Earthbound: Halloween Hack was really great! I played it this season. I wish it were longer though.

Thanks for posting the others! I’ll check them out!

Russia is sanctioned for invading Ukraine.

In ye old’n times we would leave the console on as a stop-gap way to save the game between in-game save opportunities. Because ye old’n times game design philosophy believed that the added difficulty of crazily separated save points was “fun”.

In modern times I sleep the hardware if I expect to be back within <24 hrs, and power off if I expect to be longer.

(Thank god for saving memory states in emulators!!! Elsewise I probably wouldn’t play retro games at all.)

“Minetest” was a clunky name. Wish they’d have changed the name sooner.

What do you mean? That’s the same layout as the SNES controller, & it’s what most of the retro handhelds use.

Also, it’s running Linux so it’s easy to remap the buttons to a custom layout if desired.

This is a remake, not a port. And being so I wonder: “Why not just port Minetest instead? It’d get better longterm support that way. And why reinvent the wheel?”

Sweet! You’ve probably already found this, but if you’re interested in these devices the Retro Game Corps channel on YouTube is an invaluable resource. That guy does a beyond excellent job reviewing options and giving quality advice!

Yeah, for sure. The analog stocks work flawlessly & I love them. I use them for games where they’re native (i.e. ZDoom & mods), where they emulate a mouse (i.e. Minetest), or where they emulate a d-pad (i.e. psx games). All cases work great! For d-pad games I find myself switching back and forth between d-pad and sticks depending on the application (i.e. Tetris needs precision & is better with d-pad, NBA Jam needs adaptivity & is better with sticks).

I have an Anbernic RG353M & it sounds like it fits your needs. Emulates up to PSP. Moddable: I run ArkOS which is Debian-based - so I can SSH in, apt install programs, run custom bash scripts I wrote, etc. I also ported a desktop game to run on it. So moddability points are high! Also dual-boots into Android, so Android games are available if that’s your thing. It comes with the Android dual-boot right out of the box!

Downsides:

• It can be a little small in my hands for long play sessions. I have a custom 3D printed handle extension which works great and solves this problem.
• There’s a hardware problem involving the 3.5mm audio jack output where chip noise gets in the audio. Annoying, but ignorable. Switching to Bluetooth headphones is a fine workaround too.
• In long play sessions when the device gets hot horizontal bar artifacts show up on the screen. Like the audio thing, they are annoying but ignorable. When they show up I normally interpret it as a sign I’ve been playing too long and take a break while the device cools down.

Overall, it’s got those hardware quirks above but I still like it and I don’t regret it for the price (something like ~$100 a couple of years ago I think). Battery life is very good, even for graphics intensive games. It can go many hours without needing a charge, and generally it has better stamina than I do!

A coworker recently sent me a Word document with edits and comments they had added. When I downloaded & opened it (in Word on Windows!) it told me that it had the edits/comments but it wouldn’t let me see them unless I log in to my Microsoft account and then view it online in the web version of Word. What the actual fuck?

Fuck that. I responded to my coworker and asked them to just send me the edits via email in plain text. I’m not winning popularity contests at work, but what the fuck Microsoft?

If you’re nervous about the switch consider dual-booting. Then you’re not fully committed to the switch & you can have your old Windows system back whenever you want it.

Main steps are:

• Run a defrag on your Windows machine to physically consolidate all your Windows data to one area.
• Break that partition into two (Linux will go one the new empty side)
• Install Linux from a USB as normal, but don’t choose to wipe your drive completely. Choose a manual option instead where you specifically indicate your intended Linux partition from above.
• Optional: Once installation is complete you can set up another partition to hold files which can be available to both OSs.
  • Boot into Linux & define the remaining unused space in the Linux partition as a new NTFS partition & give it a name which makes it obvious what it is (i.e. “sharedspace”)
  • Then boot into Windows and move the existing data you’d like to share between OSs here (work documents, movies, music, etc.)

Some useful links:

• Video on setting up a dual boot
• Howtogeek used to have a great walkthrough for doing this but I’m getting a 404 error when I try to follow the link now :(
• Optional: Setting up Linux symlinks to point to the shared space partition

What’s a “gang input”?

Google has way too much power & influence. BREAK THEM UP!!! This status quo is ridiculous.

I wonder whether Nukem would consider running again in 2024?

To git gud you gotta git commit and keep git push’n

I use Bats! for a HIIT timer & Loops Habit Tracker to keep myself honest. Both are available on F-Droid.

A smartphone’s virtual keyboard would be worse (smaller) than the Kindle’s, wouldn’t it? Maybe I should try it though. I mean, I’m pecking this message on my smartphone’s virtual keyboard so…

That’s not a bad idea. I keep a Linux machine in the living room attached to the TV with a wireless keyboard, so I’m already set up!

Whoa! That’d be sweet! If you go for it please post updates with pictures!!??

These are my main core apps. Not fully divested from closed ecosystems (YouTube & Google Maps are in there with alternative private frontends). But close enough for me.

• Mull - Private Firefox
• OrganicMaps & GMaps WV - Maps
• Eternity - Lemmy
• Meglodon - Mastadon
• ProtonVPN - VPN
• AntennaPod - Podcasts
• Bitwarden - Passwords
• Joplin - Notes
• NewPipe Sponsorblock - YouTube w/o ads or in-video promotions
  • Need to add the Izzy repo to get this one
• VLC - Music & video
• Yet Another Call Blocker - Spam calls
• Geometric Weather - Weather