The Lair of The Dark Knight

Holy crap, I totally haven't used this in a LONG time.

I've got some "after dark" stuff I want to talk about. It's kinda weird, but if you're interested in reading about the things I do find rather exciting then please leave a comment requesting to see or send me a direct message of the same.

I'll be creating a new group for this.

Are there any UK furs who are going to AC who wouldn't mind picking up something for me?

Y'see the thing is that I left my Nintendo DS in the US whilst at FC'09 and one of the guys I was rooming with on the last day (neouka) kept hold of it for me. I had totally forgotten about it until now.

If no one is going or would rather not handle stuff, then it's OK; I've already offered to pay shipping. :3

First of all I'd like to point out that I am incredibly tired right now. I've come straight from CF to working a 12hr shift, with another three to follow this, so this post may ramble.

ConFuzzled is something I feel immensely proud of, along with RBW. It's taken me a while to figure out exactly what Convention Operations should do and a lot of behind the scenes errors have been made in the past. Even after this weekend I realise that my perception of the role isn't complete, but it's a helluva lot clearer now.

I count myself to be lucky that I've been doing the same job from the inception of both CF and RBW, but also a little disappointed in myself that it's taken so long for the pieces to start falling into place.

Despite being run off my feet (along with everyone else on staff) I'm not sure on exactly how I saw CF this year. Sure I enjoyed working and was swept up in the inner workings of the con, but now that I'm sat at work I'm finding myself rather depressed. Once I realised just how quickly the weekend had gone by I also realised that the time I had to myself was incredibly minimal.
Conversations with attendees never lasted more than five minutes, I missed the PawPets Show due to scheduling (my own fault, really), routinely had little more than four hours of sleep each night and only two meals a day (one on Saturday), had about five units of alcohol across the weekend, and in three days I only suited for three to four hours.

And this isn't just me: Every single staff member has probably experienced the same things (except for missing the PawPet show in most cases).

Now, please don't read this wrong as I'm not bitter about the con. There are many perks that accompany the hard work, from something as simple the staff goodies to knowing that we've made 350 people have a wonderful weekend and proving once again that the UK Furry Fandom is not full of failures who couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery.

Working 18+ hour days for fun is a mixed bag, and it is worth it to see the smiles on the faces of the attendees, but boy does it take it's toll.

I don't think I'd be so meh if I had tonight off work and could have stayed to the Dead Dog party, but such is life.

I wonder if my current ambivalent feelings are due to having to come straight to work after CF or not, but I certainly feel that I've not done much that I wanted to do. This must change, for every staff member of CF and RBW. I'm not going to let this happen again.

TL;DR

CF rocked but I'm annoyed that I was working most of it, didn't get to relax, couldn't get drunk, etc. Going to see if I can rememdy this for CF and RBW.

Addendum:

This makes me smile. Hot damn I enjoy playing Radinov.

So I've come into ownership of a Pioneer CLD-1750 LaserDisc player. This bad boy plays both PAL and NTSC LDs. :D

I've also acquired 26 LDs:( Small pics, but 26 of them! )

:D

Yesterday whilst at work I spent quite a lot of time thinking about how one would go about making a full DDR machine. I discussed this with some friends on IRC and we threw around some ideas. tktiger was kind enough to let me know via Twitter how large the screens are on official DDR machines (pre SuperNOVA), which proved to be a large factor.

The main goal is that the machine should be as large as an official DDR machine; screen should be the same size or larger, stage should be the same size and height from floor, speakers should give the same quality, etc. Stage and cabinet should be constructed new, possibly salvaging parts from old home pads (controller). Software of choice is Stepmania.
We (matt_lion, Lev, nidonocu and I) managed to whittle our ideas down to four possibilities:

1) Use an old arcade cabinet rewired for the purpose. Although the idea is sound for a MAME cabinet I wasn't too happy as we'd be limited to screen size and orientation (DDR screens are angled so that the top is further back, allowing the user to look down at it). Idea discounted.

2) Use a PC with a monitor. This option, along with the following two, allow for a cabinet to be built from scrath (my preference). However finding a monitor that is as large as an official DDR screen (29" 4:3) is very difficult and potentially quite expensive. NOTE: As of this morning I have opened the possibilty of using 16:9 screens, like the DDR X machines, but large 16:9/16:10 monitors are still expensive. Idea discounted.

3) Use an XBox with a TV. This was suggested by jdel as a way of streamlining the build process. Old XBoxen are a dime a dozen and there already exist lots of home DDR pads that I can mutilate to get the controllers. StepmaniaX exists for this option but is difficult to come across and is kinda in alpha. nidonocu also pointed out that old XBoxen aren't really that reliable hardware wise, and for resiliance it would mean having multiple XBoxen ready to swap out. Idea totally discounted.

4) Use a PC with a TV. This I feel is the best idea of the lot. Stepmania has pretty low requirements, which means that I can build a machine to play it using old bits that are lying around. The other advantage is that old CRT TVs large enough are plentiful, so much so that my local FreeCycle group had four 30" CRT TVs going up for grabs in the past week! This plan has legs.

So I sent an email to one of the FreeCyclers for my area and arranged to collect a 30" Philips TV from them tomorrow evening for the princely sum of a taxi ride home. The plan at that point was to build a PC with Linux (to get the best performance) running StepMania, though I'd still need to get a graphics card that has TV-Out (composite preferably).
However on my way home I remembered something, that I still have a Mini-ITX machine that I got from jouva a few years ago, and that little beauty has TV-Out! Not only that, but I'll soon be the owner of an Acoustic Solutions (I think) home stereo amplifier (seperate) and a pair of speakers to go with them. In the next few days I'll have all of the internals sorted, then I just need to build the cabinet and the stage. :D :D

Building the cabinet and stage might take a while though... need tools and materials (wood, metal, perspex, etc).

TL;DR

After running through some hypothetical plans of how to make my own DDR machine, I actually realised that I actually have most of the hardware and software ready to go. o_o

You know that law that affects furry cub porn? I've got one thing to say about it.

If you don't like it, VOTE.

See you at the elections.

P.S. I'm neither for or against this law. I may not like cub porn but I do not have the right to prevent the freedom of expression, and that's all I'm going to say about that.

I would seriously encourage every single person who is able to vote in the upcoming general election to visit Vote For Policies and complete the survey.

The results will highlight who you should vote for based upon your responses to the policies each party provides.

Give it some thought.

I finally got around to working on some of the footage I shot at EF15. Enjoy. :D

Unsurprisingly I'm gonna be playing lots of Rock and Metal at one of the dances at ConFuzzled this year. :3

So, any requests? Leave a comment. :D

Today's Boxing Day and, as with yesterday, it feels like just another day. Like yesterday I'll also be in work, although it will be a night shift rather than a day shift. ;)

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In other news I'm currently in the planning stages for a "Super Sekrit Projekt". Yes, I know I've had these before and they haven't gone anywhere, mainly through an initial spurt of excitement and then lack of motivation afterwards.

This particular project, however, has left the initial "OMG wouldn't that be awesome?" stage and has entered the "Serious Planning" stage; somewhere I've never got to before. :O

And yes, this one is staying secret. Only five people know about this; two of them being much appreciated advisers, one in sammythesamoyed, and the final two being interested parties.

My planned time scale is to start the project in March and to have it completed by Halloween. Due to my restrictive work schedule I will only be able to work on this for one week out of every three, but I will be able to spend the entire week working on it. This gives me 11 non-consecutive weeks to work on this from start to finish, which given the amount of work to do should be easy; the problem will be motivating myself.

schnee and klepsydra, you both would probably be quite interested in this. Leave a comment if you're vaguely interested. :)