Love of Computers

Well here I am sitting with quite the smug smile of pride as I peer down upon my new masterpiece.

I had finally solved my portable computer problems! I had edited a Windows XP Pro SP2 installation CD and butchered the USBport.in_, usb.in_, usbstor.in_, txtsetup.sif and injected my own USBBOOT.inf into the CD. Not only did I create a Windows CD capable of reading and installing to an external HardDrive I had successfully installed. Now I have the problem of obtaining drivers for the machine so it can use the hardware thats in the computer it is now attached to. Walla I had also injected an installer file for Driver Magician, I then proceeded to rip the drivers from my actual desktop computers Operating System and then install copies into the external HD’s new Operating System and done! I have a fully functioning Windows XP installation running out of my external HD.

Nihal’s Portable Windows version 1 was born!

Now for version 2, after my successful editing of a full proper Windows installation I decided to go look for one of the many “Micro” installation CD’s. These are heavily stripped down Windows XP CD’s in order to reduce the install time and space wasted by the OS. I got my hands on MicroXP which was a tiny 88mb ISO. I then proceeded to butcher the  USBport.in_, usb.in_, usbstor.in_, txtsetup.sif as I did in the proper CD. I had to patch a few snags along the way as some files were missing.(Its stripped down after all). The CD is burned and I then completely formated my Windows partition on my external HD and proceeded to install my new microXP. I was amazed it installed in under 5minutes, a regular XP installation takes anywhere from 35minutes to an hour. Now when they say stripped down they mean it. The machine doesn’t even have “Internet Exploiter” on it haha. Now I can take my external HD with me where ever I go rip the drivers of that machine and then be fully functional out of my external HD. I can even install it to anyone else’s external HD’s if they want it. (I’ll upload the file to rapidshare once I get my account fixed)

The evil of MaxMSP with Jitter

During the first class of Diva200 I found myself listening to our first instructor Julie telling us about our projects this semester. Being versed in Photoshop I was not ecstatic about our first project but, I honestly awakened at the thought of making my vinyl cut and learning maxMSP.  Fast forward a 2 months and we are on maxMSP. Once we had hit maxMSP the lack of “if, and, then, else” statements had left me unable to grasp this bizzare concept of “bang” and “metro”. After finally coming to terms that I wasn’t going to get to do any traditional programming. What little programming I did do would eventually devolve into ripping and butchering tutorials for their working parts and repackaging them for functionality. Now I suppose spending ALOT more time to learn all the functionality and potential that max offers I might grow to like it. As it stands though, I could butcher a together a patch for most of my needs but never truly make something from scratch, except a few jit.matrix and jit.movie based actions. After a long collaborative effort with others in the class we all managed to get our patches done on time and in working order(with work arounds). It was an enjoyable experience when my problem solving was working but not so much when it wasn’t haha. A learning experience with alot of inside jokes about max resulting from it. Will I ever use maxMSP again? No, I’m sticking to my GML and syntax I understand and can logically simulate in my head.

Also a word of Caution to those of you using a [> 0. ] when dropping mathematical equations into them don’t forget your decimal places. Ex:  [ 50 ] — [ / 100.00]—[> .05 ]  otherwise it just rounds down to 0 or rounds up to 1.

Dreams of something new

Normally I don’t dream logically enough to form proper situations mirroring real life, atleast not enough to think I was awake. Even when I’m dreaming I usually remain very aware that I am in a dream although the experience may seem very real it is a wonderful experience in itself and like playing a game within my own mind. Usually after the dream is over though I will lose all memory of it within minutes of waking but all the feelings of it remain and I struggle to quantify my experience once the memories float off. The times where I find I remember a dream are usually the ones that also mimic reality exactly and end up happening sometime in the future(2-3months later) exactly how I dreamt it, a la dejavu. These are all quite normal for me but what made this one truly new and different was the fact that it was the first time I had a dream involving my friends from Emily Carr. What made this exceptionally different was it wasn’t like the dejavu dreams where I randomly am in a situation lasting 10-20 seconds with no context or intent and then abruptly ends. This had an unspoken intent and lasted quite a few minutes with what seemed to be a logical course of events except for the reactions of my friends. They all seemed to have the right personalities but their reactions(except one person) seemed all wrong for the situations. What makes this more perplexing is I awoke from the dream where normal dejavu dreams are shuffled in randomly with my other dreams and then get drowned in another dream.

This new dream pattern is interesting with its odd scenarios and randomosity of reactions and speech, sleepings going to be a little mroe interesting now.

No, you don’t get to find out what I dreamed because I dont tihnk it would be nice to write about my friends and what they were doing in my dream…I’d think I would need their permission first although it never happened it seems only right to ask first.

Kate Pullinger

Kate Pullinger is an English born contemporary artist who has discovered and attempted to reinvent herself on the Internet. The challenges of creating a unique literary form for conveying a traditional subject matter of scholarly literary creation is quite a challenge to visualize outside of a inherited rigid structure. While considering the possibilities of her online fiction she considered the evolution of the screen as a medium of interaction.

Her first piece of fiction was called “Branded” it triggered a new idea for her, a realization that the success of such a project would require, as a corner stone of its development, collaboration with other artists. Kate’s idea for “Branded” stems from her past experiences as a writer in residence at a British men’s maximum-security prison. In this prison only murders and arsonists are held prisoner and it is here she met men who were wrongly convicted of murder and became friends with them. Some of them are now free as new evidence has ked to their pardons. “Branded” is a fictional story directly stemming from the real life situation of those men. “Branded” weaves the story of a young man accused of killing his girlfriend. He finds that alone in his cell he can hear his dead lover talking to him from within the walls. It is a story told through an interactive flash based interface using a combination of sound and visual keys and effects to present text and convey the imagery required to progress the story. I found it very interesting she managed to reach the conclusion she did with her work although it not being entirely unique to the Internet in its final form. I applaud her ability to reach her end result in isolation from the already established early works of young internet artists which have created similar works on free flash player sites.

The part that finally brought Kate forward out of the ranks of those who had reached the same level before her was her integration of a new technology. The creator of this “tech” is a man named Stephen Schemat, a German artist she met in Munich. He was interested in incorporating “Branded” into a new system that works along side his own input interaction setup known as “Biotransmission Feedback”. The system allowed the story to progress according to how a person was reacting to the story of “Branded” by measuring their breathing and monitoring it throughout the story. “The Breathing Wall”

In the wake of this success in her story and technology incorporation she has received a proposal to develop a mobile phone version of these kinds of stories. The hook holding the episodes together would be leaving cliffhangers at the end of each new part. The idea is being funded by Pan McMillan Publishing and an untested free version is ready with 4 episodes available already. A primary concern is generating money off the internet of course and Kate is attempting to do it with selling true content instead of free content augmented by advertisement revenue. A harder route but one less traveled by business models on the “net” time will tell if this business model can still survive in the google/adsense era.

Great Things from Japan

This is pure advertising genius. A series of amazing Fanta commercials from Japan using humour and stereotypes from pop culture and societal roles.

Auto Registration

Since I absolutely despise the inside.eciad.ca site and its stupid policy of not allowing registration until 7:30am I have devised a solution so I don’t have to wake up at 7 to register for my courses!!!

First I had to scout out how the site worked and how to navigate around it quickly to what I needed. Once I had figured it out I decided to find the coordinates of the links and drop down boxes littered across the site and then made a macro to handle the process.

The macro is built in ACTOOL 5.4.0 a program originally intended for “botting” in Asheron’s Call, an extremely old game, but the program has amazing versatility within the Windows Environment.

Once I had Programmed it, and yes tested it. It made numerous successful runs to the site and registering for my courses(which doesn’t work because it’s 3am.)

Once done I had to deal with the problem of getting the program to automatically run. I decided to use the Windows Scheduler located on every Windows machine to automatically run the programs on the day of registration.

Unfortunately the macro program will only run if someone pushes the F2 key to start it. No problem!!! I had to delve into GameMaker and build a program to automatically count to 100 and then press the F2 key and trigger the macro to run in ACTOOL.

Upon the program running an object(invisible) is created in the grey box and counts to 100 and then sends a signal to the computer that the F2 key has been pushed. ACTOOL notices this and activates the macro, and begins its journey through cyberspace to register me for my courses. And I get to sleep in or wake up and forget by accident and then be in trouble because my courses filled up >< but that wont happen because the program will do it for me! The only down side is I will have to leave my computer on over night because I don’t trust an automatic startup and login to handle the resolution change.

An escapade into UI

Well many of you are familiar with Windows and Apples operating systems; WindowsXP/WindowsVista and OSx Tiger/OSx Leopard.

Their purpose remain very much the same but their user interfaces differ quite greatly from one another. For one Vista is quite the pain to navigate through if you were raised on the old windows systems or OSx and OSx can be equally as infuriating if you are a Windows person. The same can apply to Apple buffs using Windows machines. I’m at home on both platforms and decided to gather up what software I had lying around and turn a Windows UI(user interface) into the OSx Interface. I was successful and the results were wonderful. With a working dock with magnify effect and bouncing icons, along with the top menu bar with all the expected OSx options leading to their Windows equivalents. This should work just as efficiently on Windows Vista as well assuming you disable that accursed Aero effect system.
I used a combination of WindowsBlinds, ObjectBar, and ObjectDock and alot of icons to replace the usual Windows artifacts that are presented as part of the UI.

Finger Motion tracking on the Wii

Well during my many escapades across the internet I happened to stumble upon this creative and simple video for converting the wiimote into a motion tracker for your fingers. Now all I need is a Wii and I can get on my way with doing this!

Vinyl is up

Well finished my Vinyl and its up by the crosswalk linking the North and South building

London, England

Our new…well not that so new puppy London.

My sister has always wanted a dog her entire life but we were unable to get one because my Dad and my brother were allergic to them.

So after 10 long years of wanting a dog my parents finally decided she could have one. So she did her research and decided on a labradoodle.

So now we have our first puppy and we named her London after the city my sister, brother, mother and I were born in.

She spends her days lounging around the house playing with her toys and getting walked around the neighbourhood by me or my siblings.

Most of the time we can find her blocking the stairwell and looking like a stuffed animal