Getting Rockbox on a 6th Gen iPod

I should note that this was both a nightmare, and also one of the easiest things I've done in all my life. Let me explain:

I followed the instructions on the site for my specific device. After around 5 hours of dicking around with it, it looked like I bricked it, something which you supposedly aren't supposed to be able to do. I should note that because I'm on Linux, I had to do a manual re-partitioning + re-installation of the iPod firmware. THIS is what made it look like it wasn't working, however, the problem with Rockbox had nothing to do with this specifically, it would have run just fine as I had it.

I tell my husband "I had this thing for five hours and I bricked it!" and he went "ok, calm down, why don't you sleep on it," and then the next morning, he took it, placed it down on the table, did the exact thing I had been doing to get it to turn on, and it... just kind of worked for him.

Anyways, after that, I spent several days doing both automatic and manual firmware installs, looking shit up online trying to figure out what I did wrong, why it wasn't working. For context, it had some... very specific issue that tons of people were posting about on Reddit, where it... boots up Rockbox, then says it can't find the partition, and in common Redditor fashion, people were like "well, then make a partition!" and I'm not quite sure how to explain this, but it was there, it's just that the second Rockbox actually starts up, it disappears.

Finally, after spending nearly a week pulling my hair out, I go in the forums. I read EVERYTHING posted within the past month. I can't for the life of me find it now, but someone was saying that Apple did some unbelievably funny things with partitions (namely, the disappearing partition thing), likely in order to prevent people from doing exactly what I was doing. In Rockbox 3.15, there was some kind of workaround for this, but it got changed in 4.0 to something that unfortunately doesn't actually work.

I thought, as a joke, I would just take 3.15 pre-built and drop it into the filesystem. Just for funsies. This was, incidentally, how I ended up getting it to work. Quite literally I did something I thought sounded a bit too stupid and immediately got it running after nearly a week of no progress.

Digging Through Sketchbooks and Old Code

I was looking for a very specific piece of art I did for reference, and I ended up finding a few specific sets of drawings that showed, like, quite an interesting progression in the design of one of my characters? I won't post it now, I don't really have the time to compile it all right now, but maybe in my next art dump post.

The really interesting thing that happened is that simultaneously, I found myself needing to find some old code for a few different projects I've gotten started working on in the same style that I did that got me writing my own audio library. It was also really interesting seeing how I used to solve some problems. I didn't find what I was looking for, but I had the need for some basic scene management stuff, and I had some incredibly fun solutions for that. I had some interesting-looking menu-building stuff as well. It's just nice to look back on your old work and see it still holds up well.

My Car Died (Again)

This is the third one, for the third year. Don't want to talk about it. Getting kind of tired of owning a car. I am over it by now at least.

Anyways, have a lovely evening :)