Status update...
Dec. 28th, 2025 12:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arisoturaI haven't been posting much here lately. Reason is, just haven't had a lot to report about...
The radio was considered mostly good, outside of attempting cosmetic restoration. A friend was making a holder for the "magic eye" tube, so it would properly sit behind its window, but that kind of fell on the backburner... There was also the concern of heat dissipation, I'm not sure how hot that tube gets, but it's worth accounting for.
As far as other projects go, I've mostly been busy with melonDS. I added a cheat import feature, released melonDS 1.1, then went on to tackle the longstanding issue of hi-res display capture. Long story short, the OpenGL renderer wouldn't upscale correctly if display capture was used (as is used to do dual-screen 3D, motion blur, and other fun shit). I started by addressing that particular issue, but the whole project evolved into making a completely new OpenGL-powered 2D renderer. It's been a lot of fun, but also a big project, and I think I need a break at this point.
I've also had kind of a training session for a new job, which would start by May 2026. The training session has been _intense_, but it's also been very interesting stuff. The job itself would be about repairing TV studio equipment, which seems like a good fit for someone like me. I was worried about whether I'd be up to the task, but what I've seen is well within my skills, so that's nice. There is also variety in the types of equipment to repair, so that's good for my ADHD brain.
The other interesting part in this is that I would be paired with their current repair guy - since he wants to have more time for his other projects, he would do this job half of the year, and I would replace him the rest of the time, and that would all be split in 3-month chunks. This is also a special status, which means you receive unemployment benefits when not working, but the job center leaves you alone. When I was told about this arrangement, something lit up in my brain - for me, it could be a perfect way to balance things and avoid burnout. It would bring some amount of change in my life, instead of being kind of a tunnel of "just work".
So, all in all, a great opportunity, and at this point the plan seems pretty reliable to me. It would be a relief to have the whole job situation sorted out.
Other than that, therapy is still going. Mood has been pretty stable lately, not much to report there...
Oh, yeah, minor project, too. A while back, I got a SummerCart to use with my N64, and I wanted to see if I could run B3313 on that. There is a version that was actually fixed up so it would run on hardware, and the ROM was shrunk to 48 MB (from an original size of 96 MB - compare that to the 8 MB of the vanilla SM64 ROM).
I did run into some issues with it, though. B3313 is based off the USA version of SM64, so it's a NTSC ROM - but my N64 is PAL. The ROM runs, but the video is weird - the reds and blues are like, way too bright, and there's weird ghosting. The audio is also a tad too high pitched. The vanilla SM64 USA ROM exhibits the same problems.
Nadia was experimenting with patching the SM64 ROM to try and fix those issues. Her patches did improve things, but the video was still not perfect, still had some ghosting. But then I wondered which issues were from outputting a weird signal over the composite output.
I went and ordered a RGB mod kit for this N64. I guess I'll make a post about it, whenever I'm able to install it.
The radio was considered mostly good, outside of attempting cosmetic restoration. A friend was making a holder for the "magic eye" tube, so it would properly sit behind its window, but that kind of fell on the backburner... There was also the concern of heat dissipation, I'm not sure how hot that tube gets, but it's worth accounting for.
As far as other projects go, I've mostly been busy with melonDS. I added a cheat import feature, released melonDS 1.1, then went on to tackle the longstanding issue of hi-res display capture. Long story short, the OpenGL renderer wouldn't upscale correctly if display capture was used (as is used to do dual-screen 3D, motion blur, and other fun shit). I started by addressing that particular issue, but the whole project evolved into making a completely new OpenGL-powered 2D renderer. It's been a lot of fun, but also a big project, and I think I need a break at this point.
I've also had kind of a training session for a new job, which would start by May 2026. The training session has been _intense_, but it's also been very interesting stuff. The job itself would be about repairing TV studio equipment, which seems like a good fit for someone like me. I was worried about whether I'd be up to the task, but what I've seen is well within my skills, so that's nice. There is also variety in the types of equipment to repair, so that's good for my ADHD brain.
The other interesting part in this is that I would be paired with their current repair guy - since he wants to have more time for his other projects, he would do this job half of the year, and I would replace him the rest of the time, and that would all be split in 3-month chunks. This is also a special status, which means you receive unemployment benefits when not working, but the job center leaves you alone. When I was told about this arrangement, something lit up in my brain - for me, it could be a perfect way to balance things and avoid burnout. It would bring some amount of change in my life, instead of being kind of a tunnel of "just work".
So, all in all, a great opportunity, and at this point the plan seems pretty reliable to me. It would be a relief to have the whole job situation sorted out.
Other than that, therapy is still going. Mood has been pretty stable lately, not much to report there...
Oh, yeah, minor project, too. A while back, I got a SummerCart to use with my N64, and I wanted to see if I could run B3313 on that. There is a version that was actually fixed up so it would run on hardware, and the ROM was shrunk to 48 MB (from an original size of 96 MB - compare that to the 8 MB of the vanilla SM64 ROM).
I did run into some issues with it, though. B3313 is based off the USA version of SM64, so it's a NTSC ROM - but my N64 is PAL. The ROM runs, but the video is weird - the reds and blues are like, way too bright, and there's weird ghosting. The audio is also a tad too high pitched. The vanilla SM64 USA ROM exhibits the same problems.
Nadia was experimenting with patching the SM64 ROM to try and fix those issues. Her patches did improve things, but the video was still not perfect, still had some ghosting. But then I wondered which issues were from outputting a weird signal over the composite output.
I went and ordered a RGB mod kit for this N64. I guess I'll make a post about it, whenever I'm able to install it.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-28 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-12-31 11:51 am (UTC)Happy new year and all!