How’s everyone enjoying their half day of no emails

Back in the day, I would power off my hardware. My computer would tell me when it was safe to power off, my Genesis and PS1 you pressed the power button and that was it.

But when I got my PS2, turning it off wasn't just turning it off. The power button didn't turn anything off, it just reset the system. So I always hit the power switch on the back.

It wouldn't be for a while before we learned we can turn it off and back on faster by pressing and holding the power button. Rather than killing the system. And newer systems like the PS3 didn't like it at all when they were powered off completely.

a bit of warping on the top but works very well

I got a bundle of Genesis games once and as a part of that bundle I got Outrun 2019.

Not the biggest fan of the Outrun series, but I loved the soundtrack of 2019.

I’ve been working on a new ereader case platform and wanted to find a way to print bigger than the max volume, and have it extremely durable is was the result.

Need to do some more work with the cover but overall I am very happy with how this turned out.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, the clear material is TPU, and the Purple material is PETG. The holes are for Threaded inserts.

I wanted to play Metroid again, and having a handheld capable of playing all classic games in one, I wanted to give it a go!

Metroid 1 was done with Zero Mission. I played and beat NES Metroid and can confidently say it’s not my cup of tea. Love Zero Mission and love replaying it.

Metroid 2 was done with AM2R. This was my first time playing and beating AM2R, and a handheld is the right way to play it. Might try to beat the original and the 3DS remake… eventually but it’s not my favorited Metroid.

Super Metroid. I have the snes game, I played it here and… it’s a love hate relationship. I played and beat it before, but not in a long time. And coming off of 2 fusion clones, the controls are way too floaty and watered down for my poor muscle memory. I also got lost… a lot. And it took my 4 hours of game time. About 2 weeks of on and off play time. Ultimately I like it, but this is the oldest I can recommend anyone going back in Metroid.

Metroid Fusion. My personal fav since it was my first game (the save battery died in my original game as a kid and I can beat this game on 2 AA before they die). Snappy fast smooth and I just love this game and replaying again for the untenth time.

I've been slowly discovering new retro releases for Game Boy, NES, Sega Genesis and more, and been loving to try them out and supporting indi developers. Here are a few I found would love to see what your favorites are.

Walfie's Nonograms (GB): is absolutely amazing for a free game.

Echoes of the Unread (NES): just picked it up, and it looks like a fun platformer with a fun art style, good music, and a cool premise.

Thank you rural gas stations

I've been meaning to make new dev projects for a while. But finding the time to sit down to just code is difficult for me these days. However I wanted to make a watch face for my new watch and I just said screw it.

Through a mix of using the Pebble SDK documentation, and referencing a few AI chatbots, mainly GPT-OSS I'm running in Alpaca, I was able to make it, make it run, and since it's in C, I was able to have no memory leaks (according to the logs).

I've uploaded the source code to Codeberg if you want to look at it, I've yet do document it, so hopefully it's not too hard to understand and not a spaghetti mess.

https://codeberg.org/the16bitgamer/poketech-dx

** Notes on my experience using AI to aid in coding **

When I was taught to coding, Google-fu was the goto way if/when the documentation fails you. However with both how old, and incomplete the Pebble SDK docs are, Google-fu wasn't helping since the info it would pull was about a decade or older and mostly out of date or hard to decipher information on Stack Overflow. I would almost say using an AI along with the actual documentation and tutorials was a necessity for me to even finish this project.

The AI wasn't perfect, endlessly gas lighting me, telling me to do over the top things for functions I already implemented, and putting me down rabbit holes going no-where. But compared to what I could get from Google, and it's ability to try and break down what the code is doing, it was a lot more helpful than I thought it would be.

Once upon a time, I wanted to order Light Purple PETG, and the only company which sold it was a GELO band on Amazon. Several years later and I needed more.

While their Amazon listings were gone, their website was still up and their item still in stock. Since it's local I'd thought I put an order in.

This was July 14. My first point of concern was that I got no confirmation email from them outside of PayPal. But I waited, and sent a request for an update on the 16th. Just to confirm the order went through.

I then asked to cancel my order on July 20th, again to no reply, and today I went to paypal to get my Money back.

Stay away from gshop.ca as it's at this point a ghost company, and you'll be more likely to get a full spool of filament from Amazon's Reuse store than from them.