Merry Christmas and happy New Year. December 30th right now and just had a chipmunk outside getting peanuts. Very nice weather at the moment after a bad winter storm.

Sorry haven't been around, still busy with college but wanted to say Merry Christmas It is funny how animals ignore you food is plentiful outside and then boom, once it's gone they are literally knocking on your door for food.

I've not checked in recently (or replied to Onmode over in my private messages), but I'm still around and kicking. My chipmunk friends have all started paying attention to me again in recent weeks. Must be a time of year thing since before September I was mostly being ignored. Dale even stopped coming for much of the summer and I feared the worst. I guess they were just happy with what nature (And my bird feeders) supply and didn't see the need to visit me personally for peanuts. But I suppose they realize it's time to get busy stocking up for winter and are now keeping me busy when I'm outside.

Or Lynda Carter in the style of Patrick Nagel

Also on discord there is MidJourney, one of those art generating AIs. Pretty fun to play with. Like this, female 1930s detective in haunted house

Birds do develop pretty quickly. Thankfully for me, since the last time I had some nearby they decided to nest right about my front door. Anyway, still doing college, am going to full time next term since I've been getting all As so far. Got a Steamdeck. Actually O's Steam Deck, he decided he didn't want it. Glad I got his, which was a 512 gig, as opposed to my original 256 order, since my drive is already full

probably sonic 2 despite some turd spoiling that possibly on a random mutual tweet, and definitely happy for shazam 2 at this point...

dont mind me just giving things a teensy jolt... least atari boy will know...

hooked on crystal, and one little other indie game

somehow booting up and login to my PSN on vita lead to verify the email and hopefully i never have to do that bs again... and it lead me back to here as well since i cleaned out some of my email that i haven't checked in AGES. hope atari san is doing well. we know you had bad discord experience and once again as always, the server we have is only filled with the few that remain. no other bs people there.... but i'll check in here more often at least. SNIPER OUT.

Things moved along a lot quicker than I thought. The babies all flew today. Had been quite noisy around the bird house in recent days, so I wasn't too surprised. But I had hoped I'd get another week or so of seeing the parents keeping busy and the noises coming from the bird house every time one would show up with a bug or worm. I'm assuming that they moved in and laid eggs unnoticed and what I thought was the start of the moving in process was actually the early days of the parents busying themselves feeding the newborns (It's typically just under 20 days from hatching until they fledge, based off what I've read and watched on YouTube).

A chickadee couple has discovered one of the bird houses that I hung up late last winter and has been busy moving in today. Should be some fledglings come the end of July.

That's like an Ewok tree village of bird feeders. I'm pretty sure my woodpecker is back. At least he chirps at me, he doesn't swoop down like he used to, though. I have been busy, I started online college (for computer science) because Walmart pays for it and the coursework is surprisingly heavy. Like a good 8 hours of reading and interactive exercises and then another 5-6 hours of homework

I've had a woodpecker hanging around my backyard the last few weeks. It's on the trunk of the apple tree in this screenshot I took of a video from my trail camera. Also have had a fox visitor at night lately, which sadly is interested it seems in the scent of a rabbit that likes to munch under my bird feeders at night. Hopefully the bunny keeps eluding the fox (I assume foxes are predator's for rabbits). My Super Mario Sunshine quest a few months ago was successful with all 120 shines. I've stalled out on Super Mario Galaxy thanks to real-life. Mostly have just been playing Super Nintendo games since then (In particular, I've been hooked on the Super Nintendo port of SimCity). Also have been playing a lot of Nintendo games in bed before going to sleep. The two Atari compilations for the DS, Sega Arcade Gallery for the GBA, and Power Drift (Via the Sega 3D Classics compilation), Super Hang-On and Outrun on the 3DS have all been getting played regularly.

Yeah, I haven't seen my friendly woodpecker lately. Hope he's still round.

Just spotted a chipmunk out back. Time to start spending some time outside in the afternoons to renew their acquaintances. Hopefully they didn't forget about me during the course of winter.

Yeah, that's pretty small. Almost as bad as that portable C64 they made (whose name escapes me) I've been thinking about putting another desk in my living room, but then I'd have to move something that my cats sleep on, and I don't want to do that. It's pretty rare that I can get them to sleep on the couch

This little monitor has intrigued me. Been thinking about getting it for the C64 Maxi, but it might be just a bit too tiny for the job. I assume getting full screen 4:3 out of it wouldn't be an issue (Set the C64 Maxi to stretch to 16:9 and set the monitor to stretch that 16:9 source to full screen 4:3). Doesn't however solve the question of where I can keep it set up. I'm up to 92 shines in Super Mario Sunshine. It's been mostly all new to me since I remembered so little about the game from when I played it originally on the GameCube nearly 20 years ago, but I've been having a blast. Some of the common criticisms of it are valid (Too few areas, too much recycling with the tasks you have to do), yet I'm just enjoying myself despite the flaws. We'll see if that changes by the time I get the 120th shine. I don't remember really taking to it the first time around, but it's grabbed me this time. If any of you wonder what's up with AxelMill/AXM, he's on my Switch friends list and is online regularly. So everything presumably is well with him, although he hasn't popped in here to say hello in a long time. If any of you guys are also on the Switch, I'll post my friends code so you can add me (I think Jeremy is a Switch owner, iirc).

I have not actually tried my TheC64 yet because I don't really have anything to plug it into. I need to buy a small TV to put on a desk. I have a 55" Vizio in my living room but it's too big / too far away to game on. Same reason I don't use my Xbone anymore other than to watch DVDs/BRs I buy way too much stuff I don't actually use. Like I have a $100 Lego Castle set next to a $30 Lego Tie Fighter set that I haven't opened, and then in my kitchen I have an inflatable hot tub (still in the box) I bought last month when it got it in, because it was still clearance priced from last year.

All the activity in here is hard to keep up with. I've been busy playing through the Super Mario 3D All-Stars compilation for the Nintendo Switch over the past month (Currently have 35 hours logged into it). I have fully finished Super Mario 64, just passed the 60 shine mark in Super Mario Sunshine last night (Out of presumably 120 shines), and have taken a brief look at Super Mario Galaxy. Money well spent on what's a fine compilation, with likely at least about 35 hours left to go before I 100% Sunshine and Galaxy. While there's things I'd of loved to have seen improved (Both with the source material and how it's emulated), they've been minor quibbles. For instance I never once thought to myself as I played Super Mario 64 that my experience was less entertaining because it's rendered in 720p rather than 1080p, even though the latter would've of course been nice to see. My biggest complaint if it counts as a complaint is what's not here. I'd of loved to have seen Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Super Mario 3D Land be included, bringing all of Mario's 3D adventures out on the Switch. The main menu even looks ready made for their inclusion with just enough room to accommodate both games and their soundtracks. I'd absolutely buy an expansion that includes that content, but not holding my breath of that ever happening when Nintendo doesn't even sell this game anymore (It was a limited time release).

How are you liking TheC64, Jeremy? I had a chance to dive into TheC64 Maxi that I got for Christmas today. Pretty impressive little system (Or I should say big system). Updated to the latest firmware that came out last month (v6.1, I believe) and everything seems great. Tons of built in games and every game that I tried to side load off a USB stick worked great. Have a giant C64 romset downloading now to put on it. I did notice two things. The USB ports sure have a death grip on everything and look a bit cheap to my eyes. I think when I figure out how to have this connected permanently, I'll pick up a USB hub to save wear & tear on TheC64's ports since I'll be adding games fairly regularly with my USB drive. Secondly, while trying to hold the joystick like an Atari 2600 controller, I noticed after an hour or so of gaming that the bottom pair of rubber pads had slipped on the joystick's base when I suddenly noticed stickiness on my hand. They're sure not glued on too well if a little body heat made them shift position. Are you supposed to use it with the controller sitting on a desk instead of holding it? Lastly, I hope I have better luck with USB controllers on this than other people do. Would love to use one of my arcade sticks on this for instance, but compatibility is real limited (unless the latest firmware changed things for the better, but I've seen nobody say it's been fixed so doubt it). Why they've never fixed that seems to be a bit puzzling. Would seem trivial to recognize a plain jane USB controller and let you map it to your liking in TheC64's dashboard. At least they added in support for the gamepad and mouse that they're making for their Amiga Mini this year. If a full size Amiga Maxi with working keyboard happens later (Holding out hoping that's the plan just like with TheC64), it will be nice to be able to use those accessories on this system as well. Always wanted an Amiga.

I indeed now own a TheC64. I also own one of those C64-on-chip plug and plays like Onmode does. [Edit: Had a different friend on my mind as I typed this originally; Onmode probably was wondering who the heck I was talking about when I used the wrong name, lol].

Happy New Year! Heh, no TheC64 for me. I do have the Commodore 64 DTV from Mammoth Toys (though I don't recall which of the DTV's two game sets it has), picked up from a KB Toys for $10 in 2005, and that'll do for me. Thanks for the details on the Analogue Pocket, Atariboy. I'll be really impressed if it someday becomes able to play PSP UMD games. As I think I've mentioned before, I'm a big, big Lego fan; I believe they're the greatest toy ever created. Certainly, I haven't bought any in a great many years, but that's not because I don't want to. If you need to know what to do with them once you've built them, do what I did: pick them up and tell a story with them like a puppet show (your favorite!), complete with the destruction and reconstruction of the space stati--oh, I built my own one of those, but anyway, Lego are a lot of fun for storyboarding and previs applications. As for why the Friends don't have legs, maybe that's social commentary on girls being constrained by lack of mobility. Or a reaction to those old "She kicks high" Xbox commercials. ;P My Asia- and Japan-region PSN accounts got their first funding transactions ever in the last few days. For the former, I used Play-Asia.com, but for the latter, Play-Asia's ridiculous 22-26% markup on Japanese PSN cards (their markup was only 8-9% on the Asia-region card) was a big turnoff, and I tried making use of my 20-year-old Amazon.co.jp account. That got hung up on region blocking, and long story short, I ended up just using PayPal to reimburse a friend in Japan for a Japanese PSN card code. The funding of my Asia-region account made for only the second entry in the account's transaction history; the first entry was from over 10 years prior, when I got a free theme in mid-2011, shortly after PSN came back from the breach (no idea why no other free themes ended up with entries in the transaction history). The funding of my Japan-region account became its transaction history's first entry ever. Not sure why that is, given that I've definitely redeemed DLC voucher codes that came with some of my Japanese PSP games, since 2013. Come to think of it, I think I redeemed a PSP theme voucher code with my Asia-region copy of Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness back in 2008, too. As is my wont, I bought some anime during holiday sales, but the only item that's been delivered so far is my copy of Part 2 of the Girls und Panzer das Finale 6-part theatrical series (three produced so far, one every two years since 2017, so three to go; in the US, we only got Parts 1 and 2 released on Blu-ray just in the last four months). My Part 1 is somewhere in the postal system, along with some of the other stuff I ordered, and yet more remains to be shipped. Another anime item was delivered just yesterday, BUT it isn't something I ordered recently. In fact, it was pretty perplexing, because I couldn't think of why in the world I was receiving a package from Tokyo Otaku Mode, sent by EMS express mail from Japan. Never bought anything from them before, certainly not a CD-R, as the EMS label said. First thought, of course: mail bomb?! :P However, it really seemed legitimately sent from Tokyo Otaku Mode (sender signature's name came up in Google search as an employee). I wondered if maybe I might not be the only person receiving something like this out of the blue, so I ran a Twitter search for "tokyo otaku mode package," and whaddaya know, it seems the package contains the Bean Bandit Blu-ray I helped Kickstart in mid-2018: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beanbandit/kenichi-sonodas-bean-bandit-new-anime-project . My e-mail has no notification that they were already shipping, but according to the EMS tracking data, my package was shipped the morning of December 30th (Japan time). First of all, that's some fast EMS, and second, maybe they haven't gotten around to announcing the shipment kickoff yet . . . or they're really just not going to. It appears from Twitter searching that backers in Japan received their copies starting from December 23rd. Anyway, it's been a long time coming, and I'm glad it's finally here. Maybe I'll actually watch it soon (it's supposed to be very short). onmode-ky

I'm a bit late, but Merry Christmas. I'll be opening up presents with my parents next weekend, so the Christmas season hasn't quite concluded yet for me. By coincidence, one of my suggestions for a gift idea to them was the full size TheC64. We'll see if one is waiting under the tree for me in a few days. The Analogue Pocket is a FPGA based handheld game system from Analogue that plays Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games out of the box. There's an optional dock for connecting it to a television and a Game Gear cartridge adapter (And there will be cartridge adapters to enable compatibility with some other handheld systems next year). My Analogue Pocket preorder was partially successful. Thanks to Analogue being Hong Kong based, my initial attempt the other day failed since my bank red flagged it. I called the bank a few hours later and got it figured out, and managed to secure a preorder for the system (Minus the dock, which I'll worry about down the road). It's supposed to ship in the 4th quarter of 2022.

For some reason I have been buying legos. An X-Wing, a Tie Fighter, '60s era Batmobile, and some random ones. I don't know why, really. They are mildly entertaining when you put them together, but once built, I have no idea what to do with them. I ended up with one that was part of their "Friends" series which I think is aimed at girls, but the little figures don't have moveable legs. It's very odd.