Month: May 2026

I realized after the last Tech update I haven’t “had time” between work and play to do as much home lab work as I used to, this is partially due to striving for a more remote capable* work life and partially due to not really having a project currently to hyperfixate on.

Also the Gym, going three to four times a week in the evenings takes even more time.

*I’m already WFH, I’m tired of actually working from my home, my office is in my basement, over the winter I built essentially a work outdoors go bag with everything I need to hop in the truck and work from anywhere.

There’s another post I’m seeing I forgot to finish talking about my ereader(s)/tablet etc.., so I will finish that one for the more tech side of:

READING

I have gotten back into reading since the Holiday season, started with Manga, of which I have read 25,689 pages to date. Then my s/o got me into the Empyrean series (Fourth Wing, Iron Flame and Onyx Storm) by Rebecca Yarros.

After going through that series I went back to my Manga that it interrupted and my brain said, “nope you dont remember whats going on” and not wanting to start them over I moved on to re-reading Cassandra Clare’s Shadow Hunters as its been years and I know I’m behind.

GAMING

Not sure if I ever updated on the games I play in posts of the past, I enjoy RPG’s like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and so on, to the point of recent memory I have beaten:
Final Fantasy 4 Pixel Remaster
Final Fantasy 5 Pixel Remaster
Final Fantasy 6 Pixel Remaster
Final Fantasy 8 Remaster(?)
Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth
FINAL FANTASY TACTICS – The Ivalice Chronicles
*(have beaten 9-13 previously, played but never finished 15 and 16)
Dragon Quest 11
Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D
Dragon Quest 1&2 HD-2D
Visions of Mana (with s/o)
Working on: Dragon Quest VII Reimagined

Ontop of all the Atelier games from Gust from Iris up with my s/o.

I also enjoyed Armored Core 6 but have lost alot of my reflexes since started with AC2 on the PS2 and it was a struggle.

More recently I found out how to use https://retroachievements.org/ with my older game Library, this makes for quick ADD breaks from longer games/books I am engaged with for example:

I have owned Final Fantasy Legends since I was in grade school, couldn’t ever remember beating it this made it the perfect test game.

As you can tell I’m not going for 100%, this would require for example beating FFL with a single character (Human I think) or Pokemon Yellow with just Pikachu, doable but not enjoyable, I am trying to get the easier/enjoyable optional trophies though.

I beat each of these over the past two weekends, one each starting Friday afternoon/night.

Other than that, I may start posting more posts like these, may post random quotes I find interesting/funny/inspiring.

Pretty much going from what I once envisioned as a tech blog, to a random place I can loose the fire of my mind.

Take it easy and Thanks for reading.

So around October of last year I got back into reading Comics, started with a trip down memory lane with MegaTokyo and, while I’m still working on it, Hardcore Leveling Warrior. I had looked up other web comics as I was attached to reading quite a few in my teens, but alot were either gone or I had forgotten them.

Then came the holidays and being asked what I wanted, I decided on an e-ink e-reader, but never having had one before I did some research and found the cheapest I (assumed) I would be able to do the most with.

Enter the Musnap Neo C a 6″ little color e-reader that runs android under it all, I also got the official case because it has the physical page buttons the actual device lacks (that I have already returned once for one of the buttons going bad) I had already done a bit of research before I was physically handed it to know how to sideload apps and such, something this little device MUCH needed as its stock launcher and “library management” left much to be desired.

*Also, I run WPA2/3-Enterprise at home, however this version of android has been modified for whatever reason I cannot install certificate into it, it say the password is wrong even if I strip the cert of a password.

My setup came down to:
No App store: install F-Droid
Replace the Launcher: from F-Droid install inkOS
Comics: from F-Droid install Kahon
Browser: from F-Droid install EinkBro (mainly for, and to keep updated, the next entry)
Books: install FBReader Premium (I do own a license on my phone/google play and appreciate their model of making the Premium APK available.)

With all that done, I did add some extras I will go over later when its of interest but for now:

Setup a Komga/Komf duology for self hosting, metadata and progress tracking, tie that to Kahon.
Setup Calibre, tie that to FBreader.
repeat on phone*

Ok, now we have a central repository for reading material that the Musnap can pull from..while its on the local.. network..

VPN? VPN. Same one whats on the phone, no need to expose those new services to the internet, I like it better that way.

Alright, this setup I have been running for the last few months and it works well, only note I have is the 6″ turned out to be smaller than I realized, most Manga and Manhwa (HCLW*) read fine, some Manga print is really small and I have to zoom it to read it, if that becomes a series norm I just moved on from the series until..

Enter Samsung Tab A 2016! Wifes old Tablet, found it last week in a drawer while looking for something else and while the case was worse for wear the tablet was pristine if outdated, quick google shockingly (I hadn’t had good luck with custom firmwares and Samsung devices in the past) showed there was an unofficial build of LineageOS 21 over on XDA’s forums. Took a few tries getting TWRP flashed (you have to flash it then immediately go into it or else it will be over written by stock again next boot) but after that installing felt like doing all the custom roms I did ages ago, install wipe everything, boot.

Installed pretty much everything I did on the Musnap including inkOS, because I like its simplicity for a primarily reading device, with a few additions/changes:

Did not install any Google apps/Gapp’s package, on the forum it said to use mini/micro for performance reasons, I decided like the Musnap to just forgo Google all together.

Yokai * instead of Kahon, Primarily because when in landscape it offers the ability to show two pages at a time.
Wifi-Automatic from F-Droid, the Musnap has a nice feature of when the device is “off”/sleeping it automatically turns off wifi/bt to save power, This handles the wifi, bt is just always off.
RetroArch Emulation

This post was started on 2/23/26 and never finished, I am going to push it out with only a few more lines as it pertains to another post I’m working on.

FB reader also has a linux appimage: https://fbreader.org/linux/packages

Waydroid on Linux will run Yokai.

and a really geeky outcome of both of those: with a cheap HDMI2USB-C you can pipe the output of the laptop to a VR headset like the Meta Quest, meaning reading in VR :).

All on this topic,
Thanks for reading