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The Wii Fit / Whee Fit

Again attacking the stereotype that video games are for people who only wish to exercise their fingers, Pretendo® began preorders for its Wheeâ„¢ Fit home exercise product, just in time for Mother’s Day. Get Fit and have Fun with this latest home fitness device for the Pretendo® Wheeâ„¢!


Nichelle Wilcox, a personal fitness trainer and Mom in Nashua, N.H., loves her Wheeâ„¢ Fit!

Enjoy these thrilling exercises:

Thank you for choosing the Whee™ Fit exercise peripheral from Pretendo®, for use with your Pretendo® game system.

Enjoy the following exciting exercises (we recommend starting with Dialing Panic, shown on page 2):

Snowboarding (core muscles, legs)
Play your favorite snowboarding game while standing on your Wheeâ„¢ Fit. Imagine the thrill of controlling the onscreen movements via your
Wheeâ„¢ Fit device.

Basic Balance (core muscles)
Close your eyes and try to balance on the Wheeâ„¢ Fit.

Advanced Balance (core muscles, cardio)
Close your eyes and try to balance on the Wheeâ„¢ Fit while in the middle of a busy freeway.

Shower Power (core muscles)
Close your eyes and try to balance on the Wheeâ„¢ Fit while taking a shower.

Advanced Shower Power (core muscles, cardio)
Close your eyes and try to balance on the Wheeâ„¢ Fit while atop a tall hill during a thunderstorm.

Bumper Jumper (hands and fingers)
While standing on your Wheeâ„¢ Fit, grasp the rear bumper or side mirror of a vehicle stopped at an intersection. The Wheeâ„¢ Fit will score points for each second you remain gripping the vehicle. If you hear the sound of approaching sirens, discontinue use.

Advanced Bumper Jumper (hands and fingers)
While standing on your Wheeâ„¢ Fit, grasp the rear bumper or side mirror of a vehicle as it enters the freeway onramp. The Wheeâ„¢ Fit will score points for each second you remain gripping the vehicle. If you hear the sound of approaching sirens, discontinue use. Game ends if an arrest is made.

Push ’em Up (arms, chest, and shoulders)
Place the Wheeâ„¢ Fit in front of you on the floor, and use it as a platform for performing push ups.

Advanced Push ’em Up (arms, chest, and shoulders)
Place the Wheeâ„¢ Fit in front of you on the floor, and use it as a platform for performing one-handed push ups.

Super Advanced Push ’em Up (neck and tongue)
Place the Wheeâ„¢ Fit in front of you on the floor, and use it as a platform for performing push ups with your tongue.

Press Stress (arms, chest, and shoulders)
While lying face up on the floor, grip the Wheeâ„¢ Fit in both hands, and press it up toward the ceiling.

Advanced Press Stress (arms, chest, and shoulders)
While lying face up on the floor, place a small child on the Wheeâ„¢ Fit device. While gripping the Wheeâ„¢ Fit in both hands, press it up toward the ceiling.

Super Advanced Press Stress (arms, chest, and shoulders)
While lying face up on the floor, place a small automobile on the Wheeâ„¢ Fit device. While gripping the Wheeâ„¢ Fit in both hands, press it up toward the ceiling.

Mallet Fun (arms and shoulders)
Using a 3-pound sledgehammer, strike the Wheeâ„¢ Fit directly in the middle. Try for 100 reps!

Luge Run (arms and shoulders)
Lay down on the Wheeâ„¢ Fit, and use your arms to propel yourself across the floor.

Advanced Luge Run (arms and shoulders)
Lay down on the Wheeâ„¢ Fit, and use your arms to propel yourself down a steep hill.

Super Advanced Luge Run (arms and shoulders, cardio)
Lay down on the Wheeâ„¢ Fit, and use your arms to propel yourself down a steep hill that bottoms out onto a freeway.

Luge Flight (arms and shoulders, cardio)
Lay down on the Wheeâ„¢ Fit, and use your arms to propel yourself down a steep hill that terminates in a ski jump.

Dialing Panic (fingers, cardio)
Using an ordinary telephone, practice dialing 9-1-1 and describing the current situation to the friendly emergency operator.

Yes, folks, this is what we gave Nichelle for Mother’s Day, along with a promise to buy her a real Wii Fit when they were available.

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Gin, Television, and Social Surplus

While I am working on posts about “The Weaker Vessel,” and “Verbal/Emotional Abuse” (and looking into how a ‘bot hacked my BLOG files to include hidden Spam links), here’s a bit to get you thinking:

Clay Shirky published a lightly edited transcript of his speech at a recent Web 2.0 conference, entitled, “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus.”

You will definitely want to read the whole post, but here are a few noteworthy excerpts:

Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened–rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before–free time.

And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.

How much television do we watch?

[H]ow big is that surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project–every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in–that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it’s a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it’s the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.

And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that’s 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus. People asking, “Where do they find the time?” when they’re looking at things like Wikipedia don’t understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of this asset that’s finally being dragged into what Tim calls an architecture of participation.

This reminds me, I was listening to “This American Life,” episode 328, “What I Learned from Television.” In a live broadcast, Ira Glass announces to the audience that average Americans watch 29 hours of television a week. There is a loud, collective gasp from the audience, which is composed of course, of not merely NPR listeners, but NPR listeners who paid to go out and see a live presentation of the radio program. Twenty-nine hours is the average? Suddenly I don’t feel so bad about playing World of WarCraft.

As Shirky writes,

In this same conversation with the TV producer I was talking about World of WarCraft guilds, and as I was talking, I could sort of see what she was thinking: “Losers. Grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves.”

At least they’re doing something.

But I digress.

As I write this, our pastor is speaking on “Reflections from the Back of a Bike,” noting how we prefer to ride in a car metaphorically driven by the pastor, instead of providing our own power on a bicycle, comparing the early church’s prayer to “speak the Word of God with boldness” as recorded in Acts 4:29 to our typical prayers of, well, whatever; of how we fail to really act on our belief in an Almighty God and actually serve Him with actions, every hour of our lives. How we need to embrace the mission of Christ and actually do something to reflect what we say we believe.

To be honest, I have heard many such sermons over the years, but this one is different. It’s Scriptural. It isn’t designed to evoke an emotional response. Its success won’t be measured by the number of people who raise their hands or “go forward” to the altar. Its success will, rather, be measured by how we let Christ give us boldness to use our associations and talents and burdens to change others’ lives. It’s real. It’s a reflection of how he actually lives in following Christ.

And the Word of God convicts me, that I ought to be so focused.

P.S.: Shirky makes some fascinating conclusions based on analyses of both current society and the Industrial Revolution, getting into such subjects as cognitive surplus, shared information projects, and participatory media. It’s one of the few must-read pieces I’ve encountered in the past year. He wraps up with a look into this gem (which in this context of excerpts seems disconnected, but in reality is not):

I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she’s going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn’t what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, “What you doing?” And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, “Looking for the mouse.”

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Moondust and Duct Tape

This story about duct tape use on the moon was simply too good to pass up on cross-posting.

[I]n [the] Taurus-Littrow [valley, in the Sea of Serenity, on the moon] a missing fender was a potential disaster. The reason is moondust. When a rover rolls across the lunar surface, it kicks up a plume of moondust in its wake. (Astronauts called them “rooster tails.”) Without a fender, the rover would be showered by a spray of dark, abrasive grit. White spacesuits blackened by dust could turn into dangerous absorbers of the fierce lunar sun with astronauts overheating inside. Sharp-edged dust wiped off visors would scratch the glass, making helmets difficult to see out of. Moondust also had an uncanny way of working itself into hinges, latches and joints, rendering them useless.

Cernan: “And I hate to say it, but I’m going to have to take some time to try … to get that fender back on. Jack, is the tape under my seat, do you remember?” (He’s referring to a roll of ordinary, gray duct tape.)

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Total Cuteness

It’s that time again … I was reviewing photos and realized that the world needs more NaNi. Here she is!


NaNi readies herself for a Christmas ambush with David’s new AirZooka.


NaNi enjoys the Manchester Regional FIRST Robotics competition.


NaNi demonstrates her combat stance.


Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.


NaNi during a weight training session.


NaNi demonstrates her Xbox 360 Halo 3 ‘Tude.


Oh, here’s NaNi with our other kids. Meh.

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Belittled by PETCO: A Bad Customer Experience

Two weeks ago, Isaac spent some of his savings on purchasing a new tarantula, to replace Chandan, one that had died after about 3.5 years in our care. (The tarantula was fully grown when we purchased it, so we expect the death was due to old age, as these Chilean spiders, typically sold in pet shops, live only to 5-8 moltings, and she had molted thrice, about once a year, while we had her.)

However, the new tarantula did not fare so well. After a week, Isaac noted that she had some trouble climbing, within another week she was dead.

PETCO issues a 15-day guarantee on "companion animals" they sell, so we headed back to PETCO to see if we could get an exchange. To prove to them that we had adequate and appropriate housing, we brought the large plastic shoebox type storage container (about 2.5 gallons in volume) containing the spider.

That is where the trouble started.

The attendant examined the box, and said, “You’ve used fertilized potting soil; it looks like you killed it.”

(For the record, we did use potting soil. Potting soil often contains Styrofoam, perlite, or vermiculite to improve aeration and water retention. In this case, our soil contained perlite, which is completely harmless. Of course, some potting soils, even organic ones, contain fertilizers and insecticides, but I was very careful to avoid selecting one of those.)

“No, I replied carefully, "we used sterilized potting soil with no chemical additives. You must understand we had a tarantula living for nearly four years in exactly these conditions, and it was an adult when we bought it."

Then he seemed to express concern over the container. I quickly pointed out, "The container is not airtight,” which, after some seemed to satisfy him.

By this time I was seething, although outwardly completely controlling my anger. We are not idiots. We have been keeping tarantulas for four years now. Chandan, the one who died several months ago, exhibited no problems of any kind during her life. I even keep a tarantula (named after one of our VPs) at my office. I strongly resented the immediate and obvious blaming, and felt even worse because essentially everything I said was ignored, even when I was correct.

Reluctantly, the clerk issued me a refund, and we headed off to the reptile and fish department, which houses tarantulas and such. The fish display featured a wall of Betas, all in tiny, nonaerated plastic containers. Great way to take care of those fish!

And there we waited. And waited. And waited. Isaac repeatedly spoke to the staff, who assured us they would be “right with us.” This went on for about 30 minutes. (Thankfully I’d brought a book to read.)

Finally, the “spider guy” came out. He claimed the soil contained “chemical crystals” that kill insects. I explained the reality to him, which he clearly didn’t accept, and recommended peat instead. He also claimed we had told him we would be keeping the tarantula in a 10-gallon aquarium, which, we, of course had not, and he wondered, “How do you expect to regulate the temperature in a plastic container?” (I did not want to go into physics with him.)

Initially and over the years, we’ve done most of our research on tarantula care via the Internet, from a variety of sources. If we go the experts, the American Tarantula Society, we can see what their articles and care guides say:

Pet Pals sold in pet shops, work well for many species. Many plastic and glass containers can be adapted for tarantula homes.

They also recommend topsoil or potting soil as the ideal substrate for tarantulas. Peat was only second-best.

Good air circulation in a container has been thought by some in the past to be a requirement, however, serious doubt has been cast on this idea in the last few years. The up side is good air circulation may prevent stagnant conditions with very high humidity that can easily breed mold, fungi, bacteria, nematodes and mites.

The clerk said he might not sell us another tarantula, and that he would have to talk to the other clerk and check. After a few minutes, he returned, and informed us that we could buy a replacement tarantula, but they would not provide a guarantee this time. We paid for the new tarantula with our refund money, and left.

Over the week I triple-checked our information. The ATS agreed with our care policies completely, contrary to the details the PETCO personnel provided. So, the next weekend, I went back to the store and spoke with the manager. I told him that I understood people do not typically do the research into caring for exotics, but that we were experienced tarantula owners who were thorough about what we were doing. I explained that we were very dissatisfied with our treatment, and pointed out where the ATS recommendations were contrary to the store’s advice.

He apologized for how we were treated, and said he had all our information, and that he would have the regional controller call us.

We’re still waiting for the call …

But at least the new tarantula is doing well.

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Nine 11 Boxes Later: Comcast TiVo Service

When I learned that Comcast was finally rolling out it’s long-delayed TiVo service, I was thrilled. I had seen the benefits of TiVo via several friends, but had avoided buying my own TiVo box because the HD versions are so expensive. I had been moderately disappointed in Comcast’s home-grown DVR service (which sported a clunky user interface and a mere 12 hours of nonupgradeable high-definition recording capacity).

We counted down the days until the Comcast installer would arrive to upgrade our two cable boxes. To our surprise, rather than merely a firmware update, the installer provided two brand new Motorola DCH3416 boxes, complete with 160 GB of storage and a wonderfully designed TiVo remote.

The cable guy came out mid-day on a Friday, and claims he tested everything before he left, but by the time I got home a few hours later, neither TiVo box was working correctly. The downstairs box had staccato sound, the upstairs box simply displayed the loading screen and never got beyond it. Tech support had the cable guy call us back, and he was actually willing to drop his kids off and come back out to try to fix the boxes.

Unfortunately, what we needed were replacement boxes, and he didn’t have two more of the DCH3416s, so we had to wait until Monday and another technician visit. (The technician was supposed to arrange for his boss to handle things on Saturday, but this never happened; on Monday Comcast had no record of anything like that being set up.)

In talking to customer support and in subsequent visits from the on-site troubleshooters/installers, it became clear that not much information had been propagated to the installers about how to set up these boxes or keep them working. One installer explained that in his training for the new cable box, the cable box was broken, so they had to learn from a PowerPoint presentation on the setup instead.

The downstairs new box worked for a few days, and then quit, going into an infinite booting cycle which Comcast guys call the “Crazy Eights,” because for part of the boot-up, the entire display shows all the segments, like in the photo above. Comcast replaced it the box. We learned that updates to the program guide or updates to the firmware can cause this problem, meaning the software hadn’t been quite ready to roll out, from a QA perspective.

So far, we are on our ninth cable box. Other than the sound problem exhibited, most of the time the issue was the “Crazy Eights,” although once the downstairs box simply decided it wasn’t going to record anything. Twice the boxes of have recoverable, but at the cost of reinstalling the firmware, which has to be initiated by an on-site tech. (This is apparently an evidence of improvement—until a week ago, such a feat was apparently impossible.) Of course, once you have to exchange the box, all one’s saved programming goes away as well. Likewise, firmware reinstalls seem to wipe out all previously recorded video and settings.

The boxes have dual tuners, but the software doesn’t take advantage of them correctly. If one is watching one program, a confirmation dialog requests switching channels to record a scheduled or suggested recording. Hey, it has two tuners. Perhaps the one not in use could be used for the recording? I had a similar problem with two recordings that started an hour apart which I had set to run one minute over; the second recording never happened.

There’s no 5.1 digital surround output. We get 48 MHz PCM output that’s in Dolby Surround (stereo) only. This is expected to be fixed in a future software update, but far more critical fixes need to go in first.

TiVo users will be wondering about TiVo Desktop, the software that lets one use a computer on the network to transfer shows, program the TiVo, and even move recorded programs from TiVo to TiVo or burn them onto DVDs … although it is not currently possible to use it, the powers that be at Comcast are actually considering enabling it, because so many customers have requested it. (Like the regular Comcast DVR box, the DCH3416 sports FireWire, eSATA, USB, and network ports. Like the regular Comcast DVR, they are all currently disabled, except maybe the FireWire port which will only output what is currently playing—and we only get that because the FCC mandates it.)

Other than the problems with the boxes self-destructing at irregular but rapid intervals, I couldn’t be happier with the service, especially at only an extra $3 a month. The 160GB hard drive give us enough storage space. The TiVo user experience is much better than the Comcast DVR software, akin to the difference between the Hotmail and GMail. Programming is rapid and easy, and navigation is a dream. In fact, the overall user experience is good enough that I’ve kept having Comcast replace the boxes rather than go back to the old Comcast DVR. Even the HD image quality seems to have improved. (I do wish the menu response were a little faster, but I believe this is normal for such devices.)

A software update is due out on April 1, that should correct the “Crazy Eights” and approximately 40 other bugs, but will not yet provide 5.1 digital sound. I hope our current box lasts until then!

Addendum: The downstairs box went into “Crazy Eight” mode on Friday. So now we are up to 10 boxes.

Updates at last!

April 1 came, and of course required a visit from yet another Cable installer. With the update, our box went into a mode where the TiVo software itself wouldn’t work, although we could at least change channels.

The technician was actually upset, because he believed he could reset our box with a little bit of help from ATS, but they wouldn’t work with him, so he had to swap it out. He swapped the box, and the downstairs one, and updated them both with the new code.

The improvements are significant: The menus respond about twice as fast. The record light illuminates on the box when something is recording. Dolby 5.1 is back (which we did not expect yet). I even think both tuners actually record (we have not tested that yet). So far both boxes are working fine.

The technician said that an update planned in about a month will further improve the menu response time, which is now reasonable, but was painfully slow before. That’s the beauty of Java: “Write once; run really slowly everywhere.”

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2008 as Seen from 1968

“The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer.”

In 2008, Mechanix Illustrated prognosticated on what life would be like 40 years later. Some of the predications are eerily accurate, some may be seen in another 40 years, and as for others, we can only hope. Take a look!

(While I’m working on 3 other relatively detailed posts, I figured I’d provide something to chew on to prove I’m still alive. For the record, I was born in 1968.)

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I Told You I Was 1337!


I told you I was 1337, as this compilation screen shot shows.

I grabbed this screen shot at work today. Every developer wants to write 1337 code, but I think this proves that I’m doing it.

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Hacking (Literally) the Xbox 360 for HDMI with Optical Digital Audio

I actually like Microsoft. Microsoft, for example, brought affordable computer networks to the masses, dramatically improving productivity (and gaming). Vista, like Windows ME before it, is a complete pile of very unpleasant substances, but in the meantime we have Windows XP, the best Windows-based operating system to ever grace the planet. (Now, don’t get all tech-bashy on me; I like the look of OS X as well, use Linux systems on occasion, and program in Java.)

However, in a capitalist society, caveat emptor is still worthy of being heeded. Such is the case with the newer Xbox 360s and HDMI output that uses digital optical for audio.

In a perfect world, one wouldn’t need to output both digital audio and HDMI. HDMI includes digital audio output. One would just plug the HDMI cable into a receiver, run the receiver HDMI output to the television, and the receiver would take care of everything, including the video switching. Sadly, such a perfect world requires far more pictures of dead Presidents than I am willing to part with, especially since it would involve replacing a receiver that I am very happy with.


Xbox 360 back panel, showing the A/V port and HDMI port.

The standard Microsoft Xbox 360 currently ships with a component video cable for HDTV or standard TV that also outputs surround-separated stereo. That cable also has a plug for digital optical audio output, which is ideal. Unfortunately, if one plugs in the supplied cable, due to its size and shape it completely covers the HDMI port on the 360, which precludes using HDMI for video at the same time as optical 5.1 Dolby Digital. (Note that some older 360s do not have an on-board HDMI port, but that any recently purchased one should.)

Enter the product pictured above. This $45 item is designed to provide the ability to output both HDMI and digital optical out simultaneously. Problem solved! Beautiful, isn’t it? It would be, if it weren’t a case of manipulative engineering. (I am reminded of an old “Monkees” episode, in which a computer designs toys to break almost immediately, so parents will enrich the toy company by continually buying replacements.)

If both an HDMI and the A/V cable could be plugged in simultaneously, there would be no need for this extra cable.


A little work with a hack saw, and a consumer can easily save $45 or more.

Enter the hack saw, and a pair of needle-nosed pliers. (A better way to do this would be to use a Dremel tool, but I do not happen to own one.) By carefully cutting into and removing the plastic on the Xbox 360’s included adapter, one can easily make enough room to plug in an HDMI cable. It will be a snug fit, but it should work without any difficulty. Embedded in the A/V cable’s plastic body is a metal shield that protects the connector and helps eliminate electromagnetic interference. Although it is acceptable to scratch it, be careful not to cut through it. Also watch out for the cord itself. The picture above should provide all the guidance you need.

As one might expect, there’s always the slight risk that you’ll damage the A/V cable while cutting it, in which case, you’re going to be spending that $45 anyway. Hey, I told you to be careful.

Enjoy.