allison @aparrish@friend.camp

another little jazzy lsdj loop. unfortunately the emulator i'm using doesn't seem to play the noise channel correctly, so what sounds like hihats on my pocket comes out as... noise. i will try to fix this! or maybe I will need to record directly from my gameboy after all... #looptober (also my poor macbook air can't keep up 60fps on the emulator when the batteries are running out, so there are some hiccups in this recording. technology huh)

this is nothing musically speaking but it is the outcome of two important experiments: (1) getting lsdj to work in 5/4 time (very annoying) and (2) exporting from lsdj by backing up the rom data from my cart, and then recording an emulator's sound output using soundflower #looptober

still learning lsdj. also trying to learn about jazz chord progressions, which I know nothing about! I thought I had a 1/8" cable somewhere, but apparently I don't, so this is still just recorded from my phone 🤷🏻‍♀️#looptober

finished my first project on my new table loom! this is a cotton/linen scarf (gist yarn storm and apricot) woven with a "scattered satin" pattern. no fancy math or tricks with this one, i just wanted to get more familiar with my new loom and also make something nice for myself 😎

teaching myself lsdj. i know trackers pretty well but this still took me like an hour haha #looptober

(recorded straight from my gameboy to my phone, if i stick with this i'll figure out a better setup)

why did I do this? it started out as a kind of joke—there are a lot of mods out there for the GBA SP that take out the hinge (e.g. https://retrogamerepairshop.com/products/slate-by-makho) so I thought... why not take a gameboy without a hinge and add one? it was also a good excuse to teach myself some stuff I've been wanting to learn better for ages—CAD, PCB design, 3D printing, etc. I also learned a LOT about gameboys. here are some more process photos, including my gallon-size bag of failed prints and prototypes

here's the completed build! I present... the Game Boy Pocket SP. it's a Game Boy Pocket motherboard in a custom shell I designed to resemble the GBA SP. to fit the motherboard into the shell, I cut it in half, and then designed a custom flex PCB to connect the two halves through the hinge. i'm using an aftermarket LCD from Cloud Game Store and Gil Tesa's USB-C charging mod for the internal battery. that neat Link's Awakening label is from https://nextstopplease.square.site/

this still needs a ton of tweaking and i accidentally printed the wrong version of one of the pieces BUT this is a more or less complete prototype of the shell, the first prototype i've made so far where i can actually put all the pieces together. compared to the gba sp, it's definitely on the thick side, and it's definitely less "pocketable" than an actual pocket 🤷🏻‍♀️ but it still feels nice to hold and handle imo (this is not the final idea for the surface finish btw!)

here's a picture of the motherboard halves. i'm making a pair of flex pcbs that you'll just be able to solder in place over the relevant vias, and then connect the two with a thin flex cable (which will be much smaller and easier to solder than this nest of wires). the shell in the previous video is my custom design! i still have to model and print the rest of the shell, and i'm still figuring out the whole hinge situation. but i am excited about how it's coming together!

for the past few months i've been working on an idea, which is to make a gameboy pocket with a hinge (so it folds in the middle like a GBA SP or a DS). the plan: cut a pocket motherboard in half, rewire the parts together with a cable that can fit through a hinge, and make a custom 3d printed shell for the whole thing. today i made a proof-of-concept prototype combining in-progress versions of these components and... it works!

just finished this custom DMG with an aftermarket IPS LCD, shell and buttons! I love how it came out but it was a surprisingly tough build. I accidentally zapped the original motherboard I was going to use (the DMG's design makes it too easy to send -30v straight to the CPU) and killed the first fancy LCD I tried to install (which the vendor kindly replaced). and THEN I discovered the speaker didn't work, so I had to reopen to diagnose. but it's all fixed now and works great!

i needed a way to sample yarn and color combinations without the hassle and waste of warping my regular loom, AND i wanted to learn how to make 3d models for 3d printing... so i made my own little 3d printed frame loom! i designed the model in freecad and printed it with one of the ultimakers in my department's shop. the loom is so small that i didn't bother with a heddle—i wove "manually" using a long tapestry needle and beat the weft with a 99c hair pick from walgreens.

i finished (mostly) this backlit gameboy pocket build! i ended up using another gbp screen i had for the backlight mod. the bivert chip i bought was a dud, i think, but the backlit display looks fine without it imo. this model of the gameboy pocket didn't include a power led, but the aftermarket lens i bought has an opening for one, so i ended up rigging the most homemade power led mod imaginable (just soldered a through-hole led and resistor between vcc and ground)

another first for me: I resoldered a surface-mount chip in this old flash cart of mine for the GBA. I opened the cart up and found that the SRAM chip (in the upper right corner) had separated from its solder pads somehow—one side was completely loose, and a bunch of pins on that side were bent. I used fine tweezers to bend the pins back, then soldered it back in place (with the help of a lot of chipquick flux). it's not pretty but it does work!

i finished another towel set! these are handwoven on my 15" rigid heddle loom, with cotton yarn (the lilac color) and a cotton/linen mix (the white color). both towels are from the same warp but i tried to give them different styles by mixing up the weft a bit (one towel has weft stripes with the white linen, the other has areas of warp/weft floats and i left a bit of fringe on the end). i learned a lot from this project and i am pleased with how they came out!

removed my first burned polarizer today, from a game boy pocket lcd. it was less difficult than i thought it would be. (tedious but not difficult.) pics show what it looked like beforehand, the middle of the process, and after the polarizer was removed completely (including all the adhesive). i don't have new polarizer film yet, but my sunglasses are polarized, so i used them to check to see if the screen still works (it does!)

i couldn't find a gameboy color case on the market that i liked, so i made my own! the case is made from two panels of hand-woven fabric (cotton with an area of weft pile for cushioning, and a cotton/grey linen strip for decoration) which i hand-stitched to together to make the pouch. third pic shows the larger panel after it came off the loom. the button is made from a spare gameboy color d-pad i had hanging around, which i trimmed and glued to an acrylic shank button blank

smallest domino: german legislators taxing radios

biggest domino, a century later: Google Sidelines Engineer Who Claims Its A.I. Is Sentient

final little touch on this build: i replaced the stock red power led with a white led, to better match the color scheme

with apologies to ranjit (who wanted me to use the original translucent case), i decided to put the formerly corroded board into the fancy boxy pixel shell with the fancy backlit aftermarket screen. doing the custom case install was easy breezy compared to the work i did repairing the board. this thing is incredibly luxurious and i love it and i love knowing that i put so much work into it! just a really fun and satisfying project all around!