In Glenwood, got some good walking in

As stated in the previous post, I'm in Glenwood Springs. We parked the car in front of our hotel and have been walking everywhere. And the Pokewalker has been in my pocket all day (10K+ steps, according to it). There was a significant amount of discussion of it at the Brewery as well today. We all passed it around and got a good chuckle out of the Slowpoke I put on there (a Slowpoke on a pokewalker is apparently "epic, but not as epic as a Snorlax on one.")

There were some thoughts about this. We were discussing if a pokemon levels up faster with the walker than it does when fighting normally (ie. put it as the first and instantly switch it out with something strong enough to battle whatever you're fighting). I'm hypothesizing that no, it doesn't; all this walking today made my Slowpoke only go up a single level. But, it might be worth testing this.

It also came up in conversation whether if the pokemon would learn a new attack at the level up that it does in this device, whether it would do it or not. When you leave a pokemon at the ranch in the game for others to raise, you lose those attacks; so it was hypothesized that the same might happen for pokemon in the walker.

I also figured out that you can get a new area to walk in for every badge you collect (at a minimum). And there are different pokemon in the areas (many of which you haven't yet seen in the game, so there is significant motivation to try and capture some of those).

We also discussed who might use the walker as a useful device. Because, it really seems easier to raise pokemon normally in the game. I can see the use case of a 10 year old boy carrying the pokewalker to and from school and screwing with it in class and between class (frankly, I expect schools to react and ban the things when these are officially released in the US (way to go pro-health policies)). I say 10 year old boy, mainly because I remember being in that situation and bringing stuff like the pokewalker to school and playing with others who owned the same. Margaret mentioned that pokemon was really cool in 6th-7th grade and it would be seen as cool to have the pokewalker on your belt. But by 8th grade, it was no longer cool and such a thing would get you shunned. I dunno, we'll have to see what kids do with this, but I think I can safely guarantee they will be playing with it.

I'm also remembering a ton of Japanese as I'm playing this game. I'm starting to sound things out that come in menus I see all the time. I decided instead of going "ok, the second from the top is the one I want" that I should make sure I know what buttons say incase some new item gets introduced that moves them around. I've also been doing the same with attacks and such. Doing this has turned this game from a chore back into an enjoyable game.

There was another observation about the device: when you are walking and then suddenly look at the device, you can see the number incrementing quickly and the pokemon walking with you; there appears to be a bit of a time lag to give you feedback. We also we passing the device around the table playing with shaking it in various ways to get it to register steps. I think the best method is a simple moving your hands in a ellipse with the walker in it; any straight motions aren't detected reliably as steps. This makes it a little harder to cheat at this than with the Pocket Pikachu 2 (which has stories online of kids sitting and just shaking the thing).

Also my wonderful girlfriend got me a DSi for Valentines Day!!!

haha! Great Success

So I've been fighting this for a while: playing this game w/o being able to easily read things is HARD. I've been trying all sorts of things to get my Pokewalker to work (my actual research topic) but I finally figured out how to load pokemon on the Pokewalker. Basically:
you need to have caught more than one pokemon and put a pokemon into one of your boxes on the PC
Save the game
Reboot the DS
Load your pokemon game, and choose the third option
You then just keep clicking YES (todo, lookup how to input Japanese on my EEEpc/eeebuntu)
You choose a pokemon in your box (I chose a rattata I just caught)
Then you just follow the pictures and you get a pokemon on your pokewalker.

HURRAY!!!

And no, I didn't magically find this combination through button mashing. I found a video of the Pokewalker in use on Youtube.

Now onto my actual tests.

First Impressions

Ok, so today, I figured I had enough calibration data and cracked open the game. No the Pokewalker didn't come magically loaded with pokemon (though that would make my life easier). I spent about 1/2 hour playing the game; it's amazing how much text you can skip and still understand what is going on. To get farther in the game, I will have to start reading things. Right now, I'm slowly sounding out words if I think someone is saying something of interest. We'll see how long I can do that without getting into trouble.

I haven't managed to get the pokewalker working yet. I think I need to capture a second pokemon, and then access my PC (it's a pokemon thing to call every computer/terminal in the game "my PC"). Thats the best I can figure out from the instructions in the book. If I get really stuck, I'll spend some time and actually do a decent translation the applicable couple of pages and see if I can grok anything else from the text.

Anyway, it's time for bed. I'm making good progress in the game, and will do a little research online tomorrow to determine what steps I need to complete to use my pokewalker. Although, Pokemon's first two towns or two are generally set up as tutorials that introduce one piece of the game at a time (and that piece isn't accessible until I go through the tutorial). So I might just get an event where the pokewalker is explained to me and I'm instructed how to activate it.

A bit of reading

I spent a lot of time today sitting on my couch with my laptop reading. I needed to create an annotated bibliography for this project and needed to provide three references for this iteration. There are quite a number of pieces of literature on the topic of pedometers. I've picked three that represent a decent basis for what I believe is the background of the Pokewalker.

In no particular order:

Toscos, T., Faber, A., An, S., and Gandhi, M. P. 2006. Chick clique: persuasive technology to motivate teenage girls to exercise. In CHI '06 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montréal, Québec, Canada, April 22 - 27, 2006). CHI '06. ACM, New York, NY, 1873-1878. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1125451.1125805

Consolvo, S., Everitt, K., Smith, I., and Landay, J. A. 2006. Design requirements for technologies that encourage physical activity. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montréal, Québec, Canada, April 22 - 27, 2006). R. Grinter, T. Rodden, P. Aoki, E. Cutrell, R. Jeffries, and G. Olson, Eds. CHI '06. ACM, New York, NY, 457-466. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1124772.1124840


Consolvo, S., Klasnja, P., McDonald, D. W., Avrahami, D., Froehlich, J., LeGrand, L., Libby, R., Mosher, K., and Landay, J. A. 2008. Flowers or a robot army?: encouraging awareness & activity with personal, mobile displays. In Proceedings of the 10th international Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Seoul, Korea, September 21 - 24, 2008). UbiComp '08, vol. 344. ACM, New York, NY, 54-63. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1409635.1409644

There is also the obvious Fish'n'Steps paper from Siemens Corperate Research, but I felt that the Consolvo et al. 2008 paper built upon the Fish'n'steps research so I'd use it instead.

I also keep coming across references to Fogg's "Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do" book, and it talks about the Pocket Pikachu; so this is something that I will need to track down. I've looked at part of the book online using Google books (a half page blurb about Pocket Pikachu), but I'm going to need to attempt to reserve a copy from the library.

Its Here!

I arrived home tonight full of anticipation. Like a kid on Christmas day, I crept to the mailbox outside my house. I held the post and pulled the mail box open, for it had been crushed in years past by an exuberant driver who missed the road (or perhaps a rural youth practicing their baseball swing, and they are now playing for the Phillies). I peered into the metal vessel of communication to see if my prize had yet arrived. There was a manila envelope inside the box, the kind with bubble wrap built into it. Could this be it?

There was also some spam shoved in my mailbox as well, which I dumped into the recycling bin on the way into the house. I inserted my key into the door; two locks were opened, and I pushed the door into the dark house. I stepped inside, and placed my messenger bag upon the floor in the foyer. My keys were hung upon a hook beside the door, and I turned the lights on. I stepped lightly up the stair, like a kid granted a cookie from the kitchen, but they must choose it themselves. My manila envelope was placed upon the dining room table as I removed my coat.

I tore into the package as a lion tears into a gazelle after a long hunt. This was it! My precious had arrived! I rubbed my handed over the satin textured gold coating on the box. The text was in Japanese, barely readable, but symbols I knew. The seams of the box were crisp and well made, the tabs to open my prize uncreased.

My hands trembled; do I dare to open this package before my calibration test is complete? Will I be able to resist placing the cartridge into my DS, if I do open this? No. No, I would not be able to resist; I must keep the box sealed until the fateful day when I have a week of calibration data.



Also, note to self, if there is a weird spike in footsteps today, I spent a couple hours wandering the hill eating gelato and drinking boba tea.