💾 Archived View for jsreed5.org › files › week › index.gmi captured on 2022-07-16 at 13:57:57. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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We own a Pump It Up arcade cabinet, and with the help of a friend, we installed an off-the-shelf PC and some generic I/O boards inside the cabinet. The PC runs a standard copy of Windows 7, and input from the dance pads is mapped as keyboard input, allowing us to run any program we want on the machine. Of course we primarily use it to run a home version of PIU. For the last half-decade we've run StepF2, but this week I decided it was time to upgrade to StepPrime.
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My current smartphone is a Samsung Galaxy Note8, which has dual 12 MP main camera sensors. I have 2x optical zoom with the device, but the rest of the zoom--up to 10x--is digital. The pixelation at that level makes photos almost indecipherable, but by altering the exposure compensation, I can at least get some details to come out.
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I was invited to a tiny pinball bar on Thursday. I hadn't played pinball in years, and I'm no good at the game, but I always enjoy playing it. One table was themed with classic monsters such as Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, and Frankenstein's monster. I'm a sucker for that kind of horror, and the table was one of my favorites at the bar.
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Two examples of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, the only aircraft to deliver nuclear weapons in combat, are flightworthy today. One of them, 44-69972 "Doc", visited an airfield not far from us on Saturday. I was incredibly fortunate to be able to take a 30-minute ride in the bomber. As an aviation enthusiast, it was one of the most amazing flights I've ever taken, and one I'll like never be able to do again.
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Spring in the area has been unusually rainy. The clouds partially broke on a day when we needed to move some arcade equipment, allowing us to keep the electronics dry, but rain continued to fall to the east, producing one of the strongest rainbows I've seen for some time.
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My wife received a stuffed seal plush in the mail as a gift. It was supposed to puff up to a round shape upon being removed from its vacuum packing, but we've found that it has remained curiously flat. It makes a silly perch for one of her cat plushes.
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I've seen this aircraft performing touch-and-gos at KMCI many times, usually on Mondays around noon. I'm not sure why they're performed at a civil airport and not at one of the nearby air bases; this could be a privately-owned plane, or on load to a civilian operator. I'd never had the chance to see it on the ground until this day.
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I own four arcade sticks and two flight sticks, including a full HOTAS. After purchasing a PowerA Fusion arcade stick for Switch this week, I gathered up several of my controllers to try to figure out where to store them all. The small controller in the lower right is the "Pocket Voltex", meant to be used with Sound Voltex-like games such as K-Shoot MANIA or Unnamed SDVX Clone.
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My wife needed to catch a plane this weekend. She hadn't felt quite right while packing, so the night before she left, we picked up two COVID-19 test kits. I had never taken one before, which is an interesting thought to me, since the pandemic has now lasted two and a half years. Fortunately, we both tested negative.
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In our Final Fantasy XIV-themed tabletop campaign, I play as a red mage, but until now I've played with green dice. I've been getting consistently bad rolls in almost all of our combat scenarios with them, which has left me a little demotivated at times. This new set of red dice has been somewhat kinder to me--even when our GM hasn't!
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The weather has remained stubbornly cold in recent days, preventing many trees and flowers from budding. Over the past weekend, an azalea tree near my office suddenly bloomed, despite the frost on the ground mere days before. My first indication that the tree had bloomed was not the sight of the flowers themselves, but the wonderful scent they emitted across the parking lot.
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With the weather slowly warming up at the start of the month, I finally had a chance to walk around a local park with an old friend. He informed me that earlier in the year, he had found dozens of turtles lounging near the ponds along the park's trails and footpaths. I spotted one myself as we passed one of the quieter spots.
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I'm fairly certain I will never clear Pump It Up charts in the 20+ difficulty range, nor am I actively pursuing such a goal. I simply want to stay in shape, keep my weight down, and have fun playing a game I enjoy. That isn't to say that I don't pursue other challenges in the game, though, such as replacing all the arrows with identical soccer balls. This week I cleared my first S16 using the noteskin.
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My sister owned a copy of Pokémon: Yellow Version when we were young. We used a cheat device to teach the hidden move "Surf" to her Pikachu--usually only doable through official Nintendo promotional events--which unlocked a surfing-themed minigame on the cartridge. Recently I felt the urge to play the minigame again, and when I did, I achieved a new personal high score.
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I had an extremely bad week in mid-March, the details of which I won't expound upon here. Upon leaving work near the end of the week, the weather turned quite cold and dreary. It almost felt like nature was wallowing in my sorrows with me.
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Local temperatures oscillated wildly over the course of the week, reaching close to 80 F one afternoon and dipping close to 0 just a few nights later. Snow melted off our roof during the warm days, and water overflowed from a clogged gutter onto a Japanese maple tree in our front yard. The water then froze as temperatures fell, leaving thick ice on the branches.
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I paid a visit to Kansas City this week and got to explore much of the city center. I arrived at KC's Union Station fairly late: most of the attractions were closed for the evening, and only a few people remained in the front hall. This meant, however, that the historical terminal was unoccupied, allowing me to snap some striking photos.
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Temperatures have been rising in the area over the last few days, but some snow remains in shaded areas. While walking next to a swimming pool a few days ago, I came across one such place: the thin line of shadow created by the top bar of a chain link fence. A single line of snow found refuge in the shadow, unmolested by the heat of the sun.
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An arcade in the region has a fairly new DanceDance Revolution machine. I don't go to that arcade very often, because my preferred dance game is Pump It Up and this location does not have a PIU machine. When I visited last week, I discovered that a broken menu button had been replaced with a button that didn't match the others at all.
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A rare westerly wind at KMCI caused traffic to arrive and depart from runway 27. This extracted video frame shows the shadow of a Southwest Boeing 737 as it crosses over the perimeter fence on final approach. I love seeing the shadows of aircraft--watching them speed along the ground gives a very real sense of how fast these planes fly, a sense which is often dulled by seeing them move across a featureless sky.
Week 05: A Work-in-Progress Workstation
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My wife and I recently re-arranged the house to have separate studies. This gives us privacy, as well as extra space to set up equipment and furniture other than just our personal desktops. I've used the extra space to set up a dedicated digitization machine and a retro gaming station. VHS cassettes and RCA cables have already started piling up.
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I purchased a Kobo Clara HD last week, factory-new directly from Kobo. Unfortunately, when I opened the box, I discovered that the screen already had damage: a visible crack line ran across the upper-right corner of the screen, and the top several lines of pixels didn't function. I immediately opened a ticket with Kobo, and they agreed to replace the device under warranty.
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I've returned to working full-time in my office, but almost all of my coworkers have switched to working from home permanently, and most have only come on site once or twice to pick up their belongings from their cubicles. Every now and then I see some remnants of the COVID-19 mass exodus, such as a calendar that was never advanced past March of 2020. It's a little spooky to see--I'm reminded of the abandoned towns of Chernobyl and Fukushima.
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We enjoy crepes and often frequent a local creperie on the weekends. Recently we've begun baking and cooking more often at home, so my wife decided to try her hand at a ham and asparagus quiche. The result, soggy bottom crust aside, was absolutely delicious--and surprisingly photogenic.
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The most direct route to my office includes an interchange between two highways. Most of the interchange ramps are left exits, and they all involve very tight turns. Tractor trailers often take these ramps too fast and tip over--and whenever they do, I have to find an alternate route to work.
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