Day 20 didn’t afford me much time to work on my December Adventure, so I thought it might be a good opportunity to take stock, and do a little housekeeping.

Ideas

Since I’m two-thirds of the way through the month, I wanted to see which of my initial ideas remain. In the last 20 days, I’ve taken a crack at:

I also distracted myself into a few bits of 3D design and printing that weren’t on the list:

I even started to create a Psion-focused launcher for MAME.

This leaves me with:

  • Keyboard support for the LZ64
  • Psion webring
  • Software Index UID listing
  • Software Index CLI for Linux
  • Software Index spelunking
  • PsiBoard documentation and write-up
  • PsiBoard finishing touches
  • PsiBoard charging status LED
  • Ship Thoughts for EPOC32
  • Minimal Psion USB-C cable
  • Backups in Reconnect
  • Organiser connectivity in Reconnect
  • Write about RMRSoft preservation
  • Ship OpoLua Qt
  • Series 3a hinge reinforcement
  • Archive Palmtop magazine scans
  • Web-based Psion emulation
  • Archive more Psion ROMs
  • Add guides to psion.community
  • Support attachments in Thoughts
  • Thoughts for iOS
  • Print feet for Anytime x Nixie
  • Try out GlobalTalk
  • Write up my read later strategy
  • Time zone logger
  • Little Luggable keyboard improvements
  • Write up MiSTer x PVM
  • Show filenames in Folders
  • Support filtering in Folders
  • Remove Libretto 50CT batteries
  • Write about model-viewer
  • Write about my 3D printed brackets
  • Series 7 emulation
  • Write up Nezumi
  • Try out Plan9

(It’s good know that I’m not going to run out any time soon.)

While the fairly random nature of the Organiser II lucky dip I’ve relied on for much of my adventuring has been enjoyable, that’s a fairly long list and I’d like to be a little more deliberate in the coming days—I don’t anticipate quite so much spare time as we move into the holidays themselves and I’d like to make it count. This list will serve as inspiration, but I’ll be more directed in what I choose.

That said, I’m also going to add one more thing to the list: I had a really fun conversation with Tomsci about how we approach EPOC16 support in OpoLua, during which we decided to look into auto-generating EPOC32-era Psion install (SIS) files for use on EPOC16 devices. We aim to do this as part of the Psion Software Index indexing process, meaning that these new installers will be available for anyone to use, in OpoLua, Reconnect, or other tooling. I’d love to start planning this out.

Gridify

During the process of documenting my Organiser II icon designs, I found myself writing a little Python script (which I’ve dubbed gridify) to enlarge pixel art images and add grid lines. The script is tiny but, in the interests of sharing, I’ve uploaded it to Codeberg and assigned an MIT license.

Gridify lets you generate previews like this:

Thinking more about the announced GitHub pricing changes for self-hosted Actions runners, I wonder if a tiny project like this might be a perfect excuse to try out CI alternatives. While GitHub have flip-flopped on this, announcing that they’re delaying the planned per-minute metered pricing for using self-hosted runners, the writing’s on the wall, and I need to find an approach that’s more sustainable.