Pek Pongpaet

Using a WiiMote to Control an X-Wing

2009-11-02T06:57:22Z

I spent this afternoon putting together a quick demo for my Rich Internet Interfaces Beyond Mice and Keyboards talk I’m giving at the DePaul University iTea Seminar tomorrow. The example is a simple one that illustrates using a WiiMote as an interface to controlling a 3D model. This can be easily used as a game control and or more general UI control. I believe it is a more natural way to interface with 3D elements navigating in 3D space and can be generalized to let people more intuitively navigate through and interface with software such as the operating system. After a few hours of looking for the WiiMote, charging it and some coding, I’ve put together this simple demo:

I can’t claim credit for putting together code to display a 3D X-Wing. I’m not interested in that. I quickly found what I was looking for here: http://code.google.com/p/papervision3d/downloads/list – the source code repository for PaperVision – the open source 3D engine for Flash. At the very bottom there’s sample code for displaying a 3D X-Wing.

First things first, you will need the WiiFlashServer that interfaces the WiiMote with your Mac. That code and supporting documentation can be found here: http://wiiflash.bytearray.org/. There are 2 pieces to the puzzle here. The WiiFlashServer which listens to the WiiMote and sends messages to your app and the WiiFlash Actionscript API which can receive those messages.

Once you download the Actionscript API and put that in your project directory, include it in your application:
import org.wiiflash.Wiimote; import org.wiiflash.events.*;

var wiimote:Wiimote;

Initialize the Wiimote like so:
wiimote = new Wiimote(); wiimote.addEventListener( Event.CONNECT, onWiimoteConnect );

wiimote.connect();

The only thing we really have to do now is to use the pitch, yaw and roll values of the WiiMote and use them to control the X-Wing, like so:
function handleFrames(e:Event):void { var rotX = 0; var rotY = 0; var rotZ = 0;


	if (!isNaN(wiimote.roll))

		rotX = wiimote.roll/Math.PI * 180;
	if (!isNaN(wiimote.yaw))

		rotZ = wiimote.yaw/Math.PI * 180;
	if (!isNaN(wiimote.pitch))

		rotY = wiimote.pitch/Math.PI * 180;
	// no easing - animation too jagged

	//group.rotationX = -rotY;

	////group.rotationY = rotZ;

	//group.rotationZ = -rotX;

// added easing to smoothen motion group.rotationX += ( -rotY - group.rotationX) / EASING; group.rotationZ += ( -rotX - group.rotationZ) / EASING; }
You can see from the code there’s a section I commented out. You can use the raw WiiMote values to feed to the X-Wing directly but I found that the values can be jumpy and discreet causing the X-Wing to turn and move with a lot of jitter. I added a simple easing function to make the movements smoother.

As you can see, it’s not rocket science. With a little bit more work, we can easily add other controls like button presses to control the firing of the X-Wing.

Here’s the link to the source if you’re interested. Thanks for watching.

Overnight Success on Reddit, 10 Years in the Making

2009-10-25T05:00:05Z

On Thursday evening, my pals Sachin and Brad alerted me to a new section on Reddit. It’s called IamA as in “I am a…”. Basically you submit a post telling your special story and people just ask you anything. They strongly recommended that I go on there and post. They were sure I was going to be a big hit there.

I tried to come up with a pretty eye catching sensational title that was true. I posted “I am Raiden from the Mortal Kombat video games. – AMAA”. AMAA stands for Ask me almost anything.

Since creating that post a bit over 24 hours ago, it was front paged on the IamA section, upvoted over 280 times, downvoted over 120 times, and received over 390 comments. People have even blogged about it. It’s been pretty amazing.

It’s been very interesting to see the kinds of questions that come up. People were excited to find out that Raiden is a web developer. The Reddit crowd I’m sure probably skews towards that. The reception’s been great. People ask really funny questions. There were some really hardcore MK fans. Or maybe I just really don’t know much about MK.

I’ve actually had an account on Reddit and have submitted articles and upvoted posts. However I’ve long since forgotten my login and password so I created a new account and named it more appropriately for this one post.

I think my takeaway from this is that there really is no overnight success. My instant hit on Reddit was a confluence of many variables. Most importantly it was due to the fact that I did martial arts for 10 freaking years and did the moves for a very popular video game franchise. That is all.

Another reason is that it was the right social network. I’ve been on Twitter for over a year and I can’t say that I’ve found the engagement on there that I’ve found in 15 minutes on Reddit. I think on Twitter there’s more marketers and other types of people – not as many video game geeks.

If you’re interested in reading the full transcript, here it is:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9×5dh/i_am_raiden_from_the_mortal_kombat_video_games/

Hi Reddit – I am Raiden

2009-10-24T00:40:13Z

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gleentea/sets/72157605844577560/

For those of you following my blog, I’ll explain in a different post

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9×5dh/i_am_raiden_from_the_mortal_kombat_video_games/

Inspirational Quotes

2009-10-15T03:14:35Z

I love quotes. They have move people. They can affect change in people. They can inspire. Every so often I feel beaten and defeated and sometimes find comfort in some of these peoples’ words.

If you follow my tweets or my Facebook updates, these shouldn’t be new.

“If you want to win, you have to pay the price – it’s not that complicated.” -Michael Jordan

“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan

“Outhustle everyone that you know that’s doing the same thing you are.” – Ramon DeLeon http://bit.ly/r5qE

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”-Thomas Edison http://bit.ly/J7olv

“The way to succeed is to double your error rate.” – Thomas J. Watson

“Don’t worry, be crappy. Revolutionary means you ship and then test… Lots of things made the first Mac in 1984 a piece of crap – but it was a revolutionary piece of crap.” – Guy Kawasaki

“We don’t ask consumers what they want. They don’t know. Instead we apply our brain power to what they need, and will want, and make sure we’re there, ready” – Akio Morita CEO of Sony on the Walkman and other innovations.

“As long as your going to be thinking anyway, think big.” – Donald Trump

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates

“The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn’t like to do.” – Thomas Edison

“Diligence is the mother of good luck.” – Benjamin Franklin

“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.” – Babe Ruth

“You must taste the bitter before you taste the sweet” – old wushu saying

“The wise man sees in the misfortune of others what he should avoid.” – Marcus Aurelius 121-80 AD, Roman Emperor, Philosopher

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” – Michaelangelo

“There is nothing impossible to him who will try.” – Alexander the Great

Quotes From “Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don’t”

2009-10-15T02:39:18Z

I’ve been on a Kindle kick lately. It’s uber-convenient and I get to save money and be a bit green. I’m on my fourth book already and I thought I better jot down my thoughts and notes before I forget. This particular book is in the vein of more recent business where the title is usually a word followed by an explanatory phrase. The books are almost always paperback all in white with a simple graphic and text in black. Here are some of the passages I liked.

Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don’t

by Kevin Maney and Jim Collins

Adding a social dimension can change the prospect of a product or service. That’s why teens will buy a cell-phone ring tone for three dollars but balk at paying ninety-nine cents for a full song on iTunes.

The ability to say “I went to Harvard” is, for many, probably worth more than the actual experience of going to Harvard. This is part of the reason why attending Harvard is a higher fidelity education experience than attending say Penn State: the identity aspect of Harvard is worth more.

Cost is a key part of convenience for the simple reason that if something costs less, it is easier for most people to buy – which means the product or service is easier to obtain.

Never evaluate a product or service based on the enthusiasm of early adopters.

Wushu Workout

2009-09-27T05:13:24Z

Here’s a video clip of last week’s workout with Taylor and Don.

It’s so funny. I never posted anything during the peak of my wushu career. Well, I didn’t even have a blog then but that’s besides the fact. I was too busy practicing to be bothered with sharing what I did with the rest of the world. Now that I’m old and past my prime, it’s amusing that I share my wushu workouts so freely.

Partly it’s because I’m not getting any younger so I figure how I look now is going to be better than how I look in the future so if I’m going to post stuff, it might as well be now. Also, it’s good to be able to look back on this stuff. Not to mention that when you post stuff online, you have to step up your game.

Can anyone tell who’s staff intro I am using?

Impressions of the Kindle

2009-09-18T05:05:38Z

I’ve finally had a chance to play with the Amazon Kindle. I won one for my company t-shirt design contest about a month ago. I have to say I was really skeptical at first about owning one. First the price tag was too high. $300 buys me a lot of books so I have better things to do with $300 than to drop it on yet another electronic device which comes with no books. Sure I can download some free public domain books but we’ll get to that. I even bought a leather cover made specifically for it since the Kindle looks like it would get dirty and scratched really easily.

Amazon.com Widgets

First and foremost, the Kindle is thin. When I first opened the box, I was amazed by how thin it was. I was not expecting iPod touch thin, but that’s about the best I can describe it.

Can’t touch this. My first impression of the Kindle was that it was a touch screen. Maybe it was the clear display or perhaps the vague UI, but somehow I was mislead to try to touch the screen. Of course nothing happened because you are not supposed to touch the screen. You use the buttons provided. There are navigation buttons on the left and right on the screen to go back and forth between pages. There’s a joystick nub to let you go up/down/left/right.

Easy on the eyes. Reports about the refresh rate on the screens are true. The Kindle screen definitely beats staring at the monitor. You won’t even notice reading on it for hours. Too bad they don’t have it in color.

1 Click shopping. I purchased my first e-book on the Kindle today. The process was painless. Almost too easy. All you had to do was search for the book you wanted, navigate to it, and click the buy button and your e-book will be downloaded in the background through WhisperNet. It literally took a few minutes to download the whole book.

Free books. So the cool thing about the Kindle is that Amazon lets you download some public domain books for free. I’ve downloaded some fairy tale classics as well as The Art of War by Sun Tzu. So that’s great right? Wrong. They don’t make it easy for you to find all those free books. At least the iPhone app store sorts by free and paid apps. You get no such thing here. It’s up to you to try to sort through the mess.

The Fine Print.Here’s where they get you. You can also read blogs. However it’s not as easy as putting in an RSS feed. Well, you can read the ones they’ve prescribed for you which are popular blogs. However, it’s gonna cost you. Usually it’s $1 a month subscription for EACH blog. I was surprised to learn that you DO get a cut of the action if somebody subscribes to your blog. However, it’s a measly 30% as opposed to the iPhone app store’s generous 70%. So if I were to subscribe to my 300 RSS feeds that I currently get for free through Google reader on my G1, I’d be paying $300/month on subscription fees. Insane. Yeah, screw that.

The extra stuff. The Kindle comes with an experimental browser. I played with it for a few minutes. It was a painful way to browse the web, from entering the URL to actually perusing websites. We won’t be replacing our iPhones and netbooks anytime soon.

The UX So I decided to give the Kindle a fair shot before I wrote it off, seeing as I got it for free and all. To that end, I’ve bought a book – which I thought could not be made any easier and started reading on it. I’ve read it on the train, on my breaks and on the couch. It’s pretty awesome. There are 3 things about the Kindle that make it a better book.

You don’t have to turn the page. It’s much easier to move to the next page by hitting a button than it is to flip pages. You get lost in the flow of reading and not interrupted by page turning.
You don’t have to constantly alternate between reading the left and the right page. Again, it’s a subtle change in the way you read, but I like this better.
You can read while you eat. If you’ve ever tried to read a thick paperback while eating, you’ll know what I mean. The chunkiness of the paperback forces you to have one hand on the book at all times. If you want to turn the page, then you are forced to use your other hand. Makes reading and eating a bit hard. However with the Kindle, your hands are free to eat.

To sum it up, I like the Kindle because it’s thin and convenient. I don’t have to lug a huge book(s) around. Also, I save a little money since e-books are a bit cheaper. The drawback is that I can’t lend it to my friends of course. I also like to stick post it notes in my books. You can write notes on e-books too but it’s a bit awkward. I probably won’t buy all the books I want to read on here. Some of the price difference between real books and e-books was so small I would rather spend a few more bucks to get something physical and tangible. Plus Amazon can’t decide to later revoke my book. All in all though, I like it. Would I have spent $300 to get it – probably no.

5 Animals Conditioning

2009-09-12T04:27:41Z

I’d like to share some of my training tips. Here’s an exercise/game/race that I came up with to help strengthen the body and help with wushu training. I have the kids do it in kids class and the adults seem to like it too. Not only does it help improve basics but also contains some upper body workout as wushu sometimes tends to be very lower body oriented.

The 5 Animals:

Seal Crawl. The Seal Crawl is the only exercise that needs any kind of special equipment. It is designed to use the upper body. All we need is a kicking shield which we put on the floor smooth side down. We lay our shins on it and make the legs limp like dead weight and use our upper body to move across the floor. If a kicking shield is not available, we can substitute this exercise with the bear crawl which is basically running on all fours.
Frog Jumps. Frog jumps are pretty common in wushu training. If you go to China, you will see that the professional teams do these to improve their jumps. Key here is to go all the way down and jump as far as possible. This is a lower body workout which gives our upper body a quick break before the next exercise.
Crab Walks. Crab walks develops speed and the upper body. It’s easier if we fall into the next step instead of lumbering slowly. Again, we alternate between upper body exercises and lower body.
Duck Walks. Duck walks are another set of exercises that develop the legs. We can have the arms behind the back but I prefer to have them help make the move more balanced and more natural. Make sure that the buttocks are low to the ground.
Spiderman Crawl. Ok, technically this is not an animal style. It’s a superhero mimicking an insect but it’s still a great exercise and very challenging. Crawl as if you were Spiderman crawling up a wall. The torso and hips must be low to the ground. Elbows and knees must not touch the ground. That is the challenging part and will really work the upper body and core strength.

The way I usually do this is to make it a game between 2 teams. Wushu class is usually divided into 2 rows anyways so each team is a row. It’s a relay race where everyone has to do each exercise and when the first person in a row is up again, they go to the next exercise. Before each race the teams agree to a “punishment” for the losing team. Usually it’s monkey jacks or push ups. I also try to level the playing field by pairing up people that are close in skill level or body ability. This also makes it more exciting.

I’m always looking to improve these conditioning exercises so any more “animals” tips are welcome.

Hot Tweeters on Video at TECH Cocktail Chicago 11

2009-08-28T05:02:45Z

On August 6th when we had TECH cocktail, Ron May interviewed Olya and I about Hot Tweeters. I think the only reason he wanted to interview me was so that he could get close to Olya. Hey, whatever works. To skip directly to the Hot Tweeters part of the interview, go to 9:30.

The May Report @ TechCocktail 11 from The May Report on Vimeo.

Here’s another video of me pimping Hot Tweeters at TECH cocktail by Ramon Deleon. This Domino’s Pizza multiple franchise owner is a marketing genius. I met him at a social media conference at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange earlier. He’s got a great story about how one of his orders got screwed up and the customer happened to be a big time social media person who tweeted about it. He handled it very well by doing a videopology to said person and making it up to her with a new order on the house. That video has been viewed almost 80,000 times at the point of this blog post. He’s one of the best things to happen to Domino’s Pizza hands down. Now he’s hobnobbing with social media heavy weights like Gary V and giving talks all over because of his insane social media marketing.

Tech Cocktail 11 from Andres J. DeLeon on Vimeo.

Our Newest Member of the Family

2009-08-28T04:25:43Z

Almost two weeks ago we picked up our newest member of the family. His name is Snuggles and he’s an 8-week old havanese puppy. He’s so tiny that I actually think he’s smaller than a subway sandwich. When Kim first found him she absolutely adored him and told me we had to have him. I don’t think words do him justice.

Here he is in the sink. In the beginning he was very needy. If he didn’t see us for any period of time he would start whimpering and crying. After not even 2 weeks, he’s shown a lot of improvement. Now he’s able to hang out by himself for a little bit. He figured out the puppy pad pretty quick but he’s also pooped and peed wherever he pleases. We got him these steps to help him up the couch and he figured those out right away although he didn’t like going down headfirst. He’s recently figured out how to go down sort of sideways.

I’ve never had a puppy or a dog before and I have to say they are a lot more work than I ever imagine. Stay tuned for more posts on Snuggles.