This was quite an eventful week, in a good way.
Projects
I have not been as productive this week due to not really knowing what I should work on first.
MediaCow Touch 2
MediaCow Touch 2 Lite is still a complex project, just not as complex as the full version, so the pressure is still on to complete the project if I want to see it get done by June 8, 2025.
This week, I started preliminary designs for the carrier board, since most of the other work has been done. I started on HDMI and USB-C ports, the latter I was able to copy a lot of from the old MediaCow Touch 2 designs from 2024.
The Website
Recently, I started to look over the many portfolio websites of other users on Discord for inspiration. I am close to starting to work on a new website design, though I feel as I should not do this just yet.
ContactList
This time, I have decided I should really plan out ContactList before working on it. I still have not decided if I should use a relational database or CouchDB for data. I am leaning towards relational databases such as SQLite due to their flexibility, ease of use and that it would give me more practice with using SQL which is important for employment.
I have decided that this project would not only be about creating a contact manager but a way to learn how to use Go.
YAGNI is going to be an important principle to follow, I've done it before with ContactList and I got a successful product out of it.
Serine
On March 30, 2025, I removed the repository for Serine because it is at this point where there is no longer any need for it to exist as the templating engine, Lysine and the projects its based off; Jinja2 and Tera, have been and is being used for CSS styling for my projects for years now.
Samsung Chromebook XE500C13
On March 27, I received the LCD panel for the Chromebook. I found out that the cable that was already in the Chromebook was not damaged and functioned with the display that I received. I noticed some light spots all over the display that is only visible when dark colors are displayed. Given that I paid US$18 for the display and that it is much better than what was in there before, I am not too concerned.
After the display was put in, I backed up the system and installed Fedora 41 XFCE, replacing Linux Mint.
One thing I noticed that is different from when I used to use the Chromebook in 2023 is that software has gotten slower and slower, especially web browsers.
Background
In April 2023, I chose this Chromebook because of its small size and lack of any vents. The latter was important since during the spring, there is a massive amount of pollen in the air that would otherwise be pulled into the computer with active cooling. This also makes the device easier to clean, having it more useful in hazardous environments.
Battery life is exceptional, getting 10-14 hours with continuous use. This is likely attributed to the CPU's TDP of 6W. Eve on heavy loads such as compiling code, running a web browser and decoding, the bottom of the device barely gets warm.
The lack of vents, exceptional battery life and limited set of ports has inspired design choices for MediaCow Touch 2 Lite. The former two especially due to the Intel Processor N100 having a similar TDP of greater than or equal to 5W.
PyRPG/Amoxa
On March 26, I tried using cocos2d (original Python version) in place of PyGame as it has built-in support for Tiled maps among many other things I am trying to achieve with PyGame. Due to what I presume is a incompatibility with either a newer version of Python or the Tiled map format, maps failed to load. I may look into this more and attempt to fix it then make a pull request.
With the pressure to work on MediaCow Touch 2 and ContactList, I may put PyRPG/Amoxa on hold for a while.
Development Hardware
Starting March 28, all development of the game will be on the AMD Opteron desktop, formerly referred to as "Polypropylene". This has some benefits apart from aesthetics including separating the game's development from the rest of my work and it would have me consider optimizing the game for older hardware with relatively poor single-thread performance. This is the same desktop with two AMD Opteron 4386, 8GB of DDR3-1333 Registered ECC RAM and a Radeon HD 4770 512MB graphics card I covered in the Week 3, 2025 Blog Post.
On March 28, I finalized the installation of Fedora Linux XFCE on the system. I initially tried using KDE (including Wayland) but it was much too slow on the HD 4770. The XFCE spin, however, seems to be a perfect fit. Later, the system seems to crash after about 30 minutes of use, which I presume is something to do with the graphics card, specifically the amount of memory required to run 1080p displays. I have noticed visual artifacts with this card on multiple systems but the crashing is new.
I ordered an HD 4870 1GB graphics card, though it is located in Kyiv, Ukraine so it may be a while before I get it. Given the circumstances, especially in Kyiv, I do not care if something happens by the time it arrives. They definitely need the $40 more than I do.
In the meantime, I am going to use an Nvidia GTX 1630 4GB that was given to me by my father. It is definitely much more than what I need but it would work for now.
Artwork
I designed a logo for the game, in an attempt to capture the aesthetics of the game:
Starting March 28, tiles are to be on a 20x20 grid instead of a 32x32 grid. This allows for finer control over the map's appearance as I could have a larger tile be made up of four 20x20 tiles. Another reason why I went with 20x20 is that I could have the window an aspect ratio of 16:10 to be able to fill up the screen on the Steam Deck at 1280x800 and MediaCow Touch 2 at 1920x1200; on 1280x800, the game can be scaled 2x while on 1920x1200, the game can be scaled 3x without any visual artifacts or mixels. Though, I am unsure how the game would appear on 16:9 displays which are much more common and what I am actually developing the game on.
Other
In my growing, possibly obsessive, interest in displays, I recently discovered the JDI LPM130M364 13" panel. I found that it was interesting that not only JDI produces laptop displays but has a high-DPI 3:2 aspect ratio panel which is unique and is rarely seen, especially in laptops. It appears to have a resolution of 3000x2000 at 277 PPI.
If I were to find one, I do not have anything other than the LattePanda Mu development hardware that has a 4-lane eDP 1.4 interface that is required for the panel. I may consider it for a project named "CowTop", a laptop project I have considered working since 2020.
Personal
Overall, mental health has improved over the past week. I had a depressing end of the week but I plan to turn that around.
Employment
As seen with the last few blog posts, I am spending money at an alarming rate. I may have to return to work at some point in the near future.
GalaxyCon 2025
I was not able to attend GalaxyCon 2025 on Saturday, March 29 due to a lack of communication on my part to get the tickets from the college. Though, on the day of the convention, I am to work on MediaCow Touch 2 and NetKart.
Tech Club
On March 25, as part of the Tech Club, we finished the Intel Core build which I let the other members do; it is important that I don't do all the work as the point of this is to for the others to learn how to build computers.
In the meantime, I worked on installing Fedora Linux on the AMD build, as the Windows 11 images (which I was reluctant on having the college paying for) were not in yet. I was advised to record the process, showing how to install Fedora, though the installation process was quick and simple, more so than Windows and any other Linux distribution I haved used so far.
I explored a few things with the Linux install: I checked if the EDAC module loaded, indicating if ECC is enabled, which it was. I installed the Rust language utilities and timed how long the former ctclsite-rust took to compile using the release profile, which took 59 seconds.
When the Intel Core build was finished, I booted Fedora but did not install it as we expect to put Windows 11 on this system.