Projects
MediaCow Touch 2
I am disappointed to see that I am already more than a week into April, with no progress on MediaCow Touch 2 or anything anything else done in a month. I get physically sickened by the idea of working on any software projects apart from game development (AMOXA). I'm getting sick of seeing nothing get done and I must do something quick to turn this around as I have less than two months to get MCT2 done; as I mentioned in MediaCow Touch 2 - Part 16, I will stop working on the project altogether if I don't get it done by June 8, 2025. I have been doing circuit designs at a steady pace, with the eDP touchscreen adapter board being completed and reviewed.
With much of the extra seemingly pointless features not present in MediaCow Touch 2 Lite, circuit design has gone much faster and I am feeling more optimistic about the project.
Brightpoint can shove it; getting a project done of this scale would show more skill and resolve than anything that gets thrown at me in college. My parents are definitely not going to like seeing this (they read this blog) but this project has taken over my life for way too long now, the constant voices that tell me that I'm not holding up and that I should have gotten MediaCow Touch 2 done by September last year. I will not give up on college since my workload at college is comparatively light, with there practically being just one assigment per week, so it should not pose as too much of an obstacle.
Sure, I do not know what I am doing, much less so in 2021 but I see that it is possible for me to get this done now with the corners being cut with MediaCow Touch 2 Lite. On April 10, 2025, I decided to use the codename "Curitiba" as a dark reminder to myself that I have been working on this project for a long time; "Curitiba" being chosen to remind myself that I was working on MediaCow Touch 2 even when I still knew the two from Brazil, who were mentioned in the Week 12, 2025 blog post. Being nice to myself did not work so I had to do the alternative.
The US President's decision to push tariffs through the roof does not make this project any easier. It is probably to the point where I cannot make any physical prototypes for the time being. I do not need to make a physical prototype anyway but assuring parts that I would need would be available later on would be difficult, possibly ending up like it was in 2021-2023 with the global chip shortage.
Samsung Chromebook XE500C13 and nvim
It turns out that I would not realistically be able to use VSCodium on the Samsung Chromebook due to performance issues. It is also like this on the ThinkPad X200 Tablet where the remote session would often drop due to performance issues. I have started to consider using a different editor. I was recommended nvim which I have looked into recently. I wrote this section with nvim from the Chromebook, being able to use it over an SSH session in the terminal. It is quite different from what I am used to it but I can see myself using it more often.
PyRPG/AMOXA
Officially starting April 9, 2025, the name AMOXA would be stylized in all-caps as shown.
Recently, I explored the idea of making the game using Go with the Ebitengine library to further assure performance on systems with limited resources; such as the VIA C7 I am trying to target while learning how to use Go. I noticed the game AAAAXY was made with Go and Ebitengine which seems to perform well on anything that I ran it on.
Using Go, however, would have PyRPG be a misnomer. On April 11, 2025, the repository was renamed to amoxa to reflect this.
Switching to Go would slow down development since it is a completely new language to me but it is something I should learn anyway. Developing the game entirely on the AMD Opteron machine is something different.
Other
This week, I have gotten Space Engineers to run on Linux after gaining interest in the game again after watching gameplay videos with my father the week before. I have tried this before back in 2021 with Debian but to no avail. This time, I was somewhat able to play the game but crashes are common. I presume the crashes are from not properly installing the dotnet48 dependency. I already found it amazing that I could even launch the game, let alone load a world.
I seemingly resolved it on April 9, 2025 with using a slightly older version of Proton GE and properly installing dotnet48. Only issues I face now is models taking time to load and something with directional audio.
Personal
This week, I tried taking a break from ADHD medication but I felt too exhausted to do anything. I feel like as if I have not really gotten anything done in the last month, excluding the recent trip to the Pocahontas, VA-Bramwell, WV area which I saw as a much-needed vacation.