2018-12-01 14:42:35

Well let me be the first none advertisement to wish everyone celebrating a happy christmas, since its december which means  its the time of year to have fun despite huge amounts of crass commercialism.

Anyway, hope people are having fun.
Since my lady and I both sing, December is always a busy time. We have a charety concert for a local hospice to do a week on Friday, and since we still need to learn "A little priest" from sweeney tod we'll be rather busy with that.
I also have started a new hobby myself and am taking harp lessons. yes harp!

I've never had much luck with the guitar, but the harp is proving much more intuitive to play, or at least it is to me. Accompanying either my or my lady's singing on the harp would be cool, though at the moment I'm still at the scales and arpeggios and picking out tunes point, though at least the scales and arpeggios still sound lovely.

My lady and I sang selston music festival a couple of weeks ago,  things didn't go as well as they could, indeed we dont' know if the adjudicator had a bit of a thing against blind people given that neither of us did particularly well, bloody adjudicators!
Still on the fun side I've been doing a few local  writing type things.

I went to a poetry society with some of my poems last night and people seemed to, ---- well not exactly enjoy given a couple were quite grim, but at least appreciate them. and I also did  workshop on writing microfiction last week which was an interesting challenge, trying to write stories in as few words as possible, albeit I personally like words too much to really cut down to ridiculous levels (my short microfiction was still 185 words, as compared to one person who wrote one in 16). 

I'm also working on the db as usual, indeed its been a yearly tradition to get a big update done for Christmas eve, and I'd like to maintain that if at all possible.

Reading  wise I'm currently putting together a review for Elizabeth Anne Scarborough's book "the healer's war" whilst rading Stephen King's collection night shift.

buffy season 7 is proving good, I'm liking where the plot with spike is going. Actually since my brother's fiance owns all of stargate whilst I own all of Buffy and angel, we're probably going to do a swap at Christmas, so I need to get buffy season 7 and angel season 5 finished for then, though as the writing is mostly extremely good on that series that shouldn't be too hard.

I also still need to catch up with the latest doctor who, since I really want to see what the series is going to be like now we've got rid of moffat, actually, the removal of the moff is to me far more interesting than the fact that the doctor is now a lady.

So, hope everyone else is having a fun december so far.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-12-02 03:21:58

hello dark and all, november has been a good/bad month
i am going to actively try to learn how to code, as before i tried to, but for some reason i gave up, i don't know why i gave up, i played bk2 and 3, and a lot of other games,
might get a new computer, and dark, the harp seems like a good instrament,
school has been busy, and hard, in literature, we are reading a book called of mice and men, by john stinebeck or however you spell his name, its a good book has anyone else red that book?
i mite try to actively poast on here
that's my month
by people

2018-12-02 13:38:44 (edited by Phil 2018-12-02 13:41:10)

Dark,
I once knew a woman who had a large harp in her living room.
It was about six feet high, 2 meters, and was very heavy.
She played it by sitting on one end and strumming both sides of it with her fingers.
I used to baby sit her cat when she went on vacation.
She played it with her fingernails, finger pads, and two plastic guitar picks when her fingers got tired.

2018-12-03 10:34:59

Dark,
You are a busy man!
The harp is a lovely instrument though, and lately, I've been looking for Christmas music with only harps.
Skyguardian,
I have read "Of Mice and Men" and it was very moving. I read it when I was sixteen, and it made me think deeply about a lot of things.
Merry Christmas and happy Hanukkah to all.

2018-12-04 15:55:53

@Sky guardian, we did of mice and men in school, however its oddly enough one of these books that I appreciated more when I didn't! have to analyse every inch of it and could just appreciate  story as it was.

@Phil, the practice Harp I've borrowed to play isn't quite that huge, and thus far I'm still just on the practicing stage, getting used to where the strings are etc. Learning the tuning of it is a nice challenge, since basically the entire harp is in e flat major and if you need to play in other keys there are small levers at each string that alter it by a tone. You can get peddle harps that let you play accidentals, but the one I've borrowed from my teacher is just the standard harp with no peddles.

@Mirage, We once found a harp quartette who did some amazingly arrangements of christmas carols for four harps which were quite something else, the harp does lend itself to carols and folk melodies so I might try and pick out a few just for the sake of practice.

Last Sunday we did something pretty awesome, we had tickets to Birmingham arena where they were doing a full showing of Starwars a new hope with a live orchestra playing the soundtrack.
though I wasn't really close enough to make much of the screen, its not like I don't know the film backwards at this point, and having a full orchestra, especially in bits like  battle of Yavin at the end was quite something.

The coordination of how to play exactly in time with a running film must be pretty staggering big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-12-07 16:30:06

The month of December, where season of marages is just starting here in India, exams start, (they are just preparation, but still,) and winter.

For those who don't know, I really don't like the cold season in general. coldness due to rain is just fine, but cold season in general, like in winter, simply does not sit well with me.

I know I have been missing for a while, but my programming lessons have just crancked up to next level, the colege failed to provide me any reasonable amount of reading material, so I have to by the books scan them, convert them and then read them...

Not a thing which I enjoy.

On top of all that, the native language Hindi (which I have to study, not that I mind or anything,) needs fonts for showing Hindi text.

I know I will need different voices for reading the language, so I did set them up in advance. so, I got a trial scanned PDF in Hindi, converted it, and got a garbled mess.

Apparently, the fonts which comes with word by default (Arial unicode) are not up to the task. I will have to download and install different fonts if I want to read Hindi in word.

But the problem is, I am not sure whether if I scanned and converted a PDF to word file, those fonts would work or not.

Also annoyingly enough, I don't have anyone who have knoledge of such things.

I guess downloading them and installing them, and then testing them is my only option.

Yes, I also know that I can always make notes in braile, but most of the notes and text of the subjects are in my computer. and organizing notes written in braile is simply not something I would like to do for a single subject.
Other than that, I find myself slowly drift away from the online games, because the shear amount of time they require to play. I also was getting annoied that I have to play them so much just to progress little bit. thus, time to put my foot down, and say, "Enough!"

But, my interest is still on offline games, well not offline, considering you can play with people through there connection, but I never do that. I really am a lone kind of gamer.

Hope you guys are having more fun then me this month.

2018-12-09 07:34:55

Hi Dark eagle, sorry about the extreme hassles and trouble converting Hindi, that sort of thing always strikes me as hyper complex so I'm glad I never need to do it big_smile.

Interesting you mention December being marriage season in India, traditionally weddings over here are supposed to be in the spring, though mostly that has dropped off and people just tend to get married whenever. My lady and I got married on  third of July 2016 because it was an important date, as it was a year to the day since I told her the way I felt about her which makes it a very lovely double anniversary

Well things have been interesting over here. We did the charity concert last Friday which was fun, particularly singing A little priest from Sweeney tod, although I had to speak a lot of it since its extremely low in my range, also as we only have one microphone between us we couldn't really do much by way of actual acting.

We have a church service we're singing at  a bit later on which should be fun, though for now my friend from university is staying with us a few days.
Last night we watched the fantasy film Krull, from the early eighties which was amusing if a wee bit ponderous, and with a rather cliche script, though it had fun bits including a pretty awesome comic relief character.

We're probably going to see Fantastic beasts and where to find them today which should be good, plus my friend is making us Goulash as he's recently been in the Ukraine and has the recipe. He's a pretty awesome chef, and  runs his own wine import business,  he's pretty random  but we always end up having a lot of fun big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-12-10 14:02:00

@Dark: wow, that's a busy month!
I sing too. Heads up, long post ahead!
Tomorrow Dec 11 the theatre group I'm a part of, called First Act, it's a group involving clients with disabilities that run the gammot, and we're doing our Christmas show for the year. It's Goldilox and the Three Bears but we always change things up a bit. So, our tutors set it in a town called Storyvill, and are bringing some other fairytale characters into the mix. I'm playing Jack, as in Jack and Jill, and we're a sort of comic relief duo for our scenes. We've also got a bunch of songs running the gammot from The Jacksons Can you Feel It, to Shrek The Musical's Big Bright Beautiful World, all the way to A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman from 2017, plus a custom-made, orchestral/midi, medley of tunes as in act 2 there's a big running away scene, and that one incorporates the Automatic's Monster as the main hook plus a custom melody for one section, and even The Mob Song from Beauty and The Beast. I'm doing a harmony for the final monster bit! We've also got some new cast members this year and they are awesome.
Then, on the 15th in the evening I should be if all goes well, singing at a cabaret event, as far as I know, solo! Two Christmas songs, It's the Most Wonderful Time of The Year in the style of Andy Williams, and a jazzy version of Holly Jolly Christmas in the style of Lady antebellum.
Then, on the 23rd, I'm singing with a choir, and we're in an abbey! It's Voices of the Isle of Wight this choir is actually on YouTube so have a listen to some of our past songs if you wish although I don't know how many I'm in. But, we're doing a bunch of new stuff this year. Absolutely can't wait!
So, that's what I'm doing this month. Oh and we've got our decorations out, it's great hearing my noisy Christmas stuff again especially, the stuff from Hallmark US that I was able to obtain last year. Absolutely loving the sounds that those ones make. One of them sounds like a train as the music plays, it's quite clever.

2018-12-11 07:14:14

@Aaron that sounds awesome, good luck with all the random performances.
I've never done panto type stuff though my singing teacher suggests I should and I admit I always have had a bit of a desire to play the panto villain and get all the audience to boo me big_smile.

Well We went to watch fantastic beasts yesterday which was good fun if a little unsatisfying, I wrote my thoughts about it In post 14 of this topic.
My friend is heading back to London tomorrow though its been good, and that not just because he absolutely loves trying out his cooking on us. This time around it was goulash with a recipe he picked up in Hungary, he also bought a surprising amount of libations with him, including a bottle of Grand Marnier which we wound up drinking at the cinema.

Actually it was nice to go and see a film for once. There is a cinema in this town but I've not been for a while since there's not been a lot I wanted to see, but my lady would definitely like to see Mary poppins returns I think, and I didn't realize they were making a film of battle angel elita, something I wouldn't mind seeing myself since I did enjoy the anime.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-12-21 18:30:40

First, Merry Christmas to all, things were bussy in my life too in these almost 2 months now.
First, I help a charity place who helps other small kids with disabilities or with no problems but just poor, they help them with clothes, small gifts for kids, education and stuff like that.
So, I am always Santa, for 3 years now I believe, I love taking kids on my lap and listening to what they have to say to theyr loved Blind Santa.
smile I got for Christmas 2 Amazon voukers, 50 pounds each and I decided to buy a Rastbery pi ful kit and a small usb keyboard, so, I still have 27 pounds left.
I wanted to buy a Leapster Explorer console, accessible to us but it was not eligible for delivery to my address, so, I could not buy it, sadly.
Howp you are having a great month and howp you did not have exams until december 19, like I did. smile

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-12-22 09:44:58

Wow angel that's quite something to do, though I hope none of those kids are like the one in Great toy robbery big_smile.

well things have been a bit weird over here since my lady and I both got aweful colds so basically spent the last two days in bed reading Stephen King.
Other than that I've been doing a lot of work for the db since I want to carry on the tradition of having a big Christmas eve update, which has meant trying out a lot of games and writing about them.

I also finished buffy Season 7 the other day which was good as a final ending. I liked where Spike's story ended up, though its going to be interesting to start the last series of Angel.
My brother's fiance has stargate on dvd, so we're thinking of doing a bit of a swap, her lending me stargate in return for me lending her Buffy and angel, which should be good.

Other than that I've been ordering a lot of things from Amazon for my mum, since one miner disadvantage of being the person with the Amazon prime account is that you always end up being the one other people ask to order stuff big_smile.

then again since my mum has an xp machine still that probably wouldn't work, indeed getting her to try out windows 10 and chrome so that she can have a nice shiny new pc is sort of a project for next year.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-12-24 17:13:43

Yeah I know smile everyone calls me and asks if I can order something for them.
Now me and my father share the same amazon account, just for passing the stress to him.
smile Now I am at the country and my friends won't come this year for Christmas and for the new year celebration, so, I will be alone and that sucks.
sad Guess I will have more time to read books and because I do not have any on this old piece of crap, I have to ask one of my best friends to give me some. smile
I almost finished Ready player one on Audible and I like it alot, much better than the text version.

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-12-25 06:10:00

A philosophical Advent from Saint Nicholas.
BY Phil Vlasak,
Inspired by CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE,

'Twas the night before the Nativity of Jesus, when all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a Mus musculus.
The long silk foot-shaped bags were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that Saint Nicholas soon would be there.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-coated caraway seed candy danced in their heads.
And mamma in her large colorful Bandana and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap.
When out on the forest of green conifers there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave a lustre of midday to objects below.
When what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny Rangifer tarandus.
With a little old driver so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment he must be Saint Nick.
More rapid than Aves Accipitridaes his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
"Now, Sprinter! now, Stepper! now Strutter and shrew!
On, Serpent! on, Swinish! on, Scriber and True!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the housetop the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of books puzzles games and Saint Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney Saint Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in red Russian Sable fur from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with wood ashes and soot;
A bundle of books puzzles and games he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.
His eyes, how they shimmered of aluminum metalized polyethylene!
his small depressions in flesh, , how merry!
His cheeks were like Rosa rugosas,
his nose like a Prunus cerasus!
His charming little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow.
The stump of a Alderman   pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the tobacco smoke circled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face, and a little round stomach,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of collagen extracted from bones.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself.
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the long cotton foot-shaped bags, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a Cynareae thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Nativity of Jesus   to all, and to all a good night!"

2018-12-25 20:29:40

Lol phil that is rather nuts, though happy nativity of Jesus to everyone as well who is celibrating, and happy Hanuka, winter solstice etc to people celibrating other things this year too.

its been a bit of a weird christmas, though playing trivia games on the Amazon Echo with my parents was fun. aCtually this is christmas number one, since my brother and his fiance are in Sussex  with her family, so we're going to do an extra crimbo around next week when they'll open their presents.

We've not opened ours yet, though we did have goose with all the trimmings including bread sauce,  stuffing,  roast potatoes, brussle sprouts etc which was lovely, we even listend to the run down of the nations favourite Christmas carrols big_smile.

Hope everyone else is having fun today whatever your up to.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-12-25 22:22:22

Lol, we don't open our presents untill I go home, actualy, here at the country I do not have any. smile
I bought alot of things for others, I am curious what I got too.
So, happy everything, including Christmas, hollydays, new year, life, what ever you want.
smile

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-12-26 02:30:46

Dark,
Thanks,
After I posted the poem, I found out that
Donner and Blitzen or Dunder and Blixem Both translate as "Thunder and Lightning.
So I could have used Thunder with wonder or blunder,
or Lightning with frightening.

2018-12-26 14:51:37

Hello all!
I hope everybody had a wonderful time spending Christmas with friends, family, and loved ones. I sure did. I went out of state to visit some family on Christmas Eve, in which we did lots of activities.
Before that I had a really awesome time on Discord talking to some of my friends. I talked with them on voice chat about various things like music, video games, and everything in between, one of them even wanted to stream our conversation and stream it to her Twitch channel!
As for presents, I received a few things.
Ever since I got my Raspberry Pi last year to set up and play classic retro games using RetroPie, I wanted to take it a bit further on the aesthetic side of things. I wanted to make the outside of the device look like a true retro console, since the starter kit I bought, which was the CanaKit 32 GB Raspberry Pi 3 B starter kit, came with just a generic plastic case. It worked well for a while, but the generic plastic cases aren't my favorite. There were a ton of cases that satisfied my wants, but some of them were a bit too pricey, especially for shipping, and I didn't want to wait a couple of days for them to ship to the States, even when we have Amazon Prime. So, I ended up buying a case called the Super Kuma 9000, made by a company called Kintaro. It's another Raspberry Pi case that makes it look like the North American Super Nintendo on the outside. The best part is that the case has a PCB board on the top of it, and it has built-in connections to the Pi's GPIO pins. When that's connected to the pins, it enables you to have real working power and reset buttons that work safely. They use a shutdown script that you install in order to make the buttons functional, so it mimics the behavior of a real console. One of the things I like about it, and it's a big selling point for it, was that it included a massive and beautiful large aluminum heatsink that goes over the entire board, and it covers the CPU and the Ethernet chip, and it kept the Pi really nice and cool during my time using it, even when overclocked. Best part is I didn't have to wait a long time for it to ship to my house, since we have Amazon Prime.
The second thing I bought is a USB controller. It's made by a company called RetroFlag, who are known for their NesPi case, which is another case that makes it look like an NES, complete with working power and reset buttons. They made a couple of USB controllers to go along with another case that came out this year, the SuperPi Case, which is another SNES case, but unlike the Super Kuma 9000, it has USB ports on the front where the controller ports were on the original SNES. The controller and case came in 2 variants, the North American SNES design, and the Japanese Super Famicom and European SNES design. I ended up picking the North American design, just because it looked perfect with my setup. The controller itself feels really nice in the hand, and the buttons feel equally as great, they aren't mushy like some other USB controllers I've seen, and it works well on my PC and on my Pi.
Last thing I bought was a 5 volt 3 amp power supply for my Raspberry Pi, made by a company called NorthPada, because I was constantly getting undervoltage warnings with my CanaKit 2.5A power supply all of a sudden, especially when doing some heavy transfering or when scraping my games through SSH or the command line, which is when I get metadata for a game like publisher, developer, game title, and screenshots, and optionally, a video preview that plays when that game is highlighted in the game selection screen. This new power supply has worked really great when I was using it, and I haven't had any warnings ever since I received it.
Last thing I received were some Bluetooth headphones made by SOHO, and in my little time using them, they've been working really well. Of course I had difficulty figuring out which buttons did what at first, but so far I have no trouble at all.

2018-12-26 15:07:25

Lol Mario, it seems that we got the same kit and I am curious if the building is easy, I want to do everything on my own. smile

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-12-26 16:37:40

If you are referring to building a retro gaming console, it was really easy. All I had to do was download RetroPie from the official website, flash the downloaded image with either Win32DiskImager or Etcher (I used Etcher), plug it in, configure my controllers, set up my Wi-Fi, turn on SSH through the Raspberry Pi Configuration Tool, then transfer my ROMs and make the tweaks I wanted to do like install some extra emulators, install some extra components like visual themes for EmulationStation (which is the main graphical interface so that you can launch your games), and install some background music scripts that play your own MP3 files while selecting a game. The music will stop as soon as you enter an emulator, and it will resume once you exit the emulator. I also ended up scraping all my ROMs as well. Scraping is a way that allows you to fetch game metadata like box art, publisher, developer, genre, number of players, screenshots, and artwork. Optionally, you can have a video preview to go along with it. So, for example, say one scraped the NES version of Super Mario Brothers. When Super Mario Bros. is highlighted in the NES game list, a video preview showing gameplay of Super Mario Bros. would play, along with the information that the scraper could pull concerning that game. Scraping primarily requires a connection to the Internet, since the scrapers pull metadata from specific sources like TheGamesDB or ScreenScraper, and they compile the data into an XML file. There are lots of scrapers that RetroPie can use, including the built-in scraper that EmulationStation has, and 2 optional scrapers that you download from the RetroPie Setup script, which is a graphical-based setup for RetroPie which allows you to install, remove, and configure additional packages. Those scrapers include Skyscraper and Steven Selph's Scraper.
However, you're dealing with some inaccessible catches along the way, the main EmulationStation windows and RetroArch emulator configuration tools are inaccessible as well. Since the base RetroPie installation image that's available on the RetroPie website is based on Raspbian Lite, you don't have a screen reader included. Since I have a bit of sight, all I needed to do was change the actual console font size to be a bit larger and better for my eyes.

2018-12-26 17:33:05

Nah, someone told me already how to make a retro console, but thanks for the more detailed info. smile
I meant the CanaKit 32, it is the one I bought, the starter kit and I wanted to know if it is easy to build, if NEOBS is accesible and if the case looks nice, at least if it can fit on a working desk, so others wouldn't ask me what is that weird thing.
smile

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-12-26 17:40:16 (edited by FamilyMario 2018-12-26 17:43:46)

The kit was pretty easy to build. The case looked nice, and it matched my desk where I kept my Wii and where my TV was sitting. The case was not that complicated to put together, as the plastic pieces snap together nicely, where as my new case that I'm using has a screwdriver, some thermal paste for the included heatsink, and 3 sets of screws (2 long ones if using the included heatsink, 2 shorter ones if you aren't using the heatsink, and 4 small screws that are used for the bottom of the case).
As for NOOBS being accessible, I haven't tried it, as I never messed with it at all as I just flashed RetroPie which overwrote my NOOBS installation. But from what little I tried, it doesn't seem to be accessible out of the box, nor do I know how to even make it accessible.

2018-12-26 18:59:37

Thanks, that is nice to know, I have another case too with a touch screen who makes it look like an older iphone and from what I know, it has some screws too, that is not a problem for me.
In regards of books, I started yesterday Ink heart, a book which I love soooo much, now it became my favorite, Harry Potter is on 2nd place big_smile
Do not know, it makes me feel happy for a second, after it makes me sad, like one of my best friends said, this book is a train, but instead of stations, it has emotions.
So, talk to you later, I really want to see what happens next.

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-12-26 19:09:58

@/Family marrio cool with the retro remake. I still have actual consoles such as a Snes and gamecube with the  adapters, plus my x arcade stick, actually its been a while since I did some retro games I should pull the thing out soon.

One amusing christmas present I  were sets of retro socks, with graphics on from space invaders, packman, asterois and some other games, as well as some ninja turtles socks just for nostalgia value big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-12-26 21:09:28

@Dark Thanks.
The only consoles I have at the moment are an original Wii and the NES Classic Edition, if you can even call it a console at this point which, sadly both NES and SNES Classic Editions are being discontinued for real this month, meaning that once they're gone, they're gone for good, which is sad because they were neat little products while they lasted, so I ended up picking a SNES-style case for my Raspberry Pi to complement my NES Classic Edition which was sitting on my desk, and while it's not the exact same size (the Super Kuma 9000 case I have is smaller than the SNES Classic Edition and the USB and Ethernet ports are on the side instead of having front USB ports), it's still a perfect case that looks as good as an SNES Mini, plus having the benefit of playing systems from the Atari 2600 up to the PlayStation 1. What more could I ask for? Well, probably a controller with analog sticks so I could play more systems, but this USB SNES controller can get me by in no time. Plus, I won't be playing that many games that require analog sticks on my PC and on my Pi anyways.
As for the socks, man those sound really cool!

2018-12-27 15:55:29

I actually should look at emulation at some point,  my current hardware is more than fine so far, and when I played around with mame to play some  arcade classics like the walkalong arcade beatemups of the turtles and simpsons, I found it a wee bit clunky to configure and use.

Well we're back now  though unfortunately Mrs. Dark is not well which isn't good.
I've been listening to the audible original audio drama of the Arabian nights. Its pretty fun accept for the random way people describe everything, I'm pretty sure if a huge great monster  about to clobber you you wouldn't be saying See there, arising above us, a mighty giant!" or something of the like big_smile.

Still they're surprisingly fun, I never thought the head chopping Sultan who went through a new wife each night could be a commical character, but from presenting him as a total psychopath at the start they actually have some fun with him later which is amusing.

Actually all this talk of Arabian mythology and retro games makes me want to go and play super marrio 2 big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)