I know I’m way behind in posting reviews (will get back to it, I promise). I got distracted with another one my hobbies these last few months. It’s made me wonder what other hobbies do all of you have? Anything radically different from flashlights?
Some of you know about my whisky reviewing hobby (www.whiskyanalysis.com), but that one has also gone dormant in recent years. My latest site is comicphilosophy.com - where I explore concepts in moral philosophy through superhero comic book stories (in particular, normative ethics). That one is keeping me very busy right now - it’s a lot to research and concisely write up (although I typically fail on that last part, lol).
I know these all seem very different, but there is a research and analysis thread that ties them all together. The flashlight testing and whisky metacritic are more quantitative of course, but it was my original interest in how the brain (and mind) works that let me to neuroscience research (my professional field). I got back into reading comics again during the pandemic, and have been enjoying writing up explanations of ethics and philosophy (grounded in modern neuroscience) through comics stories.
I’m curious to hear your wild pursuits … here’s my current comic blog site home page, if you are curious:
Lately the Solar Bug has bitten me like Flashlights did ( Solar way more Expensive ) Learning to fight Shade / Clouds is more challenging than you think, just when you start producing power the Earth goes and tilts.
I also like to overvolt Scooters, Kids Toys ( grandkids love to go fast, Grandpa does to )
Building/ Rebuilding battery packs. Learning how to charge/ store them to make them last.
Fixing things is pretty rewarding, especially for kids
The shiny things are, uh, the point of this forum. The weird noises are what some might call “music”… but I hesitate to ascribe such lofty terms to the sounds I make.
Games. Someone gave me a raspberry pi and I turned it into a retro game console. It has been lots of fun. I even got a sub-5 Mario run, though it doesn’t really count since I had to use save states. It’s a lot harder than the speedrunners make it look!
So lately I’ve been making a browser extension. I waited and waited and waited for someone else to do it, but it didn’t get made, so I finally decided to just do it myself. Something to let me organize all my web stuff into a big tree structure and sync it between all my browsers, so everything can share the same session and I can add notes and todo lists and stuff. Sort of like “Tabs Outliner” or “Tree Style Tab” plus more. It’s a pretty big project, and it’ll take a while to reach the first release.
Here’s a small part of a test session, a screenshot of the sidebar / sidepanel which serves as the extension’s primary interface:
Good to see you still dropping by every once in awhile. Since I’ve retired everything is a hobby. Doing a bit of shooting, reloading, and teaching the skills. I did firearms instructing at my department, retired still doing it.
Do I spot actual photos of an old CRT? Should be able to actually play Duck Hunt or Battle Clash with that thing. I haven’t tested RetroPi since the old 3B+, and the biggest issue was managing heat. Switched over to an Anbernic handheld of some sort, and it’s rekindled an old love of gaming I lost some years back.
Nope, I don’t have any CRTs any more. I’m just really into shaders. Graphics programming was my first love, after all.
At some point, it’d be nice to upgrade to a 1440p screen, instead of the 1080p screen I’m using now. Because most old games are 240p and you need 6X resolution in order to simulate each individual phosphor on a CRT. Every game pixel is represented by a bright scanline and a dark scanline, so that’s a 2x2 grid in a simulation, and each of those requires a 3x3 sub-grid to render the red, green, and blue phosphors individually. Overall, this makes a 6x6 grid of subpixels for each in-game pixel, so a 240p game needs a 1440p screen for that.
Also, every other column of phosphors is offset by half a row, which makes sort of a honeycomb pattern. And there are lots of other effects to simulate, like bloom and gamma and convergence and saturation and curvature and ghosting and beam power response curves and … etc.
Here’s an actual CRT (left) vs one of the shaders I’m using (right).
Still doing some graphics programming now and again? Also, I’m always down to listen to new stuff. Got a link? I recall you had a YouTube channel some time back, but can’t recall if you’ve added anything to it recently. Lately been listening to a lot of ‘80s Japanese city pop, but I’m down for most things barring new school country.
I collect knives, I watch TV & movies, and I play video games.
I’m pretty good with some electronics, especially Windows PCs.
Also, I listen to music and like to shop online.
As you can see, I’m an indoor cat.
I’ve been tempted to make a game I designed long ago but never actually built. I got as far as a little demo of the water physics engine, and always wanted to turn it into an actual game, but didn’t do it. So I’ve been tempted to finally do it. It would be the biggest project I’ve ever done though, a huge amount of work, really pushing my limits on several fronts, and probably wouldn’t even pay the bills. So… no plan to actually do it in the foreseeable future.
Here’s a screenshot of the water demo. It’s basically a screensaver of an invisible boat driving around on a pool of water during a gentle rain. It was running at 60fps 720p on a low-end computer from 9 years ago in a single thread, so I’m guessing pretty much any recent computer should be fast enough for the full game if I were to ever make it.
As for music… mostly no. I’ve been wanting to, but every time I’ve had the energy to make music, I feel like I should be using that energy to get some work done… so I do that instead.
But if I eventually do the game, I’ll need to make a lot of music, and it’ll be difficult. Because a core aspect of the game requires multiple versions of each song, so I’d have to make songs that can change in real time in response to what’s happening in the game. It’s definitely do-able, but it’s pretty far beyond anything I’ve actually done with music before.
Anyway, which Anbernic did you get? I like the RG35XX SP “Flipzizzle”, but I wouldn’t be able to use one without hurting myself. Old thumb injuries don’t react well to Anbernic’s stiff controls.
RG40XX H. Wasn’t sure if I wanted to dedicate too much in resources to something I wasn’t sure would work out, and besides some lag with N64, it’s been great. Analog sticks are trash, but I rarely ever use them, so no issues there. It makes for a nice change from the monotony of work or the craziness that comes with taking care of kids.
Other than the gaming when there’s downtime, my time has recently been spent reading manga, or building some proper networking skills. Had this SuperMicro system that I’ve been meaning to use as a pfSense firewall for a while, and I’ve recently been trying to learn the ins and outs of OpenWRT, but need room so I don’t keep taking the home network offline due to a poor config.
My hobby is collect and repair mechanical watches and alarm clocks.
In the past I repair cars and motorcycles but now I have a little interest for that and I wait summer and hot days to finally start to solve problems with fuel injection on my moto guzzi california, my only remain motorcycle.
