I finally won something, even though it was not a competition. I was the first to respond to a free Lenovo 80NR offer on an IT forum. I replied within 10 minutes of the offer being posted. Second post was one minute after me. So... I got it
At first I wanted it for collection purposes, but when it arrived and I tried it, everything changed. It only has 2GB of RAM and an Atom processor, but it is a great piece of hardware.
It is a tablet and a netbook in one. The screen can be detached from the keyboard, so it can work as a tablet, or you can attach the keyboard and use it as a terminal, for programming or writing.
And it is addictive. I never liked the Android tablets because they are completely useless. The phone screens are big enough to have another touch device, and it is useless for any kind of productive work. But this is an absolute game changer. I can surf the web, gather ideas and resources in tablet mode only, and then switch to productive mode by attaching a keyboard. I ...
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I got a micro arcade machine for Christmas. It is based on a NES emulation and it looks cool. It contains around 240 NES games.
Looking more closely at the list of games, I thought it contained mostly unknown NES games, just with different names. The only game I have successfully recognised is Lunar Pool, but only called "Super Pool".
However, it contains simple games from various genres. Some car and boat races, bomber games, platformers etc.
The controls are not very intuitive and ergonomic. The priority is the design and not the ergonomics. However, it looks really cool and you can play it for tens of minutes before your hand starts to hurt, which is enough.
Some of the games are really crap, some are good, so maybe I would take some time to go through them all and try to find some that are worth playing in depth.
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After getting the Blackberry up and running and finding a way to sideload applications, I enjoyed a few "native" games and then thought about some emulators. I found the retroarch and PPSSPP should work. So first try was the Retro Arch.
There are a lot of systems that are supposed to work. My first attempt was with the SNES, but I am still not able to load any ROMs, because the emulator still sees only empty folders instead of a list of ROMs.
I did try the NES emulator though, and surprisingly it works. So I downloaded an archive with lots of ROMs sorted by genre and am going through it now, but it seems to be working fine and I have not found any problems with any games. So I will play with NES for a bit and then I will try some other emulators, or maybe I will try to get more involved with SNES and try to get it to work.
By the way, I tried Tetris and spent almost two hours with it... so... don't try running emulators unless you want to kill time.
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I received a very special delivery today. It is a Blackberry Classic with Blackberry OS 10.3. I have never had a Blackberry phone before, so this is my first one and it is fantastic.
It is in perfect condition, with no cracks or scratches on the screen.
So I was really looking forward to turning it on. However... as support has ended and the Blackberry servers are down, there is a bit of a problem getting through the initial setup.
So, the way to go through the setup is as follows.
When the phone is turned on, it must not have a SIM card in it, so in the setup, skip the question about the cellular connection. Then move on to the WiFi setup, which is necessary. I was able to successfully connect to my wifi, but then the setup got stuck on the wifi setup screen, as if it was not connected, but the green text next to my wifi said it was, and I got stuck. The next step is to scroll to the bottom of the list and select "Hotspot Login". This took me to a screen with some information and the Blackberry logo at the top. ...
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Finally, I set up my server to serve my photo archive in a "civilised" way.
I started building a photo archive as it was a general purpose buyin server. So I sort it by my own, just by samba shares, and sort all the photos into folders manually to keep it under control.
I was still wondering about a way to deploy any media server to access photos in a better way than just directory listing. I always wanted to get Photoprism working on my TrueNAS, but I was unable to deploy it properly as it always got stuck while deploying the app container. I tried it for at least the tenth time just in case it would work, and now it accidentally worked. So I deleted it and tried again, as the try was with default setups. So I set up the "originals" folder at the root of my photo library and made it read-only to make sure it would not corrupt my files. The thumbnails and other stuff is stored on the system disc as it is not needed. Photoprism is now indexing the folders and photos, but it looks like it is working and the photos are starting to ...
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I got a Lenovo Yoga 300 a few weeks ago. My friend sent it to me in exchange for a broken 3D printer I gave him.
Despite the fact that the post office completely destroyed its plastics during shipping, I decided to make it work. Initially there were some problems with the battery and the drive. The drive looked OK when I got it, but the battery was .... tricky. It was caused by a broken connector. So I disassembled the connector from the motherboard, and carefully pinned all the wires from the battery directly to it.
After some tinkering it looked like it was working. So I moved on to installing the system. I decided to install Xubuntu. After a few tries I managed to get it to boot from USB and installed the system. After rebooting and unplugging the USB it said "no bootable devices detected". So another installation with different BIOS settings, another reboot and the same result...
It took me about three hours, but I finally found a solution to get it working.
But I was disappointed again. I wanted to use the notebook to take notes with a pen. I thought the touch screen was good enough, as ...
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I received some phones to expand my collection. I have already resurrected the Samsung Galaxy J1 (Android 4.4.4) and the Huawei Y6 SCL-L01 (Android 5.0). The Nokia 6230 is still waiting for charger to arrive, and then it will get some attention.
I loaded the J1 with a few games, such as Flow, Cut the Rope, Angry Birds, etc., tried them out, and charged it.
The Y6 is a little more interesting. I also installed a few apps, again using sideloading, as the lowest version of Android supported by Google Play is currently Android 8. I installed some more sophisticated games as it has a bit more power. Then I remembered my favourite game - Race of Champions, which I used to play many years ago. The game is no longer available on Play, and I don't sideload apps onto the phones I use for everyday use, so I put it on this phone and I really like it, even after all these years. I think I will spend many hours playing it on long winter evenings...
By the way - Finding the working copy of this game for sideloading is almost impossible, as you can download .apk files ...
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The replacement "W" key for my laptop has finally arrived and it is great.
I had very low expectations but it is indistinguishable from the original, I really like it and for about 6 Euros it is the best I could get.
The package included the keycap and spare "csiscors", which I did not need as this part was fine in the laptop. I just 'clicked' the new keyboard onto the keyboard and it works absolutely fine. If you need a spare keycap, feel free to contact me, I can give you the link for the seller on Aliexpress, I can really recommend him.
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My colleague gave me a small, almost unused LED projector. It can project from the HDMI port, USB or SD card.
I have just taken it home and have not tested it yet, but I am really looking forward to trying it out. I have never had one before, but it is really interesting for me. I am not expecting too much from it as it looks like it has been bought off the shelf, but I have just tried turning it on and it works.
I suspect the resolution will be low, but it would be good enough for some cartoons or some background entertainment at garden parties.
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I bought my first touchscreen laptop, the IdeaPad C340, many years ago. Then I found it useless and put it in a drawer.
In about a year ago, I found out that it is able to use an active pen, so I would use it to make notes. I ordered one, tried it out and it is just fantastic. I have been using it daily and I really used to do all my notes on notebook because I can then share them to any PC and Android phone.
Unfortunately one of the keycaps broke (the "W" one) and I really cannot have things messed up. So I was looking for a way to fix it, so I took the keycap off and found that one of the snaps was broken. I tried to glue it on or repair the snap, but it was impossible because it is really tiny and I cannot really understand how the rest of the keycaps are still holding their position.
The replacement keyboard cost more than the remaining value of the notebook, so that was out of the question. However, I have found a Chinese guy who should be able to make ...
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