WestabyHome

A used game shop in La Crosse has really shined lately (the place is always
packed when I head in there on Saturdays). Within the last year they have
brought several arcade machines into the store, but only with the last week
with the release of Street Fighter IV did they bring out something really special.

Pictures available.

A custom mame arcade machine that is so beautiful; 4 player, custom art, 40+
tv. On top of that, they also have custom made 360 arcade sticks for playing
Street Fighter IV on their HD tvs. These are not the poorly made madcats arcade
sticks. Did I mention they are holding fighter tournaments?

Pictures in the forums
Gaming Generations

Woke up today with a great idea for a piano learning application. A program that would display songs in a format that is familiar to me, guitar hero. My plan was to make a scrolling music application written in C++ that would take xls files as input and display note names on each bar. I am not much with OpenGL/DirectX programming, so I would need help. It then dawned on me to search sourceforge for a similar application already in development and offer my help. I found one, Synthesia.

Synthesia completely blows me away. Does everything I wanted and takes a huge step forward by using MIDI files, making it compatable with thousands of free songs. It even connects to your USB or MIDI keyboard for input and “scoring”. It also has a practive mode that will pause the scrolling waiting for you to hit the correct notes.

I am saddened that the project is currently closed source. The only help accepted is from a user’s perspective; bug reports, feature requests, etc…

New widget added to the main page for tracking my personal exercise activity (below the right side menu bar). Hosted by Walker Tracker, one glance shows the last 14 days.

This new plan was inspired by an old article. I am keeping a step goal and increasing it by 2000 each month, but the simple act of tracking how active you are makes you self aware of when you need to be more active.

"It takes about six months to "lock in" a new behavior."

I am using a freebee pedometer that came with a brita water filter. I am about three months in and promised myself a new pedometer if I make it to six. Should prove interesting going into the coming winter months.