StepMania

Ever heard of a video game called Dance Dance Revolution? That game in the arcades where you stomp on plexiglass arrows which makes you look like a retard or someone with rage issues taking out his/her/whatever anger on the dance pad?

Well this post isn't about that. It's about its clone called StepMania.

StepMania (or SM) is basically an open-source clone of Dance Dance Revolution. The difference between DDR and SM is that:

1. You can add songs, themes, etc. to SM.
2. It's free (and open-source, which means you can make modifications to the code to add features like some people did).

SM can played with either a dance pad (through the use of special adapters) or the keyboard. Simfiles (songs and step files for SM) are designed for either pad or keyboard play.

Let's get to the screenshots. Here's the mode select screen:
the style select screen:
the difficulty select screen :

the music select screen:
and the main game (it's on AutoPlay, obviously):
SM is also capable of playing different game modes than DDR. Here's a screenshot of SM in Pump It Up mode:

An extra feature is that you can edit steps of songs you like (or songs you made)

More info can be found on the StepMania website (also includes program downloads and older versions)

Some websites for SM Stuff:
Zenius-i vanisher.com
StepManiaThings
StepMania MEDIA (registration required, in Spanish)
bemanistyle.com (registration required)

Mandelbrot Set

First post on my blog and it's the most boring topic i can think of. It's about the Mandelbrot set. Here's the starting image:
The Mandelbrot set is a fractal which means it has small copies of itself in the set.
Let's try zooming in between the head and the body:
And now we try to zoom into one of those seahorse-like things:

And now into its tail:
And to those little things that make up that tail:
Now to that area that looks like a sideways "S":

There's a Minibrot inside it! What images do we get in we zoom in further? Let's see:





Now we zoom in further to the center in that part:

Another minibrot!

If you want to zoom in on the Mandelbrot set yourself, here's a free program called GNU XaoS.

For more info about the Mandelbrot set and fractals:
Wikipedia article about the Mandelbrot set.
Wikipedia article about the Fractals.