Macintosh

R.I.P Shufflez0r

01/12/2005 – 04/05/2005

Last night my iPod Shuffle was connected to my Mac, and suddenly I got the unsafe device removal warning, and now he wont connect to any computers or play music. If I leave him alone for a while, he half wakes up.. I can check the battery charge one time, or make the power light blink a little, and then he goes back into his coma. I browsed Apple’s forums and it seems other people that upgraded to the 1.1 firmware are having similar shuffle-comas. Apple’s shipping me a replacement, it should arrive in 1 – 2 business days.

So I finally broke down and bought an Ignition Pad and it works perfectly with my adapter on my Mac! I can finally play StepMania on my PowerBook G4 instead of having to lug out an old Windows box!

Plus, it’s X-Box compatible, so if I ever decide to get a console with DDR that isn’t from Sony, I’ve already got a pad 🙂

Well I’m making progress on my quest to play StepMania on my Mac. I now have an adapter that works perfectly with StepMania, as well as being able to produce the up/down and left/right doubles — as long as I use a real Playstation controller. If I attach my Mad Catz Beat Pad, I get no input from the joystick. Apparently it’s a known problem with the old grey Mad Catz Beat Pads, so I have to go out and pick up a new black one, or another brand. I’ve been eyeing the Red Octane Ignition pads at Gamestop, but $100 is a bit much for a soft pad, considering you can get a hard platform for that much.

I guess I’ll leave the grey pad and the Mac-incompatible adapter I got last time upstairs for my sister to use on the yucky Windows computer in the living room.

W00t! So I finally broke down and booted Windows on one of my 2 linux boxes and played some StepMania. It was awesome, I haven’t played since the end of December when came to visit.

Soft pads are teh suck, I miss the hard platforms we had in the apartment, even though the buttons kept cracking. I can’t go higher than light mode, otherwise the pad moves too much. It happens sometimes on light mode, too, but only ’cause I’m a fat-ass 🙂

Also, one of the designers of Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 is smiling evilly, knowing that his automatic update message box keeps interrupting my game every few minutes to “remind” me that it installed some updates, but I haven’t restarted my computer yet. Well duh, the reason I didn’t reboot yet is because I’M BUSY PLAYING A GAME!! Eventually I just gave in and rebooted.

I also ordered a really HID-compliant USB adapter, so in 2 – 3 business days I can play on my Mac, and the Windows box can go back to running MythTV again.

So, my quest to be able to play StepMania with my dance pad is still incomplete. The first adapter I got will only send buttons on an axis, so it can’t send up/down and left/right together.. but it works great in Mac OS X, and I’ve been using my Playstation controller in a few emulators.. lots of fun. Yesterday I received my Super Dual Box, which is another 2-player PSX to USB adapter. Everyone raves about how compatible it is an how well it works.

Sure it works well… if you’re on Windows. It claims to be USB HID compliant, but in typical chinese-knockoff fashion, it only pretends to be enough of a USB device for Windows to see it, but not Mac OS X or Linux. It shows up correctly on my Mac and my linux boxen, but it wont send any data when you press buttons.. making it pretty useless.

If any of my Windows friends would like the adapter, feel free to give me $10 and you can have it.. it works perfectly in StepMania on my Windows XP machine, however I refuse to play DDR upstairs, so it’s time to purchase yet another cheap chinese adapter and hope for the best.

My iPod Shuffle came today!

It looks like Reducto got to it before I did 🙂 It’s pretty neat, I set aside 20MB to use as a regular thumb drive, and filled the rest with music. I have around 7 hours of music on it, which is not too bad at all.

I almost lost it in my jacket pocket earlier, I need to clean that pocket out sometime.. I think it’s safer to wear it around my neck with the included lanyard for now 🙂

Note: Your package is in the UPS system and has a rescheduled delivery date of Jan 18, 2005.

My iPod shuffle comes tomorrow! 🙂

Dear Apple Customer,

Apple is pleased to report that a shipment for the following order is on its way to you.

Product # Product Description Qty Ext Price

M9724LL/A iPOD SHUFFLE 512MB-USA 1 99.00