totm aug 2023 What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?

[Sir Stef]

Greetings from Central London, United Kingdom, near Europe, on Monday, 6th Day of April MMXX-2020 A.D. C-virus MMXIX-2019 A.D. lockdown. Today we have received a letter from Mr Boris Pfeiffel-Johnson, acting as Prime Minister of the UK, and a leaflet with vital information on the C-Virus Lockdown. The local Television magazine mentioned Jackie Gleason, so I decided to look up Ms Jackie Gleason, and guess what came up in the listings. I have a brother in law who could do a good impersonation of Mr Jackie Gleason actually, if he decided to put his mind to it. I will forward any reasonable comedy offers to him. He has a dry sense of humor, which is useful when you have lots of medical operations..He is encouraging me to have one too....Sir Stef

[Retro Starship]

Went for walk today and met basic human nature that made me chuckle. Well let me back up a few days though to understand this. I have been walking everyday since this virus started. Safe, quiet and not too many people around. To my amazement, some people on the narrow sidewalks do not take a 6 foot circled turn on the grass when they go by you. They don't get it. Most of the time I have to do this myself to keep us both safe.

Our state recently decided to recommend that we wear masks now. This is to be on the safe side before the peak hits very soon with the important pharmacy and grocery store trips that we all still need to do. Even though walking does not seem to be a problem with that, I put my small white 3M airbrush mask on. I will do this for these walks from now on. (I am a model maker so I already had these).

Now when I went for my walk today, with the mask on.... EVERY body walks around me on the grass!!

So wear one, it will save you from some of the stupid people that really still don't understand whats going on.

[Delay]

I'm left a little dumbfounded and confused. It seems like Game Boy cartridges and their batteries are used differently to what I expected.

Case in point: I have a copy of Pokémon Crystal that, by the looks of it, has a dead battery. Yet the game works fine and is absolutely capable of of saving and loading. Even the clock ticks!
However, when I take the game out of the console and plug it back in, the save is gone.

My conclusion? It seems like the cartridge happily feeds off of the Game Boy's power while plugged into one and runs on its batteries only if it isn't. I have an Advance SP, so I have no problem because it is rechargeable, but the GBA and GBC are battery-powered themselves and you are bound to lose your save at some point!

In short, today I found out Game Boy cartridges are bloodsuckers!

 

Edit: Well, that was short-lived. I decided to test a bit further and the save is only retained for a few seconds, I don't know for exactly how long. It's weird nonetheless that the save is not lost the second the console is turned off.

Well, at least I was right with the cartridge using the console power while the Game Boy is turned on, the clock is running, the play time is counted, etc.

Edited April 6, 2020 by Delay

[Retro Starship]

14 hours ago, Delay said:

Case in point: I have a copy of Pokémon Crystal that, by the looks of it, has a dead battery. Yet the game works fine and is absolutely capable of of saving and loading.

Yea those cartridges (from the old days) had a 3 volt watch like battery soldered on the board. This was done alot because the ROM inside could not keep game scores and such. I have replaced a few of them for my daughter but you have to open the case and know how to use a soldering iron. They still can be found on evilbay for a few bucks but it will take some work to get them back to life.

[Delay]

9 minutes ago, Retro Starship said:

I have replaced a few of them for my daughter but you have to open the case and know how to use a soldering iron

I have only soldered a few times in my life, and that was years ago. I'd try to find some way to practice soldering before touching that cartridge, way too precious to accidentally destroy.

And because I don't repair old cartridges for a living, I don't even have the right screwdriver to open the cartridge and no store in my city sells these things, so it will take a while anyways. Gives me plenty of time to learn soldering, too!

Luckily non-volatile memory became cheap enough to put on the board instead of extra RAM and battery by the time GBA games rolled out, so if I ever get my hands on third-gen Pokémon or another GBA title I probably won't have to worry about that (unless they also have some sort of clock, but I don't think they do?).

_________

Because I was interested, I took the time to make another save, turn off the GB for a few seconds and then back on to find out how long it takes until the save breaks. It becomes corrupted somewhere between 10 and 12 seconds and is completely erased after 13 seconds.
I have no idea how the GB works - which is obviously by now - so I don't know why the cartridge still has enough power to keep a save for 10 seconds, but I can say for certain that it takes at least that long for the hardware to "truly" shut down instead of stopping instantly.
Does the GB have any sort of capacitor or something else that takes that long to completely discharge? Am I utterly embarrassing myself by asking that question because I have no idea what I'm talking about?

 

[Retro Starship]

37 minutes ago, Delay said:

so I don't know why the cartridge still has enough power to keep a save for 10 seconds

No problem buddy. Yea you got it right, all electronic devices that have a micro-computer chip (or even in the case of the cartridge) its always a cap. Capacitors will hold a charge for about 10 seconds or more, depending on the device and hang on for just that much time. That cap is in the Game boy.

On another note tho speaking of caps, Its sad that VERY old electronic devices will never finally fail because of something going wrong in a way and not just the battery. One component will always bring them down. Its always the caps that will kill power-supplies, make screens go blank and really most anything else useless. Capacitors dry up after time. It may not be a year or two but it will take a much longer time, maybe a decade or so. Some dont tho but most will.

So if you have anything that finally just went dead... always know that 9 times out of 10, its a cap that dried up. Whats good is that when it happens, get your soldering skills in use and replace all the electrolytic capacitors on the board and what may happen... it all comes back to life. For just a few bucks and some time, its almost brand new.

Edited April 7, 2020 by Retro Starship

[DDE]

Russian trawler attacked by young Norwegian pirate.

Spoiler

 

[tater]

Just thought this was a cool picture (and my house is in it, pretty close to the center (foothills, that's Sandia casino in front all lit up)):

 

[DDE]

"So what were you doing at work today?"

"I thought you heard"

Spoiler

 

 

[tater]

I read this. Read it.

 

[Delay]

I was bored, had some hours to spare, so I decided to make an 8-bit remake of the Emerald Hill Zone soundtrack (Sonic 2).
Yep, and that's about everything interesting that happened today.

[YNM]

Not quite today, but I kept thinking about getting some way for there to be something to tell me the weather in the background while logged on the computer. Seems like "official"/"stock" widgets / gadgets have been removed in Windows 10, so I re-discovered Rainmeter...

Spoiler

Yes, that's the absolutely ancient Enigma skin, for those who know ! It's so ancient, it doesn't know more than 4 CPU cores (well, threads), and doesn't know what a GPU is...

Wallpaper credit to くっか (@hamukukka)

I last used them on my PC from 2011 - obviously a modern PC / Laptop would have less problem doing it. But I'm genuinely surprised it's still alive ! (well most of the stuff now is a lot simpler, or is just too flashy for my liking. Old ones do work, but with their own caveats.)

Edited April 22, 2020 by YNM

[CatastrophicFailure]

4 minutes ago, YNM said:

Yes, that's the absolutely ancient Enigma skin,

 Either your monitor is really huge or your eyesight is really good. 

[YNM]

5 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

 Either your monitor is really huge or your eyesight is really good. 

Both ? XD (with glasses anyway.)

To be fair the skin was made when most screens would only support up to 1280x1024, and I can't find a way to reliably change their size. But the small size makes it much more versatile against any backdrop.

Edited April 21, 2020 by YNM

[TheSaint]

So I finally finished coding the star map utility for my RPG campaign. Now I have to, you know, actually start using it to construct the star map for the campaign.

Edited April 21, 2020 by TheSaint

[CatastrophicFailure]

Ever have days like this? 

that pet gate cake from the other room...

[Delay]

I just saw Starlink satellites pass by. I have to admit I think Starlink is more interesting to spot than the ISS because instead of having one bright object and a few minutes of that, you have 60 satellites to see and it takes a very long time for all of those to pass. My pass took around 25 minutes and I'm not even sure I saw them all!

Apparently it was Starlink-5. It's a series of more or less equally spaced out satellites passing by, like, 2-3 are visible at a time. I even saw some satellites that definitely weren't part of the constellation cross their orbits, some were headed north, others southeast, others were almost parallel to the constellation and slowly drifted away from it.

Definitely very exciting to see, although my neck hurts now. To no one's surprise, I almost had to look straight up!

[Catto]

I bombed the ksc

Very interesting.

[Delay]

Starlink, again! But this time I have made some pictures!
I had to brighten a few of them because I used ISO's too small. I played around with exposure as well, but because they're moving so quickly I reckon it had little effect on their visibility. I was lucky to have the Moon in clear sight, it gave me something to adjust the camera focus to!

Anyway, here they are!
 

Spoiler

Faint, but in the bottom middle and in the top third, on the left.

30s exposure, the longest one my camera allows before bulb. You can even see a satellite that isn't part of Starlink! ...And a fairly annoying cloud.

Spread out from top left to bottom right.

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

Made a chicken tractor.

That fits on a tractor tractor. 

Then went up to clear some more brush and found a couple things. 

First, ants. Lots and LOTS of ants. 

Google tells me these are thatching ants (Formica obscuripes). Called such cuz they build colonies out of like pine needles and grass clippings that look like, well, thatching.

Which I kinda sort semi-intentionally destroyed. But, great site for the new chicken tractor!

 

Also discovered this great big Black Hawthorne somehow surviving in a 2+ meter high mess of blackberries.

It's got lots of flowers already, and is just a short flight in direct line-of-site to the beehives. 
Also, beer cans, tupperware, an old bathtub... people are pigs.

[cubinator]

I've been approved to do some Science! by my university! I will be building a bug farm and determining how well it would work on Mars based on what happens with it on Earth. 

[Cavscout74]

My step-daughter had a doctor's appointment today & wanted my wife to go with her.  All went well and as they were leaving, the receptionist says to my step-daughter that she took after me more than her mom.    Which is even funnier because she looks like a younger version of her mother and has very few of her biological father's features

[lolkekov]

For several days I can’t get myself to start reading books. I was attacked by procrastination ( But nothing, I will pull myself together and begin to read books intensively. Starting next Monday (but that’s not accurate)

[kerbiloid]

The best way to stop the procrastination is to start reading sci-fi books.

[Shpaget]

7 hours ago, lolkekov said:

I was attacked by procrastination

Just sit in a corner and wait until it passes.