Archive for April, 2006

Another endeavour with flush tank leakage

Sunday, April 30th, 2006

Sometime ago, I envisaged to fix a leakage in the toilet flush tank. After replacing the ‘K’ washer, the leakage however persisted. Click here for the post. This weekend I examined the outlet valve and the flush pipe conditions, especially how the outlet valve seats on the flush pipe. I could not find any apparent problem just by looking at them. So I removed the flush pipe and examined the washers. I discovered that the wedge washer inside the flush tank has worn out and was rather brittle while the seating washer outside the flush tank was still good.

Today I bought a new wedge washer from the Bunnings warehouse. Bunnings did not actually have the exactly same washer but the Bunnings staff suggested a different shape that would still work. The washer was quite cheap, only about $2. Later I installed the new wedge washer. The leakage virtually stopped although I noticed there was still a tiny amount of water leaking out of the flush tank. But the leaking might be due to the outlet valve not seating firmly on the flush pipe (It was quite wobbly). Overall I am happy with the way it turns out.

SMART Braingame

Sunday, April 30th, 2006

Today I came across SMART Braingames, a US-based company which develops and sells technology to play games using EEG (brainwaves). It appears that this company is very much focused on the neurofeedback scheme. The concept behind neurofeedback is to train our EEG activities so that we can achieve certain brain states. This is a very common therapy to treat ADD (attention-deficit disorder) which normally occurs with children.

The one thing that really attracts my attention is its ability to be plugged into PlayStation and XBOX. The SMART product can be used to control games although it is only limited to racing and jumping games for the moment. Click here for their list of games. Also unfortunately the product does not work with first person shooter type of game and one reason from SMART for not going that path is that the game genre is too violent. Well, I think SMART has just lost 80% of games (alright, the number is perhaps arbitrary but my point is a large percentage). Anyway, I think SMART has a different target market. Nonetheless it would be nice to expand the ability to control other actions in games rather than just controlling the “X” button. I definitely will continue to follow SMART’s progress and look forward to any interesting development.

Editing and Proofreading course

Friday, April 28th, 2006

Today I received the first package of the editing and proofreading course. I recently enrolled on this correspondence course to improve my skills in writing. In the beginning, I didn’t immediately join this course when I first enquired about the course because of the expensive fee. Few months down the track, they offered me a scholarship after I wrote a brief motivation behind my interest in the course. The scholarhip covers about half of the course fee. It’s rather an irresistible offer. After some deep thinking, I decided to join the course.

Neurosky re-appears on the radar

Friday, April 28th, 2006

Neurosky, an innovative US-based company in developing brainwave detectors, has re-surfaced in the press. The mercury news published an article that Neurosky appears to change its technology focus to EEG (electroencephalogram: electrical activities of brain detected on scalp) and its application to video gaming. Read the full story. This is rather interesting since Neurosky originally considered both EEG and EOG (electrooculargram: electrical activities of eyes) and the application was directed to sleep detection.

Emotiv received federal government funding

Friday, April 28th, 2006

SMH on April 24, 2006 reported an innovative Sydney-based compay, Emotiv, as one of the receipients of the federal government funding. Emotiv received $1.5M for its invention of wireless headset that “is designed to carry specialised sensors that read brain signals and detect a range of different brain states relevant to game play”. Read the full story.
Perhaps this would be the next revolutionary game contol after Sony’s EyeToy.