Ever since then, I have had the itch to get some more new furniture and keep making my room look a little bit more mine.

Recently, my parents went to a pretty big city in my state, and during their visit, they went into an IKEA store. I have heard of IKEA in the past, but I hadn’t really considered them. But since my parents were there already, I asked them to look for something for me!

They didn’t dissapoint.

They sent me some píctures, and I chose a couple of things.

A cabinet, to store some things I had on some old boxes, and a new desk, for my computer!

New desk - IKEA HAUGA Desk

My old desk, was one of the old style ones from the 2000s or so, with a slide-out section for the keyboard and a shelf above the monitor, as well as sections under it for the machine itself and whatever other things you may want to place there. My parents got it out of nowhere during my early years at university, when I only had an old desktop computer. It worked fine, if a bit wobbly, since the whole thing was just plywood. One of the worst mistakes done to it, was placing a printer on the top shelf, which weighed quite a lot. In the end, it was even more wobbly, and I ended up removing the top shelf section and using it like that, more stable as long as you didn’t push it from the sides.

Enough backstory. I bought those two things from IKEA, first we assembled the cabinet, which took the most time, and replaced a modular metal wire storage rack—which I passed down to my sister. The next day we assembled the desk, pretty easy and painless to me.

I won’t mention the cabinet much, it is what it is—an IKEA BRIMNES cabinet. Here’s a picture of it though, although it’s a bit of a mess inside, like all cabinets are.

The desk is also just a desk, although it is still the space I will use the most from now on. As it houses my computer, my gateway to the internet, the place where I’ll write, read and interface with the world from the comfort of my bedroom.

The dimensions are 100x45 cm, slightly less usable suface, because of the rails on the sides, but still plenty for me. I would have liked a bit more depth, but it’s good enough.

The shelf under it is a bit meh, it’s only 7cm high, and what looks like a “drawer” in the photo, is actually just a sliding door. That means that things stored all they way in are hard to reach. I put some card games and notebooks, and my handhelds when I’m not using them too. Not much space for anything else.

The space on top I decorated with a mousepad, a pencil holder, a lamp for aesthetics and some other peripherals.

To make space for the keyboard, I used the rail on the back to raise my laptop. I initially bought a stand for it but I think this works better, since it can get even further to the back, which allows more space for my palms to rest.

I had heard some things about IKEA, both good and bad, but in my experience both the desk and the cabinet were quite easy to build with the help of my sister. She’s really into LEGOs so it was like the adult version of that. I had a nice time as well, nothing that complicated happened, but I wonder how we would fare building something bigger later on. For now, this is good enough.

New keyboard - Machenike K500

I wasn’t really planning on buying a new keyboard, I have never been interested on mechanical keyboards before, and while my desk is much bigger than my previous one, I didn’t really think I had the space for it anyway.

However, I made the mistake of just looking it up, and I saw one for very cheap, and with colors I really liked, so I had no choice but to cave in and get it anyway.

The Machenike K500 is a budget keyboard, plastic body and all. Honestly, I couldn’t care less. I have zero experience in this little world and I don’t know if I really want to get into it any further.

Regardless, it just arrived a few hours ago as of the writing of this piece, and this is the first chunk of text written on it.

They keyboard feels nice to me, I don’t know about lube, or sensitivity, or if the sound it makes is super satisfying. It has a numpad and full arrow keys, and that’s really all I needed. The only key I really miss right now is the Delete key, but I will survive.

The keyboard is also “hot swap” capable, it comes with some Cherry MX Red clones and RGB too. I set it up so only the keys I press light up in white, nothing too fancy. It has some software to setup profiles or customize things further, but it’s proprietary and I don’t really care much.

The layout I got is the standard Latin Spanish one, with an ñ and some different key placements, which are the same as my laptop’s, so I’m used to it. The font is more standard than what I saw on reviews with the US layout, with which was a bit too gamer for my taste. My first impressions are quite positive, I am satisfied with my purchase so far.

Final thoughts

Getting to really customize my space how I want is something that I couldn’t really afford when I was a student, it’s one of those nice adult things I get to do with my own money and it’s honestly kind of awesome.

The keyboard I got feels good so far, I’ve never really had issues with thin laptop keyabords, I actually kind of liked them—I admit that I barely used other keyboards but the cheap ones at school. I am liking the feel it has while typing all of this. I hope I don’t get the itch to really get into mechanical keyboards, it’s too expensive, and scary—send help.

In the end, I am really happy with how everything turned out! From assemtly to decorating everything, I had a nice time.

This is day 71 of #100DaysToOffload

It flips.

This is one of the things I was really looking for when I got into this retro handheld emulation bubble, I heard of things like the Retroid Flip—too expensive and flimsy—and I eventually found the Powkiddy V90—too cheap and weak—that were going for a clamshell design like the Game Boy Advance SP.

None of these options were exactly what I wanted, there were rumors and leaks of an upcoming device by Miyoo, and some promising pictures are out there at this point, but it had a weird analog stick in it, and there are still no news or release date announcements. However, Anbernic had its own plans.

A bit of backstory

The GBA SP was the first handheld console I ever saw. A kid at church had one and always played awesome games such as Yoshi’s Island and Sonic Advance (1 or 2, no idea). I just loved watching him play those games, and having them on the go was incredible to me.

My parents did not like videogames that much, and we were not in a position to spend money on such things anyway. All I had was some computer games that came with cereal boxes, and one of those handheld clones with a screen and 999 games that were all pretty basic Snake, Tetris or simple blocky games playing on a DMG screen.

I saw a few more GBA SPs and normal GBAs later in my life, it was a fairly popular device after all, and there was a variety of games for it. But of course, the coolest thing about the SP was that it could flip.

At some point when I was 10 or 11 years old, a friend at another church gifted me his Game Boy Advance SP. He didn’t have many games, pretty much only Tony Hawk Underground 2, which—since it was all I had—got played a bunch by me. By then the Nintendo DS and the PSP had been around for a while, but that didn’t mean the GBA wasn’t fun. I wish I had had more carts, but I was pretty happy.

Sure THUG2 is a nice game with lots of fun missions, cheats and courses to skate on. However a single cart could only last me so long, and eventually I got my PSP, gifted by the same friend, and I stopped caring that much about it.

Despite it all, I always wanted to try more GBA games, which years later led me to installing emulators on my phone and my PSP as well. I managed to complete games such as The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap and Metroid Zero Mission. But still, playing them on the real thing would’ve been amazing.

The Anbernic R35XX SP

I caved in with this device a month after it came out, I just saw it for 50 bucks on AliExpress and decided to just go for the silver model—since it’s the most nostalgic one for me—and patiently waited for it.

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised with it, I saw tons of reviews praising it and I could see why. The hardware is good, although it feels slightly cheaper than an original GBA SP, it is still perfectly serviceable.

The buttons are clicky, not squishy like on the Miyoo Mini Plus, and while some reviews say they’re too noisy and hard to press, I don’t really consider it a problem.

Of course, the main feature of the XXSP is its form factor. Being almost identical to the GBA SP, it can be opened and closed, protecting the buttons and the screen from scratches and other dangers.

The lid has a magnetic sensor that can put the device to sleep when closed, and closing it shut is extremely satisfying.

The default OS is alright, but I pretty much swapped it immediately for MuOS, which is a pretty minimalistic alternative that works really well for a lot of Anbernic devices in the RGXXXX line.

It has quite a bit of features, such as

• Custom behaviour when the lid is closed. Shut down after X minutes, etc
• Resuming games and auto-savig when turning the device on/off
• RetroArch and everything that implies
• A variety of themes

Honestly, it can do pretty much everything OnionOS does, except for the quick game switching. However, theere is a history section which can work as a replacement. It still lacks a bunch of features such as Bluetooth functionality, Activity Tracking and a few others, but the essentials work really well.

The device can emulate up to PS1 with power to spare, and can run some Dreamcast, Nintendo 64 and PSP, but the performance is not the best.

Finishing thoughts

I must admit, I am extremely happy with this device. Recently, my sister borrowed my Miyoo Mini Plus and proceeded to never give it back. I do miss some of the features, especially the Activity Tracking that allowed me to see how much time I played my games, but other than that, I have absolutely no problem with this being my only retro handheld.

Anbernic has been releasing tons of devices ever since the SP came out, the RG40XXH, the RGB40XXV, the RGCube, the RG406V, and many more. But the SP’s form factor remains unmatched, and even if one with a 4 inch screen came out, I don’t think it would hit the nostalgia factor as much as this one does.

Maybe the only form factor that really interests me is that of the Retroid Pocket 5, which already has pre-orders available. This is an Android based device and it can emulate much more powerful devices from a pretty much perfect PSP performance up to light Switch games, time will tell if I actually purchase it.

In the end, what I wanted was a GBA SP with tons of games, and Anbernic gave me that and much more, at the cost of a horrendous naming scheme.

This is day 72 of #100DaysToOffload

In case you don’t know, the Miyoo Mini Plus is a retro handheld emulation device running Linux under the hood, which is able to run Retroarch and handle all kinds of games for multiple systems from Atari to the Play Station, and even the Nintendo DS.

Miyoo has managed to grow a big community during the last couple years, thanks to the success of the original Miyoo Mini and the Plus, its succesor.

Thanks to both devices sharing the same CPU and internals, with the only differences being a bigger body, better ergonomics, and Wi-Fi. All of the software side of things was easy to apply on it, making the existing development and maturity easy to transfer to this.

Hardware

The body of the console feels great on the hands, it does not feel cheap at all and it has a nice weight to it. Maybe it’s because I’m not used to it, but since the screen takes pretty much the whole top of the device, I do think it can be easily broken if it falls, it has almost no bezel and while that’s not bad, I do feel like it’s somewhat fragile. I’ve seen some rubber cases available for it that would greatly diminish this risk. For now, I trust myself to not let it fall.

The buttons are very good in general. A friend of mine got one and they are all great, however, one of the buttons on mine is a bit squeaky, which is kind of annoying, it is not a big deal though and I forget about it 99% of the time.

The D-Pad is truly fantastic, I have no complainst about it, it feels just like an original SNES D-Pad. I like to use it even when the console is off just to fidget around.

The triggers are nice to press, but I think the positioning should have been much higher. It can get uncomfortable after a while.

If you have adult hands, and you plan to play games that make heavy use of those triggers, especially if you have to press buttons and shoulders at the same time, it’s probably better to get grip case to make holding it more comfortable.

Sound is decent but not amazing, there are mods out there to replace the speaker, but I don’t particularly mind it. I’ve played a couple of times with headphones (wired only) and it sounds much better. Note that I am not familiar with the original sound of many old games, but if you are, don’t expect a lot on this regard.

The screen looks really nice and crisp, it’s wonderful. However, in some cases the screen can come off of the plastic casing, and I have noticed mine getting a bit wobbly. It is not hard to fix if you have some double sided tape, or some B-7000 glue, and for the price, these quality issues should be expected.

Software

I am running OnionOS, I did not even try the stock firmware, but I’ve heard it’s decent if you just want to get up and running on this device. Still, every review seems to agree that Onion is superior in every way.

There are a lot of settings to tweak. It is wonderful and amazing pretty much all the time. Here are some of my favorite features:

• Activity Tracker to know how much time you’ve spent on a game.
• Quick switching between games to go back to where you left off.
• Since things run on Retroarch, pretty much everything that does is here.
• Enable and disable systems quickly, hide apps you don’t care about.
• Plenty of themes and icon packs to choose from.
• Quick shutdown that saves state before turning off the device.
• Restores your last game and save state on boot.

It should be noted that Onion OS is not a full operating sytem per se, but a set of scripts and modifications on top of the Stock OS that comes with the Miyoo. It can’t be ported to other devices, making it an exclusive but wonderful piece of software for the Miyoo Mini and Mini Plus.

The Experience

So, the software is great, the hardware is pretty good. What about games?

I don’t have performance stats or anything, this is all just my experience with the few systems I’ve played often, which are mostly GBA, PS1 and SNES.

Pretty much everything from the SNES and below is absolutely flawless. No complaints at all.

The GBA is awesome too. I have played a bunch of games and I’ve had no major problems with it for the most part. However, in some occasions I noticed some flickering sprites, especially on Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga. This was noticeably reduced after going to RetroArch’s Core options—the default core should be mGBA—and disabling the “Game Boy Player” mode.

However, playing something like Golden Sun, which is much more demanding, I saw no problems at all. Apparently the flickering sprites happen to make some transparency effects. Whatever the case, it’s not that big of a deal.

PS1 emulation is wonderful, I’ve been playing Final Fantasy VII for 5 hours or so without any hiccups or problems that wouldn’t be present in the original. The only problem I have is I’m playing the Spanish version of the game which is at 50Hz instead of 60Hz, and RetroAchievements don’t seem to work for this version of the game specifically.

There is also no fast fowarding on PS1 emulation because of hardware constraints. I think you can force it and overclock the machine, but I don’t really want to risk it.

Overall, RetroAchievements are not that simple, they slowdown save states and increase the boot times a bit, besides the device usually fails to connect after booting up and I have to enter the quick switch menu and select the game again for the login to work. I wish they didn’t need an internet connection at all. I’ll probably just disable them in the future.

Finishing thoughts

This device is fantastic, it is one of the best purchases I’ve made and I’ve already played more than 60 hours on it.

While the Miyoo Mini Plus works well out of the box, I still think Onion OS makes the experience so much better, it is a must have if you want to take advantage of everything this little console has to offer.

This is day 62 of #100DaysToOffload

Turns out, Kobo devices are pretty well supported by an alternative document viewer as well: KOReader. So I finally decided to acquire one. I went for the Kobo Clara 2E, and I almost immediately installed KOReader on it.

The device itself has a 6 inch display, it might not sound that big, but because of the screen ratio, it works great. The bezels are thick, so you have somewhere to grab it from and avoid tapping the screen, turning pages by mistake, etc. Other than a power button on the back of the device—kind of where a fingerprint reader would be if it were a phone—there are no physical buttons to turn the pages, but that’s something I don’t care about.

Now, after turning it on, Kobo requires you to make an account to register the device and be able to use it at all. I think there is a way to circumvent this by popping the back off and changing the SD card for one with unlocked firmware, or something like that. I just registered mine, since I was lazy.

After registration, I decided to explore the regular Kobo interface for a bit. The screen looked great and it was easy to interact with. Part of me wanted to left it as is, and keep using it—that didnt’ last long. The stats weren’t good enough, and I also had to convert my ebooks to their kepub format since their normal epub support is not as good. It isn’t hard to do, Calibre can even convert transferred books on the fly with the KoboTouchExtended plugin, but I would rather not, I can’t help but tinker with my devices—it’s my entire reason for living!

Installing KOReader

In case you don’t know, KOReader is a wonderful program that can be embedded into e-readers and a myriad of other devices. You can install it on you phone on F-Droid as well! But the lack of animations and scrolling can make it a bit tedious to use when compared to other offerings like Librera.

Still, on my Kobo? It was wonderful. I installed it and it basically flies, I found a one-click installation tutorial with some scripts that run on Linux and other systems just fine, I pretty much did nothing but mount it, run the script, leave it plugged for a couple minutes and everything took care of itself.

KOReader has a bunch of bells and whistles, but it is still rather minimal. I was able to customize a lot of things, such as my progress bar info, the gestures and tap shortcuts, and gain access to better stats and other great tools, such as SSH access and wireless book transfer with Calibre.

Another neat feature it has would be panel cropping support, for Manga or Comics, you can tap and hold on any panel and it will make the panel fill the screen, which I find much better than zooming in and out with gestures on Kobo’s firmware.

Maybe the main missing feature in KOReader is the lack of a proper overview screen, or main page where you can have quick access to books, series, stats and the like.

The main view is just the file manager, and since Calibre will organize books in folders by author, you will have to get into each folder to find the books manually (or with a search bar), no way to just list all the books at once or similar.

Overtime, the History view can work well, but it is still not the ideal.

You can also install dictionaries in the stardict format on it, but I am going to write a proper overview of KOReader and my setup in a later post.

Final thoughts

I have read a lot more than in previous months thanks to this acquisition, which makes me quite happy. I think that separating reading from my phone is a really good way to be less prone to distractions. I’ve been also reading along with a friend and the chatter about whatever happens each chapter is always very fun and enjoyable, which is a nice reward for making the effort. Being part of a book club is quite good, since you have to commit as well.

I think one thing I should get though is a nice flipbook case for it, because this thing gets thrown around in my backpack and it has already clashed with coins and keys which a few small scratches on its plastic body and even the screen. It is all superficial though, and invisible when the backlight is on. Another annoying problem at least for me, is that fingerprint smudges can be kinda common. They are not noticeable with the backlight on, but if you have it turned off, you can notice them from some angles.

Regardless, nothing is a deal breaker here for me, and I can highly recommend this device which has come down in price quite a bit thanks to the arrival of new devices from Kobo, such as the Kobo Clara BW, Clara Colour, and Libra Colour. I would stick to the BW model since I don’t care about color, but it is something else to consider, a bit of a shame that they came out a month after I bought mine, but it is how it is…

This is day 36 of #100DaysToOffload and post 4 for #WeblogPoMo2024