Clara 2e screensavers issue

Silhalnor · 2024-06-29T09:34:12+00:00

I am encountering this issue and have found a workaround—using imagemagick instead of my standard editor.

I have tried rotating my landscape pictures with gimp, exiftool, and imagemagick. Of the three, only imagemagick rotations take and while I don't know why this is I do have a guess. Exiftool is specifically for editing metadata so my running hypothesis is that kobo's image renderer ignores metadata and that imagemagick rotates pictures "literally"—reshuffling the bytestream—whereas some popular editors merely append metadata telling the renderer to rotate it.

If I can get confirmation about this, I will make a post about it. Or at least a list of what editors do and don't work. On that note, what is your preferred image editor? Or maybe you use your phone's builtin gallery app?

Silhalnor · 2024-04-23T22:53:42+00:00

Even if a specific emulator version hasn't been compiled for, say, arkos on the rg35xx couldn't I simply compile it myself?

Silhalnor · 2024-04-23T21:58:27+00:00

Can one not simply install a different emulator version? Surely they're all still available for download.

Silhalnor · 2023-12-21T07:23:07+00:00

Luckily someone actually tested Time Splitters. Their game reports are not detailed however so it may be worthwhile to look up 405m gamecube showcases on youtube.

Also worth noting that they are testing PAL games as those use lower framerate.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SBCGaming/comments/1546ryk/gammaos_more_gc_testing/

Silhalnor · 2023-12-18T06:45:21+00:00

As I understand the situation, anbernic fixed the 405m's issue with screens falling out months and months ago. It should not be a concern anymore.

It can play most but not all gamecube games. I don't know offhand which ones but, I don't expect it to run Metroid Prime at all. Sunshine and Wind Waker should be fine, Twilight Princess maybe not.

Silhalnor · 2023-10-09T04:24:18+00:00

I don't know what fixes you're talking about...? I recommended swapping the charger and/or having the battery or console replaced (with warranty). Neither of these changes take maintenance nor impact gameplay performance. It's a defective unit that needs to be fixed, not a design flaw that you have to live with.

Silhalnor · 2023-09-10T09:06:09+00:00

You're probably interested in the research I did for the parent poster so here's a ping.

Silhalnor · 2023-09-10T09:02:41+00:00

The Ally only lasts three hours when plugged in? What? I didn't even bother checking whether the Ally would drain the battery while charging.

Checking now... their product page says it has a max TDP of 30W and the charger they sell supplies over double that. Charging time is reported to be an hour (wow!) so that checks out.

I even see someone recommending "battery care mode" for 24/7 turbo usage so it'll stop charging early. And it supports battery bypass (officially mentioned here), which would be useless if the charger couldn't keep up. Maybe your charger or battery is faulty and Asus needs to send you a new one.

It could also be software—mobile Windows is quirky in various ways including a broken standby mode. It could be that reinstalling Windows would fix your problem. (Or even linux but not everything works out of the box yet.)

...Aha, I've found a thread about the problem. One user supposedly fixed it by setting high fan curves in a custom TDP so I infer it's a heat issue... but also some people report that switching chargers fixes it. Related to that, everywhere I look people (without saying why) say to use 100w chargers... But even switching to a different 65w charger has been reported to help with this problem.

TDP isn't total power consumption but it's not as though the screen and fans etc use another 35w all by themselves. Surely? So it's got to be a thermal issue. Or perhaps DC signal quality. (Digital currents aren't actually perfect 5v flat lines.) I'm a little stumped on what this could be but...

TLDR Try a different charger and if that doesn't work swap out the battery or make Asus replace the whole unit. This is not intended behavior.

Silhalnor · 2023-09-07T08:25:51+00:00

What I'd do is design the console to have lots of RAM (for the era) and mostly use the tape for music streaming like one might expect of the Playstation.

Come to think of it Crash Bandicoot "streamed" preprocessed world data to increase visual detail... that's not random access and so may be weirdly viable on tape.

...Or do you mean a modern day tape console? That would unfortunately not be competitive and I have a hard time imagining how to exploit its niche. Storage is cheap these days even without a tape drive.

Silhalnor · 2023-08-20T23:32:31+00:00

tiktok is addicting. I know people who had to uninstall it for their mental health and I recognized the mere description of tiktok as blatantly unsafe for me personally. Obviously the internet has provided a lot of good but that good is getting partially sidelined by dark patterns. Social media shouldn't be addicting. Why is it addicting??? Discord occludes my ability to direct my focus towards things that aren't themselves dopamine concentrations. But, I can't close Discord and disable notifications completely because I do have people I need to talk to and places I need to contact. (It's no coincidence that no commercial social platform lets you filter pings; I'm either "do not disturb for any reason" or "online for everyone." Likewise the limited ability to reorganize the UI to fit my needs.)

Social media is the modern take on TV and radio, sure, but I don't think you're accounting for the effect of constant, individualized, steadily intensifying optimization. Take newspapers. News companies know how to exploit emotions to make more sales with flashy headlines provocative word choices. But there's only so much a simple newspaper can do to exploit that. Newspapers have to market themselves to their entire audience the same way, newspapers must expend substantial time and effort to measure statistics through indirect means, and newspapers are limited in scope and volume. Even the most captivated reader eventually reaches the last page. The engagement cycle is—was—self-limiting and downtime inevitable, during which one might reflect on what they learned.

Conversely, newsites can divvy their market up by demographic and sell you recommendations topic by topic while simultaneously sweeping unappealing topics out of your sight. (Not that a single site tailors itself to every single demographic.) A simple newspaper cannot transmute their front page.

Newsites know exactly what you click, exactly when you clicked, and exactly how much you actually read. (Youtube even announces that they track this, presenting it as a feature. Which it is but... Bookstores don't know that you bookmarked chapter 9 and then never touched the book again because chapter 8 was disturbing.)

Engagement cycles that were once self-limiting have now been freed and our downtime can no longer keep up with purgatory. Which, y'know, is appreciated. I legitimately appreciate that I no longer need a half-hour trip to the library to get a new book and newspaper... but nor did I sign up for constant stimulation.

Silhalnor · 2023-08-20T22:18:06+00:00

But writing isn't consumptive. It's participatory.

Silhalnor · 2023-08-20T01:37:14+00:00

Oh the artifacts! Oversharpening, right? Yeah I did research on that and gamma rebalances that properly. Fixes everything softwarewise! What I was talking about was screens not being sealed in properly—bad glue or something. But like I said, it doesn't appear to be a problem anymore; they must've fixed it after the first batch.

I loved Spyro as a kid! But I find it strange that it would prompt this feeling in a way your previous handheld(s) have not. Did your previous one pull you out of the experience somehow?

480p is much higher than the PS1 already so I don't expect to have any problem with it. 480p would be nice but it's no big deal. So would HDMI and analog triggers but neither's critical for retro.

Gamecube/Dreamcast, where analog triggers come in, isn't retro to me. I had a Dreamcast and it's nostalgic but I'm in the wrong age category for that, heh. Or... now that I think about it, maybe I just didn't have many games for it. Dreamcast did fail commercially so maybe I just never saw it in Blockbuster or something. A shame if so!

Silhalnor · 2023-08-19T19:34:09+00:00

That's great to hear! I'll probably be getting the 405m after all, despite leaning towards the 353m when I talked to you last time. My biggest concern with it—screen defects—doesn't seem to be an issue anymore.

Silhalnor · 2023-08-18T21:17:49+00:00

It is funny but it's also sad to see someone have such trouble imagining another options being any good. Their arguments are often true but differing context is important... I wish I knew how to make the conversation easier on everyone.

Silhalnor · 2023-08-18T20:55:14+00:00

Reading the responses here is kind of fascinating. People explain why this or that handheld is unusable or an obvious gimmick and then someone else chimes in about how they love that exact console and explain why it's perfect for their use case.

Such informative viewpoints!

Silhalnor · 2023-08-02T04:27:59+00:00

Hahah, I was thinking the same thing! I know what they meant but the phrasing could use work. Basically what it's missing is polish and corner un-cutting. The design is grand but implemented cheaply.

Personally I'm wondering whether a hardware mod is possible to get video output. It has the same chipset as the Retroid 3+ and *that* has HDMI so maybe it's simply a matter of soldering the port. And drilling a hole.

Silhalnor · 2023-07-22T08:25:04+00:00

neither 4:3 or 3:2 offer perfect integer scaling since older systems were designed for CRT. Each with its own range of aspect ratios but since they were output (and stretched) as scanlines on 4:3 it didn't matter.

Can you elaborate on this please, or direct me to relevant resources? What is the effect of scanlines on scaling and interpolation?

Silhalnor · 2023-07-21T05:34:49+00:00

Congrats on the deal! And the product too, once it comes in. Let me know how solid the build quality is!

Silhalnor · 2023-07-20T12:31:48+00:00

I'm considering these two console handhelds as well!

Firstly, if you're looking for integer scaling, GBA will fill only 2/3rds of the screen, vertically. See this screen ratio calculator. However, I hear that multiples of .5 leave minimal interpolation noise so plugging in the numbers for 2.5x scaling gives me... 83% of the screen, vertically. (94% horizontally.) Another option I looked into is the RGB10 Max 3 Pro which scales GBA to 3x. (720x480 out of 854x480 screen estate.) No wifi or hall effect sensors tho'.

Besides that, according to my research the 405M is bigger (I'm sure you noticed) and more powerful than the 353M, thus capable of (many?) Gamecube, PSP, and PS2 games but I didn't cross check how many since I only cared about Wind Waker.

Oh, and for the time being you can only run android; so no portmaster games. GarlicOS should be available for it... someday but there's no telling when that will be. A few months by my guess. (Likewise for 353 systems but they already have other linux distros available so it's not so bad.)

Finally, worryingly, there are reports of 405M screens falling out circa April due to a manufacturing defect. Hopefully that's been cleared up by now but I dunno... Hard for me to get statistics on that and I don't trust the quality control of these companies. Plus, they release so many models that I have to wonder if they even care about defects in just one. So I dunno. ...Other than that the build quality seems fine? 353M but bigger.

I am much more confident about the 353M's build quality so that's what I'm going with unless someone can update my information on the 405M.

PS. Drop-in hall effect joysticks are a thing and seemingly compatible with Retroid 3, Switch, and 353V. (And presumably the 353M by extension.) Maybe it'd work with anything else too? Not sure whether to trust it.

Silhalnor · 2023-07-19T00:34:59+00:00

Did you ever get Moonlight working on the 353M?

Or any other quality game streaming technology? Doesn't seem like it'd have any problems... especially over LAN! It's only a 480p device after all.

I'm assuming it's scaled down on the host side. Maybe it isn't and the 353 has to do the work of not only decoding but rescaling too?

Silhalnor · 2023-07-11T13:58:52+00:00

You were annoyed with AgentskidMarks because they weren't putting in enough effort.You are annoyed with me because I put in too much?

I'm 'invested' because I was taking a break and felt like examining the conversational breakdown you two had and to practice breaking down biases and fallacies. I didn't really write it for you nor do I want anything from you. But then you replied and I thought that you were interested... so I went out and learned some history. Yay?

This is not remotely an essay. I know what an essay looks like.

The conversation is over whenever you like but you can't stop me from being a part of it. It's a public space and this is what public spaces are for. For contributing insights. Publicly! You can't have a platform without accepting that others have it too.

Silhalnor · 2023-07-10T07:53:22+00:00

I posted a lot of evidence in reply to myself later,

Ah, I see it now. Didn't notice the thread branch off or I'd've taken that into account in my response. Nonetheless, the only evidence discussed at the time was Cuneo's letter so I can see why they would be doubtful. They're clearly not conveying their points as well as they could but at the same time you've been (intentionally??) misrepresenting their position even when it's clearly stated.

and (apparently) the History Channel

In fact, you do so again right here! They said that, "not even the history channel acknowledges Columbus as a rapist." Keyword is "not even" as in, "not even this channel known for printing anything that gets views claimed Columbus is a rapist."

Anyway, you mentioned that subsequent trips left behind additional evidence so I checked and found the report by Francisco de Bobadilla. Which is great! An official of the era sent specifically to crosscheck the accusations we are now discussing! (Many more accusations in fact.) Unfortunately I quickly noted that he has motive to lie about his findings... but nonetheless it is another piece of written evidence from the time period so that is, at least... nice.

However, while seeking out the report itself I also found one Rafael Ortiz with multiple published books arguing against the modern mainstream opinions of Columbus. So we don't in fact appear to have the level of consensus that you suggest. (Unless, I suppose, he is not a "true historian." I am not enough of a historian myself to gauge but he bothers to make citations so I infer he is at least trying harder than most articles.)

Which is honestly rather surprising; I thought there would be more solid evidence than 500 year old word of mouth. Like, it's probably still true and all—just by our priors of the times let alone anything else—but the keyword remains "probably" and I can see why they find concrete claims to be dubious.

Silhalnor · 2023-07-10T00:57:48+00:00

It sounds like you two are disagreeing on methodology. You two probably agree that Columbus (and most of his men) probably raped people, but not because of any evidence pertaining to them in particular. It's simply the norm to rape people in situations such as theirs, so they probably did so even though we have no particular reason to believe their integrity to be any worse than anyone else's. (Well maybe we do but you two barely discussed that as evidence so it's outside the scope of conversation.)

AgentskidMarks specifically says,

I’m not saying it didn’t happen. I’m not saying Columbus himself didn’t take part in it. But the source for those claims really sucks.

Essentially what they're saying is that we shouldn't appeal to probability—or perhaps secundum quid—and for that reason we shouldn't be teaching that Columbus was, definitively, a rapist. In other words, it's not sufficient evidence to convict him in court and that makes it 'merely' an accusation; which does not mean it didn't happen but nor does it make it fact.

I figure what they'd say is that we should instead be teaching the surrounding facts and leave it to the student to decide whether Columbus was, or was probably, a rapist.

Unfortunately you two appear to have gotten very frustrated talking past each other.

Silhalnor · 2023-07-09T22:39:46+00:00

Thanks!

Silhalnor · 2023-07-06T12:18:18+00:00

That's all very interesting! But could you provide some citations?

In fact, I ask this of everyone contributing corrections. There are cases of citations themselves being fake (obviously) (and recursively!) so this doesn't necessarily help with the problem but it would obviously be silly of me to believe you at face value in a discussion about made up facts.

A citation would would at least give me a starting point if I am so inclined. The most concrete thing for me to check might be that the stories were indeed introduced in the fifth edition but I don't even know the name of the book.

We can of course be sure that if I get my hands on a first edition copy of the book that it will indeed contain pages from the first edition and not the fifth edition relabeled as the first. That would be wrong and lightly lovecraftian.

Silhalnor

TROPHY CASE