[Daniel] Finally Off Crutches

Today was my first day totally off crutches. It's healing, slowly but surely. I'm hoping I'll be able to drive again by next weekend. Hopefully, Moriah won't have to play chauffeur much longer like she had to this weekend. 22 hours of work between yesterday and today, having to drive out the stadium every hour or so. It was not a weekend off for her like I had hoped she'd get.

[Daniel] Countdown To Graduation

Added what is most important to both of us right now... how many days until graduation. :)

[Daniel] The Damage

For those with a strong stomach (i.e. you can handle looking at my feet), a rare glimpse of a highly-sprained ankle as compared to a normal ankle. This is why I am quiting street skating. It's never cool when you can't distinguish between your ankle and your foot due to swelling. :(

[Daniel] The End Of Skateboarding For Me

Those who care, take a long last look at the MLTK video. It's the last you'll see of me skateboarding, maybe ever.



For perhaps the 10-11th time in 5 years, I have sprained my left ankle badly. It started freshman year of college when I rolled it badly walking downstairs. Ever since then, it's been extremely weak and has rolled many times since, especially while skateboarding. Most of the times, they weren't bad (only out of action for a couple days) but the last couple times have been much worse. The time before this, I was on crutches for at least a week and couldn't skate for a month after that. This one is only slightly less severe.



So I am giving up using my double-kick skateboard (what you see in the video), maybe for a year or two, maybe for good. It's not worth the pain, the limping and the worrying about the future anymore. I'm sick of gimping along to class and work, having to explain to everyone and their brother who asks why I'm gimping.



I won't be giving up completely, as I also have what is known as a longboard (thanks Mom & Dad). It's fast, smooth and almost impossible to do any tricks other than a manual (wheelie) on. It's a lot of fun and probably the only skating I will be able to do in the future.



This really bites. I was NOT planning on giving this up until I was at least 30 (another 10 years ). And I am especially mad as Moriah and I had started to film our next little video, in which you would have seen vast improvement in both of our skating over MLTK. Now, that too is over for me.



What is likely my final list of accomplishments is posted on our Skate page. There likely will never be any more additions for me but watch out for little 'Riah. She's getting good.

[Daniel] PyGame & Mac OS X Revisited

My problems of last week have been solved in multiple ways. One, Slackware did successfully build and run the PyGame module I was trying to get running. I got everything working flawlessly under Slack, which is either a testament to how simple and flexible Slackware is or to how comfortable I am with it. However, due to the emulation, I discovered it was very slow (or at least slower than I would like). I didn't have unrealistic hopes for it but it was kind of dismaying.



Approximately 6 hours after getting PyGame working and playing around a little, I sat back and thought about my previous problems, especially the problems with getting things working under Mac OS X. After poking around for maybe 5 minutes, I discovered where I had went wrong. So off I went to redownload the py-kitchensink.dmg.



6 hours of downloading later (no thanks to dialup) and 15 minutes of install later, I had everything working under Mac OS X at a significantly improved speed over the emulated software.



The connection I made that turned things around for me was that PyGame was installed correctly as well as all the modules I needed the first time I installed the KitchenSink. What was wrong was that I was using the wrong Python to try to use them. With path modifications (or using the packaged version that came with the KitchenSink in a different way than I had in mind), I could well have used it straight from the start.



Lessons learned: 1. Stop and think before giving up. 2. Play with everything that comes with a package like that because there is a reason it comes like that. 3. Dialup is really slow and broadband will be more important than food when I move in two months.



Incidentally, the Ball is bouncing just great. :)