https://www.macrumors.com/2013/07/18/vlc-for-iphone-and-ipad-returns-with-wi-fi-upload-dropbox-sync-and-more/

Back in the day. Like *over a decade ago I believe.

(woah I dunno why I made a wall of text but here it is)

Yeah i’m rocking muOS on my 35xxSP (I hate that name everytime I have to type it), and its pretty dang great. In not much of one for the curated library experience with like lush game covers and cool flashy layouts so I dont have much insight to offer there. I downloaded a Star Trek LCARS theme and that was good enough for me.

MUOS has had no problem reading roms off the main boot SD card (which thanks to their rom directory rules is super grab and go, select a rom, select a core your first time and you’re off) is really seamless. You can set favourites etc its very intuitive with on screen button guides. By just launching retroarch on its own you can load roms off the second SD card even if its not formatted to their ROM directory rules which in my case is good because me second SD is just my mass storage card and isn’t organized, so its a bit more of a manual Retroarch process to play but not problem for me.

The SP hardware is fully supported, there is lid close detection and you can tell it how you want that handled, I have it set to save my game state and power down after a set time. My play sessions are typically 3-5 minutes long when I have a brief moment to myself (job and family = gaming atrophy) so its nice to just close it up when I am needed and not have to worry about powering down etc, then when I power it back up again it does take a minute or two to boot but then instantly brings me right back to the game and state I was in when I left. Very nice and it saves me having to constantly charge a dead device I forgot to power down.

There are some omissions like bluetooth audio, but I’ve never really had a good experience with bt audio and emulation on handhelds in general so its not glaring for me. I make do with wired headphones if I need them, but the audio response is very quiet. Not sure thats MuOS fault. I think there is also support for BT controllers, but I’ve never tried that. Nor have I experimented with HDMI out or the like.

The team making muOS are pretty cool and seem like they have a good vibe. Recently they announced they were actively making changes to the firmware to block a third party application that automagically downloads roms, and it caused some discord drama. I get their motivations, and their desire to protect their work from unwanted ninty litigation, it just kinda seemed like an over correction to me. Just one parasites opinion though. I don’t think they are being dicks, just looking out for their hard work and I respect that.

On the side of general purpose computing theres a number of convenience apps built in, an MP3 player, a video player, some file management tools, a terminal. Theres also an integrated backup and restore tool if you want to nuke and pave. There’s also a web based file server if you want to transfer files over wifi which has been SUPER handy.

On the whole I feel muOS has been a really good experience on the ANBERNIC RG35XXSP and if you’re on the fence about trying it consider this a recommendation.

Wow. What a question. Its hard for me not to be dismissive.

I’m going to have to go with Mario 64 by a country mile.

Appreciate the thought experiment though.

I love old consoles… but old media (carts, cds/dvds) not so much. Flashcarts have been a revelation for me. I’m happy to help out the collectors out there by lowering the demand for original cartridges for my NES or gameboys.

And honestly its a much purer and more fun experience than an everything emulator where you spend most of your time setting it up and then deciding which game of all the games ever created you feel like playing right now. But I do also enjoy setting up emulator devices be they handheld or set top, and playing on them. I’m not a snob, it’s all good stuff and its a great time no matter what your choice, tbh.

I wish I had known about this game back in the 90s. What a sleeper hit. Easily in the top ten Gameboy games imo.

I always just figured it was a port of the arcade game. Imagine my shock after the first few levels it turns into its own amazing game with some zany puzzle platformer mechanics.

I ended up buying the cart because it was just too good not to have a copy of.

Some of us never forget. And the path it paved for the greatest trilogy in gaming (for Mac users anyhow).

Somewhere in the heavens they are waiting…

Videos like that I’m always amazed the creator even bothers uploading. I’d be so fucking embarassed it would never see the light of day.

But I guess its sunk cost fallacy. Gotta get that content out there I spent a week working on. I guess I can appreciate that. Theres also something to be said about being honest about your fuckups. I was so embarassed for him I noped out of that video so I dont really know how it ended, but I dont recall there being much humility about it?

I dunno what everyone else is using pis for but for me it’s not media centers or servers. The pi has a full gpio header with i2c and spi. I can hook up LCD screens, sensors, servos, etc without much additional components. It’s like an Arduino except I get a real file system, network stack, multicore performance.

It’s more than just a single board computer it feels like an ultra microcontroller.

I feel like this whole “micro PCs are better than raspis” is coming from the group of people who never really used pis for what they were intended? I don’t know. Maybe I’m out to lunch here, I’m not trying to defend the pi because it is definitely a really bad choice for a lot of things but honestly despite all the bad blood they’ve accrued there still isn’t an sbc that can really match it’s utility and community support at least that I’ve seen.

Ensign Sonya Gomez over here thanking the replicator

TNG “Q Who?”

SONYA: Hot chocolate, please.

LAFORGE: We don’t ordinarily say please to food dispensers around here.

SONYA: Well, since it’s listed as intelligent circuitry, why not? After all, working with so much artificial intelligence can be dehumanising, right? So why not combat that tendency with a little simple courtesy. Thank you.

GIMP is great but it definitely needs its own Blender 3.0 moment where they just completely overhaul the UI.

I’ve used it as my primary raster app so I’m way used to it now, but I totally understand the people who just never even bother to learn it because they are so turned off by the absolutely bonkers design decisions.

Agreed. I also see them all over youtube videos and stuff and I just can’t keep reading/watching. Its not like an ideological thing, i don’t hate generated art. I just find it so distracting.

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Wow, thats some wild hyperbole there.

GIMP really needs its Blender moment.

Blender. I feel pretty confident in saying that there is simply nothing like it in the commercial world. Its feature set is unreal; its like the swiss army knife of 3D modelling programs. I can’t say enough good things about Blender. It has replaced so many secondary programs in my workflow and is slowly dominating to become my entire workflow.

It used to suck to use in the late 2010s and then work was done to overhaul its space-shuttle cockpit interface, and now it actually feels concise and usable. I freaking love blender now. Big time blender fanboy right here.

Jeeze. Sorry to hear that. Love mine. Maybe the quality jumped with the 2+ 🤷‍♂️

Yeah I noticed that part too and just sort of randomly started equiping stuff. Usually I’m lost in RPGs so I’m just rolling with it.

Before it closed, the Brantford Computer museum here in Ontario had an amazing collection of machines. My wife took my friends and I there for my birthday one year and oh man what a trip. They had everything on display, from common systems like the c64 to really rare ones like the Unisys Icon. All up and booted, ready to be played with. But despite all these ultra rare systems the one that caught my eye was the Apple Pippin.

I grew up an insufferable mac fanboy (now reformed and agnostic), and as a kid I had heard tons about the pippin, but it was so obscure and terrible that I was sure I would never get to play one IRL.

But there I was, smile on my face, playing Super Marathon on that crappy pippin. I had the time of my life that day.

Thanks for everything Syd. RIP dude.