DDR/Stepmania fun times

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Yesterday I finally got ArrowVortex working; originally I was running it under WINE on my Intel NUC over xrdp to my Mac, which was kind of janky but functional, but after that stopped working (and was too obnoxious with latency) I just tried out Crossover WINE again and it worked like a charm.

Incidentally, Crossover’s gotten way better in the 10 years since I last used it and I might end up paying for it again!

Anyway, you can see the results of this: I have a very much work-in-progress song pack that you can check out if you’re so inclined. Beta feedback is appreciated as well. I’ll be adding artwork eventually but right now my effort is primarily on getting more songs and charts in.

If there’s any songs of mine you think would be a good DDR track, let me know!

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Updates

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Had an appointment with my psychiatrist today. Turns out I was supposed to get a drug screen some time ago, oops. But I’m not that interested in stimulant-based meds anyway. For now we’re going to try Wellbutrin, which is I think what we were talking about last time anyway and it doesn’t need a drug screening. So that starts tomorrow morning.

DDR pad arrives sometime tomorrow as well. Just in time, too, the pad I’m borrowing from Spud has decided that the down button doesn’t really need to work right.

I hope all this stuff helps me to get motivated at work, because holy crap I am having a hard time finding the energy to actually, y'know, work.

Feeling better already

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Today my copies of DDR for PS2 arrived. Also Spud mentioned that he still had some soft pads from back when my enthusiasm for the game got him into it as well and offered to lend one to me, so I picked that up from him.

Before I started playing I felt tired, depressed, and dismal.

Then I played for half an hour and already felt so much better.

The pad I’m borrowing isn’t anything special, and the button response isn’t great and it slips around a bit much, but even bad DDR is pretty good. And I think this is a habit I’ll be able to keep up, and which I’ll feel really good about.

I can’t wait for the L-Tek pad to arrive in (probably) a week or two, but in the meantime it’s really nice being able to play the game again.

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DDR update

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I ended up just ordering one of the pads from Poland, with the intention of modding it to work with the PS2, and then I ended up installing Stepmania on my old, generally-useless Mac mini and downloading all of the songs from the PS2 games that I’d rebought, making the PS2 entirely redundant anyway. Rumor has it that the Polish pad manufacturer is working on a native PS2 control box and when that comes out I guess I could buy one but jeeze, Stepmania on the Mini looks and plays so much better than the real thing on the PS2 anyway, so why even bother?

Plus, Stepmania has a huge community of people adding more music all the time, and maybe this’ll encourage me to make some packs of my own stuff. I bet Sliced by a Mandolin would make a great DDR track.

Oh, and even after shipping, the pad from Poland still ended up cheaper than any of the domestic options I could find, DIY kits included.

Pain, music, and DDR

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I’m fully off the nortriptyline and I haven’t had withdrawal side effects for several days now. On the other hand, my persistent fibro dizziness is back, and when I hit a wall with a pain flare I really feel it. I’d forgotten just how much more intense that was before nortriptyline. (Of course, while on nortriptyline it’s not like the end result was any different so I don’t feel like I’ve made a big mistake getting off of it.)

My pain doc recommended trying low-dose naltrexone, which is something my previous pain doc had scoffed at1, but anyway I’ve sent a message to my GP asking about getting on it, and if she can’t take care of that then maybe my psychiatrist can, or maybe the pain doc can (but unfortunately he’s really busy and appointments with him are booked to well over a month out at this point).

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