2022 Week 4: Thoughts and Photos

2022-01-31

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After half a year of long capture sessions and endless encoding errors, often requiring re-recordings to fix, I've finally finished converting all of my family's Hi8 cassettes. There were over 100 tapes in all, totaling about 190 hours of content. I don't have much time to sit back, though: now I want to get through all our VHS cassettes too.

It was warm enough on Saturday for me to go on a bicycle ride, my first one since September of last year. Unfortunately my stamina was nowhere near where it should have been, and I had to cut the ride short after only a few miles. I'm endlessly impressed at those who can cycle for 50 miles or more in one go; I'd love to reach that level someday.

My Urbit planet needed to be breached again. I went to Bridge to submit the transaction, where I discovered that the recommended gas fee was about .012 ETH (approximately $30 USD). I only had about .0013 ETH left in that wallet, so I decided to cut the gas fee down to .0012 ETH (approximately $3 USD). The transaction was submitted on Friday, and it still hasn't gone through yet. I don't really use or need Urbit right now, though, so I'm willing to wait until transaction either goes through or gets canceled.

One of my friends lost a parent this week. In the aftermath, this friend learned that the deceased parent had been sheltering the family from the effects of substance abuse by the other parent. Needless to day, the situation is quite tense. I'm trying to provide support as much as I can.

I've had an Etokki Onmi Sanwa edition arcade stick for about six years, though it's only seen heavy use in the last two or so. At first the movement of the joystick had some solid resistance, but as I've played more and more, that resistance has eroded almost completely and the joystick moves almost effortlessly. I'm not sure if this is a normal symptom of break-in or if the assembly is getting worn out. If it gets much looser, I'll probably start looking for a replacement joystick assembly.

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Photo of the week:

New-in-box Damage

(PNG, 450x800, 213 KB)

I purchased a Kobo Clara HD last week, factory-new directly from Kobo. Unfortunately, when I opened the box, I discovered that the screen already had damage: a visible crack line ran across the upper-right corner of the screen, and the top several lines of pixels didn't function. I immediately opened a ticket with Kobo, and they agreed to replace the device under warranty.

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[Last updated: 2022-01-31]