I like the single color slab personally. My eye is drawn to the dead space more with the dividing wall in the Pak E. Derm picture. I like the blue or the red really. Lighter colored characters are going to pop off the blue better I think, but I’m not too good at color stuff. I could see a bright yellow working well with the darker colored characters maybe?
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Second soldering project was a big leap in difficulty from the first, but it seems to be working! The tutorial I was following was 10 or 15 minutes long, but the whole process took me about three hours.
Here’s what it looked like before:
I bought the unit from a Japanese eBay seller, it worked but it had a lot of scratches and scuffs and it was missing a battery cover. The “power” and “option” buttons were beginning to deteriorate, they had that slightly clammy feeling that a lot of old plastic gets. The sound was also kinda hissy.
Here it is after:
The new screen is an IPS LCD panel (same kind that a lot of GBC mods use, I believe they’re reclaimed BlackBerry displays). It has an option for a solder-less installation using touch sensors, but everyone online says the sensors are really finicky and go off unexpectedly, so I opted for the more difficult solder approach, where you can hold down a button combo to fine-tune the screen position, turn on/off pixel grid, and see a battery indicator.
The only aftermarket shells available for this model are white, transparent white and transparent black. I thought the transparent white looked the most fun, and I saw a redditor pair that shell with some red buttons to match the “P” in the NGPC logo. The buttons look a bit more orange than I was expecting, though that does make the unit feel a little more Dreamcast-y.
I could never afford to repurchase my old NGPC game collection, so instead I got a NeoPocket GameDrive. This lets me “flash” up to 16MB of games from a MicroSD card.
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This is sort of a project:
So one of my PS5 controllers has drift. Noticed it yesterday when my character would involuntarily move left without my input. I looked up a repair guide on iFixit since I’ve already replaced springs in my DualSense controller, and I’ve modded my Switch joy-cons while replacing analogue sticks, but I noticed that replacing analogue sticks in the DualSense requires de-soldering and then re-soldering four connections. I don’t know if I want to do it. I need to borrow a soldering kit because I don’t have one delicate enough for electronics of this size. I’ve repaired many a controller for various systems in the past and I’m annoyed I need to break out a soldering kit to fix this one.
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Back on the topic of photography for a moment, this evening I spent some time in a darkroom developing some negatives and it felt good to be back. I’ll definitely be booking more time as soon as I have a few more rolls to process.
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I bought a Collector’s Edition mox ruby. Do it get an expensive card!
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Woah, that’s cool! I have always wanted to have a P9 but for now, I’ll settle with my Cradle and my 0 ramp artifacts. My next small to-be-finished collection is having 5 graded basic lands from alpha. I currently have 3, a swamp is on its way and that would leave me just a plains short of finishing it.
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Cradle is about the same price as a CE Mox Ruby (you could probably get a mox cheaper). I have a cradle I bought from a friend who bought it from me previously. At the time I sold it to him for $250, I bought it for $300, then it skyrocketed in value to $1k. My friend was not super happy.
Since I seem to like my non-tournament legal cards I have my eye on a gold bordered cradle and yawg will.
Wow nice, alpha basics. That’s a very unique and specific thing to collect. I have some UL basic lands and seem to trade or sell away anything Beta/Alpha. Besides alpha lands what are your favorite basics? I enjoy old style foil basic lands (Onslaught, Invasion, 7th ed), Portal 1st gen mountains, and FBB fourth (or is it revised?) basics. I also am partial to Mirage, Ice Age, and Tempest basics.
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I’m based in Europe so I mostly use cardmarket for buying cards and, oddly, a P9, while more expensive, is not that off of what I’m seeing for cradles, say, 550 euros for the cheapest one. And funnily enough, I got two Yawg wills from saga when they were a bit cheaper and have them sitting in my RL and other goodies binder.
The alpha collection started weirdly. Like 5-7 years ago I thought: why don’t I just get an alpha thing, a relaly iconic card like, don’t know, a Llanowar elf? I went through online suppliers and found Hareruya selling some really cheap (living in South América at that time so the shipping was more expensive than the actual card, which was mint I’d say). That’s when it started and after a while, I wanted to get something else and just then I noticed how the prices skyrocketed. But lands will be lands and the first land will always be the first land, so I went in and started to get at least one of each. And I’m not sure I adore them, I definitely dig other lands more. I’m a sucker for what John Avon has drawn on some lands though, and I find the white bordered mountains in mirage, or the urza’s saga mountains, which are the cards I imagine when I think of basic lands. When I was a kid, I thought I liked the unhinged full-art style though and while I still think those are the nicest full art lands made to date, my nostalgia filter also draws me back to the old frame cards, aven more if they have a reminder text with a T instead of a little bent arrow.
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550 for a power 9 like UL or Beta? Thats crazy. I assume you mean CE.
I really like old border foils and non foils. Im happy they brought them back!
I’d like to get more into photography. I have a book on picture composition I should spend time with.
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I explained myself like crap: Cradles are around 550 euros and a CE P9 is a bit over that but not that much, say, 650-700 the cheapest. I am still thinking on getting one at some point because, well, it´s a P9.
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Haha it’s all good!
I could be getting a bonus soon which means another CE P9 but I’m going to do something more responsible and put it toward the mortgage. Boring and responsible.
So I’ve been holding onto this for a while as I didn’t want to jinx it. Now having been working on it for three months with the contracts signed I feel it’s safe (touch wood).
I’ve been commissioned by a publisher here in the UK to write a book on the history of SEGA. Right from their earliest times to present day. It’s been 10 years since the last book on the subject was published (as far as I know) and that was very much centered on their console history from an American position. I’m planning on covering their arcade stuff too, as well as what they’ve done since leaving the console space. While America and Japan are obviously important markets, I’m endeavouring to put in as much info as I can about European markets as well, especially smaller ones like Australia and Brazil as I feel it’s an important part of the story that often is overlooked.
I’ve got 60,000 words to play with (+/- 10% either side) and so far I’ve written a bit over 14,000, so still a way to go.
It’s both exciting and terrifying at the same time, but I am really enjoying it!
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Let us know when it’s published! We’ll probably pick up a copy for our library!
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That’s amazing. I’ll definitely pick up a copy for my personal collection once it’s done.
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Thanks man! That is very much appreciated! 
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Have you seen this?
I don’t know if the documents it’s referring to are at all usefully to you but I thought I should highlight it if you weren’t already aware of their existence.
I had seen that, bit thanks. It’s interesting stuff! Haven’t gone through it all yet.
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Wow that’s cool. Keep us updated.
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