Blog: Articles filed under DDR

I woke up today to Lauren knocking on my door, telling me that her mom wanted me to go see a doctor about my eye. So against my will I acquiesced, although I’ll admit it’s probably for the best anyway. I went to see an optometrist, Dr. Henry, who was very nice. He gave me free samples of eye drops and an ointment and said that if I needed a follow-up visit next week, he wouldn’t charge me for it. So I survived my foray into the American healthcare system. :P

Later that evening, Lauren had some of her friends over for a games night. We played Taboo with Nisha and Jessica—I‘ve never played that before, but I really enjoyed it. I got to listen to lots of fun stories from Jessica too. Michelle, whom I met yesterday, arrived about twenty minutes later. She joined us for a second game of Taboo, then we went downstairs to play DDR. Now, I’m exceptionally bad at DDR. I’m not great at much in life, and DDR—or any form of dancing, actually—ranks pretty high on this list. Part of it is a distinct lack of regular practice; if I actually bothered to acquire a proper DDR game and practised regularly, I could probably pick up some reasonable skill. In general though, I just lack rhythm. So when Lauren tried to teach us the electric slide afterward, I got absolutely lost.

Nevertheless, I had a good time. It was probably the most sociable I had to be in a long time, and I’ll be stretching that comfort level more tomorrow, when I go to the birthday/graduation party of one of Lauren’s friends. I‘m not entirely sure this much human interaction is good for me. I’m sure that other people can handle it. But it’s like alcohol tolerance. Some people can hold their social interaction better than others. And now I’ve gone off on a tangent and I don’t remember what I was talking about….

Oh yes, now I remember: about the existence of Sasquatch…. I think it’s possible for such a cryptid to have survived for such a long time and gone undetected. Possible, but not probable. We’ve inhabited the New World for about what, 20,000 years now? And in all that time, the best we can come up with are some footprints and the world’s first YouTube video?

Now, if Sasquatch is real and intelligent, I could totally see it intentionally hiding its existence from us, then laughing as we try to figure it out. I could even see it staging the Patterson-Gimlin film for its amusement. It’s probably in some sort of secret Cryptid Society that meets once a week, where it and Elvis and Nessie play poker and share stories of how they toy with the rest of we humans.

The fact that apes rose to sentience on this planet must be some sort of great big cosmic joke … and humanity is the punchline.

Windows Vista does not like the adapter that I bought with my dance mat, so I ordered a new adapter online (thanks Laura!) that’s better. It arrived last week and I got my dance mat working, which means I can now play StepMania! Plus I bought an RF modulator to hook up my computer to the big TV upstairs (because the TV is too old and has no S-video port!). This morning I went to play some StepMania and discovered that I had to move my dance mat closer to the TV. This is not because I have poor eyesight (which I do) or I couldn’t hear the music (which I could). No, it’s because where the mat was originally positioned, if I jumped my head would hit the ceiling fan. h34r:

So much for that. I’m tall, and the ceiling is low, which means I need to be more careful!

In other news, I‘ve started tinkering with OOP in PHP. I’ve often had trouble grasping OOP, but I finally wrapped my head around some aspects thanks to PHP 101: The Bear Necessities. Several concepts continue to elude me, so I‘m hoping that I never have to use them. I’ll figure it all out one day… .

My code benefits from this change. It’s good timing too, since the PHP group has announced that it will be ending support for PHP 4 at the end of this year. So I’m packing my bags and moving to PHP 5! This means that I‘ve stopped working on VSNS Lemon 3.3. Instead, I’m coding VSNS Lemon 4.0! It will be recoded from scratch using OOP to make it faster and more flexible. Most of it’s done except for the layout and a few little functions. VSNS Lemon 4 will have all of the features I promised in v3.3 too except probably AJAX editing, which I’m increasingly feeling is a bad idea. However, there will be a primitive search engine, live comment previews, and a few other goodies in there.

Vanilla Guestbook will get a PHP 5 makeover sometime after. It is less of a priority since my guestbook isn’t an essential part of my site, whereas this blog is basically the only new content on this site. Maybe that will change someday. But not today! I must go to bed.

As you previously heard, I fell in love with Dance Dance Revolution the first time that I played it, on New Year’s Eve. Since then I have been plotting to acquire my own game. I don’t have a PlayStation 2, however (or any sort of gaming console with DDR on it), and buying one just to play DDR would not have been ideal.

Enter StepMania! StepMania is a free and open-source rhythm game that is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Essentially it emulates DDR. Not only that, but it works with dance pads. With StepMania, I was one step closer to my own DDR setup.

I needed a dance pad. Either I would have to find a dance pad that connected with USB, or I’d need to get a dance pad and some sort of adapter. Today I went shopping with Laura (who has blogged about that adventure in detail) for a dance pad and (if we needed it) an adapter. I found an Intec dance pad for PS2 at EB Games for only $15, so I snagged that, and I got a $17 PS2 to USB adapter from the Source.

Got home, ate supper, and then plugged everything in and downloaded StepMania. Lo and behold, success! No error messages, no big warning screens, no explosions. The dance pad works perfectly except for what appears to be a common problem with some adapters—it doesn’t recognise simultaneous up/down or left/right. That’s a bit of a problem, since many songs use those moves often. So I’m probably going to have to buy another adapter.

StepMania is an awesome program. Not only does it let me play DDR on my computer, but I can also take my own MP3 files and use them. I just spent my night adding steps for the Hampsterdance Song (what?! ). It an exhausting process. And that song is fast. h34r:

De-da-dee-dee-dee-de-do-do … de-do-dee-dee-do…

The clock hit midnight and we watched Dick Clark (who is still alive, yes) kiss someone on national television. In order to get this “pretty picture” out of our mind, we (my friends Laura and Rhiannon—we were playing DDR and watching movies) came up with the insane idea of phoning our former English teacher, Ms. Sukalo, who currently resides in the Big Apple.

So Laura dug out a phone card and we attempted to reach her several times. For the first few attempts, no luck. Busy line, “circuits were busy”, blah, blah. Apparently everyone drinks and dials on New Year’s Eve. Go figure. Finally, at about the third try, we get through! Success—or was it?

“United Airlines.” United Airlines? United Airlines? So I thought I had dialled a wrong number, and hang up, too chicken to say anything. Of course Laura pointed out that they had probably just said that as a New Year’s (drunken) prank. We tried it again—line was busy. At this point, we wanted to check that we had the number right. We went on an epic quest, first confirming the area code, then confirming it was not the number of United Airlines. Boy were we dumb. Lastly, we looked up the phone number in the white pages and it was a cell phone. So we tried again.

Fifth try got us United Airlines again. This time we weren’t giving up. I gallantly surrendered the phone to Rhiannon, who has more pluck than me, and she asked in succession these question three: “Where are you located?” (New York City). “What is your address?” (We have it right here… one moment.) “What’s your phone number?”

At this point, we were hearing hushed voices in the background. Then suddenly someone (hello, Ms. Sukalo) burst out laughing and the voices were no longer so hushed. We tried to elicit further response only to have the call cut out on us and get replaced by a busy signal. And that’s where this tale ends. Or does it?

Well of course not, because I just have to take things too far. I fired off an email to Ms. Sukalo with contributions from Laura and Rhiannon, congratulating her on redecorating her apartment into an airline. And that’s where we left things. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow (or the day after that … or the day after that—check your email, Ms. Sukalo). But it was an interesting New Year’s diversion!

Speaking of which, I have fallen in love with Dance Dance Revolution. I suck at it, but it’s just too hard to hate that game.

Have a happy new year. Speaking of which, if you haven’t already heard, we’ve decided to give 2007 a miss, since it probably won’t be a very good year anyway. I’m thinking a rerun of 2002 may be in order. Sorry for the inconvenience this abrupt change in the schedule causes, but I‘m sure we’ll all adjust soon.

Don’t touch that remote.