I’ve been toying with the idea of making my own internet show. It would be about obsolete technology. What specifically? I’m not too sure. At first I considered just how to use some obscure hardware in the style of a showcase tutorial. However, I think it would be interesting to work new life into old tech. For example, I could talk about using a LaserDisc player, but it might also be interesting to figure out how to rip some titles that never made it to DVD. Maybe learning about rotary phones could be fun, but converting a handset into a standard microphone could also be something of interest.
I’ve had the idea of starting a show for a few years and I feel that I am close to being able to produce a prototype. I’ve attempted segments for other shows, as well as management for new ones with little success. Most of my projects get tied up as ideas and never solidify. This project, however, has some motivation behind it as well as the availability of tools and talent. Though I have two t‘s I lack time, and therefore may be limited in my conquest. I do hope to have something to show in the next few months.
So in December, I made a goal for myself to do some iptv archive work on my Winter break. As the time ticked down for December, I realized I did nothing to reach my goal. So in early January I started reuploading to the blip.tv account, paying attention to formats and conversion timeouts. It came to where I reuplaoded everything that was there, and than some.
So from there, I began work on a website for this archive, something static. When Stage6 went down, I lost all my tags and home made descriptions, and I didn’t want to have to go through that again. Enter http://cmdline.tv/iptvarchive. Its not much to look at, but it gets the job done. I hope to be uploading a series or two every week. With a few hundred gigabytes of this stuff, that shouldn’t be too hard to keep going.
So check out the site, spread it around, register, tell me I’ve got something wrong or broken, have fun.
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…
After I finished making my new file, I decided to see just exactly how the frequencies changed using another great free tool, 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
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 really 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.
I had heard about the fon early in December I believe. For some reason, I wasn’t smart enough to order a load of free ones to toy with. For those of you who don’t know, the la fon, or fonera as it can be called, is a wireless router designed solely to be set up giving free wireless access to anyone and everyone that happens to connect. It creates 2 wifi networks. One public and one private WEP encrypted dealy for access to all your private whatnot. The reason most people flocked to these was because they were being given out for free by the company that makes them. So you got a free wireless router, and you could sign up a bunch of times and order a dozen of them. For some reason, I overlooked the link and got one right on the deadline before they stopped the free offer. And because of this act of karma, the power supply for my fon doesn’t work so I had to splice a D-Link psu together to get something workable. By the way, their tech support is lacking. They claim one day wait and I’m on the fourth day with nothing.
Anyways, the problem that many people had with these devices is that as soon as they plug a fon into the internet, the company locks it down and you can only use it for the fon service. There is an answer to this. Disgruntled or just perhaps curious people discovered a way to run DD-WRT on the fon making it a fully accessible wifi router. If you get all the files needed to do this ahead of time, its quite a simple procedure. Because I suck at gathering necessary materials, it took me near 5 hours to complete the install. Bear in mind that if you have ever used SSH , telnet, and know your local ip, this shouldn’t take you more than half an hour. There’s the golden question of “Is this worth it?”. Depends on your situation in particular. Am I gonna use this day to day? Probably not. If I need to set up a quick wifi for my laptop at a lan party, this small box may be just what I need.
Hopefully soon, fon will offer another free giveaway. I could use some more of these to screw with, along with one to actually use with their service. Its an interesting idea all in its own that I hope will catch on. For more information and perhaps the opportunity to obtain one of these suckers, check out The main fon website.
