💾 Archived View for dressupgeekout.com › gemlog › 202108.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 02:36:00. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I've decided to actually maintain a Gemini log which covers my real, daily life... rather than my virtual life in video games :)
Keeping up Scalita's journal while playing Black Desert Online has been very fun. Now, you'll notice that there haven't been any updates to that journal since like June. The truth is, I straight up haven't played Black Desert at all since then ... except when the new season started, I got myself a Corsair character and played with some of my online friends.
I've been updating dressupgeekout.com and tweaking other things today, so that's what put me in the mood to actually write something here.
Definitely the most interesting thing that's happened today is that the Dreamcast broadband adapter ("BBA") arrived! Way ahead of schedule, I think. I mean, I wasn't expecting it to arrive *today.* But I did take it for a spin. After a bit of fiddling around, I am able to give my Dreamcast a writeable root file system over NFS!
The NetBSD wiki article is slightly misleading in terms of communicating to the reader the kind of work that's actually required in getting NFS-boot to work on the Dreamcast. I had to learn how to set up a DHCP server, and dhcpd.conf's man page is *VERY LONG*.
I would like to write a proper tutorial about it, and ideally I'd also make a video and upload it to YouTube.
I think I'll wait for tomorrow to talk about the Apollo Vampire V4+ which arrived yesterday! I've been thinking about showcasing all the new, interesting computer hardware and software I've acquired recently.
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Probably the most fun thing I did today that I'd like to report about is that I've finally started this one Dreamcast hacking project in earnest.
It's super simple, but, you know, baby steps. The goal is to write a program which sits in a loop and reports all events coming in from the Maple busses as they happen. Think xev(1) but it's for Dreamcast controllers and the like.
Anyway, I've not had much luck with it so far, primarily on account of "I don't know what I'm doing!"
But I will keep trying. I want to get better at this. And I want to see fun, interesting things happening with Dreamcast peripherals on NetBSD. Cuz I'm a nerd.
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Haven't been uploading this like I said I would, lol.
I think the main thing to communicate is that I've decided to study Spanish in earnest -- for real this time.
So, like, I'm half Mexican (basically), but Spanish wasn't ever really a presence in my family life. (There's kind of a reason for that.) But anyway, I also live in a very Mexican neighborhood. So here I am, more or less able to understand what I read and what other people are saying (kinda) -- but not able to say anything for myself. I can't contribute to the conversation!
A week or so ago, I decided I was fed up with that. I don't like having those "basically"s and those "kinda"s. Truthfully, I feel that I need to be able to express myself in Spanish.
My French studies throughout middle school, high school and college have greatly informed my understanding of romance languages in general, so I've had kinda-sorta of a leg up already. That's a good thing! I love languages anyway, so I'm glad I stuck with learning a foreign language that whole time. But I might be starting to feel some regret about having chosen French when Spanish was always an option. I dunno. Feels like a missed opportunity, somehow.
Some conscious, purposeful changes I've made in my daily routine recently:
- I switched the default system language of "dawnchorus" (my daily driver, a MacBook Pro) to Spanish.
- I've begun watching Club de Cuervos on Netflix, without subtitles. It's pretty funny!
- I've resumed the Duolingo habit. I kinda gave up on Duolingo after I decided I wasn't really learning what I wanted to with their Korean module, but their Spanish one seems fine.
- Been reading Spanish Wikipedia articles out loud every once in a while to improve my speaking.
I'm not sure if total fluency is ever going to happen, but I want to keep this up as long as I can.