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This year, I'm using my beloved Thinkpad x270, limited to 610MB RAM and a single core 400MHz CPU.
Yup. Linux Mint doesn't boot with 512MB RAM, and the alternative is installing a whole other distro for a week. So I'm bending the rules a bit, because otherwise I wouldn't be doing this at all.
I spent more time than I care to admit making my neofetch look all pretty, so I could post a picture to fedi. I then got sidetracked, remembering a cute cowsay-style tool someone made in toki pona, called kijetesantakaluotokieni. Yeah. That's the name. I had to install cargo to install it, and I noticed it was *really* slow to install, considering how simple it is.
After messing with that for a while, I watched some YouTube using the FreeTube program, while eating breakfast (yoghurt! yay!). I feel like this is pretty cheaty, since it's making the most of my modern GPU, but... I'm allowing it, because I say so. Runs fine with so little RAM, for the record. A bit sluggish at times, but video playback has been totally OK.
I scrolled through fedi for a while, with no troubles since I already use qutebrowser. If I want multiple tabs, or try to look at Discord, it starts to chug, sure. But it's taking it like a champ so far. I then realized "hey, I want to write about this and put it on gemini", so I set all of that up, and wrote this very sentence with an incredible amount of self-awareness.
By about lunch time, my battery was getting low- sooner than normal, for sure. I suppose the "hardware minimum" clock speed isn't the most energy efficient one. I ended up sorting through my wardrobe while it charged, and consolidated the growing piles of laundry that needed doing. I'm hoping to get through that over the week, so I can tell exactly how many clothes I own, and know how liberal I can afford to be in throwing out worn out stuff.
My evening was spent doing more of the same casual browsing I usually do. I found out about a fedi web client that was more performant, so I switched to that. Both of the instances I use only support infinite scrolling, which was starting to chug over time. (Honestly, I prefer the paginated approach anyway, and even thouhg this is unmaintained, I'll probably keep using it until some API change breaks it.)
Yesterday proved to me that I can do more or less everything I normally do with no issues. So unless I do something especially interesting, these updates will be shorter (and possibly less than daily).
I've been feeling the itch to play the games I'm nostalgic about, but my nostalgia times are a little bit newer than the limits of this challenge. Plus a lot of my favourite games from back then are super mouse heavy, so it wouldn't be the same now.
Spent the morning watching youtube, learning about better finishing techniques for my knitting, and petting my cat. Found out that my lazy method for weaving in ends as you go is... not the best for cotton, but oh well. I think I'll keep doing it for now, but only for 5 or 6 stitches, and then properly weaving them in when I'm finished with a tapestry needle.
Also discovered Pinafore's not-infinite scrolling wasn't exactly what I wanted; rather than taking you to a new page, it just loads more when you click the button. Oh well, it's much better than the regular interface anyway- I'm still grateful to have been given the suggestion on the #oldcomputerchallenge IRC.
On that note, I'm starting to get the hang of using IRC, which is cool. Weechat seems super configurable, *and* i'm no longer afraid of accidentally sending a command as a message, lol. Maybe it's the social anxiety, but the thought of doing IRC "wrong" is mortifying. My wrists and arms are feeling worse for wear after working on my current project (a big blanket I'll be sending off to donate when it's done), so instead of fiddly programming nonsense I'll probably just be resting, watching videos, and spending time with my cat.
An incredible discovery was made today: my Wii is totally allowed during the OCC. I spent longer than I care to admit playing it, as well as hunting for new games to play. It was really cozy, revisiting games I loved when I was younger, or ones I wanted to buy but couldn't until now. Like The Sims 3! I was *such* a simmer as a kid, I fucking loved that franchise to death. I owned every game I could find for PS2, owned 2+3 on PC (as well as some of the expansions), but the Wii version always alluded me. It was too expensive, so I couldn't get it. But now I have it!
...and it's complete garbage, but I love it. It runs TERRIBLY, is incredibly buggy, and in general feels like it was rushed out to meet some deadline. It's not quite shovelware, but I mean... It's approaching the event horizon, for sure. But I have been having a blast playing it. The "lore" of my current character is that he's a money hungry socialite, who keeps jumping from one clandestine partner to the next, thanks to a consistent string of tragedies & desperately wanting to fill the void. And those deaths aren't in the gold digger sense! It's been totally beyond my control, but so many of his partners have died, and unfortunately the only notice you get is the negative moodlet. It doesn't even say *who* died.
The gameplay loop is pretty meh, but the lore I've been crafting for my guy Larry is impeccable. Some of the quirks of this game, despite being mechanically "unfair" or "unintentional", make for great brain lore, and I love it. I've been thriving playing this hunk of junk, and it's impressive how much it tries to be a "real Sims game" unlike stuff like the sims bustin' out, which is more story based.
But that's a long enough tangent, I think. I've played a bunch of wii games today, and will probably do that tomorrow as well.
Just played wii games until I was too tired to continue. That's the day. Spun up some childhood nostalgia like Animal Crossing- which was especially nice, the town layout I got was very similar to my childhood one, and the villagers are mostly good. Also played Mario Party 8 and... yikes, I know it came out several years ago, but I feel like this amount of ableism from Nintendo would have stuck out like a sore thumb. Haven't looked into it, maybe there was a big outrage I never heard about. At least it's "just" filler text, and the actual gameplay is fun, even when you're playing by yourself. Everything else wasn't very noteworthy, but lots of fun was had.
Wow, the week is really slipping by, huh. Started my day with some knitting & youtube watching- but I noticed the playback was way worse than on monday. I couldn't get multi-hour videos to load at all, and even shorter ones had to pause and buffer constantly. No clue why, and while I'd love to find an alternative to FreeTube (which is *good* but not great), I couldn't find anything that met my needs. Which, if you're wondering, are:
No ads + sponsorblock support
Lets me automatically enable subtitles if available, with a language preference order (at minimum, manually added english captions > auto craption english)
Runs well on older hardware
Lets me import subscriptions in some way
Easy to use (doesn't require me to host some thing myself, just open a program/go to a URL and it Works)
But then again, I managed to watch some videos later in the day with minimal issue. Computers are haunted, I guess. Played more wii games, and made progress in Pikmin 2. I spent longer than I care to admit stuck on what to do next, but I enjoyed the relief of "oh, you wanted me to do *that*". Even if I continue to think it was complete bullshit. My buddy Vimm also dropped off some more games for me to play when I get the chance, though I'm still aiming to only have a handful of "in progress" games at once. My desire to play lego star wars will drive me to beat Pikmin and/or a very cute pokemon game I forget the name of. My partner has nostalgia for it, and I'm surprised I never heard of it before.
Rest of my day was pretty unremarkable, but I did get some new face masks in the mail; that was awesome. I now have 3 of the nice cloth ones, and I'm going to be buying more soon. I don't get out super often, but its nice to have masks I like for when I do.
Nothing exciting happened, depression decided to hit me with a big stick of sad, so I just spent the day watching videos and sleeping.
Youtube rabbit hole has lead me to rollercoaster tycoon channels, which has been fun. Not a game I can really play, but it's been fun to watch. Lots more sleep and quiet time today as well. Made good progress on Pikmin 2.
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