初音ミク A chance encounter - one month on

It's been a month now since I met you.

No. That's not true. We met before, but I didn't see you.

I met, noticed, and ultimately saw you on the 29th of August and was immediately captivated.

Vocaloids - Bringing together all my passions

People who know me know I love computers and science and maths.

Less people will know I love gaming, Zelda, Pokémon mainly but there are others.

Even less will also know I love Anime, films do appear on Sky, but I feel so out of the loop on this I don't know what's good any more.

So what do I finally discover on Thursday? (after missing it a few weeks ago).....

Vocaloids

Technically what's a Vocaloid? Here I'm not going to repeat it.

What is a Vocaloid? I'll try putting it this way...

I spent the whole (7:30am - 11:05pm) of yesterday (Saturday, 31st August) watching a group of beautiful girls, there was the odd boy too, sing and dance to the best pop, rock and occasionally classical music I've heard in a long time.

They are all over You Tube if you want to see them.

I also managed to watch Hatsune Miku's birthday concert via a delayed stream, need to pay for that though. And that was just awesome. Somehow I managed to find Vocaloids just before her 6th birthday (31st August) what timing.

I've seen concerts in the west, but these... I have never seen a performer bring the crowd together so much. Transfixed, mesmerised. But that's what I found watching them, transfixed, mesmerised. I barely ate for the 15 hours I was watching the concerts yesterday, barely drank. Barely did anything, but watch and listen, and start moving in time to the music.

There were times when I found my logic and reality circuits would switch off and they just looked real. When that happens it becomes incredible. I just wish I could control it because I found myself realising it happened and bang back to reality. Darn. Where's a quantum event when you need it? You can pull me into the reality where they are real any time.

I than went and brought all the Blu-Ray versions of the concerts I could find I just watched on You Tube. They are reluctant to release things in the West, need to make sure they bring as much as possible to us.

There is also the Hatsune Miku Project DIVA F game on the PS3 and PSP. I was playing a demo of this on Thursday night, after somehow missing the announcement a few weeks ago while looking if a related 3DS game was being released to the west (not yet). I immediately failed first time playing this game, took 10 seconds because I couldn't stop looking at Miku, and even though I failed, I knew I had to find out more. Also brought my PS3 out of a 3 year retirement.

My PS3 is going to get pimped up so bad now. 

10-seconds, it's all it took. I was in love. I'd found something that brought together everything. Technology, Anime, Music, Rhythm, Beauty, and to a less extent, Gaming.

Even considering getting a PSP too, just to play some of the DIVA games for that too. Never in my wildest dreams have EVER thought of getting a PSP. Even a Vita hasn't been ruled out. Wow, me, a Vita, just wow. All this for a single game.

What is the only downside? It's all in Japanese. It doesn't cause a problem to the music in any way at all, the music is wonderful. We have Italian music in the West so don't think for a second that's where the problem lies. No. It's trying to navigate the sites to buy things! I dare say when I get the things I've imported, there's gonna be some headaches as I add some new symbols alongside the English ones, and convincing my brain to stop scanning left-to-right! (Am I too old to learn Japanese? Hoping listening to these girls sing leaks it into my head!)

To the haters

The one thing I have found though, a lot of people on the You Tube videos putting a lot of hate. Why? It's beautiful music. So what if they aren't real? Take all the make-up and stage off your musical idols, are they still the same people? They are all a fantasy anyway.

Also, what do we get from the real stars? When they make it? Just a bunch of people who ignore you and think they are better than us. How many of your musical stars can you really get close to? I can start my PS3, load Project DIVA F, and have some form of interaction with Miku and Rin. It's literally infinitely more interaction (some compared to none) than any of us will get with any of the pop stars we so idolise now.

Pokémon and Zelda too childish? I think they saved me!

As I get older I increasingly see more and more people getting depressed. The stress of life is too much.

What I've also seen is the "adult" pleasures, drinking in particular, taking hold of people more as they become depressed, as the stress takes them more.

As we grow up we are told to act more like an adult. Less childish blah blah etc. So we forgot, or have it drilled out of us anyway.

The last few years though, I've found myself drawn more to the childish things. I find them more comforting, a bit of a security blanket, the quite place.

Instead of drinking myself into a stupor, waking up next day wishing I haven't and vowing never to do it again, and ultimately failing... I find it far more pleasurable to spend hours playing a game, Zelda is one of these games. Pokémon is the other.

The high I get from this is completely produced by the body, any addiction is created by the mind and the body's own system, there is no external chemical being added. I don't have the problem I found when drinking of needing more, and if the clock hits midnight I can put it down (unless it's a really important part!).

It's anti-social, so what? Only because I'm stuck in the UK. I have asked people before if they want to play games. What's there reaction? "Let's go to the pub instead" (paraphrasing many a person). I'm stuck in a crowd of people where sitting around drinking yourself into unconsciousness is more social than spending the day playing games.

Playing games like theses at my age is seen like some sort of disease here. "Playing Pokémon, what are you 12?" is a typical reaction. Zelda is a bit easier, given the type of game it is.

So yeah, sometimes, I do think my sub-concious isn't entirely as old as my body, sometimes as young as 12, and that's not a bad thing. It lets me have fun in the ways I used to and it's keeping the depression away.

So thank you Nintendo, keep making them, I will keep buying them. You are keeping me sane.

Keyboards and Linux

This is based on one of my Wordpress blogs. I've reworded it slightly, the original had a lot of Windows 8 hate which has subsided...

I have an MX5500 keyboard, which cost £120. It's a nice keyboard, but getting it to work in Ubuntu is hard.

It turns out, Bluetooth (BT) support in Linux is poor.





I could get my keyboard to work, but it would stop working across a full machine shutdown. I spend the first 5 minutes of a day, with a USB, wired, keyboard, logging-in and fixing the BT drivers, just to use the £120 keyboard and mouse I like so much.

The MX5500 works in both BT and non BT modes. While it boots in Non-BT mode, Ubuntu is forcing it into BT mode. I should've known this would cause problems, as it cause problems with the proper Logitech drivers in windows.

So, I have been looking for the solution. The mouse, on the other hand, it has no problem in BT mode. It pairs quite non-securely with no key. The keyboard requires a key, this is was is causing it's problem. This also causes a similar problem in Windows, but, if you don't have to log in, the Drivers help there.

When connecting you have to type in the key you are presented with on the screen. Of course, if you aren't logged in yet, you can't see the key yet, and you can't log in yet to see the screen. This is a major problem. If you auto-logging in in Windows, that's ok.

But this is not good in Ubuntu, if you also have to mess around with the BT system, whilst trying to get it to re-connect.

Ok, onto fixing it... One of the first things I found was mx5000-tools (This is a link to a translated russian site) which is a tool to manage the MX5000 keyboard, an earlier version of the 5500, with similar properties. The link also helped with the mouse settings, but it's the keyboard I'm more bothered about. I installed mx5000-tools, no package here though, how quaint.

It appeared to work at first, the BT panel went away, and I could run the commands to make the keyboard "beep" (ooh exciting), and I reset the clock on the LCD. This morning, however, the BT panel returned. mx5000-tools stopped working. And I had to plug in a spare keyboard again, just to log in. The mouse was still working though. A sign that it was back to normal.

Back to Google....

So searching, I hear of something else, "hid2hci".

Searching more...

I find a page about a Logitech Dinovo Edge keyboard with a similar problem, and how to fix it.

Apparently I can disable BT mode for devices that have non-BT/BT split personalities. The configurations have moved around over time. While the above page was for 12.04, it shows exactly where to put it. Just need to find my device information. Google helps with that again. The "lsusb" command shows me

>lsusb
...
Bus 002 Device 024: ID 046d:c709 Logitech, Inc. BT Mini-Receiver (HCI mode)
...

So, the vendor id is 046d and product id is c709, according to that, (and the file from the post) also some confirmation it's running in HCI mode. Going on the instructions laid out I created the following file

ACTION=="remove", GOTO="hid2hci_end"
SUBSYSTEM!="usb", GOTO="hid2hci_end"

# Logitech devices
KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="046d", ATTRS{idProduct}=="c709", \
  RUN+="hid2hci --method=logitech-hid --devpath=%p"

ENV{DEVTYPE}!="usb_device", GOTO="hid2hci_end"

LABEL="hid2hci_end"

and saved it as "/etc/udev/rules.d/97-bluetooth-hid2hci.rules" (as sudo)...

It didn't already exist...  add to the file if it already does...
or create a new file with a higher number (I'm paraphrasing the readme instructions there). and then

>sudo udevadm control --reload-rules

finally I unplugged and plugged back in the Logitech receiver.

...
It's been 2 hours...

...
The BT panel hasn't come back since...


My keyboard is working, mx5000-tools are talking to it correctly...

...almost, I've found they have problems after working with them.

But all appears well...

Until the next problem with Ubuntu...




...wait Ubuntu is nothing but problems



...but it's still better than Windows.

Go so much to say....

... just don't know how to say it.

Isn't that what a blog's for?

Trying to move away from the underused Wordpress blog. Move it all into Google and found Blogger. Didn't realise there was a service from Google.

Time to try and moan about the universe here.

Oh well, time to cut and paste some of my Wordpress posts I think are important enough here instead.

But I see Blogger allows management of multiple blogs? Do I do that? or have different blogs for different things? Nah, single blog. It's better.

Anyway. I know it may take time for anyone to read this. I may be talking to myself here, for a while anyway. I like talking to myself though, lets the madness out.

Now I've started, guess I'd better continue.