I watched the collectors edition five-disc version of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on Friday afternoon while Sharaun was busy at a salon of some sort. The additional scenes were absolutely excellent, and really aide in conveying the spirit of the story. I wish I could’ve had Sharaun see this extended version first, as it helps to explain things much better for those who may have not read the books. Though I doubt I’ll be able to convince her to watch it again now that she’s sat through the screener version I originally downloaded. Although, she did say she really enjoyed the non-extended version. Anthony and I have talked about having an all day marathon when the last dvd set comes out. Starting in the morning and watching until the end. I heard that the Return of the King dvd cut will clock in at four and half hours, that means watching all of them in a row would amount to something like eleven hours of movie. I’m up for it, and I think it’d be an awesome experience to watch them all in sequence as a whole. I know it’s because I enjoy the story so much, but I honestly think the films are some of my favorites; ever.
I’ve found my next frivolous project.
Friday night we also played some more DDR over at Anthony’s place, and I’ve got the totally busted calf muscles to prove it. I’ve been considering downloading the game for the Xbox and then buying a couple dancepads, since that’d be the cheapest option. However, during our Friday night DDR playing, Ben managed to find a few open-source DDR emulators online. A couple seemed really good, but StepMania seemed to be the best. So, Saturday I BitTorrent’d the complete DDR mix package for StepMania. With over 1000 songs, you get a lot more variety than just having the Xbox game. All you need is a computer plugged into your TV and some dancepads. I picked up some PlayStation dancepads and ordered a PS-USB converter so I can use them on the PC with StepMania. I’ve already started on the project, because it kills two projects with one stone. Lemme explain:
I want to create a complete console emulation machine. A small computer that plugs into the TV and has joysticks and can play all the old console games from Nintendo, N64, Super Nintendo, Genesis, etc. It’s actually a relatively easy thing to do, since the emulators and ROMs for most consoles are readily available and work really well. I’ve been messing with Nintendo and Genesis emulators since college, and am really familiar with them. Cool thing is, the emulation machine and the StepMania machine mentioned above can be the same machine. Throw it all in a small-form-factor PC case and hook it up to my wireless network, and maintenance becomes a breeze. Anyway, the emulation and output-to-TV parts are already working, and I just need the PS-USB converter to make the StepMania portion work. Now all I need is a pretty frontend menu system to choose what games you wanna play, and it’s done! All in a couple days, not bad.
Well, I wrote a lot over the weekend when we got back from vacation – so I’m basically just cutting and pasting a bunch of paragraphs per day of pre-written blog. I do “proofread” it and add up-to-date stuff here and there, but for the most part it’s canned for the next couple days. Sorry this entry comes so late, but at least it’s here.
Dave out.
Also written on this day...
- built an outdoor shower - 2023
- and so on and so on until forever - 2019
- the pitch, the timbre, the tone - 2010
- pinks - 2006
- my moby dick - 2005
A LOTR marathon? 11 hours? I like it!