May 12th, 2019:

	I finished building Amandine, my 70s-era Peugeot NS 550 folding 
bike, yesterday.  I had a bit of time to kill while Mrs. IPX and our 
5-year old daughter did their exercise program, so I dragged Amandine from 
the bike shed and got to work.

After tightening and adjusting a few things, I set about installing the 
chainguard, fenders, and rear pannier rack.  I decided against using the 
dynamo-powered lights, so while I had the bike apart, I removed the dynamo 
and yanked all the wiring.  Rather than try to rewire and maintain the 
dynamo, I decided to switch to battery- or USB-powered lights instead.  
Less maintenance, less hassle, and replacements are readily available.

Installing the chainguard was a pain, I really should have removed the 
rear wheel first, but I got lazy.  The fenders were a learning experience, 
as I've never installed fenders from scratch before, and it took me a 
while to figure out how the Daruma/Eyelet bolts worked to hold the fender 
stays... but eventually I got it figured out.  One of the Daruma/Eyelet 
bolts for the front fender was missing, so the fender stay is unsupported 
on one side.  It doesn't affect the fender in any way, but it makes for a 
noisy ride with the loose part banging against the frame!  Not a big deal, 
a replacement bolt is on the way from overseas.

Once I had Amandine together, I pumped her tires and took her for a test 
ride.  A block away, while starting from a dead stop, the chain started to 
slip under load and needed to be tensioned.  No biggie, I turned around 
and headed home.  The rear wheel seemed to have locked, making pedalling 
an unnecessary chore, so I got off and walked the remaining block home.  
Turns out the rear brake pad was rubbing against the rim.

Tomorrow's task will be to replace the Peugeot's original (worn) tires 
with the new set I bought last summer, adjust the brakes, and retension 
the chain.  After that, I'll look into a set of lights and reflectors, 
then my project will be complete.

Monday's weather is supposed to be nice, so I may embark on my first bike 
commute of the season!

In computer news, I've been playing with my MSX2 a lot lately.  While I've 
mostly been playing games (Fire Hawk: Thexder 2 mostly), I've also been 
exploring MSX-DOS2 and learning how to do things.  It's pretty much the 
same as MS-DOS (hell, they're both from Microsoft), so the learning curve 
isn't steep.  I've been playing around with the Sunrise CF-IDE clone I 
bought back in January, and am trying to figure out how to load game ROMs 
and copy floppy games to hard drive (if indeed it can be done).  Haven't 
gotten too in-depth yet, will work on it when I have a bit more time.  I 
found an enhancement patch for Fire Hawk that will let me install the game 
to hard drive, and will also allow me to save my game to the hard drive as 
well.  Which is cool, since the battery in my PAC save cart is dead.

Speaking of PAC save carts, I bought an FM-PAC for the MSX on eBay a 
couple of weeks ago.  This adds FM sound capabilities to my MSX and also 
has the PAC save cart built-in as well.  Looking forward to improved music 
in the games that support the cart!

There's not much else happening, computer-wise, around here.  I've been on 
a RPG kick lately and am planning to revisit some of the classic RPG 
series on rainy days.  I'm not sure which series I'm going to tackle and 
on which platforms, but here's what I'm considering:

1.  The Xak series:  Xak 1, 2, Fray, and Gazzel on MSX2

2.  The Xak series:  Xak 1&2, Fray, and 3 on PC Engine Duo

3.  The Ys Series:  Ys 1+2, 3, 4 on PC Engine Duo, and 4 and 5 Expert on 
Super Famicom

4.  The Hydlide Series:  Hydlide 1, 2, and 3 on MSX2, Virtual Hydlide on 
Sega Saturn

It's a tough decision, as I'm emotionally invested in all three series.  
I've gotten pretty far in Hydlide 3, Ys Book 1+2, and Xak III in the past 
and would love to continue on each.  Sure, I'm going to play through them 
all, but I'm not sure where I'm going to start.

So far, Ys is the frontrunner...