Well, after all of the massive press coverage over a dude that hooked up a interactive fleshlight to a blowup doll with some chat AI and called it a sex bot, I figured it was time for me to invest in one of these things so I could get some of those so called "hits" that I'd been desperately missing out on lately. That's what I get for becoming overly obsessed with haptics hardware.

So, the Interactive Fleshlight. For $39.99 (Available from Citouch.com, and this is for the interactive part alone, a fleshlight will run you another $50-70 depending on where you get it), you get:

• Top Cap Replacement for the fleshlight

• A Rubber Tube

• A Control Box

• A USB A-B Cable

• A "game" (I'll explain the quotes later, but holy jesus fuck is this some bad shit. Well, I guess that explained it. But, well, um.. yeah.)

The Basics

Most of the devices I show off on Slashdong are output devices. Input comes from some other controller, be it your mouse, keyboard, video game controller, or whatever. The Interactive Fleshlight, however, is an input /only/ device.

The Fleshlight, for those not familiar and not able to discern the obvious from the above picture, is a plastic casing with a latex insert. You stick your dick in it. That's... about it really. Both ends of the plastic casing come off: one end to stick yourself in, the other to adjust air pressure once you're in. This second cap is where the Interactive Fleshlight comes in. They give you a replacement endcap (w/ gasket, to maintain pressure) with a tube attached to it, that goes to a little beige box. The little beige box contains a PIC 16C745 microcontroller that processes the signal from an air pressure sensor, and sends it down the USB to your computer. This means that your computer can basically sense when and how you thrust into the fleshlight, as that action changes the air pressure inside the tube.

Yes, you can control your computer by fucking it. However, this is only for some values of "control"...

The Controls

In terms of control schemes, the Interactive Fleshlight takes Occam's Razor and, instead of going across the street or down the road, just takes the whole motherfucking arm off.

You see, the PIC16C745 has embedded USB 1.1 capabilities, which makes it great for an Human Interface Device, or HID, controller. To avoid a long, horrid discussion on USB, basically, the USB standard gives you a ton of ways to talk about human interface devices like mice and keyboards and joysticks and what not. Hundreds of types. It's crazy. So, with all these types, you can have a bazillion axis controller and it should "just work" with any operating system, though you may have to write some drivers as to how those bazillion axes should work with a normal operating environment.

You could.

Or you could just make the OS think it's a mouse.

The Interactive Fleshlight registers itself as a USB HID single axis mouse. Any system you hook it to that has an HID manager will believe this (people have done VERY evil things with this fact, too). So, hook up your brand spankin' new computer aided luddite killing fucktube, and your mouse cursor starts moving up and down on the screen. This is a less than stellar situation for multiple reasons.

But, let's play devil's advocate first (in a very literal sense of the term since I'm about to talk about technological onanism, and if you don't screw on the lid tight enough, some is probably gonna fall on the ground). This is a GREAT design for maximum simplicity. Just hook it in and it fucking /works/. Sure, it's hard to mouse around with it (the sensor is incredibly sensitive), but the only programming mechanism you have to provide with any game to support it is "move cursor up and down over the screen". You can't possibly ask for a more open, cross platform interface. The fact that it fulfills so many of the things I bitch about in other toys makes me hurt.

If you're me, though, this fucking SUCKS. Why? 'cause this thing has SO much potential! Hook it to a First Person Shooter and play the "This is my rifle This is my gun" sample from Full Metal Jacket!

Hook it to Max/MSP or PureData and trigger drum samples with it! (Sorry, I don't have a video of me doing that. Yet.)

Make it universal left mouse click, disable your actual left mouse button, and use it as a way to either curtail your computer usage or die happy!

The problem is to do any of these hacks, I'm basically going to have to give the OS a personality disorder to make it think it's not a mouse. This can range from simple (filter drivers on windows) to mildly annoying (System Extension filtering on OS X) to downright painful (VID/PID HID kernel blacklisting on Linux). I had to do something similar for The Journey to Wild Divine Lightstone and its janky ass "let's write a protocol using random raw HID reports!" protocol, but I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now.

Enough bitching, I'm sure you're wondering, how well does it actually work?

The Game

Not very. Well, ok, I'll rephrase. First off, here's what thrusting looks like. The graph is time on x (1px = ~1/60th sec), vertical position on y (1200px). As you can see, we definitely pick up some sort of pattern there, though it's still rough. Nothing a little DSP couldn't smooth out (Ok, I just like saying that 'cause I just finished reading my DSP book and I'm itchin' for somewhere to use it now). Here's a little Max/MSP patch I made to show what thrusting reaction is like... (where's your god now, Cycling '74?).

Just using the mouse movement as an indicator is kind of hard, unless your game takes up the whole screen. The game that they ship with it... Well... Uh...

Yup. Nurse Nicki.

Intro screen circa 1980s... You can almost taste the EGA...

And there's our hot 3D modeling action right th... Ok, no.

Yeah, there's the first gameplay screen, and that's all you're going to get. Why? Because you have to sit there hitting the "hand presents" or "take medicine" button for 10 minutes. Then she takes off her shirt. Then you have to fondle her by clicking for at least 15 minutes. Notice the problems here?

"Hitting". "Clicking".

All you can do with the fleshlight is move the mouse. You can't click shit. So, you've gotta spend ~20 minutes doing things with your regular mouse before you can do anything with the fleshlight. And you sure as shit ain't gonna have both the mouse and the fleshlight going at once, unless you want to know what it's like to have your penis actively fighting your hand.

UPDATE! Ok, due to popular demand, I actually included pictures of the action scenes. And yes, it really took me about 10-15 minutes to get to this point. My hand hurts. And not in the fun way.

And, of course, once you do get the payoff, you find out that the male character (i.e. you) looks like a radiation experiment gone awry.

Bugged out eyes, missing half his chest hair...

The blowjob scene actually has GUT obscuring the view. Maybe I'll put this up in a later post. It's kind of like watching a giant suck a monolith that's situated behind some serene mountains.

Anyways, there you go. That's the interactive fleshlight. Assuming I can figure out a nice, cross platform way to unfuck the HID shit, expect to see libinteractivefl on sourceforge sometime soon, 'cause you know handing out headshots with this thing in an online shooter would be beyond awesome (hell, that was the idea that originally started slashdong. But that's a story for another day...).

Yup, it took all of a month for my "no new speaking until I have something new to say" thing to fall apart. But, well, this is different! Really! Somehow. :)

So yeah, I'm now part of the BDSM and Web 2.0 panel at the 12th Annual Leather Leadership Conference. The panel takes place Sunday, April 13th, at 10:30am. The panel will include Thomas Roche (who I was also on a panel with at Arse Elektronika, now of kink.com), Richard Hunter (of Mr. S Leather), Steve Bower (Webmaster for the Society of Janus), and others. Should be fun!

Cheetah, the source of many of our best posts here on Slashdong, was kind enough to send me a photo set of the new Tenga Fliphole, the new Japanese fucktube that's been getting a good deal of blogging press. And really, rightfully so, it's a great piece of engineering, put into a product we usually don't see such care with.

I've uploaded the photos to flickr for anyone that might be interested in getting a good look at it.

And, you can pick up a fliphole for $99 at Kanojo Toys.

It's that time again! Monochrom is working on the beginnings of Arse Elektronika 2008, so it's time to dust off all of those "ACM conferences would NEVER publish this!" work you've got!

Also, they're looking for sponsors for this year's conference. It's a great way to get your companies name out there!

The Call for Papers is included below.

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Call for Papers

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ARSE ELEKTRONIKA 2008

Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep?

Critical Perspectives on Sexuality and Pornography in Science and Social Fiction

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Taking up where the successful conference in autumn 2007 left off, this year's Arse Elektronika stands under the motto "future" -- and the ways in which the present sees itself reflected in it. Maintaining a broadened perspective on technical development and technology while also putting special emphasis on its social implementation, this year's conference focuses on Science and Social Fiction.

The genre of the "fantastic" is especially well suited to the investigation of the touchy area of sexuality and pornography: actual and assumed developments are frequently depicted positively and approvingly, but just as often with dystopian admonishment. Here the classic, and continuingly valid, themes of modernism represent a clear link between the two aspects: questions of science, research and technologization are of interest, as is the complex surrounding urbanism, artificiality and control (or the loss of control). Depictions of the future, irregardless of the form they take, always address the present as well. Imaginations of the fantastic and the nightmarish give rise to a thematic overlapping of the exotic, the alienating and, of course, the pornographic/sexual as well.

In order to intelligently contextualize the abundance of queries that are involved here, this year's conference will be structured around three day-long discussion panels, each devoted to a specific theme. The impossibility of fitting many of these issues and relationships into such neat categorizations is not only accepted, but also encouraged.

Panel 1: Narration

Narrative positions and narrative media are closely linked in the treatment of the sexual and the pornographic. In the area of fantasization and its great variety of media differentiations (film, literature, computer games, etc.) this fundamental phenomenon is also expanded through the facet of a highly influential fan fiction. Submissions for this panel should deal e.g. with specific aspects of individual media, media complexes, distribution or reception.

Panel 2: Technology

Sexuality and pornography are manifestations of a social reality and are directly linked to questions of technological innovation, whereby fantasizing can also function as a motor of innovation. Submissions for this panel should deal e.g. with the present and future of technological developments, with social-technological aspects (e.g. space travel, plastic surgery, etc.) or with conditions of technologically driven development.

Panel 3: Politics

Science (and social) fiction, sexuality and pornography are often infused with colonialization strategies, conceptions of social norms and political strategies. Here the utopian, the dystopian and the xenophobic are mixed into a dangerous and interpretationally potent concoction. Submissions to this panel should deal with e.g. the juridification of the body, biopolitical standardization processes, political systems of domination and taboos surrounding interracial sex.

Submission requirements:

The 1-2 page submission, written in English, should be thematically oriented toward one of the three discussion panels. It should contain clear information regarding the methodology and up-to-dateness of the thesis it puts forth and detail the technical equipment required for the lecture's delivery. Submissions should be mailed to arse2008@monochrom.at no later than 2 May 2008. Organizational considerations make it impossible to take into account submissions received after this date.

Each participant's written lecture notes should reach the organizers no later than 15 September 2008, the version for publication in the proceedings of the symposium by 15 November 2008.

British Engineering Systems' Intelligent Vibrator Project

Man, BES's website name sounds so much more official than Slashdong. Ah well, we were goin' for comedy in the first place (for those of you who didn't notice the gigantic flying circuit board dildo in the header and all).

Remember the torturedildonics project that I mentioned someone else coming up with and mentioning a few months ago? For those of you that don't like clicking links, the idea is basically to make a random number generator that controls a vibrator, therefore making a very annoying sex toy. Yes, some people want this. No, I don't care if you don't. Maybe some other people reading this page do. Might be nice to think of them every once in a while, eh?

Anyways, the BES blog is all about the journey to discovery and learning that goes along with trying to put this particular project together. Lots of interesting discussion about implementation, ideas for the future, etc... Hasn't been updated in a couple of months, but I'm partially posting this to poke the project's author to start posting about it again. Here, have some hits, random internet guy!