FallingStuff – Words from fallingstuff

Acer Aspire 7741

A while back I saw a listing for batches of laptops being sold from a computer recycler. These machines were being sold as “we don’t know if they work, they’re not what we usually sell, but you’re welcome to try to fix them”. So I thought to keep up my repair skill and to have a test laptop or two I would pick up a batch and give it a try. Couple odd days later I received the lot and most of them were just generic consumer ultra basic laptops and most of them, surprisingly, powered right up without an issue.

Most of the machines were low end consumer laptops with not much noteworthy; under-powered CPU’s, barely enough memory, mechanical hard drives, all wrapped up in a “budget friendly” package. Having the wind knocked out of sails of my epic test lab dreams (not sure what I was expecting out of the lot anyway) I decided to pivot my plans slightly. In October of 2025 Microsoft will be cutting off Windows 10, meaning that whole lot of machines just like these that I bought will be effectively eWaste and thrown in the trash. So I decided to amend my testing plans just slightly to find out if these machine would still be usable for most things … just without Windows.

I pulled out the first laptop an Acer Aspire 7741, it was not spectacular with an Intel Pentium P6000 processor (2 core 1.87ghz) and 6 gigs of RAM. To establish some kind of number that I could use to give others an IDEA of what the machine performed like (that is they could run the same tool on their own computer to get a number that could be compared to get a feel of better or worse) I would use GeekBench. (Note: this is not an endorsement for one tool or another, just the tool that I thought would be usable on the most platforms and be reasonably priced.)

To get started, I had installed a 120GB SSD to the machine and install Linux Mint and then ran a performance scan.

Single-Core score: 273
Multi-Core score: 481 — Not terribly great …

The results were not the most remarkable numbers ever, but the machine was definitely usable. I thought that numbers alone really did not mean a whole lot, so I would throw some things at it and see how the machine did.

Youtube screenshot — Plays some Youtube LoFi

Amazon screenshot — I can search for more powerful laptops on Amazon

Screenshot from AdVenture Capitalist - a clicker game — AdVenture Capitalist works!

I could search on the web, watch Youtube, and play a simple clicker game … But could I do anything useful?

Screenshot of google doc in progress — Google Doc

OneDrive doc in progress — Doc in OneDrive too

LibreOffice screenshot — And LibreOffice

So, it would not win any awards, but this Acer Aspire 7741 was not eWaste and was very usable based on the tests I threw at it. I enjoyed this first test and think I will write more of these, help in my small way to show that someone does not need the latest and greatest machine just to get on the internet and do basic things. Ultimately I will toss this machine on eBay, and I need a better testing process moving forward …

Bulletstorm

Bulletstorm, a wild and unique, first person shooter from the now very defunct People Can Fly studios is a game I cannot say enough good things about it. I have replayed this game many times already and it is as satisfying each time as it was the first time. Why is this game so much fun time and time again … well let me break it down.

The game puts you in the boots of Grayson Hunt, ~~Elite Special Forces soldier~~ Space Pirate, who in a single stroke of brilliant revenge manages to get his crew killed and ship destroyed. Grayson ends up on this supposedly abandoned planet with the last surviving member of his crew and working together they attempt to get rescued off the planet by way of their former Commanding Officer. A General who used Grayson and his former Special Forces team to cover up heinous crimes the General had committed and framed Grayson’s team for.

Honestly, on the surface, not that complex of a story … and then you start to find out the story of this “abandoned” planet – a former pleasure retreat built and staffed by convicts … that have been mutated by hazardous waste and radiation from ion storms on the planet. The player, as Grayson, now has to fight through these waves of mutated enemies for a chance to get off the planet and help your last crew mate, and friend, who was seriously injured in the crash landing. `To fight through all the mutations on the planet you are given a fairly standard compliment of weapons – pistol, shotgun, automatic rifle, etc all with a primary and secondary fire mode.

However, there is one weapon that made Bulletstorm truly unique at the time – an energy tether called a “leash”. This weapon allows the player to grab items like ammo from a distance and pull it closer or pull environmental blockers out of the way, a very useful trick. The “leash” also allows the player to grab enemies and pull them closer to be shot or kicked into other enemies … or grab explosive cylinders and throw them into enemies … or grab enemies and kick them into spikes … or any combination of these grab and kick combinations for interesting kill combinations that reward the player with points that can be used for weapon upgrades or ammunition for the other weapons.

This guy just got a boot to the head and went for a flight

Skill points from shooting enemies with a giant toy

Spend them points for upgrades and ammunition

The whole game is a profanity laced, ‘turn off brain and play’, action movie disguised as a video game. The original PC version was released with Live for Windows integration and has been removed from Steam, but was re-released as “Bulletstorm : Full Clip Edition” which appears to have toned down some of the profanity from the original but kept the original story intact.

It required a relatively decent machine for the time (requirements by Can you Run It) –

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Athlon X2, or equivalent, running at 1.6 GHz or greater
CPU SPEED: Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Athlon X2, or equivalent, running at 1.6 GHz or greater
RAM: 1.5 GB
VIDEO CARD: DirectX 9.0c compatible, 256 MB of VRAM; NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS, ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro 256 MB, or greater
TOTAL VIDEO RAM: 256 MB
PIXEL SHADER: 3.0
VERTEX SHADER: 3.0
HARDWARE T&L: Yes
OS: Windows XP (SP3), Windows Vista (SP2), or Windows 7
FREE DISK SPACE: 9 GB
SOUND CARD: Yes

And for the Full Clip edition (requirements by Steam store page) –
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system

OS *: Windows 7/8/8.1/10 x64
Processor: AMD A8-3850
Memory: 6 GB RAM
Graphics: Radeon HD 6850
DirectX: Version 11
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 15 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible

Stardew Valley

When I originally heard about Stardew Valley I kept hearing the game being played by kids so I got the impression that it was very much a kids game. That was until I decided to kick the tires one day and loaded the game and started to play it. Now at the time of writing this I have almost 100 hours in, and while I do not have a lot to say about the game, I do have a way different view after playing.

The game starts off with your grandfather giving you a gift, but with the rule that you cannot open that gift until you are so tired of your city life and get back in touch with nature and people.

Sometime later, while at your desk job, you snap and open the letter to find that Grandpa left you the deed to his old farm… That you decided to move to.

It is a very simple story concept, and one that I think most adults can get behind, while being kid friendly. The game gives you a brief how to play and then sets you loose to build your farm, it is in need of a bit of work to clean up the rocks and weeds...

The game loop is simple, you grow crops and raise animals …

Craft things for your farm …

Including machines to make products (like cheese and jams) to sell …

The game has a sort of 8-bit cartoony art style with a day / night cycle – you do not want to stay out too late though, or you might just sleep wherever you drop when your fatigue hits zero. Farming and tending animals is the majority of the game, but there are other things to do like fishing, cave exploration, and the yearly seasonal system means there are holiday celebrations in town to attend and participate in. The game also supports adding mods too, on my game I have added a weekly market day for more options to sell things that I make. `

The requirements to run Stardew Valley are not so high either (as noted by the Stardew Valley Steam page) –

OS *: Windows Vista or greater
Processor: 2 Ghz
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: 256 mb video memory, shader model 3.0+
DirectX: Version 10
Storage: 500 MB available space

All in all this all makes for a very chill game and I highly recommend it, especially if you are into sandbox style games and it supports multiplayer if you want to bring along friends for the fun.`

Be Kind to Yourself

I do not have a lot to report for this week, lots of things going on in the job that pays the bills – bunch of projects rumbling along at the same time and it has been so freaking cold here. Even with not a lot to update, I did make a commitment to post keep on track posts. I did have an interesting happening this past week. I somehow managed to let all the little things in life get to me enough that I had something of an anxiety attack. The whole thing passed in a few minutes, but it was enough to be really uncomfortable and remind me I am not as young as I used to be.

I am kicking around some ideas for an old computer hardware reuse thing and right now I am trying to scope it into something that will have a good format with testing that is repeatable over a bunch of bits. I am going for a “is this old machine ewaste?” thing. I jumped into some posts that were in flight and posted the Stardew Valley post, it is not much but is good things. I had several more posts open to work on but they were not quite ready for this week so, more to come.

We will see what next week brings … and be kind to yourself, there is only one of you and if you are not careful it easy to get overwhelmed by stressors – and when that happens, take a step back and a deep breath and then take one thing at a time.

Happy New Year .. a little late

No it is not the first of the year .. it is more around 3 weeks into the new year. I have not been in a coma all this time, although I have been sick with some kind of crud. No, I have spent the last 2ish months trying to put good reasoning behind why I did not achieve my personal goals in 2023 and 2024, watching what I have been doing and more importantly how do I do better for 2025… Let me explain.

I have a bad habit of over analyzing everything to the point of stagnation (yep, old school analysis paralysis) but I have taken it a step further and tried to put everything into small VERY specific categories, but then I forget the categories. I also have a habit of putting things onto a VERY specific schedule – “I will only do X on Y day”, meaning I have cut out the flexibility if something interrupts that schedule usually this is work affecting personal projects. Wrap it all up with my planning has not accommodated for the above meaning I forget what I am working on because I missed the release time and then forgot what I was working on.

This year I am changing up how I approach these things – all my projects are being pulled under a new, more generic title – Fallingworks, my site has always been about things I was doing … and since the things that I do tend to be all over the place, the new title is fitting. Plus, as a side note, the name change leans into more collaboration. I spent the last 2ish months putting together a list of all the ideas that I want to work on, including things that I was already working on… Big list of everything, just pick something that piques my interest then only mark it off when it is done, whatever and whenever that is. The last things I have are to make a weekly ‘status’ post for accountability and to keep things somewhat on track.

I have a lot on the plan for 2025 both personally and professionally, it is going to be an exciting year.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

Sunk Cost Fallacy is a term I just heard recently but does it ever sound familiar, described as our tendency to follow through on an endeavor if we have already invested time, effort, or money into it, whether or not the current costs outweigh the benefits. In other words, I have already paid out all this money on this particular project and even though the project will not solve the problem I will keep on. This term embodies so many projects I have started over the years, particularly in the category of “I bought all these computer parts, I should use them to build something …” and the reason why my to do list of ideas keeps growing. Oh well, off to find another project …

Imposter Syndrome

Imposter Syndrome is a term I heard thrown around a lot in years past, but I never knew what it meant, so I looked it up. Imposter Syndrome is defined as the self-doubt of intellect, skills, of accomplishments among high-achieving individuals. In other words, you might have a ton of experience and years of experience but still end up doubting your own abilities or worse insulting those abilities. I can see how this would feel as it feels like something I have experienced in the past on any number of situations in not only projects but also my career.

Fear of Missing Out

For a while now I’ve been saying that social media is more harmful than good .. Ok more than I have been saying it as the studies in this article written by the Sloan School of Management at MIT point out. One thing that social media always brings is people posting only the best, making others fear that they are missing out.

That was a stretch for an intro but “Fear of Missing Out” or FOMO was another term that I had heard a lot and never understood what it meant. I finally looked it up and I understand how it is harmful to ones mental health. The first article that I ran across when researching came from from verywellmind.com and begins the description of FOMO by calling out scrolling on social media and feeling like something is missing in one life. The next article from NIH.gov reinforces the definition of feeling like something is missing when in a social context and adds emotional compulsion to gain some thing or do some action to achieve the result of being just like those social media posts.

My problem has always been video games – I find that I want to play games with friends because I have seen said friends with a game and I do not want to be left out. Sometimes everything works out and we have fun playing a particular game. Other times though I will break patterns, stay up too late and cut into much needed sleep or worse never play the game with anyone and waste the money.

This was another random trip off the beaten path to look at the meaning of a term that was scratching that curious part of my brain. It was not a deep dive but, in the end something that I could say is a bad habit I have from time to time that I could do something about.

Stale Chips

Like a lot of people, one of my goals for this year is to reorganize and clean up, my backlog keeps getting derailed every time I go looking for parts in my current storage… During my cleaning I stumbled across these two CHIP single board computers. They both powered up, but one never displayed anything on the screen … So, time for an update…?

I jumped on the original Kickstarter back in 2016 when these were first released for only $9 each. I do not remember where I originally heard about it, but I remember being excited to jump on such a neat concept and all the tinkering that would be had. Doing a quick search back at the news of the time, the CHIP was being really well received with a good amount of chatter around it – USA Today and NPR ran excited stories on the CHIP.

Seeing as how I can post pictures of these CHIPs I definitely received the Kickstarter reward, but in researching I see that a lot of people did not, it was disappointing to see that a lot of people did not. The reason for this lack of delivery was apparently that the company, Next Thing Co., was not entirely able to continue product and went bankrupt. With the company going bankrupt that unfortunately means support is, well almost non-existent, aside from dedicated folks keeping these little things alive and mostly supported …

Originally, the CHIP was flashed by a Chrome plugin, support for which Google has LONG since killed off in the Chrome browser so the first challenge was to get these chips back in working order. Thankfully with some quick googling I was able to put together enough steps to flash both CHIPS between the Flash-Chip Git hub and the JFPossibilites archives of CHIP materials. Even with the instructions from these sites I still ran into issues with the process, needing an older version of Linux and an even older version of software to finish the flash (this was just my experience though), but after a couple hours of tinkering …

Ta-Da! Success, a CHIP desktop! Turns out these little guys still work after all these years and being moved from place to place in storage, I am a little excited.

This image even had the original software that came on the CHIP from the factory …

Including the original 4.4.13 kernel from 2016 .. ouch (as of this writing, the current Linux kernel is 6.7.1). At this point attempting an Apt update returns a lot of 404’s and site not found since CHIP OS was based of Debian Jessie and long term support ended in 2020 and the repositories for Next Thing Co are also no longer a thing. At this point, these CHIPs are looking very stale and much like eWaste. These are a cool idea, but methods to support them make life difficult.

So, what now? Well, for the moment this is where the CHIPs get put back into storage. There are sites to work around the dead repositories and get some updates onto these mini computers (I would be lying if I said I did not try already), but to what level of update? Updating them to that degree was out of scope for this post – I was just out to write about a neat Single Board Computer – also, I do not have any good projects for them at the moment. They are capable little SBCs, so I think I will be revisiting them sometime in the future, until then, they are just a little stale.

Chromebook Linux

A while back I wrote about getting my hands on my first Chromebook, and while it was sitting around while I thinking of what to do with it, I stumbled across another one. This one was a Dell Chromebook 3189 Education, a cool convertible device that is “rugged” enough to be used with kids for school work. The machine only had one major problem – when I powered it up the Chromebook reported that the OS was no longer supported and it was time to get a new Chromebook – this is no good, just eWaste at this point.

So, is there anything that can save this machine from the trash. Maybe Linux. I have heard that Chromebooks can take Linux installs, which would work for a low spec machine like this. The next question is how to get started, and a some Google-Fu returns a how-to guide with a few ways to put Linux on these Chromebooks.

The easiest method being just to install it within ChromeOS, which only works on the Dell Chromebook I have, and failed the first 2 times I tried it. With a little persistence I was able to follow the instructions and get the Linux virtual machine loaded… Yes, a virtual machine.

Home Screen with Linux Apps icon

Linux apps?

Finally a terminal

So the first method is only a Virtual machine that requires you to launch something and then … click on something else not named terminal to get to a terminal. If I read some instructions somewhere this would have made more sense but walking into this process blind, this makes no sense. Really, I planned to wipe the ChromeOS out anyway so off I followed the steps of setting developer mode and wiping out what was on the Chromebooks and loading Ubuntu.

Ubuntu running a Dell Chromebook

Following the steps in the guide worked but there were some complications …

Have to push Ctrl+L every boot to get to the SeaBIOS and boot linux
The Asus C300 was too old for the SSL certs to download the flash script needing an extra switch added to the curl command and the script had to be modified to ignore the errors
Ubuntu on the C300 would also throw a System Program Problem detected message on ever login, Xubuntu was happy though
Grub was extreme slow to draw the boot menu on the Dell

Well the process works, mostly, kinda … If you do not enter the Ctrl+L at start up (that is the OS Verification is off screen), the system goes to the ChromeOS recovery error screen, and if you re-enable the OS Verification … the system becomes completely unusable and you would have to start over after restoring the ChromeOS. This was my experience though, your mileage may vary.