Prometheus
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2008
- Messages
- 9,472
So, I took my Pandora on its first ever vacation last week (I went to Edinburgh, so my Pandora came along, too), and whilst I expected it to fill a few quiet moments, there were some unexpected points where it really came into its own. I took some snapshots along the way, so I figured I'd bore you all with them share them with you all. 
Of course, I did more on my vacation than just use my Pandora, but this post is about my Pandora's adventures.
Day One: The journey to our destination was split across two days, so that we could stop at some places along the way. It rained all day on the first day of the journey, causing heavy traffic, which resulted in being stuck on the motorways for many, many hours. My Pandora acted as an MP3-player at this point. I used Deadbeef for this, as I find it to be flawlessly stable, and, as usual, it didn't disappoint me. (It is worth noting, however, that there is a problem if you use it alongside Pidgin - if you do this, Pidgin will randomly and *very* suddenly crash many, many times. I don't believe this is a problem with Deadbeef, though, as I have also observed this issue with Pidgin and other audio players on my main computer.)
This was taken in the hotel that I stayed in on the first night. They charged a princely sum for internet access here, which I didn't bother with, so I simply set up my USB keyboard and mouse (via a Griffin SmartShare USB hub) in order to get some writing done. However, I soon found that the Pandora applied its own keymapping to the external keyboard, but seemingly missed out the "Fn" key, meaning that I couldn't type a number of punctuation marks. I ended up unplugging them and using the Pandora's own keyboard instead - I'm getting a *lot* quicker at thumb-typing, now (I'm writing this on my Pandora, too). The Shrek the Third Puss in Boots plush who's sitting next to my Pandora was won when I took a chance on a crane machine* in a restaurant that afternoon. I also made a start on playing through Bucky O'Hare for the NES (via GPFCE, which I ran through GINGE).
*(I must say, I rather miss the older Comptons crane models that you used to be able to find dotted throughout British arcades. Whilst on holiday one time when I was younger, I scientifically observed the then-common model that many arcades had, and figured out its payout routine - it paid out twice a day (once before noon, and once afterwards) at a specific number of minutes and seconds past the half-hour. The result was winning one plush Pikachu, along with a £5 note twice a day, every day, for that entire week. )
Day Two: Disaster!! Shortly after setting out for day two's travelling, part of our car's engine failed! We managed to pull over and park somewhere safe, and the AA were with us in no time. It couldn't be fixed at the roadside, but miraculously we were mere minutes away from the nearest motorway service station, which they towed us to, before making arrangements to take the car elsewhere to be repaired, and to provide a near-equivalent courtesy car. The AA guy went way above and beyond the call of duty, and he saved the whole holiday - if not for his assistance with every aspect of the recovery, we would have had to have gone home. I cannot speak highly enough of the service we received. Anyway, it was on this day that my Pandora really came into its own.
I took this once we were safely inside the service station, which, it turned out, we were ultimately stuck at for three hours. It was a Roadchef (as you can see from the card in the picture), a chain which happens to provide very speedy wireless internet access, free-of-charge. I got my Pandora online within moments, and all went well - it was very quick indeed, and the connection never dropped at any point. When I ran out of things to do online, I logged off and played some games for a while instead - specifically, Rockman: The Power Battle (CPS1) via MAME4All, and Mega Man 3 (NES) via GPFCE (which, once again, I ran through GINGE).
Day Three: My Pandora had seen me through the previous two days on a single charge, so it got to take a break for most of day three in order to charge back up again. That evening, I played through three thoroughly epic levels of Bucky O'Hare for the NES. It really is a fantastic game.
Day Four: One day in the year 20XX, Prometheus teamed up with Mega Man in order to thwart Dr. Wily's scheme to invade Scotland with sixteen themed robots. Their battle was a success. Fight! For everlasting peace!!
Day Four, Translated: I played through Mega Man 3 (NES) whilst waiting for the return of our now-repaired car on the morning of day four. I completed the game that evening, after having had a great day out.
I was also able to find a branch of Maplin, which had just the right screwdriver set for an issue I had encountered (my casing has the hairline crack from the overtightened screw - it has now been loosened). Dinner was fantastic, too - if you ever get the chance to try chicken-and-hoi-sin-sauce pizza, do so. It is wonderful.
Day Five: I went out in search of a mobile internet solution on this day, and ended up learning just how the Carphone Warehouse earned the very unflattering nickname that I have heard some of its disgruntled patrons give to it. I was kept waiting for almost an hour, and the staff were exceptionally rude, with the lone exception of one woman who eventually came along to help out, who was the only polite employee in the branch that I went to. Ultimately they had no idea about the products they were offering, and frankly they couldn't have made it more obvious that they didn't want my business unless they had walked right up to me and said "We don't want your business.".
We went to Mary King's Close on this day, which is a place where some buildings and vaults were built atop older houses, leaving them more-or-less underground. It's purported to be haunted. Unfortunately, photographs were not allowed on the tour, but there was a backdrop next to the coffee shop on the way out where photography was allowed, so I snapped a photograph of my Pandora there, running, appropriately, Ghouls 'n' Ghosts (CPS1), via MAME4All.
That evening, I tried to find a copy of Retro Gamer in WH Smith. I find it somewhat hard to believe that there is more call for The Surfer's Pal, and Carpworld (Incorporating The International Carper), in the middle of a city, than there is for Retro Gamer. I ended up finding one lone copy in Asda, of all places. Then I played Pulseman (MD) via PicoDrive a bit later on.
Day Six: As of day six, I was the proud owner of a MiFi package from Three. They were faultlessly polite and helpful, a massive difference from the Carphone Warehouse. Ironically, this setup worked great everywhere but the place I was staying at.
Unrelated to the Pandora, I got a great photograph of a one-eyed tiger at Edinburgh Zoo. The surrounding crowd were all coming up with wild tales of how he could have lost his eye, which all came to nothing when his keeper walked by and told us that he was simply a klutz who had walked into a tree branch. Twice.
Day Seven: It was cold outside all day on day seven, and for some reason someone upped the heat in the place we were staying at, even though it was perfectly warm inside. I ended up playing Frostbite (Atari 2600), in an effort to cool down! I also did a one-credit-clear of Rockman: The Power Battle (CPS1), on the Mega Man 7 course. I got a high score of 378900 (to my knowledge, my best ever score), and a clear time of 4'55"02, which is my best ever time for a run-through of this game. This put me at the top of the best time table, as well as the high score table. MAME4All's high score saving function makes this all the better, as I can now attempt to beat this in the future.
Day Eight: When we got to the hotel we had stayed at on day one, we found that our rooms, which we had booked back in March, had been given to someone else! This happened on day one, too - it was resolved that time, but not this one. We were then sent on to two further branches of this hotel chain on a wild goose chase, and neither of them had suitable rooms. We finally got hold of a helpful manager at one of them, who was appalled, and who paid for our meal at the adjoining restaurant, before we started on the journey home. My Pandora once again acted as an MP3 player for this, playing through a 2010-tracks-long playlist via Deadbeef, without any trouble.
Conclusion: Though it was at times eventful, the week would have been a lot more dull without my Pandora around. It proved itself to be indispensable on more than one occasion, especially when things could easily have gotten kind of stressful, and I'm sure that this will continue to be the case in the future. My write-ups about each day of my vacation, except for day eight, were written on it, using the built-in keyboard, and it proved to be *VERY* good for writing on.
If anyone is curious, below is a full list of the games I played during the trip;
Bucky O'Hare (NES)
The Adventures of Bass II (Mega Man 2 Hack) (NES)
Mega Man 3 (NES)
Rockman World 5 (GB) (I had to abandon this one because, unfortunately, I found GNUBoy's controls to be too painful for me to use, and I couldn't find how to remap them.)
Rockman: The Power Battle (Arcade)
Pickaxe Pete (Philips Videopac)
Mappy (Arcade)
Ms. Pac-Man (Arcade)
Nebulus (C64)
The NewZealand Story (Arcade)
Root Beer Tapper (Arcade)
Lode Runner (Atari 800)
Pirate Ship Higemaru (Arcade)
Pooyan (Arcade)
Swimmer (Arcade)
Ghouls 'n' Ghosts (Arcade)
Pulseman (MD)
Frostbite (Atari 2600)
And here are the applications that I used, too, complete with links to all of them;
Deadbeef
Firefox
Mousepad (Built-in)
GINGE, in order to use the GP2X version of GPFCE
GNUBoy
MAME4All
O2EM
C64 VICE
Pandora-Atari
PicoDrive
Pandora-2600
Of course, I did more on my vacation than just use my Pandora, but this post is about my Pandora's adventures.
Day One: The journey to our destination was split across two days, so that we could stop at some places along the way. It rained all day on the first day of the journey, causing heavy traffic, which resulted in being stuck on the motorways for many, many hours. My Pandora acted as an MP3-player at this point. I used Deadbeef for this, as I find it to be flawlessly stable, and, as usual, it didn't disappoint me. (It is worth noting, however, that there is a problem if you use it alongside Pidgin - if you do this, Pidgin will randomly and *very* suddenly crash many, many times. I don't believe this is a problem with Deadbeef, though, as I have also observed this issue with Pidgin and other audio players on my main computer.)
This was taken in the hotel that I stayed in on the first night. They charged a princely sum for internet access here, which I didn't bother with, so I simply set up my USB keyboard and mouse (via a Griffin SmartShare USB hub) in order to get some writing done. However, I soon found that the Pandora applied its own keymapping to the external keyboard, but seemingly missed out the "Fn" key, meaning that I couldn't type a number of punctuation marks. I ended up unplugging them and using the Pandora's own keyboard instead - I'm getting a *lot* quicker at thumb-typing, now (I'm writing this on my Pandora, too). The Shrek the Third Puss in Boots plush who's sitting next to my Pandora was won when I took a chance on a crane machine* in a restaurant that afternoon. I also made a start on playing through Bucky O'Hare for the NES (via GPFCE, which I ran through GINGE).
*(I must say, I rather miss the older Comptons crane models that you used to be able to find dotted throughout British arcades. Whilst on holiday one time when I was younger, I scientifically observed the then-common model that many arcades had, and figured out its payout routine - it paid out twice a day (once before noon, and once afterwards) at a specific number of minutes and seconds past the half-hour. The result was winning one plush Pikachu, along with a £5 note twice a day, every day, for that entire week.
)Day Two: Disaster!! Shortly after setting out for day two's travelling, part of our car's engine failed! We managed to pull over and park somewhere safe, and the AA were with us in no time. It couldn't be fixed at the roadside, but miraculously we were mere minutes away from the nearest motorway service station, which they towed us to, before making arrangements to take the car elsewhere to be repaired, and to provide a near-equivalent courtesy car. The AA guy went way above and beyond the call of duty, and he saved the whole holiday - if not for his assistance with every aspect of the recovery, we would have had to have gone home. I cannot speak highly enough of the service we received. Anyway, it was on this day that my Pandora really came into its own.
I took this once we were safely inside the service station, which, it turned out, we were ultimately stuck at for three hours. It was a Roadchef (as you can see from the card in the picture), a chain which happens to provide very speedy wireless internet access, free-of-charge. I got my Pandora online within moments, and all went well - it was very quick indeed, and the connection never dropped at any point. When I ran out of things to do online, I logged off and played some games for a while instead - specifically, Rockman: The Power Battle (CPS1) via MAME4All, and Mega Man 3 (NES) via GPFCE (which, once again, I ran through GINGE).
Day Three: My Pandora had seen me through the previous two days on a single charge, so it got to take a break for most of day three in order to charge back up again. That evening, I played through three thoroughly epic levels of Bucky O'Hare for the NES. It really is a fantastic game.
Day Four: One day in the year 20XX, Prometheus teamed up with Mega Man in order to thwart Dr. Wily's scheme to invade Scotland with sixteen themed robots. Their battle was a success. Fight! For everlasting peace!!
Day Four, Translated: I played through Mega Man 3 (NES) whilst waiting for the return of our now-repaired car on the morning of day four. I completed the game that evening, after having had a great day out.
I was also able to find a branch of Maplin, which had just the right screwdriver set for an issue I had encountered (my casing has the hairline crack from the overtightened screw - it has now been loosened). Dinner was fantastic, too - if you ever get the chance to try chicken-and-hoi-sin-sauce pizza, do so. It is wonderful.
Day Five: I went out in search of a mobile internet solution on this day, and ended up learning just how the Carphone Warehouse earned the very unflattering nickname that I have heard some of its disgruntled patrons give to it. I was kept waiting for almost an hour, and the staff were exceptionally rude, with the lone exception of one woman who eventually came along to help out, who was the only polite employee in the branch that I went to. Ultimately they had no idea about the products they were offering, and frankly they couldn't have made it more obvious that they didn't want my business unless they had walked right up to me and said "We don't want your business.".
We went to Mary King's Close on this day, which is a place where some buildings and vaults were built atop older houses, leaving them more-or-less underground. It's purported to be haunted. Unfortunately, photographs were not allowed on the tour, but there was a backdrop next to the coffee shop on the way out where photography was allowed, so I snapped a photograph of my Pandora there, running, appropriately, Ghouls 'n' Ghosts (CPS1), via MAME4All.
That evening, I tried to find a copy of Retro Gamer in WH Smith. I find it somewhat hard to believe that there is more call for The Surfer's Pal, and Carpworld (Incorporating The International Carper), in the middle of a city, than there is for Retro Gamer. I ended up finding one lone copy in Asda, of all places. Then I played Pulseman (MD) via PicoDrive a bit later on.
Day Six: As of day six, I was the proud owner of a MiFi package from Three. They were faultlessly polite and helpful, a massive difference from the Carphone Warehouse. Ironically, this setup worked great everywhere but the place I was staying at.
Unrelated to the Pandora, I got a great photograph of a one-eyed tiger at Edinburgh Zoo. The surrounding crowd were all coming up with wild tales of how he could have lost his eye, which all came to nothing when his keeper walked by and told us that he was simply a klutz who had walked into a tree branch. Twice.
Day Seven: It was cold outside all day on day seven, and for some reason someone upped the heat in the place we were staying at, even though it was perfectly warm inside. I ended up playing Frostbite (Atari 2600), in an effort to cool down! I also did a one-credit-clear of Rockman: The Power Battle (CPS1), on the Mega Man 7 course. I got a high score of 378900 (to my knowledge, my best ever score), and a clear time of 4'55"02, which is my best ever time for a run-through of this game. This put me at the top of the best time table, as well as the high score table. MAME4All's high score saving function makes this all the better, as I can now attempt to beat this in the future.
Day Eight: When we got to the hotel we had stayed at on day one, we found that our rooms, which we had booked back in March, had been given to someone else! This happened on day one, too - it was resolved that time, but not this one. We were then sent on to two further branches of this hotel chain on a wild goose chase, and neither of them had suitable rooms. We finally got hold of a helpful manager at one of them, who was appalled, and who paid for our meal at the adjoining restaurant, before we started on the journey home. My Pandora once again acted as an MP3 player for this, playing through a 2010-tracks-long playlist via Deadbeef, without any trouble.
Conclusion: Though it was at times eventful, the week would have been a lot more dull without my Pandora around.
It proved itself to be indispensable on more than one occasion, especially when things could easily have gotten kind of stressful, and I'm sure that this will continue to be the case in the future. My write-ups about each day of my vacation, except for day eight, were written on it, using the built-in keyboard, and it proved to be *VERY* good for writing on.If anyone is curious, below is a full list of the games I played during the trip;
Bucky O'Hare (NES)
The Adventures of Bass II (Mega Man 2 Hack) (NES)
Mega Man 3 (NES)
Rockman World 5 (GB) (I had to abandon this one because, unfortunately, I found GNUBoy's controls to be too painful for me to use, and I couldn't find how to remap them.)
Rockman: The Power Battle (Arcade)
Pickaxe Pete (Philips Videopac)
Mappy (Arcade)
Ms. Pac-Man (Arcade)
Nebulus (C64)
The NewZealand Story (Arcade)
Root Beer Tapper (Arcade)
Lode Runner (Atari 800)
Pirate Ship Higemaru (Arcade)
Pooyan (Arcade)
Swimmer (Arcade)
Ghouls 'n' Ghosts (Arcade)
Pulseman (MD)
Frostbite (Atari 2600)
And here are the applications that I used, too, complete with links to all of them;
Deadbeef
Firefox
Mousepad (Built-in)
GINGE, in order to use the GP2X version of GPFCE
GNUBoy
MAME4All
O2EM
C64 VICE
Pandora-Atari
PicoDrive
Pandora-2600
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