Artificial Unintelligence

The Aspiring Acer Apire One

Stolen from Wikipedia, A netbook is a light-weight, low-cost, energy-efficient, highly portable laptop suitable for web browsing, email and general purpose applications. This holiday season, I was lucky enough to get my hands on an Aspire One of my very own. This thing comes fully loaded; a gigabyte of RAM, 1.6ghz Intel Atom processor, 160GB hard drive, three usb ports, card slots, built in web cam and mic, audio ports, wifi, the list goes on. The model I got came with a 6-cell battery for over 5 hours of use, as well as Windows XP Home. I figured that I’d go XP over getting a prepackaged Linux install because hey, I can always install Linux for free later anyway.

So, upon first boot-up and registration, I notice there’s a load of bloatware, including some DVD app which is strange because these things lack a disc drive. After uninstalling, the Aspire One boots up in seconds, perfect for use just about anywhere and fast. Want to check my email, BAM, I’m up and running.

The two biggest complaints I’ve heard about the Aspire One were that the wifi card gives out at strange times, and the internal fan is very loud for such a small machine. After searching around I found out that the problems with the Atheros card can be easily stopped by turning off sleep mode in device properties, so I did just that as a preventative measure. Also, I don’t know if they improved anything when updating the Aspire Ones to make use of the new Intel processors, but I barely hear a fan, and thing thing hardly ever feels warm.

One qualm I do have is the built in speakers. From the first boot up when the Windows start up music chimed in, it was scratchy and underwhelming. I can say however, the HD sound achieved with headphones is a magical experience. Music sounds better on this than on my iPod. The internal microphone also proved a little soggy with its test, though I do believe the quality on that can be fine tuned if I put in enough effort.

For a web cam, this one works very well. Its spec’d at 1.3 megapixel, which blows other netbooks out of the water. The frame rate isn’t the best in the world, but its not like I’m making a movie on it, it gets the job done. On the performance side of things, with a 1.6Ghz processor, nobody is gonna be playing the newest and greatest games. The video playback seems to be very nice though. 720p  HD video plays smoothly and with no distortion. Even though the display is small, the video is crisp and detailed, as well as with no audio lag.

On the physical side of things, the Aspire One is very lite, and small enough to take just about anywhere. The 6-cell battery adds a load of weight, though and does stick out the back a bit. The keyboard is a little cramped but easily usable. The placement of the mouse buttons beside the touch pad are a bit awkward; needing two hands to comfortable operate.

In all, I can say I’m happy with it. I can easily boot up into Windows, or use a USB insallation of a Linux live cd (Backtrack 3 anyone?) and go take on the town. It also appears they have included a one year warrenty incase something breaks down, which is nice considering how paranoid I can become.

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Binaural Beats

So recently with doing some audio experimenting, I was introduced to the concept of binaural beats. The idea is that a listener uses a pair of stereo headphones to listen to two differen frequencies, one in each ear. The result is the perception of a beating tone as if it was produced by the brain itself. This causes brainwave synchronization with desired frequencies from outside stimuli.

So why would anyone want to do this? The practical side of this is use with learning, health, and meditation. In studies, binaural beats have been seen to increase information retention as well as the amount assimilated. Binaural beats have also been see to act as pain relief, and even help with addiction rehabilitation. Some also believe when targeting specific types of brainwaves, meditation can be enhanced as well as attribute to out of body experience and lucid dreaming.

On the other end of the spectrum, binaural beats are used as entertainment. How effectively they are used in this sense is debatable. The thought is that by manipulating brainwaves, you can temporarily change perception.  So basically, binaural beats give people the ability to create audio that mimics the effects of chemical substances that alter normal body function. Enter I-Doser, probably the leading name in brainwave entertainment. Their shtick is offering up “doses” in the form of audio files that give the same effects as legal/illegal substances. However, there is much question about if they actually work or not. Many claim they do though it takes a while (which may coincide with how binaural beats are used with meditation) however a large majority of people who have had experience with I-Doser claim that either nothing happens or many people suffer the placebo effect. If you want to see for yourself, you can obtain some demos at the I-Doser website.

So of course after hearing of the concept of binaural beats, I wanted to hear binaural beats. I found an interesting program by the name of Gnaural which acts a a binaural beat generator. Its open-source and thus free, so you can try it at your liesure. Gnaural seems to be a fully functional generator with the ability to control pink noise, frequencies, etc. I tried it out and I can say it was an interesting experience, theres definately a weird feeling achieved through the sound.

So in closing, give it a whirl if you’re interested. Who knows, you may be one step closer to controlling your own dreams.

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Wizzywig Volume Two

Ever since January of this year, I have been waiting for the second book in the Wizzywig series to be ready for distribution. The first volume, subtitled “Phreak” follows a young kid named Kevin Phenicle who goes by the handle Boingthump. Let me say, this isn’t some drab piece of writing you would find in the discount bin at your local book outlet. These are graphic novels, containing anything but a boring story about some kiddie hacker acting out a stereotype. This first book I read about Boingthump was a definite, and somewhat unexpected, treat. The bulk of the story was composed of little snippets of this character’s doings. From his first experience with blueboxing to social engineering pizza, the story is rife with creative scenarios that paint a vivid picture of an anykid in the golden age of phreaking. Suffice it to say I was impressed by just how much fact went into the story, and was curious to see where it would go… or where it would take me.

Fast forward to November. I stumbled across Ed Piskor’s website after forgetting about it for a little while. I found out that the second book had been completed and was ready for purchase, so I quickly snagged myself a copy, which arrived in the mail quickly after my purchase. Upon reading the book, I was happy to see much of the same structure as was present in the first. The story bounced back and forth between present day (Kevin has been incarcerated) and his younger days when he started experimenting with computers, and became immersed in a new, exciting, and scary world found through his phone lines.

The story found in these books is not your cookie cutter hacker epic. Take your Hackers, your Die Hard 4, your Swordfish, and throw them out the window. Ed takes careful attention to detail, nothing here is a stretch of the imagination and you can see he has done his homework in the creation of these novels. Reading along, you’ll be able to see all he has done simply by what is alluded to. No Hollywood garbage trying to make hacking seem glamorous or news stories spewing out tales that this underground world is full of all kinds of dangerous people who can make a computer explode. Ed gives the honest, gritty perspective the genre has hardly ever been represented by.

Summing things up, I don’t know anyone who is showing the world of phreak/hack culture in this fashion. Ed has truely honed his craft, and the fact that he himself is only an admirer of this culture, and not a participant only ampliphies his qualities. If you liked the first one, you probably already have the second, and are waiting patiently for the third and fourth. For those of you who haven’t jumped on the wagon yet, you can purchase both books directly from Ed at his website. There are also previews of both of the books, so you can read a few panels before deciding.

Also, I happen to be “in” the second installment as an angry fellow on page 10.

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Software Vocoding with the Stylophone

So as I said a few weeks ago, I have a Stylophone which is essentially a pocket synthesizer. What I got the idea to to is use the Stylophone as my synth device in post-processing vocoding. I needed to do it post because I don’t (think I) have any equipment that would make me able to vocode audio on the fly. Oh yeah, almost forgot, a vocoder is a device that takes sound (usually a modulated sound like a voice), reduces the amount of information used to store it, and then turns it back into sound by oscillating it according to frequencies in a carrier sound. Basically, you can make mechanical/robotic voices using it.

So I wanted to make a robot voice using… oh… say… some podcast audio. So first, I trimmed out a little bit of podcast audio in Audacity, my favorite open-source audio editor, which was easy enough. Second, I rigged my Stylophone to my computers audio input and recorded a tone in audacity with vibrato turned on. I wasn’t sure what would be best, so I tried vibrato on, vibrato off, I changed notes while playing, adjusted pitch, etc. I wanted variety. So after I got the tones I wanted, I chopped out the empty space, the mess ups, etc to have a nice flowing audio sample.

So now I had the original audio and my Stylophone audio. How do I vocode? I found a wonderful program a while back called Zerius Vocoder. Now you have to note, its pretty basic and has only a few features, but gets the job done. Also, its free, which is always nice when you’re looking for software to try out.

The Modulator file is my podcast sample, the Carrier file is my Stylophone file, and the Output file is the output. As for the options, I messed around with those until I found what I perceived to be the best combination. There’s always the “Restore Defaults” button if you mess up and want to redo the options.

So after hitting “Vocode”, I have my finished file all ready and waiting to be played. Here are the files I used below…

Modulater File

Carrier File

Output File

After I finished making my new file, I decided to see just exactly how the frequencies changed using another great free too, Spectro which gives spectrograms of audio waves. So using this, I was able to have visual representations of the frequencies of the audio files. See for yourself,

The modulator file below has an average frequency of 19.5KHz

The carrier file below has an average frequency of 22.1KHz

The output file below has an average frequency of 22.1KHz

Happy vocoding!

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Flea Market Find 11/09/08

So today, I went to a flea market in New Castle, Delaware and snagged this sign for $10.

It plugs in, and lights up. Not too sure what I’m gonna do with it, but its pretty cool, and I’d expect hard to find as well.

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The Stylophone

So about two weeks ago, I ordered a Stylophone from Thinkgeek and have been more than satisfied. For those that don’t know, the Stylophone was a popular toy in the late 1960’s. What sets this toy apart is that it is infact a compact synthesizer. What makes it awesome is the fact that it was used by several big names in music, for example David Bowie played a Stylophone on his song, “Space Oddity” and Kraftwerk used it on their track, “Pocket Calculator”.

I purchased a reproduction Stylophone for $20, and certainly got everything I wanted and more. The new Stylophone has three tone settings as opposed to the original Stylophone’s one, so my Stylophone has the same set of tones as the original, but also two additional. I also learned after purchasing that there is a pitch knob underneath the unit, that can be used to tune the Stylophone to the desired key, but can also be used while playing for strange melodic effects. Lastly, there is a vibrato switch on the top next to the power switch, which can make the tones “pulse” in a way that mimics the human voice.

Below is a wav file of some tones I recorded while I was screwing around with it (yeah, this thing has a line out jack).

Stylophone Synth Demo

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Hacking around with the N64

So in my summer time, oh so long ago, I picked up with my N64 shenanigans again for the first time in years. Probably about seven years to be more specific. While the software is a lot more advanced then it was back then, we had another innovation called Windows XP which doesn’t really like the software, and a step back, Windows 2K realllllly doesn’t like it. So I had a bit of success on Windows XP with some loopholes, and actually less success then I was supposed to have one one of my surviving Windows 98 boxes. Everything comes down to how the kernel locks down the parallel port of the computer. Windows 98 loves to give away the access, Windows 2K likes to hold onto the access, and Windows XP likes to hold onto it, but let you borrow it if you want to.

So the way it works, through the parallel port of my printer, I hook up a cord that goes to my gameshark, which sits between the N64 console and the game (With the software I have, Goldeneye was used). If you have ever used any console based cheat device, like a Game Genie, you know the kind of in-between cartridge I am talking about.

The back of the Gameshark, showing the SharkPort

So, after I connect everything and set it up, I went to the software side. The first thing I needed was DLPortIO which unlocks the parallel port for the purpose of writing data to devices on connected to the port. It comes with its own basic writing functions, but I only needed it to open access to the port, which it happily did. I then retrieved GE Face Mapper from http://rarewitchproject.com/ which is an excellent website that pushes the limits on games made by the company Rareware years after they come out. I also kept a copy of N64 Utils v3 on hand just in case my Gameshark decided to freak out and delete its own software. It was also useful for retrieving screen caps.

It might not look too nice, but this is one of the outcomes of a texture replacement

So I unlocked my ports, and booted up facemapper and started my N64. I turned on the code generator function of the Gameshark to use some of the in-game features, and loaded up Goldeneye, selecting the first level, “Dam”. Once there, I did a ram dump using the GE Face Mapper, which showed me which bitmaps of enemies’ were loaded in the level, and allowed me to replace them with my own bitmaps, overwriting their places in the RAM. After doing that, I was able to dump the screen capture (as you saw above) back onto my computer.

There is plenty more canned software to do texture recreations, but also do things like compeltely redesign levels to load and play on the console. However, my hardware limitations halted these ideas quickly. So unless I can get some stable incarnation of Windows 98 on a nice box, don’t think about it any time soon.

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Ghettoblasters and Boomboxen in the Modern Age

So for the past year or so, I’ve had increased interest in vintage boomboxes. I believe the appeal comes from the need for a powerful portable audio solution. Previous to having boomboxes, I would take a set of dc-powered computer speakers, chop off the plug, strip down the wires, and hook up a set of 9-volt batteries wired in parallel. The problem with this, however, is that 9-volt batteries are expensive, and most sets of computer speakers run on more then 9 volts of electricity. So yeah, I could mix and match batteries, but to get a reliable flow of electricity, that would require casing, and basically a bunch of wiring I didn’t want to do. So I went around with underpowered speakers that just caused problems when batter life ran short.

Now, I turn to boomboxes to do the hard work for me. Boomboxes were first introduced in the mid to late 70’s and became a facet of audio gear until their decline in the late 80’s. The appeal of boomboxes were their portability, battery life, and most important, volume. Every boombox was made to be cranked up with quality amplifiers and top of the line remixing features.

The thing that makes boomboxes accessible nowadays is the fact that the majority of them included built in cassette decks. With simple adapters purchasable at any electronics store for under $15, any new mp3 or cd player can be hooked up to a boombox, giving it whole new life and purpose.

Clockwise, mid 70s Panasonic, mid 80s Soundesign, late 80s Panasonic

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Debian

So a few nights ago (I don’t remember how many because my sleep schedule is so messed up) I installed NetBSD on an old box I had lying around. This box is a P2 running at maybe 266mhz with 64mb of ram; its been a while since I’ve seen the specs, but these are roughly them. This was the second computer I have ever purchased, and has gone through so many operating systems, I can’t believe the hard disk still spins up. Win98 to Ubuntu to Debian to CentOS to- well, you get the idea.

So I got the impulse to install something new on it. I mean, I completely ignored it for a year or two, and I couldn’t remember any passwords, so an install was logical, but normally I would have just flipped the switch and forgot about it for longer. Something grabbed me. I chose to go with NetBSD because I had used flavors of Linux and Windows before, but had no experience at all with a BSD environment. So the install seems to go well, it boots, I can login, but after a while, I thought it to be lacking. Maybe a bit over my head. There was no help command, it didn’t seem to network itself; I was lost. So instead of continuing with this install, I went over it with a familiar face: Debian.

I had installed Debian for the first time maybe 2 years prior when I had absolutely zero experience. I was trying to make a web server, and needless to say, that project failed. I could always install NetBSD again later, but for now I wanted something I could use right out of the box.

The install goes smoothly, and everything settles in nicely. This time, I know the thing networked correctly because I used a bare bones net-install disc and it had to connect to the Debian ftp servers to get the additional software to accompany the core. So everything loads up, I apt-get a few more applications, screw around with making directories and whatnot, and admire my install.

After getting an sshd installed, I can now just SSH into the box from any computer on my LAN, and possibly anywhere on the internet if I ever decide to forward the port. So know, I have remote access from upstairs, and its as if I’m sitting right in front of box. The thing I really appreciate about this Debian install is being able to  run scripts, may they be python, perl, or my favorite: bash. This way, I can execute a whole new set of programs that I had previously been locked out of due to OS restrictions.

The WOPR (Named after the Wargames computer) running a simple "Hello World" script.

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Dropping Eggs

So last night, while doing nothing, I decided to full around with eggdrop irc bots. I specifically used Windrop to run on my desktop for easy testing and whatnot, but one day I hope to toss this thing on a nix shell and get it off a personal pc.

The config file was daunting. This wasn’t the first time I made one of these bots, but since I had originally, the config base file has been altered somewhat, and is far more complex. After I partly configured it, there was the problems of commenting out all the kill commands that were put in it to make sure you went through the entire file thoroughly. Needless to say, I didn’t, and probably wasted more time looking for those damn lines then it would have taken to just read the entire thing. Then there was the problem that the bot worked, but it would flip out when opped and do crazy things to the channel and people. I couldn’t fix this without reinstalling the bot, and the torment continued.

After maybe seven re-edits, the thing became stable enough to op, and utilized some key features. TCL scripts add so much functionality to these bots I wonder why anyone would use them for anything else. I mean, I can see these bots back in the day used in place for various services, but now, they are just kinda knick-knacks. TCL scripts allow regular programmers to go off and create bot code without modifying any key files. These scripts are add-ons, or modules if you will.

So now, I have all these scripts on the bot. Weather, horoscopes, seen commands, etc. It all functions well, six hours after starting. The possibly best feature I integrated into this bot is the ability to read RSS. I now have a use for these feeds I have been compiling. The beauty is, the bot will check the forums, and the rest of the site every half an hour, If something in the feed is new, the bot will announce it to the channel. Refreshing the pages waiting to see updates becomes obsolete.

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