The Little Fujitsu Lifebook U820

Posted 12/16/2024

Hi everyone! I want to make a proper, full post about this at some point soon, but for now I'll just go off the cuff. I have in my possession the tiniest little laptop I've ever seen. It's about 7 inches by 6, and I'm a little unsure as to its intended purpose. I would guess that it's meant for business types who don't want their laptop taking up more space than absolutely necessary in their luggage as they travel for work, but it's small size makes just about everything difficult and tedious. The keyboard is about half the normal size which makes fat-fingering keys unavoidable, and I have rather small fingers already!

With all the negative aspects of this weird little machine, though, I can't help but be a little enchanted by it. I want it to be enjoyable, and so I'm trying to find some purpose for it. My first thought when starting to play with it was to use it as a dedicated journal, but typing on that thing for anything more than a minute at a time makes me want to huck it through a window. I then thought it could be good as a dedicated emulator machine for old video games. Surely they'd run on its 1GB RAM and 1.5GHz processor, and if I just connected it to an external display, keyboard and mouse, it wouldn't be that bad. I could even hook it up to a tv and use a wireless keyboard and mouse and that'd be great! But alas, it seems it was not meant to be. The damn thing doesn't have any video ports. It seems there are port extenders for it, but they seem to be somewhat rare and cost more than I'm willing to pay. There are even usb to hdmi adapters out there, but most don't work on Linux, which I've installed on it, and those that do are, again, more costly than I feel is worthwhile right now. Furthermore (and I'll go into more detail in a second) I can't seem to get any emulators to work on this tiny source of frustration. It's even too weak a machine to allow for browser-based emulation.

I have antiX Linux currently installed on the little laptop, and overall it works amazingly well. When I got it, it had Windows 7 and did not run smoothly. But with antiX, it runs as smoothly as one would hope a computer would. It's fully usable, assuming you don't try to push it too far by, say, having the audacity to try to watch a youtube video. There is hope for it to be able to do something well. I'm just not sure what that something is for me. I'm don't know if the emulators don't work because of some clash with antiX specifically, or if it's the laptop itself. I did install antiX on my husband's old laptop which really isn't that much stronger despite being almost a decade newer. Maybe I'll try running a GameBoy Advance emulator on that machine to troubleshoot. And in the meantime, I'll keep racking my brain and playing around with this most confusing of devices to see if I can't find something to do with it. And maybe I'll get around to making a full review/documentation of it for posterity.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my ramblings and I hope you have a great day!

Byeeeee

First Blog Post and Games made in Godot

Posted 12/15/2024

Hi everyone! Welcome to the ribbon-cutting ceremony for this-here blog. This is where I intend to post updates about my various hobbies. Today I want to bring attention to my itch.io page. There's only a few games at the moment (including one I altered specifically for my wedding anniversary), but one of them is a janky first-person tennis game, so doesn't that sound fun! Feel free to give them a go and leave a comment if you wish. I'm very new to gamedev and I've learned so much even just following tutorials and playing with Godot over the summer.

For anyone who doesn't know, Godot is a free game engine that is decently powerful and really not that tricky to use once you're up to speed. I first heard about it through Youtube recommendations of videos showcasing small indie games made using it. There's a huge community and lots of support, so if you have some time and any inclination at all toward making games I'd give it a go.

It's been fun playing around with making video games, an artform so near and dear to me, and I hope to get back to it soon. I'll keep you all updated.

Have a great day!