Completing a Pokedex in a Pokemon game is something I've never done.

In recent weeks I've been playing through Pokemon Ruby and I think I'm at a point now where completing the Pokedex might actually be possible.

I've been playing via by favourite emulator OpenEmu and as usual the emulation experience has been great. But OpenEmu lacks one feature that's critical for completing a Pokedex; trading.

Without trading you:

• Can't do evolution trades
• Won't be able to access Pokemon that are exclusive to one game
• Can only access 1 of the 3 starters

Luckily another emulator mGBA has a multiplayer window feature which opens up the possibility of "single player" emulator trades.

To do this I needed to:

• Download and open the mGBA app
• Have a .gba and .sav file for 2 different Pokemon games, for me it was Ruby and Sapphire
• Make sure you're at least past the first gym in both games, this opens up trading
• Open up the first .gba file in the emulator (Pokemon Ruby for me), then go File > New multiplayer window to open up a second window, in this second window open up the second .gba file (Pokemon Sapphire for me)
• You will likely need to go File > Save games > Load temporary save game and select your .sav file to actually access the save state in the multiplayer window
• In both games go to the trading location in the Pokemon Center
• Thanks to emulator magic the 2 different games are able to connect and you'll be taken into the trading room where you can trade Pokemon
• Once you're done just save to create a new .sav file

I think I've linked to Derek Sivers blog once but his posts are an absolute treasure trove. I think this particular post is taken from his book Hell Yeah Or No.

Whether you’re a student, a teacher, or a parent, I think you’ll appreciate this story of how one teacher can completely and permanently change someone’s life in only a few lessons.

Before I met Kimo, I was just a kid who wanted to be a musician, doing it casually. Ever since our five lessons, I’ve had no speed limit. I owe every great thing that’s happened in my life to Kimo’s raised expectations. A random meeting and five music lessons showed me that I can do way more than the norm.

Well, I want you to visit my website. I want you to read an article from a search result, and then discover the other things I’ve written, the other people I link to, and explore the weird themes I’ve got. I want some of you to read my article then ask me to speak at your conferences. Many folks rely on ad impressions to support the high-quality content they’re putting out for free.

I write the content on this website for people, not robots. I’m sharing my opinions and experiences so that you might identify with them and learn from them. I’m writing about things I care about because I like sharing and I like teaching. I spend hours writing these posts and AI spends seconds summarising them.

I'd much rather people read the whole thing, take it in, digest it and have opinions right back at me. I love it when people connect with what I’m writing (and sometimes they email me to tell me that, which is really delightful).

I don’t write these posts for VC-funded LLMs to come along and gobble up and produce some shitty facsimile, or summarise what I’m saying with none of the nuance or context on someone else's website.

This website is for humans, and LLMs are not welcome here.

This is a fun little blog. I've added the feed to my RSS reader.

I'll play Wind Waker as my next game. I think I'm ready for another Zelda experience. I previously played a fair way through the game but never completed it.

This year has been fucked.

It's a very blunt viewpoint but I think its the best way to describe things.

The year started rough with mum having to get her bladder removed. She's been incredible strong mentally and has recovered quickly but it was still a bad time.

Me and Emma got married in February. It was the best day of my life.

We went on our honeymoon in March to Vietnam. Apart from getting really bad food poisoning it was a wonderful experience.

In April, Emma's dad had some health complications in China which led to a brain bleed. Me and Emma took some time off work and flew to Beijing to be with him and Emma's mum Annie. It was a scary time but thanks to some high quality health care he pulled through. It was a reminder for why you need great insurance when travelling.

The happy side of this was that me and Emma had 2 nights in Hong Kong on the way home where we went to Disneyland.

May and June were generally normal. We tried to get back into routine and the normal swing of things.

On the 1st of July we received potentially the worst shock we've ever had with Boots' cancer. It was painful and mentally exhausting. It was the final straw of getting mostly bad luck this year.

And now we're in August. Boots is now in a better place where he's not in pain.

Me and Emma have to carry on with our lives.

But as they say in Dead Poets Society:

Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.

Me and Emma have been doing some crazy planning with this in mind.

We initially thought about doing a big Australian road trip. Where we landed with this was:

• Buying a van proved to be very tricky, we tried to use Facebook Marketplace but actually finding something that worked for us in a limited time frame was tough
• The whole idea was very expensive and we would have needed to borrow some money
• We'd love to do this trip one day, the best way to do it is to buy a "cheap" Toyota HiAce which is mechanically sound and then pay someone to fit it out properly, then hit the road with more confidence
• Working remotely for me would have been tricky being on the road so much, Starlink makes this easier but we would have faced some challenges

We had a reset on the crazy idea and thought about what we both wanted. Emma wanted to go somewhere warm.

I looked at Google Maps and saw that just north of Australia was Bali. It's warm, cheap and is still within the Australian timezone so I could work remotely for a short time frame. Me and Emma talked more about it and researched costs for Airbnbs. It was within our budget.

So our new plan is:

• We're going to Bali
• We leave on the 8th of September and will be back in ~3 months
• I'll work remotely, Bali is 2 hours behind AEST (3 when day light savings hits)
• Emma will take long service leave and do part time remote work in December
• We'll stay in 3 different Airbnbs across the 3 months in Canggu, Ubud and Uluwatu

So yes, this year has been fucked but it's also been a year of travel and challenge. I think this 3 months will be awesome for me and Emma.

It's a reminder of how life never really plays out as you'd expect it to. There was a comment I read this week in this Hacker News thread which is pretty applicable:

Not a trick of the programming trade, but: life will not be clean, smooth and according to plan. Learn how to deal with things getting messy and derailed, and to accept that you "lost your streak" or whatever. Tomorrow is a new day, it is always ok to start over.

Do optimize for the long term, but also realize you could be dead by next morning.