Great to see Alexandrite getting some updates again! :)

No idea if it’s related, but I see similar behaviour (the not loading, rather than the error message) whenever Firefox requires a restart for an update. It doesn’t make it clear this is what is happening, it just stops loading web pages in existing tabs. Only if I open a new tab does it show the “Restart to keep using” message.

I’ve spent far too much time diagnosing network issues without realising I just needed a restart :)

I love and hate the feeling in Animal Crossing that the world has just continued existing without you for the last 18 months that you haven’t booted it up. Feels like visiting old friends… but old friends that thought you were dead or something.

Yeah, it really was amazing to play blind. We especially enjoyed the DLC… when we first realised what it was all about, it nearly blew our minds!

Except in the case of the Sega Master System, where the simplistic 8-bit graphics felt like a massive leap up from the terrible box art!

You know, I’ve been using Mastodon for 10 months and I’d never noticed the Explore link! My interface even has the fresh, dismissable help text at the top of that column! :D

There’s a sweet spot, right? Popular enough to be viable; not so popular that the quality decreases.

I’ve been coding for 40 years, it’s both my job and my hobby, and I still feel old and out of touch when reading or taking part in coding conversations outside of my sphere :)

This is not meant to be discouraging - even the smallest amount of coding you could learn will be immensely rewarding - more to say that coding is vast arena with a breadth of complexity that can often feel overwhelming. So don’t be put off when you teach yourself some JavaScript and then still feel adrift in a conversation about C#.

I don’t have any specifics to recommend, but I would say that you should start small. Don’t aim to write the next Flappy Bird as your first project, or the next Mastodon. Just concentrate on making a web page say “Hello world!” or changing the colour of some text. Back in the 80s, most kids got their first taste of programming by having a computer shop C64 print “Dave is rad!” on an infinite loop! :)

Good luck!

I’'m one of the people who sheepishly really liked “new” reddit’s interface, so Alexandrite is like catnip to me!

Infinite scroll! No more losing place in feeds!

Yeah, I believe there was an MSDOS port, I just didn’t have the set up to play it. From YouTube, it looks similar to the Amiga version.

Hah! I seem to remember that R-Type DX on the Color was really good, wasn’t it?

Yeah, it’s incredible! The only thing that lets it down slightly is the vertical scrolling (and the fact that they split the levels on two separate releases - I think the TGX16 version got them all in one).

I mean, the arcade is clearly the best version… (if you’re talking the original game).

For the ports… the Spectrum is great for sheer chutzpah, but the PC Engine port is probably the most faithful of all the versions that weren’t running an emulator. The Sega Mastersystem is also extremely good, on much less powerful hardware.

Also, the coders who ported these games often wouldn’t have access to the arcade cabinets at all, other than some hastily recorded VHS footage. So getting a port that actually felt like the original was a rare treat. Most of the time the ports felt like they were inspired by the source material more than anything.

Leaving Twitter for Mastodon barely had an impact. I was just about done with that whole place, with or without Musk in charge.

Reddit is different… I still loved using it. I had my subscriptions honed, all my interests represented. I suffered none of the toxicity that others saw. Not sure if that was just because I mostly used smaller, niche-interest subs or because I mostly lurked and seldom posted? It was all friendly, knowledgeable and entertaining, a stream of consciousness that I could dip in to whenever I wanted to.

So I’m not leaving Reddit because of the experience, but more on principal (both the API kerfuffle and a general aversion to ad-revenue models, which are clearly harmful to society). Principals sadly don’t give me something to read over breakfast…

I hope Lemmy can become that stream of consciousness in time. I’m trying to do my bit by being an active contributor rather than a lurking grazer.

I got the Miyoo Mini Plus a few months ago, and I really love it. They’re really lovely devices for just whipping out for a quick game of Tetris, especially with the convenience of the game switcher and save states. I’ve been surprised by how usable it is, despite the small size.