In a way, what the premise boils down to is what properties should an object have in order to be used with intent and not ignored?

The way we can afford to spend time intentionally, playing videogames, reading a book or listening to music, is heavily dependant in the context of our lives.

Right now the most time I get to spend doing such activities is on my commutes to work, but going to the gym, arriving early to work, or simply being home, come with their own set of situations.

On commutes

During my commute, I have plenty of advantages. I have free time, I have nothing else to do, and I can carry a backpack with fun trinkets inside.

This means that I can bring my Nintendo Switch and play it the whole trip without any problem. Or any other device for that matter.

However, not all commutes are the same, bringing the Switch is only worth it if my commutes are long and if I really just go from home to work and viceversa.

Sometimes, my commute takes an hour—perfect for some Switch gaming!—but other times, it only takes about 25 minutes, and that makes things a bit more tight. Those shorter sessions are excellent and they were plenty of time for me to complete something like Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker or Fire Emblem Awakening. However, I was lucky enough to have longer commutes when I played Metroid Prime Remastered.

Ocassionaly, I will get off the work bus on my way back home, and take the public transport, this happens when I’m heading to the gym, or to pick-up a delivery. In such a situation, I don’t dare to bring out my Nintendo Switch in public—I don’t want it stolen—and I won’t take out my PSP either, because the buses here are wild and if I drop it, the battery and its cover popping out who knows where.

Something like my Anbernic RG35XX SP is often ideal, much cheaper and smaller, and while not sturdier than the PSP overall, the battery doesn’t pop out—although the cheap plastic will definitely chip.

Of course, this is assuming I can sit. There are seasons where buses will be full of people all the time, and it’s in those moments where my Miyoo Mini Flip comes to the rescue! I actually haven’t used it that much, but when I know I’ll probably have to stand up among lots of people, using it to play one-handed-friendly games is awesome.

However, in that case, I may prefer to read some pages on my XTEINK X4. And yes, I am one of those weirdos that can actually read while on the move, even on a bus where I keep swaying in every direction at every stop.

Another reason I wouldn’t carry my Switch is because of the added space taken by it. A huge deterrent for me to go to the gym is carrying my extra clothing. I also don’t feel comfortable leaving such a device alone, even when there are locker rooms.

At the gym

I don’t use gaming handhelds at the gym. I probably shouldn’t care of what others may think if I did, but I do. Besides, it’s much easier for me to get distracted from the excercise by it, or slowing down my walking pace because of the game. Even if I feel justified when others spend that time on their phones resting for five whole minutes.

I simply stick to a podcast when at the gym, put my earphones and ignore everything else. My body focuses on the excercise and my mind is entertained by an episode of Wolf 359.

However, every once in a while I’ve been bold enough to take out my Kobo reader and read a whole chapter of The Expanse while using the threadmill. I have done the same thing with my XTEINK without much issues.

This is only really useful while on a walk or stationary bike, as most machinery lacks a decent place for me to place the ereader in a good position for me to read. Plus, getting stuck staring at a page I already completed because of an excercise would probably drive me mad.

Indeed, music and podcasts are best here, though the XTEINK’s form factor is nice to carry without feeling uncomfortable on my pocket for the rest of my routine. If it’s my Kobo, I’d have to bring it on hand, leave it on the floor or some other random surfaces, or store it in the locker after the warm-up.

At work

To be clear I do not play with my handheld consoles during work hours.

Fine, fine… maybe a casual session of Slice & Dice on my phone every once in a while.

Still, for the longest time the fact that the Kobo looks like paper allowed me to just have it by my side and read a few pages here and there. The form factor was ideal to pass off as a notebook—or maybe people knew sometimes but nobody cared.

Eventually, when the XTEINK came about, things got a lot easier! Although I still use both interchangeably, as it seems not many people mind about telling me to not read books at work…

Oh, right, outside of work hours, I do play with my handhelds sometimes, whenever my commute is short and I arrive early at my workplace! I only do this with smaller form factors, latest of which is my New Nintendo 3DS XL, that has been the largest of the bunch, but still slim enough for me to use before more people start showing up. The Nintendo Switch is way too big and I don’t need to bring attention to it, honestly.

At home

Tthe only thing that stops me from gaming, reading, or doing whatever I want, is the fact that I don’t live by myself!

Now, it’s not that I can’t do something I want, I am simply reminded of my responsibilities and aware of the fact that everyone in the house has to fulfill them for the sake of peace, harmony and love!

Because of this, I mostly stick to devices that allow me to have quick sessions, or some leisure time on the TV with my Nintendo Switch, when every duty of mine is taken care of—or when there’s nobody at home to stop me.

I rarely read at home using my Kobo or my XTEINK, if I’m honest, as I would rather spend my time doing things like playing longer games with a narrative that may end up too disjointed when split into short bursts.

This is also the one moment where I actually don’t mind reading a physical book as well, something different from my sci-fi novels or Manga. It’s where I get to read or study the bible, rather than entertainment.

Podcasts also win a lot of ground especially during chores here, great background noise when doing dishes or mopping the floor.

All in all, the form factor matters less when there’s no real limit to what I can do, I guess.

Finishing thoughts

Josh’s final paragraphs focused on the intentionality of choosing a specific device for a specific moment, for a specific use. Every gadget having a certain meaning, a form factor that makes it ideal for a time, a place, or a state of mind.

Especially so when so much out there is trying to convinced of how encompassing everything into a single point—the smartphone—is the ideal. In the end, it’s all too overwhelming, and overdependence on it only ends up hurting us, being a distraction to what matters in the moment.

That was some pretty good stuff, and I feel I sort of wandered off into what use every device of mine has in many situations. There’s a couple of other things I could have talked about, such as going out shopping or similar, but it’s clear that the tiniest devices are often great when they are meant to fill up empty spaces rather than being the focus.

At last, this is enough for a post, I’d say! I am also going to continue playing some Fire Emblem Awakening on my 3DS after I’m done with this.

This is day 92 of #100DaysToOffload.

Some memories

The Nintendo 3DS was one of those consoles that I mostly admired from a distance. There are a few moments in time, sparsed throughout my youth where I interacted with one, an uncommon endeavor compared to my love for the PSP or even the older Game Boy Advance.

When it came out I was too poor to even consider it, it was super expensive when it released, and it was still super expensive when the price lowered. I saw very few of them during the first few years, I was simply aware of its existence and a year and a half later I owned a PSP, not thinking much of what I was missing out on. I had an itch for Ocarina of Time 3D but I also knew of emulation already, so there was no need for it.

Somewhere in 2013, I stayed for a few days with a friend in the US. It was my first time on a whole different country without my parents! I should write about this period at some point, but for now, the important bit is that my friend had a Nintendo 3DS, and… I don’t remember playing anything on it. I think he had Kid Icarus Uprising and maybe some other title, but I didn’t do much. He had a different console I played instead, the Wii U, I’ll write about it some other day.

I dit try to convince him to buy Ocarina of Time, and telling him it was a remake of the Nintendo 64 version. He was completely sure it was a fully new game. In any case, he never bought it, at least during my stay.

Eventually I saw some other kid playing that game in some church event, not sure if it was before or after that time, I just recall the ReDeads in the middle of the ruined streets of Hyrule, with Link frozen with a scream and eaten alive, or something.

Some other time, it was my turn to have a friend stay with us for a week or so, and during that whole ordeal he brought his Nintendo 3DS, it was the original Aqua Blue model again—all of them so far have been the Aqua Blue model—and he was playing Super Mario 3D Land, a fantastic title for the system. This was the longest amount of time I got to spend playing with one myself. The game was great and I completed a bunch of random levels.

My cousins which I interacted with during Christmas and the like also had a Nintendo 2DS each, both playing whatever Pokemon was popular at the time, like Sun & Moon, but I’m really ignorant of this. They continue that tradition with the Switch today, they are absolute Pokemon fans.

Weirdly enough, I just recalled some of my best friends that I saw every Sunday at church more than a decade ago owning one too, for some reason I didn’t remember this at all. I have more memories playing on the Xbox 360 with them, but I think I grabbed it a few times when I visited their house, though I can’t recall what games I played with it—this paragraph was written after everything around it, placed here for continuity’s sake.

Last but not least, when I moved to the city I live in today, I made a new friend who owned a couple of 3DS models! From the original to the New 3DS XL. I also stayed at his house for a couple days one time.

I had my PSP and I already was a huge fan of Monster Hunter. My friend owned Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, but he barely played it at all. I gave it a spin for a few hours and it was awesome—though I kept grumbling about how this game could have run on the PSP with just a couple of compromises and raised my fist at Capcom for abandoning the PSVita—which I never even owned—but whatever.

Other than that, I’ve been aware of 3DS emulation for a while, I even went ahead and setup multiplayer with Citra only a couple years ago! This time to play some Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate using the Madness Network servers. I talked about playing Monster Hunter online already, but somehow never mentioned trying 3DS entries. Only played about a day and my setup and save have been lost to some distro hop.

All in all, other than Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 and Face Raiders, the 3DS library remained unexplored for me. That was until a few years ago, when this blog was already a thing!

A friend allowed me to borrow his Nintendo 3DS for a couple weeks, I only played two games on it, Fire Emblem Awakening, which I tried for about four hours, and Metroid Samus Returns, which I finished soon after. That game was so awesome, it is what finally pushed me to write reviews on this site, and that was my last interaction with a 3DS in a while.

Recently

For many months already, since the AYN Thor and the Anbernic DS came out in the market, with comparisons and praise and people complaining about the prices or the performance of one or the other, and after being exposed to countless YouTube videos, and lots of discussion over on the TWG Discord server, the itch to acquire a device for this was bound to happen.

The hardware of the Thor is excellent for a huge percentage of the 3DS library, and for the price, it would allow me much more than the that, as it would let me have PS2 and GameCube, Switch and even light PC gaming via GameNative or GameHub; and even though the RGDS is weak for 3DS, at least I would have save states, fast forward and other features emulating the Nintendo DS with it, on an ideal form factor.

However, as small as the impact of the 3DS was on my life, I couldn’t help myself. It was something I had wanted for a while. With prices not going down anytime soon, and the Switch 2 tempting me every once in a while, I figured this would be a nice middleground.

I looked around for a bit, and eventually landed on a red New Nintendo 3DS XL for about 333 USD with shipping. There were cheaper alternatives out there, such as a regular 3DS XL or a 2DS XL, but this is the top of the line and you can tell the quality is up there once held.

As I write this today, I saw a posting selling the same model and color I got at $290! which is better though still expensive, but the week I had to return it is over and I’ve already played with it for a dozen hours, so whatever!

My set-up

My model already came pre-modded, I took some time to make sure the modding tools were up to date. The 3DS modding scene is as crazy as the PSP, and emulation for many systems is available. However, I own plenty of devices that are better at emulation at this point. What I really care about here is the existing library for the Nintendo 3DS, and the original Nintendo DS, as was seen on my current setup.

The first thing I did when I purchased it was check the alternative shop every modded 3DS is bound to have, and grabbed myself a few titles. I do not encourage piracy much nowadays, when buying titles officially is possible, but this is not the case here. Nintendo doesn’t sell carts and they have no digital shops, so whatever. here’s a list of things on my 3DS that will probably be expanded soon.

Nintendo 3DS titles

• Ace Attorney Trilogy
• Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D
• Fire Emblem Awakening
• Fire Emblem Echoes
• Mario & Luigi Bowser’s Inside Story + Bowser’s Jr’s Journey
• Metroid Samus Returns
• Pushmo
• Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D

Nintendo DS titles

• Dragon Quest IV
• Dragon Quest V
• Ghost Trick
• Pokémon Black

Homebrew

• 3DSident
• Anemone 3DS Theme Manager
• Cave Story
• FBI
• FTPD
• Luma3DS
• NDS Forwarder Generator
• The Hombrew Launcher
• Univeral Updater
• hShop

My experience so far has been awesome. Since it came modded I haven’t really had to thinker that much with it, instead, as of the time of writing, I have played about 20 hours of Fire Emblem Awakening—I just beat chapter 13 of the game—and honestly, the hardware is pretty nice! Due to the nature of the game I often quit and reopen it—I’m sorry I can’t handle permadeath—and the loading times are rather quick! I guess it’s up to the title and how well optimized it is, but still impressive. Buttons and battery life on my device have been really nice for me, but I lack a point of reference and I recharge it whenever needed.

I made a couple folders for the built-in software, all the homebrew and a couple GBA games I added but will probably delete. Either way I added it for now. I have installed a few themes using Anemone, right now I’m using a Parasite Eve theme, but I may try and do my own, and share it in the nearby future! I didn’t like any of the ones for Chrono Trigger, though some of the Final Fantasy ones were tempting. In any case. I’m really happy with how everything looks and feels!

This is day 89 of #100DaysToOffload

Along James, some other people I follow on the fedi got it, such as Neil, who shared his thoughts on it too.

And because of me (yes, I’m taking all the credit ;) Jeremy got one, wwwgem got one, Robert got one, njrk got one… so on and so forth. A quick look through the hashtag will show how the device’s gotten popular for a few months now.

There really are not a lot of reasons not to give it a go. With a price of 70 bucks or much less on a good sale, there is no excuse, in my opinion.

The XTEINK X4 has excellent battery life, a great set of physical buttons—with no touch screen—and, best of all, a community building homebrew for it and making it better day after day!

The most popular firmware is CrossPoint, which optimizes quite a lot of things compared to the built-in OS. In fact, I didn’t even use the device until I got it installed—it took me less than ten minutes.

All I did was change the language, plug the device to my dad’s Windows laptop—because I couldn’t bother to figure out permissions for the serial USB access on my Linux-powered laptop, sorry not sorry—and off I went.

I went for a minimal and more manual approach. I only have eight books on it, and I will only be replacing them as I go through them. The device doesn’t have a lot of memory—much less than a megabyte of RAM—so it’s ideal to format the EPUBs accordingly to avoid high-resolution covers and unsupported features diminishing the experience.

Honestly, the EPUB files look great, the font included with the firmware, Bookerly—which was made for Kindle back in 2015—is a pleasure to read through as well. Here’s how a page of text looks like:

You can change the font, margins, UI theme, and most other regular settings, and the controls for it all are very intuitive. There’s also plenty of mods and forks adding even more features, such as reading statistics.

www-gem has done a lot of work finding links and extra tools, so definitely check out his posts on the device if you’re curious about all its possibilities.

I already finished one book on it, and I am making progress on another two. The reading experience is excellent and I really have no complaints about it other than the lack of a backlight.

I carry it almost everywhere, and reading one or two pages—often many more—at any point is painless, as it wakes up in just a couple seconds from sleep. The portability really is killer too. Like Jeremy, I also added a magnet to my Nothing (3A) to stick it there and have it with me.

I don’t know what else to say, I’ve not even charged it since I bought it! I’ll just keep reading on it and enjoying the process.

Even though I still love my Kobo Clara 2E, this makes for an excellent companion device. The lack of stats on CrossPoint at the moment makes it so I don’t really want to read big books on it as much, but maybe I’ll get over that soon. I’m happy to read Clarkesworld magazine and short novellas on it though…

This is day 47 of #100DaysToOffload

I’ve been cleaning up my bedroom again—and this post is definitely not a way to procrastinate doing that—so I’ve found a lot of things that I don’t really use or need anymore, but at the same time, I don’t feel comfortable just throwing them away.

Some are pieces of nostalgia that simply mean a lot to me—others are simply outdated and unnecessary. I keep hoarding them though, and they take up space in my drawers.

When it comes to phones, my Poco F4 and my Mi 12T Pro have power buttons that aren’t working properly. I don’t know what to do with them, I could look into a repair shop to see if they can replace or clean up the hardware in some way, but for now they are still there gathering dust.

Another phone I got here is a Redmi Note 7 my mom owned but the display died after it got ruined by water—the display turns out but it is extremely dim—and the repair technician said he couldn’t do anything to it without replacing the whole motherboard, which seemed not worth the effort and the money for us. Another phone, this one with a broken display and a dead battery, would be a HiSense brand budget phone my sister used to have, that phone is more than 10 years old and not even working, why is it there?

Not to mention, all the cases, unused screen protectors and cables generated by these, to think about the ewaste kind of hurts, but alas.

How can I forget about my HTC Status—or the ChaChaCha in some other countries—one of my first devices that came with a keyboard included, and pretty sick design for its time. This one actually still boots super well! I remember installing emulators on it and mapping the buttons to the keys in the keyboard itself with a GBA layout, it made for a terrible dpad…

Speaking of which, I also have an original red Game Boy Advance SP. A lovely handheld console that I got around 2011 and that I only have 4 cartridges of. I have no reason to really use it over my current emulator and gaming devices, unless I wanted to play something straight from the cartridge itself, I guess, which I find highly unlikely.

I also have two desktop computers that are both more than 10 years old—one of them is probably 20 years old—in a corner of my bedroom, I can’t really bother myself to try and get them running, I think they have power supply issues, and extremely outdated hardware. I removed the hard drives from both of them to recover the data, but I don’t really have a purpose for them anymore.

I still have my old laptop around, the Lenovo Ideapad 510, and it works wonderfully well whenever I test to see if it still boots, I think I could turn that one into a pretty functional server, since it should offer me enough power to perform quite a bit of what I need it to. A while back I even updated my Fedora install on it like 5 versions in a day.

The Raspberry Pi 4 that I used for so many projects during my last semesters at University is also there, and that one is actually super dusty, I went to pick it up—it was still in the same place it has been since I was still using it as a local server—and yeah, it’s a complete mess with dust in every crevice…

Honestly, this is pretty much a collection at this point, even though I don’t display them neatly or anything, I can’t deny the amount of things I have unused, some of which even still works! I’ve been considering getting back into selfhosting, maybe this time using my old laptop, to have some extra juice and speed!

This makes me think about all the devices I still use, what is going to happen to them in 3 or 4 years, or 10, or 20? I still live with my parents, for example, how many of my things will they get rid of without me knowing, how much of it will I carry with me whenever I leave the house and go my own way? And when I move? When I have to make space for a bigger family of my own?

Some of these things I may be attached to today and forget about in a year, some I don’t care about right now may be around for a decade, but one thing is for sure: my PSP still lives, and I still can’t find my Hollow Knight map, what a tragedy…

In any case, I would love to know if you also have old devices and peripherals taking up space in your houses too! It should be kind of fun to have a conversation about it.

This is day 20 of #100DaysToOffload

More than a month ago, I wrote about listening to full albums again, a post that gathered some interesting conversations and emails from people who shared their thoughts about it. Another thing that happened was that my post was shared to Hacker News by someone. It didn’t get any traction at all, however, a single comment was left there, recommending this little device I never heard about: the Innioasis Y1.

It was described as “A modern knock-off of a click wheel iPod, smaller, lighter, bit more plastic.”

Honestly, my interest was immediately piqued. Especially one of the thoughts shared further into the comment:

Leaving the house without a phone and listening to an album end to end is amazing and changes music consumption from Spotify background noise to actual mindful enjoyment.

It’s not as frictionless as paying for streaming but if you got the time and inclination I definitely recommend.

So, without further to do, I went ahead and bought one to try it out for myself!

On hardware

I must admit, the first thing I thought—as soon as I turned it on and fiddled with it—was regret, not because the device was that bad, I simply didn’t want to stop scrobbling my music to Listenbrainz, I just think it’s fun to have those stats out there.

In the end, common sense remained, I had my albums and files ready, so I I decided to stick to my decision, and I’m happy to say it was quite the big success!

The second thing I felt was its cheapness. I own some other budget devices in other categories—such as the Miyoo Mini Plus—but that hardware has no real compromises for what it does, which is not the case for this one, where your mileage may vary depending on what you are looking for. Here are some things to note:

• The input jack is not Hi-Fi, more like what you’d find in a medium-range phone.
• The plastic body is smooth and has a good weight to it, it’s not bad at all, actually, but…
• The screen is plastic, easy to scratch, it’ll bend under pressure, it makes everything feel much cheaper.
• Bluetooth support is a nice to have, but it doesn’t sound great and there’s a lot of compression.
• There is no microSD slot, you have to pop the device open for a replacement, and the built-in card may fail.
• No visible buttons other than the wheel’s (just a tiny reset button you can press with a pin)
• I like the wheel and it works very nicely, it defintely feels cool to use, it’s probably nothing like an iPod’s though.
• Screen brightness is fine, nothing special.
• It has a mono speaker that works, nothing special but it’s rather handy!
• It has USB type C charging—use a slow charger though—and comes with a cable.
• It’s recognized as a USB device on the computer, not MTP.

Personally, the most annoying thing for me is the lack of other input options besides the wheel. You can’t change the volume without waking up the device screen, going to the playing screen, and scrolling the wheel, for example, something that a simple set of volume buttons on the side would have fixed.

Most of the other issues are nitpicky and rather easy to ignore for me, especially when you consider the price around 40 USD, I have managed to overlook pretty much everything else.

Another small issue is that some FLAC files won’t play, I think there’s a limit to the quality it can handle, but most of my FLACs have worked, I’d have to test which ones fail and why and report later.

On software

The stock firmware is functional, it does the basics, play music, display albums, radio FM support, audiobook support, etc. I must admit I didn’t use it for long, I couldn’t even figure out how to create playlists on it.

It does have a few things that aren’t very well ironed out though, for example, the songs of an album are not sorted by track number, but by filename or songname, so you will have to to rename files and add the track number at the start, not an ideal solution.

Theme support is also rather limited, you can apply skins and replace assets, but positioning things or animations are out of the question. Of course, this is plenty for most people, including me, to be honest, but I still wanted to play around some more.

That’s where Rockbox comes into play, and I’ve already wrote a bit about it, in short, it works great, and does everything I need, although it has its own set of nitpicks. Also, it is not officially supported, but the community made its own fork and got it running just fine.

The installation method can be a bit of a pain, it’s nothing that bad. I’m rather surprised at the efforts made to improve the firmware and even adding a dual boot option to switch between OSes at will.

Although there are 240p themes originally created for iPod devices, and working just fine, it’s been cool to see many community members and creators coming up with new themes that look super crisp on the Y1’s 360p screen, along themes for the original OS, with plenty of options as well.

I’m still fiddling around with the settings available, and the Rockbox build doesn’t seem to come with plugins, games and other extras that officially supported devices have, but the basics are there and it’s awesome.

Overall thoughts

For the price, despite all the caveats, this can’t be beaten. If you want something close to the iPod experience, and you don’t care for high-fidelity audio. If you don’t care for streaming apps, or any kind of online functionality, then this device is for you.

After a whole month, I must say I’ve really enjoyed my commutes to and from work listening to music on these. I have no proof, but—other than a couple nights where I played some tracks to sleep from Nintendo Music—I can promise I’ve not listened to a single song on my phone ever since I made the switch to this device.

I really, really love interacting with it, and carrying it in public feels kinda cool. Even going back to wired earphones has been a vibe I didn’t really expect to miss so much, even if I have to deal with tangled cables every once in a while.

One thing I used to do on older phones with an input jack, was carrying it and flipping it around while holding it by the cable, basically playing with it as if it was a yo-yo or some chained weapon.

Anyway, all things considered, it may not be the best thing ever, but there’s something especial about it, and thanks to the efforts of the community efforts around it, it’s super fun to use and toy with, after a few headaches with the firmware installer.

I do wish they added some sort of online connectivity at some point in a future revision, the lack of scrobbling is probably the thing I dislike the most, but if you can get over that, go ahead and give this a try!

Anyway, my dad bought one for pretty cheap, thanks to the friendship discount, he even added some extra RAM for free, and replaced the HDD with an SSD.

I still remember, 4 sticks with a total of 24 GB of RAM, and 1 SSD with 128 GB of storage, Intel 7 2nd gen with integrated graphics. He also installed and NVIDIA Quadro graphics card, that would help for whenever I needed to use graphical programs such as AutoCAD or SolidWorks, and the many simulators I’d use for digital circuits, PLCs and the like.

It was a perfectly usable machine, I didn’t care or know much about hardware, and I had no job nor money to upgrade anything anyway. There were many things affecting the upgradeability of the desktop from the get go, but I wasn’t really aware of that at the time. I was just happy to have it, even if the issues were many:

• Old hardware all around
• It’s a slim one, so it needs slim graphic cards, if any.
• Mixed RAM sticks from different brands, probably sizes too.
• No HDMI ports, the motherboard only had VGA ones, and the other one that looks like an older VGA
• The monitor was VGA only, 1366x768.
• I needed a mini display port to VGA adaptor for the graphics card

Overall though, it was perfectly serviceable for everything I did on it, and I was rather content with it. It was even the first device where I tried Linux, installing Pop_OS! on it successfully! I think I had a spare SSD by then and that’s how I got away with it at the time. Eventually, since it was still the living room family computer that was used by not just me, I had to go back to Windows. Even today, the EFI partition still shows the rEFInd bootloader that I had installed at the time!

Today, I am getting rid of it, my mother offered it to a family friend whose children are going to the last grade of middle school, where they will start using more computer tools such as Word and PowerPoint. Once again, I won’t get away with a Linux install on this one.

There were a couple problems at first, since I couldn’t find a power cable, and I had lost the mini display port adaptor for VGA. After looking a bit more in my cable box, I decided to remove the graphics card and just use integrated graphics, and I found a cable to power the display. They are not using intensive programs anytime soon anyway.

After all that I managed to turn on the computer and setup a clean Windows 10 install. I got rid of all the clutter and bloat I could find, did a very legal installation of Microsoft Office 2016, and called it a day.

Now it’s only a matter of waiting for them to pick it up, they’ll probably ask me for help to set it up at their house, shouldn’t be too difficult anyway. It may be an old machine, but I hope it can still work for a few more years for simple tasks and programs.

I’ll miss you, old friend! 🥹

This is day 96 of #100DaysToOffload

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

The decision of getting new earbuds was made from the start, since the pair I already had fell pretty hard on the floor, and one of the beans broke a little. It still worked, and it sounded fine, but the other side which was still physically intact got volume issues, and it was not as strong as the other.

My previous pair were the Haylou GT1 Pro, which costed me around $25 USD. They’ve served me well. But, I mean, they’re 25 bucks, you can’t expect much from them (nor from this “review”).

I lived with wired earphones until late 2018. The quality of them was mixed, some were the ones that came with the phone (remember those times?), others were iPod style clones, and most were budget Sony earphones that costed me around $8, and were pretty good for the price.

Back to a few days ago. When we got to Walmart and I ran to the tech section, I saw some of the cool Samsung, Pixel and Apple products which were $150 or so, I immediately looked for something cheaper than that. Below I saw some more affordable options. JBL, Soundcore, Onn and others I didn’t know at all. I was not convinced by any of them. I saw some that advertised ANC and other features that I was kinda interested in, but I knew enough to know that even if those features “worked”, they would not compare to the real deal.

I was losing hope, until I noticed in the top right corner of the bottom section, hidden from the view of most, there was Sony, a brand I recognized, although the model, not so much (We all know Sony sucks at naming their products).

I decided to go for them. There was free internet in the store, so I looked up a couple reviews and decided to get them, without really getting to know a lot, since at that moment my parents were ready to checkout and go somewhere else.

First impressions, or is it a review?

I got the Sony WF-C500, and I have been trying them for 4 days or so, while doing work, walking and sleeping.

They are incredibly comfortable. Sony’s designers have a made a great work, this model is really similar to their top of the line earbuds such as the ones Kev bought. They fit nicely in my ears and I did not wake up with my ears in pain, as I used to do so before.

The controls are physical buttons. Some reviews may say that you can feel them pressing against your head, which could be uncomfortable, but its perfectly fine for me, it feels more like haptic feedback, its not bothersome.

The one downside is that I cannot turn my head while sleeping, since I could make a button press by mistake, I can place my hand in between my head and my pillow to create some space and avoid false positives. I’ve been sleeping face up more often lately, so this is not really a big issue.

I was surprised at the English voice indications. I got used to Haylou’s sounds effects, but the voice here is quite soothing.

There is no ANC nor Transparency mode. But I can’t miss what I’ve never had, so its a no problem.

Sony has quite a decent app that comes with a great equalizer and some modes available, and they really improve the sound a lot. Its the first time in my life that I’ve been able to notice the equalization actually do something noticeable to improve the music coming to my ears.

The battery life is pretty great. In my first night I forgot to setup a sleep timer for my music. I woke up to the sound and they still were at more than 50%. I may have woken up quite early, but still.

The case only holds an extra full charge, giving around 20 hours total. Its a bit less than what the GT1 Pro had, but the case is a lot more portable, and the earbuds battery life is superior.

There is a bit of white noise when nothing’s playing in my right ear, it is what it is, I can’t notice it when music’s playing, so its not a big deal.

Also, the case has a semi-transparent lid, which looks pretty cool in my humble opinion, it lets the LED indicators shine through it, which is nice.

Overall it was a really satisfying purchase that fits my needs quite perfectly.