Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog

My NY1 coverage this morning was interrupted by coverage of the Tony Awards. Blah. But since I was watching, congrats to the Avenue Q cast and crew for pulling 6 nominations, including Best Musical (!), Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical for John Tartaglia, and Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for Stephanie D’Abruzzo. They deserve them all.

Every since I put up VJ Army (the ranking site), I’ve received a lot of requests for a Pop’n Music ranking site. (For those who only follow Bemani to the extent that I mention it here: Pop’n Music, or PNM, is a very colorful and musically-diverse game pretty similar to Beatmania, only with 9 buttons and no turntable. The music comes in every genre available. If you’ve seen Lost In Translation and remember the scene in the arcade with the kid bouncing around in the arcade in front of a weird machine and slapping colored buttons, that’s Pop’n.) I am happy to announce that I am officially beginning work tonight on the Pop’n ranking site I have alluded to for many months. I have not received a controller yet (as was listed as a condition), but I’m partnering with a well known controller maker to get the site moving. Draw your own conclusions. Some notes for now for what you can expect:

• It will be using much of the same code base as VJ Army, as it’s pretty solid and easily adapted to Pop’n.
• It will cover the home games for the PS2 only.
• The Pop’n ranking site does not have a snappy name yet. It will be decided later.
• I’m going to be playing up the graphical nature of Pop’n, and it’ll be a bit more eye-pleasing.
• Ranking will primarily be done by score out of 100,000, but if you have a note count, you can put it in – it won’t necessarily do anything, but there we go.
• Users will be able to set in their profiles what type of controller they’re using (Dual Shock 2/Small Official/ASC) and it’ll be denoted next to their scores. Won’t do anything, just noted.
• I am not accepting beta testers at this time because I really have nothing to show at the moment. Don’t ask.

Decided to do a theme this time rather than just all my random crap. A silly theme, granted, but a theme nonetheless. iMix: Hey!

Every now and then I come across a link of something I just know I have to go do, because it is far too insane to pass up. PacManhattan fits the bill currently. Hoping to make it Saturday, weather and schedule permitting.

Just updated to MT 3.0b2. The annoyances are ironing out, which makes me happy. Friday: Saw Mean Girls. Was pleasantly surprised that Tim Meadows can, in fact, be funny. Who knew? Nearly strangled someone when Halcyon + On + On by Orbital was the tune carrying us through the last 2 minutes to the credits. I’m not sure if it annoys me more that it just makes the song slightly more played out, or that it reminds me of how much ass Orbital used to kick and how much I pray the last album is going to let them go out on a high note. Please, sirs, no more The Altogether style stuff. Saturday: Went to a bizarre book signing in the upper east side, bought Wario Ware for the GameCube, and hit a new personal record for laundry drop-off at 39 pounds. Quite absurd. Sunday: I get the feeling that the less said about today, the better. Let’s leave it at that. This week: Probably will have to work at home one day because Buttons is going to need a vet trip, and other than that, it’s pretty wide open. Hard to believe that 7th Style comes out next week.