July 13, 2008

WiibratorLink Update and WiiSex Review

Ok, first off, the new stuff. The WiibratorLink developers have been nice enough to send me more information on the product.

Here's the presentation they gave on it, which, while in German, is still pretty, um, language-agnosticly obvious about the usage and interaction models:

And, some facts...

  • Update: The OIOO add-on has a vibration motor in it, due to the fact that the feedback control for the motor in the Wiimote itself is simply on/off.
  • The product's name, OIOO, is the combination of the names for the male and female parts. The male portion (the round hole part) is named 00, and the female portion (the pokey part) 01, referring to both the chromosome identification and 0/1 because it's a digital toy.
  • Interaction happens through the digital pad, the two buttons and the accelerometer. There are two modes, Private and Link.
  • For what I'm guessing is Private Mode, the B-Button generates "Power Vibration", while the A-Button sets it to normal vibration with the digital control (directional pad) allowing for speed control.
  • Link mode I believe is demoed in the video, where one controller is used to simulate motion while the other vibrates. This relates to the main research goal of the project, translating actual human movement into sexual communication.
  • With the multiple open source libraries available for the Wiimote, internet communication (Telewiildonics?) and other controls should be quickly and easily doable.

So, yeah, the wii dildo is actually gonna happen. Now, it's not the first time anyone has had this idea, but it's the first time it hasn't been vaporware as a completely hardware and software solution. Here's a quick timeline of wiimote sex happenings:

That's everything I'm aware for the moment, at least.

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June 9, 2008

A Series of Controversial Dildos

A Series of Controversial Dildos

It seems that the contestants for the Golden Kleene prize at Arse Elektronika 2008 are off to a start on their development, and I happened upon one of the blogs!

A Series of Controversial Dildos, by the circuit benders at Cho-Yaba.com (seriously, take some time to look around the blog, lots of neat stuff here), isn't really a series of controversial dildos (at least, not as much as the divine interventions line of toys) as much as it is a series of controversial control schemes for dildos. The two current projects (both based off Arduino boards) include a vibrator that reacts off of USGS seismic feeds (definitely controversial there), and another that seems to be some sort of chastity belt based on political leanings that I'm not quite sure I get the gist of yet. There's also the "Perpetual Erection Machine", which only exists as a title at the moment, but who knows what it could be!

Definitely interested to see where these are going, and what the other contestants are up to! And remember, Arse Elektronika 2008 happens at Cellspace in San Francisco, September 25-28.

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June 6, 2008

The EyeDildo

The EyeDildo

NO IT'S NOT A DILDO FOR YOUR EYE but that's totally what I thought too so your mistake is understandable.

The EyeDildo is a clear acrylic dildo with an embedded camera and LED setup so you can play "ob/gyn, the home game". It's at least nice to see someone ripping off Sony (EyeToy) versus Apple (iEverythingEver) for once. And while there is absolutely no way to make the combination of thrusting pointy things and eyes sexy, the name does have a certain impact.

$200 lets you realize that the inside of your partner isn't nearly as pretty as the outside. It uses regular ol' batteries and comes with TV hookups so you can just plug in and plug in and see internal organs on your 60" flat screen!

Now, dildocams have been around a long, long time, but I'm rather excited about this for the machine vision and augmented reality aspects. With today's technology (read: OpenCV, ARToolKit and too much time and education your hands), you're just a few sleepless nights of coding away from games like "Cervix Invaders" and "Poop Ship Destroyers" and "It's in my nose, is that my brain?" and "Malignant or Not". Ok, so that last one, not so much a game, I suppose.

I still think this would be the ultimate survival horror game flashlight peripheral. But I'm just gonna stop there.

Note: Usually, when I get random product emails, I google them first to make sure someone else hasn't gotten to it first, because if it ain't fresh, it ain't good. Google "eyedildo". 4 sites, one of which is my LJ (where I made a silly post about it like, 3 minutes ago, and google already has it. Technology is creeeeeeeeeepy), the other three are some sex video sites they uploaded the demo to. Now THAT'S what I call a 0-day link. Though the fact that the term "eyedildo" has not shown up anywhere else on the internet ever is somewhat... disconcerting.

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qDot speaking at Unc's Colloquia Series - Thursday, June 12 - Edges (South Bay)

qDot Speaking at Unc's Colloquia Series

It's time for me to talk again. I'm rather excited about this, I'm the first presenter in Uncle Abdul's "Advanced Colloquia in BDSM" series! It even sounds academic!

This'll be at Edges, a dungeon located in sunny [somewhere in south bay], California. I'll be doing an in-depth presentation on sex technology and its applications to BDSM, which will be as educational for me as it will be for everyone else. Prepare for the wild, ridiculous overuse of the word "panopticon". Foucault's spinning will be my carbon credit equivilient.

Tickets are $16ish after fees, and it's limited to 30 people. To get in, you'll need to preregister online at:

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/117130340

So if you want to get the up close, personal, not-at-a-web-conference qDot treatment (no, I don't know exactly how this treatment is different either), I'll see you next Thursday.

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May 16, 2008

The ShockSpot: $2200 of Machiney Goodness

The ShockSpot

Remember the Hugher? Well, upgrade the "filing box from Office Depot" enclosure to "80/20 Structure" and add computer control, and you've got the ShockSpot (which I totally though was going to be an electrostim toy before I checked out the website).

This is the ShockSpot. It's a combination thruster/vibration machine, a feat that I'm not quite sure how they pulled off unless they even manufactured their own actuator system, which would explain the $2200 price tag a little better.

Honestly, from what I can tell on their webpage, they've done a lot right. The structure is made of 80/20, an aluminum "erector set" type building structure that's incredibly cheap, about as easy to put together as your normal piece of Ikea furniture, and very extensible. It can make storage footprint super small, too, since you can fairly easily disassemble the whole thing in a quick manner for storage or movement. I'd always wondered why this wasn't used more often in machine building, though there is the question of whether the low 13 pound overall weight will be enough to actually keep the machine stable during use.

The software... Well, it's looks like someone decided Visual Basic 5 type GUIs are still in vogue, and hey, if it gets the job done, whatever, but I don't really see their controls system being very extensible at the moment. However, they're not charging you extra for the software, it does allow customization, and they even allow you to share your settings files with others, albeit through having to email them to the website for someone to put up by hand. Really, anything negative I'm saying here is just me being a dick because I'm a cowboy coder with the firm belief that I'm awesomer than everyone else. The software, as I said, does what it's most likely supposed to. And they're already promising bluetooth and internet controls.

I'm definitely interested to learn more about this platform, despite the astronomic price. It could be lots of fun to develop for. And besides, when faced with the choice of fucking machine or decently tricked out Macbook Pro, which would you buy, eh?

Thanks to the fine people at CyberMistress for pointing me at this

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May 13, 2008

Open Source Teledildonics Projects

There's a couple of Open Source Teledildonics projects I've been pointed at lately, so I thought I'd pass the information on. Please note that I haven't actually /used/ either of these projects (Sex software? Ew! Grody!), but they might be of interest, since my own implementation of that crazy macro based end user programming language for teledildonics I keep talking about is coming along sometime between never and never.

First off is the OpenVibrations project. This is a teledildonics client written in Java, that has built in chat and controls through USB and parallel ports. More information on features is available at the OpenVibrations entry at OpenDildonics.

Next, there's Traviesadora. It's windows only, and written in... Delphi. No, seriously. The little language that could apparently still can. It keeps popping up in the weirdest places. Anyways, this project is a jabber based chat client with full on encryption for communications and controls! Yay, something I've been asking for forever! It's also got a rather interesting wave formation UI. From what I can tell from googling, it's mostly serial based, and probably aimed at the Nobra's Silicone Dreams line of toys.

And, if you're wondering what I'm up to in the realm of open source... Well, it really doesn't have much to do with sex, these days. My main projects are:

Out of those, I'm mostly concentrating on libnifalcon. In fact, it's just about all I've been doing in what little spare time I've had over the past two months. If you're interested in the progress on that, watch Nonpolynomial Labs for updates.

In terms of sex stuff... I've got a ton of ideas, some of which I may dump here soon. There seems to be more interest in projects these days, and I've got a few ideas that can be done with commodity hardware that would be quite fun...

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May 11, 2008

Immersion vibrates more than your games?

There's some crazy, crazy shit going down with teledildonics patents right now, and it's bringing out much bigger names than I ever would've thought. For those of you that have been reading Slashdong for a while, you've probably heard me talk about the odd "anonymous texas billionaire" that funded a troll patent on teledildonics. I was never actually sure if this was true, but hey, other bloggers said it, and we never lie, right? Right? Besides, I figured if I fucked up, I'd get one of those nice cease and desist letters that means you're doing something right.

Anyways, I'd always questioned this story in the back of my mind, because it seemed like Immersion, the 800 pound gorilla of all things shakey, should've claimed ownership on this. Immersion, for those of you that aren't familiar, are the world's largest haptics patent holders. Like, 200+ international patents ranging from force feedback to medical systems to haptic web browsing software. It's what they do, and they do it a BUNCH.

The last big news on Immersion was their suit against both Microsoft and Sony for their force feedback features in controllers for their consoles. If you want to read about the nitty gritty, check out the Immersion v. Sony Wikipedia Article. Short version: Immersion made a metric shitton of cash by nutpunching the big boys of the game industry. Like, the 100's of millions flavor of shitton.

Now that Immersion is rollin' phat on vibrating dueces, everyone wants to come looking for a bit of their cash. For instance, Microsoft countersued, which leads to more legal mumbo jumbo that you can google on your own fucking time. However, some other companies more interesting to the topic of this website have shown up too.

TechDirt is now reporting that Internet Services, LLC (ISLLC), is trying to grab part of Immersions take from the haptics lawsuits. How? Well, ISLLC is the legal whip cracker on teledildonics patents! And what is most modern teledildonics if not force feedback applied to specific parts of the body, eh? ISLLC was licensed the patents and given the right to sue teledildonics companies for patent infringement on Immersions behalf, so Immersion didn't have to crawl through the PR cesspool that is teledildonics. (Ed. Note: Really, guys, come on in to the cesspool! The water's fine!)

Now ISLLC is all butthurt (legal term) about not getting cash, since they're basically a shell for Immersion's legal weaponry. But, it doesn't even stop there! All of the craziness and blog posts aren't about the original case, but the fact that ISLLC's hired attourney is now trying to leave the case, and there's yet ANOTHER lawsuit going on over ISLLC trying to keep said attourney on the case, thus getting EVERYONE more press.

Good motherfucking times, people. Honestly, I have no idea what this means for teledildonics, patents, or whatever else. Obviously, there was a rallying cry of "prior art! prior art!" on the teledildonics patents, but if the patents were/are owned by Immersion, then there goes that idea. 'course, this is still applying only to vibrating toys as a form of feedback, too. I don't believe there's any patent on thrusting toys, since it's just a remotely controlled linear actuator. However, I am so not a lawyer (just in case the use of the term "butthurt" made you think otherwise).

Via TechDirt (Aww, and look at the first comment on the post! Thanks guys!) and The Prior Art

More info also at Boing Boing Gadgets

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May 5, 2008

BES's Intelligent Vibrator Gets a Menu


Menu V0.6.1 alpha from P B on Vimeo.

Yay! Another video from the guys over at British Engineering Systems, showing the LCD screen and menu system they've set up for their intelligent vibrator setup. Good work!

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April 10, 2008

Too Much Information about the Interactive Fleshlight

Well, after all of the massive press coverage over a dude that hooked up a interactive fleshlight to a blowup doll with some chat AI and called it a sex bot, I figured it was time for me to invest in one of these things so I could get some of those so called "hits" that I'd been desperately missing out on lately. That's what I get for becoming overly obsessed with haptics hardware.

IMG_0125

So, the Interactive Fleshlight. For $39.99 (Available from Citouch.com, and this is for the interactive part alone, a fleshlight will run you another $50-70 depending on where you get it), you get:


  • Top Cap Replacement for the fleshlight

  • A Rubber Tube

  • A Control Box

  • A USB A-B Cable

  • A "game" (I'll explain the quotes later, but holy jesus fuck is this some bad shit. Well, I guess that explained it. But, well, um.. yeah.)

The Basics

Most of the devices I show off on Slashdong are output devices. Input comes from some other controller, be it your mouse, keyboard, video game controller, or whatever. The Interactive Fleshlight, however, is an input /only/ device.

The Fleshlight, for those not familiar and not able to discern the obvious from the above picture, is a plastic casing with a latex insert. You stick your dick in it. That's... about it really. Both ends of the plastic casing come off: one end to stick yourself in, the other to adjust air pressure once you're in. This second cap is where the Interactive Fleshlight comes in. They give you a replacement endcap (w/ gasket, to maintain pressure) with a tube attached to it, that goes to a little beige box. The little beige box contains a PIC 16C745 microcontroller that processes the signal from an air pressure sensor, and sends it down the USB to your computer. This means that your computer can basically sense when and how you thrust into the fleshlight, as that action changes the air pressure inside the tube.

Yes, you can control your computer by fucking it. However, this is only for some values of "control"...

The Controls

In terms of control schemes, the Interactive Fleshlight takes Occam's Razor and, instead of going across the street or down the road, just takes the whole motherfucking arm off.

IMG_0129

You see, the PIC16C745 has embedded USB 1.1 capabilities, which makes it great for an Human Interface Device, or HID, controller. To avoid a long, horrid discussion on USB, basically, the USB standard gives you a ton of ways to talk about human interface devices like mice and keyboards and joysticks and what not. Hundreds of types. It's crazy. So, with all these types, you can have a bazillion axis controller and it should "just work" with any operating system, though you may have to write some drivers as to how those bazillion axes should work with a normal operating environment.

You could.

Or you could just make the OS think it's a mouse.

The Interactive Fleshlight registers itself as a USB HID single axis mouse. Any system you hook it to that has an HID manager will believe this (people have done VERY evil things with this fact, too). So, hook up your brand spankin' new computer aided luddite killing fucktube, and your mouse cursor starts moving up and down on the screen. This is a less than stellar situation for multiple reasons.

But, let's play devil's advocate first (in a very literal sense of the term since I'm about to talk about technological onanism, and if you don't screw on the lid tight enough, some is probably gonna fall on the ground). This is a GREAT design for maximum simplicity. Just hook it in and it fucking /works/. Sure, it's hard to mouse around with it (the sensor is incredibly sensitive), but the only programming mechanism you have to provide with any game to support it is "move cursor up and down over the screen". You can't possibly ask for a more open, cross platform interface. The fact that it fulfills so many of the things I bitch about in other toys makes me hurt.

If you're me, though, this fucking SUCKS. Why? 'cause this thing has SO much potential! Hook it to a First Person Shooter and play the "This is my rifle This is my gun" sample from Full Metal Jacket!

Hook it to Max/MSP or PureData and trigger drum samples with it! (Sorry, I don't have a video of me doing that. Yet.)

Make it universal left mouse click, disable your actual left mouse button, and use it as a way to either curtail your computer usage or die happy!

The problem is to do any of these hacks, I'm basically going to have to give the OS a personality disorder to make it think it's not a mouse. This can range from simple (filter drivers on windows) to mildly annoying (System Extension filtering on OS X) to downright painful (VID/PID HID kernel blacklisting on Linux). I had to do something similar for The Journey to Wild Divine Lightstone and its janky ass "let's write a protocol using random raw HID reports!" protocol, but I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now.

Enough bitching, I'm sure you're wondering, how well does it actually work?

The Game

Not very. Well, ok, I'll rephrase. First off, here's what thrusting looks like. The graph is time on x (1px = ~1/60th sec), vertical position on y (1200px). As you can see, we definitely pick up some sort of pattern there, though it's still rough. Nothing a little DSP couldn't smooth out (Ok, I just like saying that 'cause I just finished reading my DSP book and I'm itchin' for somewhere to use it now). Here's a little Max/MSP patch I made to show what thrusting reaction is like... (where's your god now, Cycling '74?).

Just using the mouse movement as an indicator is kind of hard, unless your game takes up the whole screen. The game that they ship with it... Well... Uh...

Yup. Nurse Nicki.

Intro screen circa 1980s... You can almost taste the EGA...

And there's our hot 3D modeling action right th... Ok, no.

Yeah, there's the first gameplay screen, and that's all you're going to get. Why? Because you have to sit there hitting the "hand presents" or "take medicine" button for 10 minutes. Then she takes off her shirt. Then you have to fondle her by clicking for at least 15 minutes. Notice the problems here?

"Hitting". "Clicking".

All you can do with the fleshlight is move the mouse. You can't click shit. So, you've gotta spend ~20 minutes doing things with your regular mouse before you can do anything with the fleshlight. And you sure as shit ain't gonna have both the mouse and the fleshlight going at once, unless you want to know what it's like to have your penis actively fighting your hand.

UPDATE! Ok, due to popular demand, I actually included pictures of the action scenes. And yes, it really took me about 10-15 minutes to get to this point. My hand hurts. And not in the fun way.

And, of course, once you do get the payoff, you find out that the male character (i.e. you) looks like a radiation experiment gone awry.





Bugged out eyes, missing half his chest hair...

The blowjob scene actually has GUT obscuring the view. Maybe I'll put this up in a later post. It's kind of like watching a giant suck a monolith that's situated behind some serene mountains.

Anyways, there you go. That's the interactive fleshlight. Assuming I can figure out a nice, cross platform way to unfuck the HID shit, expect to see libinteractivefl on sourceforge sometime soon, 'cause you know handing out headshots with this thing in an online shooter would be beyond awesome (hell, that was the idea that originally started slashdong. But that's a story for another day...).

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March 25, 2008

Arse Elektronika 2008 Call for Papers and Sponsors

It's that time again! Monochrom is working on the beginnings of Arse Elektronika 2008, so it's time to dust off all of those "ACM conferences would NEVER publish this!" work you've got!

Also, they're looking for sponsors for this year's conference. It's a great way to get your companies name out there!

The Call for Papers is included below.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Call for Papers

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ARSE ELEKTRONIKA 2008
Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep?
Critical Perspectives on Sexuality and Pornography in Science and Social Fiction

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Taking up where the successful conference in autumn 2007 left off, this year's Arse Elektronika stands under the motto "future" -- and the ways in which the present sees itself reflected in it. Maintaining a broadened perspective on technical development and technology while also putting special emphasis on its social implementation, this year's conference focuses on Science and Social Fiction.

The genre of the "fantastic" is especially well suited to the investigation of the touchy area of sexuality and pornography: actual and assumed developments are frequently depicted positively and approvingly, but just as often with dystopian admonishment. Here the classic, and continuingly valid, themes of modernism represent a clear link between the two aspects: questions of science, research and technologization are of interest, as is the complex surrounding urbanism, artificiality and control (or the loss of control). Depictions of the future, irregardless of the form they take, always address the present as well. Imaginations of the fantastic and the nightmarish give rise to a thematic overlapping of the exotic, the alienating and, of course, the pornographic/sexual as well.

In order to intelligently contextualize the abundance of queries that are involved here, this year's conference will be structured around three day-long discussion panels, each devoted to a specific theme. The impossibility of fitting many of these issues and relationships into such neat categorizations is not only accepted, but also encouraged.

Panel 1: Narration
Narrative positions and narrative media are closely linked in the treatment of the sexual and the pornographic. In the area of fantasization and its great variety of media differentiations (film, literature, computer games, etc.) this fundamental phenomenon is also expanded through the facet of a highly influential fan fiction. Submissions for this panel should deal e.g. with specific aspects of individual media, media complexes, distribution or reception.

Panel 2: Technology
Sexuality and pornography are manifestations of a social reality and are directly linked to questions of technological innovation, whereby fantasizing can also function as a motor of innovation. Submissions for this panel should deal e.g. with the present and future of technological developments, with social-technological aspects (e.g. space travel, plastic surgery, etc.) or with conditions of technologically driven development.

Panel 3: Politics
Science (and social) fiction, sexuality and pornography are often infused with colonialization strategies, conceptions of social norms and political strategies. Here the utopian, the dystopian and the xenophobic are mixed into a dangerous and interpretationally potent concoction. Submissions to this panel should deal with e.g. the juridification of the body, biopolitical standardization processes, political systems of domination and taboos surrounding interracial sex.

Submission requirements:

The 1-2 page submission, written in English, should be thematically oriented toward one of the three discussion panels. It should contain clear information regarding the methodology and up-to-dateness of the thesis it puts forth and detail the technical equipment required for the lecture's delivery. Submissions should be mailed to arse2008@monochrom.at no later than 2 May 2008. Organizational considerations make it impossible to take into account submissions received after this date.

Each participant's written lecture notes should reach the organizers no later than 15 September 2008, the version for publication in the proceedings of the symposium by 15 November 2008.

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February 17, 2008

Uncle Abdul's New Blog, and Doll Survey

There's a few people whose work I cite pretty often on this site and in presentations, and Uncle Abdul is one of them. Author of Juice, the book on electrostim play (and one of my first post topics on Slashdong!), He's been working in the engineering and science of sex and BDSM since well before the existence of this site, or, hell, my existence, period. Now he's got a new blog, BDSM Scientist, which is already full of interesting posts on estim and engineering. I'm really glad to see other people creating more blogs in this space (I've got a few more to feature later this week too), especially with my flakiness as of late.

Right now, he's got a survey going about what people are looking for in the ultimate sex doll. So hop in the comments and add your wish list!

I'm trying to put mine together as we speak, but unfortunately I can't seem to get farther than "extensible". I've forgotten what actual end features look like. Possibly a sign of too much engineering and too little usage.

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December 25, 2007

Arse Elektronika Presentation: One Big Clip, Thanks to Vimeo


Arse Elektronika 2007: Presentation by Kyle Machulis from qDot on Vimeo.

Thank fucking GOD for Vimeo. No more stupid 10 minute clips. Now I've got the whole presentation in one go. 59 minutes.

Of course, it's also up on YouTube, in 8 parts, divided by topic.

Honestly, until editing it, I didn't realize how ridiculously dense this presentation is. I basically manage to braindump almost everything I've done in 2 years into about an hour of nothing but pure factage and a lot of cursing and silly images. Just proves that I should really work on filling out Opendildonics more so the world will still have all of this if I die in a horrible dildo related accident.

Oh yeah. Merry Christmas.

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December 23, 2007

Arse Elektronika Presentation: Part 3 of Many

Part 3: Control Interfaces, from my Arse Elektronika 2007 Presentation. Explanations of how hardware interfaces are controlled.

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Arse Elektronika Presentation: Part 2 of Many

Part 2: Physical Interfaces, from my Arse Elektronika 2007 Presentation. Explanations of what the hardware does.

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November 4, 2007

Arse Elektronika - Electric Orifice Orchestra

Electric Orifice Orchestra performance from Arse Elektronika 2007

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October 28, 2007

Controlled Sensations Bondage Station

Controlled Sensations Bondage Station

So, what do you get when you take...

Why, the Controlled Sensations Computer Controlled Bondage Station, of course!

This thing is what I'd do if I had money and time and an attention span and then some more money. It's fucking awesome, and it's open source! There's pictures of the setup, and the Python Source Code that runs the setup is available! There's also message boards to talk directly to the creator through.

I want one.

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October 25, 2007

Rubbot: Mmmmm, donuts

Rubbot: Mmmmm, donuts

This is the Rubbot.

It's apparently a new sex toy for men currently in development by Design Collective in San Francisco. I hadn't heard of it before tonight (thank you very much Technorati search on Teledildonics, but it seems to have been in development for a while, and the webpage is great! There's explanations of the basic mechanical ideas behind the toy, as well the the aesthetic design factors. So what's it do?

It uses what they're calling The Inch Worm Concept to roll itself up and down your penis. That's gonna be a very, very interesting mechanism.

Right now, they're looking for all sorts of ideas. Would you use it? What would you have control it? Gather up those ideas and head to their blog! I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this and will of course update Slashdong more as I find out.

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October 22, 2007

More Arse Elektronika Video

Thanks to Donald Bell and C|Net for making this video. It goes along with the CNet article about the moaning lisa, with Matt Ganucheau explaining the technology behind the installation, and also features a portion with me pimping the iBuzz 'cause it was the only audio toy I had on hand (SoftLabs, where art thou?) and it was for an audio blog. (Dear Lovehoney: Please send the truckloads of cash now.)

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October 8, 2007

Arse Elektronika - Moaning Lisa Presentation

Presentation of the Moaning Lisa project by Matt Ganucheau at Arse Elektronika 2007

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October 3, 2007

Arse Elektronika - This weekend!

Arse Elektronika. 2 days and counting. Go. You must. It will be more awesome than is possible to comprehend.

IMG_0171

Here's some pictures from the construction of Matt Ganucheau's Moaning Lisa project for Arse Elektronika.

If you'll excuse me now, I must return to the busiest week of my life. :)

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September 19, 2007

It Vibrates: Episode 1

I tend to gather a lot of links, and keep thinking "Boy, I'll make a post about each and every one of them someday!" Someday has never, and most likely, will never come. So, instead of trying to gather some sort of motivation and do something original, I present you with It Vibrates, my new "Get all these links out of the way and act like it's new content" series. Without further ado...

Wow. I should really clean out my google reader starred items more often....

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August 24, 2007

Arse Elektronika - WHY HAVE YOU NOT BOUGHT YOUR TICKETS YET

No, seriously. $25 gets you into what will easily be the more forward thinking, interesting, and down right motherfucking AWESOME conference of this sufficiently large period of time surrounding the point at which the conference happens. The lineup is insane. The topics are important. Start hitchhiking now if you have to. I don't usually make whole paragraphs links, but it's that important.

From the depiction of a vulva in a cave painting to the newest internet porno, technology and sexuality have always been closely linked. No one can predict what the future will bring, but history indicates that sex will continue to play an essential role in technological development. The porno effect accompanies every new technological development. Is it going too far to assume that research in nanotechnology and genetic engineering will be influenced by our sexual needs? The surgical modification of sexual organs is no longer something very unusual. The question is not whether these technologies alter humanity, but how they do so.

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July 31, 2007

Kanojo Toys goes to the Adult Treasure Expo

Kanojo Toys goes to the Adult Treasure Expo

So the guys at Kanojo Toys (one of my favorite toy stores on the net. They make it possible for me to buy spermoscopes in my native language!) went to the Adult Treasure Expo in Japan, and have pictures and video up, including information on a new reusable Tenga. (I'll be covering the Tenga, which Kanojo were nice enough to send me some of the US versions of, in my Fucktube Feature, planned for sometime between 5 months ago and before the sun burns out)

I wanna go next year. I wanna go a lot.

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Sex::Tech Conference: Call for Participation

Sex::Tech Conference: Call for Participation

Interested in tech that exists in the sex namespace? Then the Sex::Tech Conference is just for you!

Ok, enough coding jokes. The Sex::Tech Conference 2008 has just posted their call for participation, with the theme being "Focus on Youth":

The Internet and mobile technologies have strengthened youth networks, provided new avenues for expression, and increased youth access to tools and information designed to improve their sexual health.

Sex::Tech will explore available tools and methods for reaching youth with culturally appropriate STD/HIV prevention and sex education interventions from a youth perspective, with input from public health professionals, educators, researchers, and technology developers.

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May 17, 2007

Halcyon Pink and the Dildonics Project


Online Videos by Veoh.com

John Halcyon Styn, that guy with the pink hair you've probably seen before if you've been around the internet for any length of time, was doing teledildonics long before I ever got into the field. Here's a video of his experiments using the Safe Sex Plus toy around a decade ago, back when webcam houses were still a novel thing. Neat stuff! (Well, other than the fact that it shows how little the technology has moved in a decade, heh)

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May 16, 2007

Artificial Means: Our New Theme Song!

Or at least, it would be if someone could crank out a bitchin' metal version of this, and we could get the good people at Fucking Machines to film the video, and lots of donations to pay the licensing fees, and so on and so forth. But anyways, on to lyrics! Song is by Christine Lavin/Flip-A-Jig, who's link I'm throwing in here a few times, 'cause, well, fuck, this r00lz.

---

Artificial Means
Words and Music by Christine Lavin/Flip-A-Jig
Music ASCAP & Happy Valley Music BMI
Copyright 1986, Palindrome Records, Philo

Oh Johnny and Janie were the perfect married couple,
But not in bed.
Oh, They tried takin' drugs, how-to books, even Dr. Ruth,
But for all intents and purposes their love life was dead.

'Til one day Janie went over to the Pink Pussycat Boutique
She bought a long cylindrical thing
Now Janie is smiling, Johnny is not
Every night you can hear him sing

He says "Our love is being kept alive by Artificial Means
You've grown emotionally attached to that little pink machine
Our relationship is not as healthy as it seems
'Cause our love is being kept alive by Artificial Means"

( okay this is a singalong for anybody who might have problems in
the Boudoire. Don't be shy )

Oh Johnny went down to the barroom
He bought one drink he bought two he bought three
Oh he moaned to the bartender the state of his married life
Bartender said "hey bud, just listen to me"
So Johnny went over to the Pink Pussycat Boutique
He bought a plastic blow up doll
Now Johnny is smiling, Janie is not,
She is angry, she is jealous, she's appalled

She says "our love is being kept alive by Artificial Means
You've grown emotionally attached to that polyethelene
Our relationship is not as healthy as it seems
'Cuz our love is being kept alive by Artificial Means"

( that was great singing, I could hear you )

Wires (wires),
switches (switches),
batteries (batteries),
plastic (plastic),
tufts of artificial hair
who'd ever think they could replace the love (Love?)
Humans used to share (humans used to, humans used to
humans used to, humans used to)

Then one fateful day, those batteries died
At the same moment that that big doll sprung a leak (hissssssssssssss)
Johnny looked a Janie, looked at Johnny, looked at Janie and they
Both found it difficult to speak
I wish I could say they threw those contraptions away
And fell in love all over again
But Johnny taped up that hissing woman
When Janie stole the batteries from his Sony Walk-man.

Because their love is being kept alive by Artificial Means
They've grown emotionally attached to these modern sex machines
Their relationship is not as healthy as it seems
'Cuz their love is being kept alive
Love is being kept alive
Love is being kept alive
By Artificial Means

---

Ok, wait a sec. I don't think I like the ending very much. 'cause everyone knows the robots are supposed to win. That's not sad. We've just evolved beyond the need for other people and now our machines are so full of awesome we just can't help ourselves.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

But even so.

Wires (wires),
switches (switches),
batteries (batteries),
plastic (plastic),
tufts of artificial hair

Sounds like a successful Friday night to me.

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May 13, 2007

Infographics via Epidermis

To say I have a... thing for infographics is quite the understatement. This video has a very interesting way to portraying stats on internet porn...

via Information Aesthetics, one of my most favorite sites ever.

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April 8, 2007

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Modern Audio Toys

8 months in the making, it's finally here...

Thanks to the Walkman-esque personal audio revival brought on by the release of the iPod, audio vibrators seem to be the toy du jour. Audio triggered vibrators have existed for years, but until recently there'd only been one player in the field. Now there are 3 choices for your bass (or possibly treble) powered thumper, each providing a different experience in terms of both hardware and usability. In this article, we'll take a look at the hardware ideas behind audio vibrators, as well as the pros and cons of each product. We'll also end with a few ideas of what can be done with these vibes that no one seems to have picked up on yet.

The Very, Very Basics of Audio Triggering

(I'm totally glossing here. If you want the straight-forward, more correct version of this, read the wikipedia entries for Band Pass Filters and Low Pass Filters.)

You've probably seen what an audio waveform looks like before, but for those of you that haven't, here's one from a piece of audio I like to use for testing audio vibes, "Akku akku" by Acid Scout.

Clip of Acid Scout - Akku Akku (1:30, MP3)

As you can see, the waveform shows us the patterns in the song. We need to pick up the beat out of that and make our motor go with it. If we were using software and a nice processor, we could look ahead and come up with an accurate version using comb filters (mmm, DSP anyone?). But, since we're playing with toys, manufactured as cheaply as possible, we've gotta do this while the music is playing with no forward knowledge of what's coming up.

The most common way of doing this in hardware is what's known as a band pass filter. These consist of a tuned Resistor-Capacitor (RC) or Resistor-Inductor-Capacitor (RLC) network that only passes frequencies that fall in certain ranges through a circuit. Since most audio toys are interested in picking up the beat, which is a low frequency, we'll be talking about Low Pass Filters in this article.

A low pass filter can be, well, a lot of things. That wall between you and your neighbors blasting some sort of bass heavy music at 3am? That's a low pass filter! Notice that what's keeping you awake and calling the cops is just the low notes! Isn't science annoying?

Low pass filters only transmit a signal for the frequencies under a certain cutoff point. For our needs, we'll call this like, ~180-200hz. We can isolate the values in that range, and use that data (run through an amplifier, then ADC, then rectified and all sorts of other stuff that I'll post about in the "building your own" article) to control other functionality. Other filter setups can be used to pick up mid-high range values and react accordingly.

Clip of Acid Scout with 200hz LowPass - Akku Akku (1:30, MP3)

See/hear the difference? This is the data we want to pass to whatever is supposed to react to the music.

Anyways, this is how an audio vibe does what it does. Most audio vibes (I only own the OhMiBod and iBuzz) run band pass filters to ADC lines on their microcontroller (uC). The uC then samples the ADC lines as fast as possible and uses the delta between samples to scale the motor speed through PWM. If the incoming audio is stereo, the ADC values for both lines may be averaged on the chip to provide proper reaction values if the audio is right/left shifted.

Enough theory, let's talk implementation.

Audi-Oh

The Audi-Oh was the first major market audio trigger vibrator available. The company seems to have existed from the mid-90's up until sometime in 2005, when their website completely disappeared. No more information is known about them, at least, by me. You can still find them in random online sex toy stores, though. (If you happen to have one, please contact me through our tips at slashdong org email address.)

Ghett-Oh


The Ghett-Oh by Afrotech shows how easy it is to make an audio vibe. Of course, Afrotech was established on the idea that you could make a whole bunch of things from salvaged parts for really fuckin' cheap, so it's no surprise that all this involves is a CD-ROM drive and a soldering iron.

Remove the disc spinning motor, attach a weight, yank one of the transistors off the circuit board, solder it all to a battery pack properly, and you're ready to go. It's got that upstate prison flavor that'll keep you ugly all night long.

OhMiBod

(Opendildonics.org article on the OhMiBod, including pictures))

Now to the current commercial toys. First off, the OhMiBod by Suki Interactive. According to the press release, Suki was founded by a New England mother of two who wanted to make sex toys more accessible to the mainstream. Of course, this description has lodged in my mind alongside Suki from the Gilmore Girls, which makes either looking at this thing /or/ watching Gilmore Girls just plain wrong (though the current season of Gilmore Girls now far outweighs the wrongness it used to be up against. DAMN YOU, NEW WRITERS.).

OhMiBod Hardware - Eye on Marketing Version

The OhMiBod is a fairly standard hard plastic white vibe, the kind you'd find in most adult toy stores in even the most conservative parts of the nation that still sell these. Now, Good Vibrations and many other major toy stores have started making a majority of their stock ergonomic toys, however, when aiming for a toy with mainstream viability, you want to give people something they're comfortable with the idea of, even if the physical implementation leaves something to be desired. This is what the OhMiBod offers. The idea of having a toy with enough technology to react to music may cause people to feel uncomfortable, and handing them something with a "normal" footprint is a good way to get them sold in the first place.

No. NO. I am lying. I cannot continue writing this way. Let's try that again.

OhMiBod Hardware - Angry Engineer Version

The vibe itself is nothing special. It's your basic hard plastic, baseball bat pearl white vibe that looks as much like a bludgeoning tool as it does a pokey tool. You'd think with all of the modern amenities afforded to us by years of ergonomics research, you might want to use something with a few more curves to introduce the main stream to the world of the buzz-buzz, but why go out on a limb when you can reduce production costs, eh?

AND ANOTHER THING. While these types of vibes are... "acceptable" for front butt play, they fail miserably in one of my favorite areas of usage: in the butt. Yes, these suck for guys. I know. I'm a guy. As guys, we ain't got shit for toys due to lots of reasons, but there's issues of footprint of thrusting tools and then there's just outright fucking ignoring half the species. Yes, I have a hole, yes, it accommodates the general shape of the OhMiBod, but hell if I'm going to act like that's the only thing on the fucking market and use it.

(Note: So I was going to include some imagery here, but have you ever tried doing a google images search on "rectum" and "colon"? Wow. Damn. googlegoat.se)

Now I'm sure you're saying "qDot, can't you take it apart in that signature way that we know and love and read your ranting posts for?". Yes. Yes I could. But I shouldn't fucking have to. If you're going to specialize you vibrator to have interesting trigger features, with NO ergonomic specializations, then WTF are you thinking? "Let's make it suck for both sexes!"

Mmm. Ok. Much better. I need a cigarette after that.

OhMiBod Functionality

The OhMiBod function mechanism is held in the cap of the vibe. Change caps, and it changes function. The Audio Cap has a circuit board that you plug your audio line into, and the speed cap is a simple potentiometer based control that everyone knows and loves.

To change the intensity of the vibe, you raise or lower the volume of your music, which is in serial with the vibe processing. This, too, is fucking stupid, because it works with no processing to prevent clipping in the amplifier. Let's look at a graph of how the reaction level in a low pass filter works when volume is changed.

First off: Our first filtered waveform, just so you remember:

Think of the range of the y-axis on that being 8 bit, so between 0-255. That means, once you hit the top of the graph, the motor is going as fast as it can.

Now let's crank the volume by some unspecified amount so we can avoid math but still get the point across:

Notice how often we're above that line now. A lot. A whole lot. This is what is called "clipping". Now, this is not representing what is coming out of your headphones or speakers, this is what the chip is seeing. This may be what the perfect volume for listening for you looks like to the chip. It means that we'll have the motor on at full speed, all the time. There's no way for the processor to differentiate between low and high and whatever else because the base signal is overpowering the amplifier and the amplifier is all "OMGWTFBBQ" and the chip is all like "O RLY?" and the PWM is like "SRSLY 255" all the fucking time.

The way to alleviate this without building your own damn circuit is to get a headphone volume patch cable and put it between you and the audio in vibrator. That way you can act as a manual cutoff between the music and the vibe, and have the music at the volume you want while still getting proper reaction from the vibe. The fact that this isn't provided with the toy or just outright fixed is a serious oversight, though.

The OhMiBod Community

Seeing as the lovely people at OhMiBod were the first to send me free hardware for writing about them, I feel like I should leave a least a little positivity in this article, so I'll talk about their community. Building a community around your toy is a fucking fantastic idea, especially when you're aiming for a demographic that might be otherwise uncomfortable. It allows owners of the OhMiBod to recommend music to use with the vibe, as well as featuring mixes that accentuate
a certain mood. They also have DJ mixes available to accommodate play with the vibe.

Honestly, it's a decent idea, especially since it's set up by the distributor themselves. It lets people know that others like them use this type of product, and embarrassment is always one of the tougher parts of buying a toy.

iBuzz

(Opendildonics.org article on the IBuzz, including pictures))

Ah, the iBuzz. The second company to send me hardware for running this site. However, not only did they send me hardware, they sent me TWO iBuzzes: One for personal use, and ONE TO TAKE APART FOR THE SITE (which I did).

iBuzz people, you are my bestest friends evar.

iBuzz Hardware

Man, it's all about the 2.5mm jacks. If you read this site, you know how much I love them. They're like an open API for toy control (Ok, that's a really horrible analogy, but I figure it'll let some of you 2.0 kids out there understand this newfangled "hardware" stuff). I have eggs all over the place, and I have all sorts of toys that will drive them. Modularity kicks ass. Sure, they aren't ergonomic, but there's still a range of them to choose from. Just go check out the Blowfish.com bullet vibrator page to see.

Anyways, the iBuzz delivers on this end, much better than the OhMiBod. The iBuzz itself with a small white box with a switch (to change between modes) and a button (with LEDs! Blinky lights++!). The package size was reduced by 50% in the current version from the v1. Yay small!

In terms of jacks, you've got audio input, /dual/ audio output (No more losing that stupid splitter!), and single motor output. The toy comes with an interesting 2 way egg set, too. 2 eggs, one jack. So, you can share one iBuzz between two people, with two audio outputs and two eggs on the same box. Or you get double the fun yourself. And if you happen to lose the eggs at any point, you can easily replace them. Fucking brilliant.

The audio circuits for the iBuzz and the OhMiBod are exactly the same, and I mean /exactly/ (more on this later). So the kvetching about clipping from the OhMiBod part of this still totally applies. Insert that rant down here again.

iBuzz Functionality

The iBuzz v2 supports 3 modes:

  • Audio activation
  • Pattern mode - 7 different selectable vibration patterns
  • Speed mode - 12 different speed levels

And of course, the LIGHTS! The LEDs flash to pattern or audio activation). My inner raver is totally PLUR puddling over this.

iBuzz and OhMiBod: Separated at Birth, literally

A few months ago, I pointed out that after taking apart the iBuzz and the OhMiBod, I found them to have almost the same exact hardware. The iBuzz people were happy to send me the explanation. Apparently both the iBuzz, OhMiBod, and a fair amount of other toys are all made by the same manufacturer in China. Even the Vibraexciter is made there. So they are, outside of some of the programming for the patterns and speed modes in the iBuzz, the EXACT SAME HARDWARE. However, as I ranted about muchly above, modularity > baseball bats.

Talk2Me

It's always the case that the thing that gets it (somewhat) right also isn't out yet. The Talk2Me Vibrator by SoftLabs uses not one, but TWO Band Filters.

The first toy will be a rather slickly made rabbit vibe, with treble being relayed in the clitoral stimulator and bass in the insertion part of the vibe. Not only that, it's wireless! They've actually built a small RF system that will allow you to stray from your music system and concentrate on the vibe. While it's going to be on the pricey side ($150), I certainly can't wait to get my hands on one of these. Even if it isn't particularly suited to my anatomy.

IGoGo: All in one! Only $500!

Update: The iGoGo is a TENS unit, not a vibrator. This should've been obvious by the pads, but I'm a lazy bastard who didn't read his own linked article.

What if you want to carry your music ON your TENS UNIT, though? Then there's the OSIM iGoGo! 128mb of memory, and only $500!

Now, I mean, there's not a lot to say here, except that it's a violently overpriced MP3 player that costs more than a nice manygig iPod plus 2 of the toys here. But really, with pictures like this:

Wow. Electrostim MP3 player. That's.... I'm not real sure what that is.

DIY

In the time it took me to get around to finishing this article, something popped up that I wasn't aware of, which should make doing DIY audio projects a little easier. There's the LM4970.

This chip is made for LED reaction on cell phones due to audio input. It takes 3 channels, all tuned for whatever band you please, and then translates that to what I believe is logic level PWM signals. So DIY could quickly move ahead of current product and have one MORE level of response. Of course, you could also wire up your own chip to do all sorts of crazy multiline filtering, but, well, whatever. This is easy. Assuming you can solder it.

Audio as Teledildonics Control Mechanism

So we've talked about solo play and distributed DJ lists, but why not create a remote control mechanism for audio toys through networks? All that needs to be done is to isolate the frequency response bands on each toy, document it, then create a program that can quickly make patterns inside those boundaries. Hook your toy into your sound card and you're ready to start playing.

While this sounds perfect up front, there's a few issues. First off, getting the toy connected correctly. You either need a multichannel card or a way to split right/left channels to have one running to the toy and the other to speakers/headphones (unless you don't mind running in silence). However, both of these are pretty common these days. Secondly, this is not the most precise of control mechanisms, even though you can send lossless audio across if you're using the audio channel only for control. However, since most people will want voice or music or something else, you can't get a good guarantee on what kind of control resolution you'll get. But, since we're using cheap, crappy motors most of the time anyways, this might not matter too much.

I plan on writing a quick test program that will work with the iBuzz and OhMiBod in this way, and will have it out sometime between now and forever.

Well, there you have it. An overview of all the audio toys currently available, and some new ideas on controlling them. So get out there and play! 'cause it very well could be 8 months before my next article.

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April 7, 2007

Hector, the Robot Porn Star

Yeah. I... yeah.

Technology is awesome.

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April 2, 2007

The Naughtyizing of Croquet: Day 1 of 29

It's pretty easy to get confirmation of how completely fucking random my brain is. Just ask anyone who's met me. I have problems keeping on a subject for more than 2 minutes, much less months at a time.

So, even though I've got ton of backed up projects and writing (hi audio vibe people and fucktube people! I swear I'm working on it!), why not jump in and start a new one... Right now? Unfortunately, there's only one way to do this pure, and that's by starting it the second it hits my brain.

So. Croquet. I have chosen what is possibly the most unhelpful image ever to illustrate this because that is how I roll.

Croquet is a 3D collaborative development environment written by some very smart people. Very, very, very smart people. However, in easier to understand terms, think of it like Second Life (and if you don't know what Second Life is, um... shit.), except the major differences are:

  • Everything is open source
    • versus just Second Life's client being open source. For now. Gonna change. At some point.
  • You run your own server and host everything
    • versus Linden Lab running and maintaining all of the servers
    • and running your own isn't necessarily a good thing. Do you know how much bandwidth this shit takes? Well, you'll find out. Remember to dip your TiSP lines in some crisco to make things faster!
  • Everything is written on top of the Squeak platform, which is pretty much Smalltalk "with benefits" (well, benefits like pretty much being an operating system. I think I'll start calling these 'emacs benefits')
    • versus Second Life's C++ core with LSL language on top of it

And there's a whole bunch of lower level architecture issues, too, but if you care about those... Well, god, I wish there was an article I could point you at, but on initial google, there doesn't really seem to be a "This is Croquet, This is SL, this is the apples, these are the oranges" type deal. It's all "[Croquet/SL] [is/is not] an [operating system/true open source/the next big thing/dessert topping/floor cleaner]". At this point, I don't have enough information to say anything, either.

The question remains, what the fuck does this have to do with Slashdong? Well, the idea is pretty simple.

Don't get me wrong. I loves me some Second Life. And not just because they, you know, pay me and let me make virtual worlds all damn day. Which is totally fucking sweet, let me tell you (Hell, come work for Linden Lab! Did I mention the awesomeisity of it? 'cause, really, it is.). But really, there's some ways that SL works you just can't change (and should never be changed, 'cause the idea works for what it's supposed to do, but more on that in a later post), mainly that whole "LL serves up everything" deal (Ok, so this /is/ slated to change at some point in the future, but bear with me for the moment). This is fine and dandy if you can drop the 16 or so Benjamins on an island of your own then sell your virtual (or real) body on the real (or virtual) street to keep up the maintenance fees. It also means you've got a built in user base of something like a bazillion people (plus or minus a hojillion. Yeah, go ahead and hump those numbers 'til they bleed, blogosphere) of people who might be (and I 100% guarantee a few that ARE) into whatever it is you're into.

But, not everyone has the $tack$ needed to roll on virtual dub$ of Second Life. More importantly, not everyone wants their business happening in public, or even the "private but not totally private" that is owning your own SL region. If you're still completely clueless of who I'm referring to here, just read this article and focus on the shouldn't part. Now, of course, even peer to peer, someone could be sitting outside your window (network) with a camera (packet sniffer or maybe some actually totally awesome scifi movie shit where it renders out all your network traffic into really neat graphs and pictures which make for a great show on a 30" LCD. But most likely, packet sniffer.), so the usual "I don't care how many Tor hops your going through, this shit ain't private" rules apply. But still, there's levels. Second Life gives you one of them, and it's great for many, many people. There's others that want different things, though. Thus, we arrive at the apartment model.

The apartment model is my term for a virtual, collaborative 3d environment that allows pure, peer-to-peer connections. Sure, you can join nets or meshes or grids or whatever, but if you want, you can also just hook up person to person (or person to machine to person to machine or...) and go about your business.

Funny enough, Playstation Home runs this sort of model. As far as I understand it, you will host your own apartment, and other people will come visit and completely stomp the shit out of your tiny little cable modem pipe 'cause you're hostin' it all! (ever wonder why they're not allowing user created content?). Not to mention, assuming you're one of the majority, you most likely don't have a PS3, nor do you have any plan to buy one any time soon. So that's just right out, anyways.

However, Croquet is totally like "Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades" and will let you render anything you damn well please (even if it does mean slicing your face off). They have VNC, web browsing, all sorts of crazy shit. I bet there's totally a ninja in there somewhere. Waiting to slice your face off. Because that's what they do.

Obviously, this is HUGE for the kind of things that, um, well, I do, and this project is all about me doin' my thing.

Back in July of 2005, I managed to get a full hardware and software interface together for Second Life in a concentrated total of 3 days from starting my first account (I think I actually took a day off work, even). For this one, since the platform is a little bit more daunting and I'm starting from scratch (well, almost, I did play with one of the beta builds for a while well over a year ago), I'm giving myself a month. I'll be blogging on my progress daily (Woooooooooooooo a full month of content! That'll be a first!), as well as rethinking my interface for Second Life, and, god (or whatever the hell deity it is that puts this shit in my head) willing, by May 1st, I'll have a Second Life to Croquet bridge.

Along the way, I'll be blurting out my thoughts on Croquet, SL (which, having now spent 10 months in the prim mines, I think I kinda maybe sorta get like, a little), Squeak, virtual worlds, programming, the internet, and anything else I feel like rambling about.

You'll also get a look inside my head during my development process of things like this. If that doesn't send you running away, you should have your fight or flight response tuned post-haste.

It'll be a fun ride. Or at least, a ride. Or hell, it could be a total failure. But I try to keep negativity out until day 2. Wanna help out? Join our message boards and tell me what the hell I'm doing wrong, then tell others what they're doing wrong in telling me what I'm doing wrong! Viva Open Source Community!

And BTW: Alan Kay, if you're reading this... Can I have your autograph? Object Orientation is, like, totally, hella awesome.

Oh yeah. And, um, sorry in advance.

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March 31, 2007

Help JD-1116 Buy a Robot Suit

Help JD-1116 Buy a Robot Suit

JD-1116, admin of the MaleBots Robotics Fetish Site, is having a fucking kick ass suit of armor built by Nightmare Armor Studios, and needs help to fund it. I'm not usually up for shilling for charity on this site, but dude. It's a fucking suit of robotic armor. I mean, I want a pony (please send me money too), but this is so much more badass than a pony that... Dude. IT'S FUCKING ROBOTIC ARMOR. GIVE THE MAN YOUR MONEY BEFORE HE TAKES OVER THE EARTH. Maybe he'll spare you then.

Also: MaleBots is having their end of month special for site sign-up, so go do that too. It's a damn fine site.

(Also: Really. I wasn't kidding about the pony. Plz send me money. Or a pony. See, here's a link you can buy it from, even. But send JD money first.)

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March 24, 2007

Twitterdildonics: The Video

Twitterdildonics: The Video

Look ma, I'm on GETV!


Click To Play

While at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas, Roving RoboReporter Violet Blue caught up with a unique hacker by the name of Kyle Machulis. Kyle isn't your ordinary teledildonic hardware hacker. No, Kyle created the ultimate real-time sex device mashup by linking public Twitter updates to a Rez Trance Vibrator allowing users to FEEL Twitter messages. Kyle demonstrates and explains how it all works to Violet. You will never regard Twitter the same way again. (This video is safe for work, no matter what your industry).

Episode links: Violet Blue, qDot (slashdong), MMOrgy, IGDA Sex, Twitter, Rez Trance Vibrator

You know, I've heard myself on podcasts multiple times since I started Slashdong, but I'm pretty sure this is the first video I've done. I'm totally having that whole "hear your own voice recorded for the first time" reaction...

So, there it is, the underground hit of SXSW, Twitterdildonics. I still plan on overhauling a few things with it and possibly making some different interfaces (Morse Code and Motor Based Phoneme Projection were both recommended), but even so, nothing beats the original.

Remember, if you're interested in using Twitterdildonics, it hooks up perfectly with the Drmn' Trance Vibe, the open source sex toy!

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March 17, 2007

Motion Portrait: Speeding over the Uncanny Valley at Warp 9

At GDC Expo, I happened upon the Silicon Studios booth, where they were showing off Motion Portrait, a new piece of face mapping/morphing software that... well, it hacks the uncanny valley into tiny, bloody chunks.

Here's a decent video of it so you can get an idea of what's going on:

And then here's my face mapped into it, as taken by my cellphone:



Now, all they had to do was take an expressionless picture of me in order to get the facial manipulation to work. Since I'm posting this on a tech sex site, right after a post on transhumanist ethics in sex, the discussions of the horrid misuse of this technology is left as an exercise for the reader and/or reblogger.

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From Virtual Sex to No Sex?

From Virtual Sex to No Sex?

Just found an article from the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies by Dr. James Hughes (a transhumanist ethicist who has a whole bunch of cool articles, check that link for them) about the neuroethics of virtual sex. Much of the beginning of the article actually references some of my writing here on slashdong, and I found it through my referrers. I was all giddy that someone had written me up in IEEE somewhere then realized that was a T not an E and got all pouty, but continued reading anyways.

And now I wanna go curl up in a corner and rock back and forth while crying for a while, I think.

But the equipment has been so crude that it has not provided a very interesting experience for many. In about ten years however I’m sure that Wii-sex will be quite popular.

Agreed. Equipment totally sucks. (I'm not kidding here. I'm never one to defend our current teledildonics technology, nor am I saying I'm doing much to advance it. I just make the easy stuff and hook it up to the silly stuff). However, I'll ask again... Why does everyone love the Wii-sex idea so much?

Eventually we will be able to directly stimulate the parts of the brain that desire specific partners or experiences. In the future we will be able to specifically turn off sexual thoughts about children, and turn on appropriate sexual thoughts about adults. We will be able to make gays straight, and straights gay, and everything in between. There will be no more necessity for sexual boredom between long term partners. We will be able to wire ourselves to only desire sex with our spouses, to only desire it in-body, and to desire it according to an agreed upon frequency. Or we can turn off our jealousy, and turn up our libidos, if we have agreed to a polyamorous lifestyle.

... Man, what the fuck are we gonna do for sitcoms on TV when this happens?

In all seriousness though, there'd have been a time when I would've knocked this whole article off as fucking nonsense (possibly earlier this morning even, before I took all the cold medicine I'm on right now). However, 2 years down the road, spending all my time working on or in virtual worlds and watching how people are innovating in sex tech, all I can do is stand by the side of the road, crack open a beer, and say "Yup."

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March 15, 2007

MariaScript - The Interactive Sex Language

MariaScript - The Interactive Sex Language

Someone (who's managed to keep their contact information pretty well hidden) has come up with a language specification (but I don't believe a parser is yet available) for having sex with an android. I don't think we're gonna be seeing this language on Lambda The Ultimate any time soon.

Honestly, I'm not sure why this /needs/ its own language, but I guess I can applaud the effort nonetheless. Or at least give it that weird, tilted head, "Huh?" kinda look. Doesn't look like there's any implementation or examples available as of yet, but lord knows I've built things for no reason before...

Since there's a good chance we'll kill the tripod bandwidth limit for this site, I've mirr