Michael Pavone

@retrodev.com

210 Followers 273 Following

Author of BlastEm, a high-performance accuracy focused emulator for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive: https://www.retrodev.com/blastem/ he/him Build more housing! Berkeley, CA

All-Transactions House Price Index for the Oakland-Berkeley-Livermore region showing a peak in 2022 followed by a dip and plateau
A metallic orange 2017 Chevy Bolt Ev with a bunch of damage to the front
Graph of payback period for infill and fringe housing development across a number of states. The average is 9 years for infill and 13 years for fringe development
A Copper Charlie induction range installed in a kitchen. It has the optional Black Walnut knobs and handle
Screenshot of current state of the CA Controller primary. Malia Cohen, the incumbent democrat has 54.8% of the vote. Herb W Morgan, a republican has 41.0% of the vote
Email screenshot, the text reads: Hello MICHAEL PAVONE, This is a message from the California Secretary of State on behalf of Alameda County Registrar of Voters. Your ballot for the June 2, 2026, Primary Election was received and will be counted. Thank you for voting!
A video showing the game Shadow Squadron for Sega 32X running in BlastEm
Star Wars Arcade for Sega 32X running in BlastEm. Apart from some garbage at the bottom of the Sega logo screen, it runs without any obvious issues.
Virtua Racing Deluxe for 32X running in BlastEm. The Sega and Sega Sports logos are missing at the start, the music slows down at some point and eventually there are some flashing red rectangles in the border area, but otherwise it looks great.
A video of Virtua Fighter for 32X running in BlastEm
A graph of median real (i.e. adjusted for inflation) weekly wages for workers 16+. There's a big spike around the pandemic, but ignoring that there's largely a consistent upward trend starting around late 2014. Q3 2025 is $374 in 1982-1984 dollars, Q3 2019 is $360 in 1982-1984 dollars. This represents a small increase in real income, in line with wages outpacing inflation
Graph showing nominal weekly earnings for full-time workers 16+ in the first income quartile (i.e. 25% lowest earning). Q3 2019 was $611, Q3 2025 was $818, a roughly 33.9% increase
Real median household income. While not monotonically increasing, the overall trend is upwards and the most recent data for which data is available is an all time high
A video showing Doom 32X being played in BlastEm
A video showing Tempo, a 32X game, running in BlastEm. The video shows the Sega logo, intro animation and the start of the first level. Part of the intro is obviously broken, but there are no other obvious problems.
A short video showing Motocross Championship running in BlastEm. The menus are all displayed correctly. There are still some obvious bugs once you get into actual gameplay, but the game is mostly playable now.
A screenshot of the new UI asking a user how they want to deal with "machine freeze" events. The top section provides a general explanation along with the text of the specific error. The middle has 3 radio buttons with the choices "This time only", "For the rest of this session" and "Always. The bottom has 3 buttons representing the possible actions: "Exit", "Enter Debugger" and "Ignore & Continue"
A short video showing Space Harrier 32X running in BlastEm. The title screen and part of the first level are shown. There are some glitches, but things are mostly working correctly
A short video of the 32X port of Yeti3D running in BlastEm. There are graphical glitches, but things mostly work as they should
Short video of a small 32X demo with a fire effect
A short video of a 32X demo with a "plasma" effect
A short video showing the Sega logo, title screen and main menu of Doom for Sega 32X running in a WIP version of BlastEm
Screenshot from the clipper card website that reads: Set Up Auto-reload There was an issue processing your request! Please verify your information below or go back and select a different primary payment method.
Screenshot from SFMTA Bus Fleet Plan, it reads: 3.5.1 Mean Distance Between Failures SFMTA defines mean distance between failures per sub-fleet per the FTA guidelines as an in service mechanical failure that cannot be fixed in the field divided into the total service miles per sub-fleet. SFMTA’s MDBF is continuously working to improve MDBF and enhance the maintenance program. In addition to lowering the average age of the fleet substantially over the past 5 years, SFMTA has also made numerous improvements to the maintenance program include: • Implementing a road call truck deployment program • Introducing the use of on-board diagnostics • Adhering to an on-time PM program that meets or exceeds the OEM • Adding a significant increase in mechanic training hours
An orange tabby and a black and white medium hair cat snuggled together on a bed
Ridership recovery by route comparing January 2019 vs January 2026. Oakland & Alameda + Alameda Seaplane is slightly ahead of the old Oakland & Alameda route, Richmond is doing much better than 2019 (though it started not long before the pandemic), Vallejo, Harbor Bay and South San Francisco are all doing worse than 2019
Screenshot of a graph from a recent Lazard LCOE+ report. Utility Solar+Storage has a range of $50-$131/MWh and Onshore Wind+Storage has a range of $44-$123/MWh. The average for fully depreciated US Nuclear like Diablo Canyon is $34/MWh
Screenshot from my custom solar dashboard showing a graph of solar production (blue line), battery charge/discharge (orange line), grid import/export (yellow line), total consumption (red line), estimated consumption from EV charging (green line) and battery state of charge (purple line). Solar production topped out at around 3350 watts around noon. Minimum state of charge reached overnight was 24.5%. Peaks in consumption (red line) correspond to the heat pump cycling on, microwave use (short spikes a bit after noon) and the dishwasher turning on its heating element (afternoon spikes).
an officer in tactical gear pointing what looks like an MP5 at a man holding a young Elian Gonzalez
An orange tabby and black and white medium hair car snuggled up together in a small cat bed
Video of Radica's Sega Genesis Arcade Legends Volume 2 running in BlastEm. A splash screen is shown following by a menu with a list of games. "The Ooze" is chosen from the menu and that games intro sequence plays. The system is then reset and the menu is shown again. This time "Gain Ground" is selected
Screenshot of Alien Logic: A SkyRealms of Jorune Adventure. I remember being somewhat fascinated by this game, but never got very far because it's fairly complicated. Still have the CD-ROM. I should give it another go as an adult sometime
Map of Craigslist search results for apartments/houses for rent with at least 1000 square feet and max price of $4999 per month
Graph comparing life expectancy and per-capita health expenditures. Switzerland is second on life expectancy to Japan, but also has the second highest per-capita expenditure in Europe (only Norway is higher). France has slightly lower expectancy, but also lower expenditures. The USA is an extreme outlier with mediocre life expectancy and extremely high expenditures.
Album cover for The Ladder by Yes
An orange and white cat sitting on top of a parked silver Mercedes in Thessaloniki
(e) “High-frequency commuter rail” means a commuter rail service operating a total of at least 48 trains per day across both directions, not including temporary service changes of less than one month or unplanned disruptions, and not meeting the standard for very high frequency commuter rail, at any point in the past three years.
A brick wall with large graffiti that says ESL. In the lower right are a number of improvised, insulated cat boxes. Some of these appear to be made from coolers and others from upside down covered litter boxes. It's not very visible, but the one second from the right is occupied
A cat sitting outside a glass automatic door in front of a supermarket in Thessaloniki, Greece
Kristi Noem on an outdoor display in City 17 with Citadel 17 in the background
Graph showing solar production in watts in blue and the most recent forecast for a given hour in purple. Production starts off strong, but gets very variable around 10:20 due to intermittent cloud cover. A bit before noon it dropped down to around 1000 watts due to overcast conditions before recovering somewhat around 2 PM.
Screenshot of a home automation dashboard showing solar production, electric consumption and battery information next to a graph of production, consumption, battery and grid power over the course of part of the day.
Quote post by Jay (CEO of Bluesky): Too real. We're going to try to fix this. Social media doesn't have to be this way. Quoted post by Jerry Chen: (bluesky user bursts into Waffle House) OH SO YOU HATE PANCAKES? Reply post: have y'all banned Jesse Singal yet or Jay's reply: WAFFLES
A map showing the locations of data centers in California. The largest circle is in San Jose with 75 data centers. The second largest is around Long Beach and has 71 data centers. The third largest is in Sacramento with 22.
Screenshot of a helicopter's path from FlightRadar24showing a number of circles around an area near College Ave and Asbhy Ave in Berkeley
A very young Pedro Pascal playing Edward in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Episode "The Freshman"
Screenshot of the Enphase Enlighten app showing 3.8 kw of solar production, 3.2 kw of consumption and 0.6 kw of charging of the storage battery
Image showing the first 6 games I acquired on Steam, of which 5 were purchases. Text is as follows: Oct 9, 2007: The Orange Box Nov 13, 2006: RoboBlitz Jul 8, 2006: Half-Life 2: Episode One Feb 7, 2006: Darwinia Oct 19, 2004: Half-Life 2 Silver Nov 8, 2003: Half-Life Platinum Pack
Screenshot from the GPT3 paper showing sources of training data, their token quantity and training weights. Common Crawl (filtered) contains 410 billion tokens and had a weight of 60%, WebText2 contains 19 billion tokens and had a weight of 22%, Books1 contains 12 billion tokens with a weight of 8%, Books2 contains 55 billion tokens with a weight of 8% and Wikipedia contains 3 billion tokens with a weight of 3%
An orange tabby and black and white medium hair cat sitting in front of a window and looking at the camera. A Sega Genesis with attached Sega CD is between them
A photo of a black and white medium hair cat curled up on a fluffy chair next to an open window
A screenshot showing BlastEm's emulation of the LaserActive main unit. Test mode has been entered causing a decent amount of text to be displayed via the character generator overlay and all front-panel LEDs have been turned on.
Screenshot of BlastEm showing emulated LaserActive front panel LEDs and the on-screen display showing the text "OPEN"
A graph of the Federal Funds Effective Rate From 2009-2025 showing a dramatic increase staring in February 2022
Photo of an orange tabby and a black and white medium-hair cat on a cat tree. The orange cat is sitting and looking up. The black and white cat is laying next to him
Cutaway view of a Toyota Mirai showing the underseat fuel cell stack and hydrogen tank. Behind the rear seat is a small battery
Photo of a Sega Teradrive Model 3 with SEGA sticker on the front face plate