and you go back to a puzzle where it is your chance to betray, hopefully kick-starting trust, third time, you are actively paired up with someone you know was themselves betrayed.

Finishing off.

This just about wraps it up, for this game idea. As for implementing this, 2D puzzle platformer (Limbo or Abe’s Oddysee) might play well. A Flash/Unity in-browser game would add a nice chat-roulette anonymity feel, detached from the friend’s lists of things like Steam. In terms of aesthetics: simple yet washed out, like Limbo or Silent Hill (Art style.) could work well.

As far as turning this into a real game goes, It’s sitting at the top of my games-to-make list, though me actually making a game, at times, seems just as unlikely as many things seem in life right now.

Image: Left Behind by Marc Wilson-Blackburn which I saw in the search for “Left Behind” and was instantly sure it was the right one.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The related guide in pictures.

As it stands, in the next week or so, I’ll be putting in an order for some Radians DIY custom earplug mix (Ebay search: “custom earplugs“.) and giving it a go myself, after which, I’ll post my results.
While I could use the earplugs for casting, I’m going to see how long I can use them in just their foam form. Unlike the video, I’m going to drill out a tunnel from driver to eardrum, reducing the amount of air being moved, just to see what the difference is.

As no-one seemed to have found an answer to this problem, I wanted to post how I got around this.

The short of it is: Don’t install the optional Windows “Recommended” updates.
After reinstalling a first time, I got a chunk of the important updates installed and rebooted several times in a row to check stability. Attempting to install the recommended updates as a lot failed and, once again, I got the loop had to reinstall. On the third install, I didn’t install any of the optional updates and it seemed I got a lot more updates (I don’t remember seeing Service Pack 2 on the first time round.).

Now, I have a sneaking suspicion that what was happening was I was being allowed to install an optional update before it’s pre-requisite main update had installed (Linux people may know this as a dependency problem.) so installing them after all the main updates might not present the main problem but, I’m not risking having to install Windows again to find out.

In conclusion: Recommended Updates are optional and can break your computer. They may also be presented before it’s safe to install them.

Introduction: Where I stand on this.

As someone who speaks about one and a third languages (Good English and barely passable Japanese.), it has often struck me as strange that learning languages is something that is often expensive to learn, and it is difficult to find a learning program worth it’s paper or bandwidth.

After having gone to Japan, I came across Tae Kim’s guide to Japanese, a well written guide that I’d wish I’d had before going, which is the work of a single individual and freely distributed freely to anyone who wants it.

This lead me to wonder why there exists an entire industry devoted to what a small office of linguists could kick out in a few months, post on the internet and then sell paper copies off for people’s convenience.

Further-more, while there may be those who lobby against it, this would be something well worth the government’s time, to create a definitive guide to speaking their country’s language and translating that guide into as many other languages as possible as a way of making it easy for others to integrate into a society.

The situation at hand.

Let me start by saying that this isn’t a case of “What if?” but something that began more than five years ago¹ but may yet need to pick up some serious speed. With things like Tae Kim’s excellent guide and Wikibooks, the idea that something known by the population of an entire country should be kept as something for those who pay for it is going to go out of style faster than the idea of paying in the range of £20 for an album with five good tracks on it if you’re lucky.

The collapse of Nova (Japan’s biggest English school franchise.) in 2007 really brought home how much people pay to learn something that should have a single, concise, and documented guide (Varied  for region, i.e. British and American for English.). A single website that will teach you, through words, sound and video, how to go from knowing literally nothing about how to speak or write a language to having enough competency to then learn from others (A leaving-the-nest scenario.).

The need to communicate with other humans while learning is a problem that would need to be solved in conjunction with this, but combining Skype with a system similar to Rhino Spike (A service where you speak phrases in your language in return for phrases spoken in another.) may be the beginnings of another way to facilitate such things.

The wider implications.

Given what the internet can now deliver in terms of multimedia, we are at the point where, once a system has been established for teaching people how to do things, in the same way that wikis have been recognised at the standard repository for written knowledge and documentation, the wiki learning system (For want of a better piece of jargon.) should hopefully replicate naturally.

In a sense, it is not the knowledge or people what need to be created, merely the standard for freely communicated knowledge. Wikipedia appeared and now there are wikis for everything ranging from traveling the world (WikiTravel.) to the long and varied fiction of Star Wars (Wookiepedia.), once someone properly creates a structure for learning topics to the point it starts replicating, it’s time to think about selling up in the Teach Yourself sector.

In conclusion.

The recent years have seen the event of creating a single repository of knowledge when it comes to encyclopedia style collections of facts. Going forward, organising these facts into an easier to learn format than can be easily replicated for various sorts of skills.

In short: We’ve got reference books down as far as wikis go, but complete how-to courses are going to need someone to arrive at a recognized standard. The sooner the better.

¹Assuming Tae Kim’s guide was around for a few years before I heard of it.
Image is made up of the Wikipedia logo and this mock up by Ryanhagemandesign.