You can have my ender 3 when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

(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.

Smart watches really feel like the palm pilots/pdas of this generation.

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 too would like to hear some hot takes on core xy

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.

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.

It was this thing. Ages ago. https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/camping/earl-rugged-revolutionary-tablet/

The Earl Tablet.

I wish Eric had given us pebble v2 instead of beeper, honestly.

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.

Its fun with minimal bullshit.

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Im not going to try and convince people who have already made their mind up, but I ditched Fusion for Blender ages ago and haven’t looked back. Its completely usable for CAD and precision design for 3D printing or what have you. Its not built for it, but its capable if you learn how.

The lack of pure CAD focus is a drawback, but it is largely made up for in blenders absolutely amazing general purpose tool set. Its not just mesh manipulation, with geometry nodes you can create complex intricate shapes that are also precise to your requirements. There are countless workflows and plugins that allow you to make blender adapt your needs. You can remix existing STLs and bring in reference photos/models/etc. Simply put IMO there is no need to use any other program for almost any aspect of 3D design, and so it has become my go to.

I don’t recommend it for beginners, but it really is an incredibly powerful tool if you put the work in. Is it better that FreeCAD or Fusion? I am not qualified to say, but I’m pretty confident there are few features either package has that blender does not.

It was $79.00 USD before shipping/etc.

For coding I almost prefer it?

I think we take for granted how much predictive magic is happening behind the scenes on capacitive touch keyboards like on smartphones. I often find coding on a smartphone kind of challenging because it starts autocorrecting natural language, but on this its pretty easy since its just what you type is what you get. Lots of mistakes still, but having modifier keys available is also helpful.

I’m not trying to say its great, its just… very fine? Very okay.

the keyboard is definitely “fine” to type on, its just a blackberry keyboard. The driver for the keyboard is also in development so theres not much support for using the trackbutton as a mouse. The display is difficult for practical use, its a monochromatic screen, there is no backlit, and the pixel density isn’t amazing so you can’t see full lines of code, lots of wrapping. It’s better than having NO display in the field though. I actually really like it, its quirky, but with some struggle it is very usable.

I got the general idea from the iPod Mini

Its basically a metal flatish sort of cylinder with a central chassis that slides in and out. I’ve used this technique a lot for printed enclosures because it feels pretty strong to me, and usually pretty easy to print, even with overhangs, since its such a regular shape. You also dont have to worry about applying components to the inside face of the case, since the whole things just slides in.