Cyberpong

This article is over a year and a half old, but I’ve only just come across it.

Matt Nagle is 26 year olds, and is a C4 quadriplegic, and he can play Pong with his mind. You might also describe him as cybernetic, part biology, part technology.

Interesting for my research into phenomenology and videogames.

Four months after the operation, I watched Caplan take Nagle through a typical training session. He tracked Nagle’s mental activity on two large monitors, one of which displayed a graph of red and green spiking lines. Each spike represented the firing of clusters of neurons. As Nagle performed specific actions in his mind’s eye – move arm left, move arm up – the electrodes picked up the patterns of nearby neuron groups. Then BrainGate amplified and recorded the corresponding electrical activity. Over dozens of trials the computer built a filter that associated specific neural patterns with certain movements. Later, when Nagle again mentally pictured the motions, the computer translated the signals to guide a cursor.

Currently Reading

Here are a few provocative titles to give you a bit of an idea what kind of things I’m reading for my course,

• Violence and the Baudrillardian Repetition in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho.
• Toward a phenomenology of the Role-Playing Game.
• The Practice of Perception: Multi-Functionality and Time in the Experiences of a Heavy Metal Drummer.
• Walkthrough: videogames and technocultural form.

“Less Guattari, more Atari”

I really liked this quote from Zach Walen on Gameology

PS2 Devkit for sale

I’m sure this is illegal as Sony loans them to developers at a cost of something like 10-20,000 Euros. Still, it’s a real devkit, just the same as I used for the last five years or so.

Sexy Case-Mod

A short history of videogames

M.C.Escher’s House

You can find it here

Sex Toys

A friend of mine has just launched his new website. Remember Christmas is just around the corner so if you want to get that special person something naughty but nice, you’d be well advised to take a look!

Dirty Code

I just read about some naughty words in the Linux Kernel.
Boy, I wish I could share some of the code from my professional life…

Donald Rumsfeld on the Late Late Show

This is just the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages.

The synchronisation is brilliant, I’ve never seen anything like it before.