Insidethe.com

Insidethe.com

Random Life and Technology Bits

Dad

I never knew the last conversation I had with my father would be the very last conversation we would ever have. Even though he’s gone the stories and legacy he left behind will long outlive him and fortunately (or unfortunately as it sometimes was) he left behind a lot of stories. I find myself telling my own daughter stories about her grandfather just as Dad told me stories about my grandfather. It’s been difficult for me to process and I don’t know what to say because it’s easiest to share the most recent stories and work backward to the events that have become hazy with time. Even though our last conversation is finished the story around that conversation remains unfinished and due to the shared hurt from neighbors and distorted civil justice. The events have been difficult to process and separate from his death. There are lots of facts surrounding the issue and interpreting those facts will ultimately determine how the story ends but I’m too emotionally invested in the story to try and lay it out.

For now, until the story ends, March 23rd will simply be the end of my Dad’s side of the story.

Obituary

IRONWOOD, Mich. — Steven Andrew Bratu, 59, died tragically in an automobile accident on his way to see loved ones out of state on March 23, 2019.

He was born to parents Samuel and Margaret Bratu in Hancock, on Feb. 1, 1960.

On July 21, 1979, he married his high school sweet heart, Rose Schneck, who survives. Instead of calling each other by their respective first names, Steven and Rose playfully and lovingly referred to each other as “George” throughout their whole relationship.

Steve graduated from Luther L. Wright High School in 1979. He worked at various jobs early on in his adulthood, until he opened his own planing mill which sparked his loved of working with wood. He relocated his business, Bratu’s Hardwood Interiors, to the Ironwood Industrial park in 2001 where he worked with his friends and family until the time of his death.

Apart from working, Steven enjoyed hunting, fishing, walking with his dogs, working on endless projects around the house (like moving his entire house across the street), and of course, spending time with his family. Together, they loved going on cruises and traveling, swimming and boating in Lake Superior, babysitting the grandkids, listening to music, watching movies, having campfires in the backyard, and cheering on their daughters at various sporting events. As long as he was with his family, he enjoyed whatever it was, no matter how insignificant.

He is survived by his wife of almost 40 years; his sons, Jared (Jinhee) of Cinnaminson, N.J., and Marcus (Maria) of Ironwood; daughters, Hannah and Samantha, both living at home; and his grandkids, Selah, Meyer and Maverick. Also surviving are his mother, Margaret of Hendersonville, N.C .; his brothers, David (Sharon) of Clintonville, Wis., Dan (Georgina) of Hendersonville, N.C., and Joe, of Wakefield; and numerous aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces.

Steve loved God and had a big heart to help anyone in need. He will be sorely missed by all who loved him. His legacy will live on through his family as they strive to fill the big shoes he left behind, until we are reunited in God’s presence.

A memorial service for Steve will be held on Friday, March 29, at 11 a.m., at Range Community Bible Church in Hurley, Wis. Per his request, cremation has taken place. Steve loved flannel and Hawaiian shirts, so if you have one, please wear it to the service in memory of him.

Instructions for Konami PS3 Dance Pad on PC with Stepmania

TL;DR

Using two Konami PS3 dance pads on Windows at the same time and fixing the up+down or left+right combo steps is impossible. Use Linux instead, instructions below.

Background

While looking for things to do with my 5-year old I found the Playstation 3 Original Konami Dance Pad were less than $20 on Amazon and decided to buy two. Using these on the PS3 in 2018 turned out to be more difficult than anticipated:

  • The Playstation store doesn’t have Dance Dance Revolution for download.
  • Only used copies were available on Amazon/Ebay and selling for $50+.
  • GameStop no longer sells Dance Dance Revolution because they don’t sell the dance mats to accompany it.

The dance mats appeared to be plug and play with StepMania on Windows. Out of the box everything appears to work but there is a problem with the input translation when pressing Up and Down or Left and Right simultaneously. The Up+Down or Left+Right combination actions don’t register as valid input. Windows sees the dance mats as a joystick so when pressing left the computer interprets it as a joystick being moved to the leftmost axis. So when two conflicting inputs are pressed such as Up and Down or Left and Right it doesn’t register as valid input. There are various solutions floating around but none of them work:

  • Use raw_inputs_ps3.exe to work around the limitation – This works but only with ONE dance pad. Since I was using two dance pads connected at the same time this solution didn’t work for me. If you’re using only one dance pad try this first.
  • JoyToKey – This sort of worked, after fiddling around I managed to map the direction arrows on the pads to keys and then trigger a key combination when opposite arrows are simultaneously pressed. While this works with two dance pads I found the pad presses to not register accurately. I’m only a novice player but the results were frustrating.
  • Xpadder – I didn’t try this solution and would have gladly paid the $10 to find a solution but the online store lack of a direct download concerned me. From what I read it relies on the same inputs as JoyToKey and would not accurately solve the issue.

After a couple of days of fiddling and searching, I tried followed some forum posts that talked about using the Konami Dance Pad with StepMania on Linux to solve the input axis problem and use two pads at the same time. This worked great for me and I have documented the steps.

Instructions for Ubuntu 18

As of this post StepMania 5.0.12 for linux requires libva.so.1 which is not available in Ubuntu 18. Ubuntu 18 has libva.so.2 so the solution is to compile StepMania using the new library. You’ll need most of the common build tools installed.

  1. Download and compile StepMania following their instructions. The only variation is you need to use this command when you get to the cmake step per this forum: cmake -G ‘Unix Makefiles’ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DWITH_MINIMAID=OFF .. && cmake ..
  2.  You should be able to launch StepMania once compiled. The next step is to install HIDRAW
  3. Download and compile libsuinput-0.5.tgz
  4. Build it following the libsuinput instructions which is a requirement for the hidraw project.
  5. Copy the compiled module from the library source folder:
    cp src/.libs/libsuinput.so.4 /usr/lib/
  6. gitclone https://github.com/orochimarufan/hidraw
  7. Build hidraw: 
    cd uinput_ddrpad
make
make install
  8. Once compiled plug in one dance mat and run uinput_ddrpad. It will detect the first dance mat.
  9. Launch StepMania and assign the key bindings as normal. You can use the input test to verify Up+Down and Left+Right options are both registered when pressed at the same time.
  10. Close uinput_ddrpad and StepMania
  11. Plug both dance pads in. The first pad will register as /dev/hidraw0 and the second will register as /dev/hidraw1. You must run a copy of uinput_ddrpad for each pad.
    uinput_ddrpad /dev/hidraw0
    uinput_ddrpad /dev/hidraw1
  12. Start StepMania and configure the directional arrows on each pad. The input test program should confirm both pads can be used at the same time and up+down and left+right combos work at the same time.

Happy Dancing!

Instructions for Ubuntu 16

I have not tried these instructions but I think you can use StepMania from https://www.stepmania.com/download/ and follow instructions 3 through 12 from above.