Computer on Blogarious

Laptop gaming with cooler

Sun, 12 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I played game with my laptop, and I prefer performance rather than graphic quality. Hence, I use MangoHud (previously I used libstrangle), by changing the FPS to 24 or 25, the gameplay is still good, and there is no heating issue on GPU (or CPU). But some of the action games like “Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon” and “Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth” will require higher FPS, else the action is not smooth.

Bluetooth devices

Sun, 31 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Due to previously reviving old Samsung Galaxy Tab, I bought a bluetooth gamepad/joystick (MOCUTE 053 Gamepad). Then I found that bluetooth technology is so wonderful, as I am not bound by wires.

Configurations

In Linux, to make Bluetooth to start on boot, need to edit /etc/bluetooth/main.conf and set AutoEnable to true. Furthermore, I have issue on the paired device. I also set AlwaysPairable to true.

Another issue I faced was the devices are not able to auto reconnect after resume from sleep. As a result, I created a custom “systemd unit file”,

Not able to boot

Sun, 03 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, I failed to boot into my laptop. I was shocked.

home contains a file system with errors, check forced.
home: Inode 12976129 seems to contain garbage.
home: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.
        (i.e., without -a or -p options)
fsck failed with exit status 4.

Then not able to mount the home partition, I was prompted to login as root. However, I was too nervous, I forgot what is my root password.

Dell Vostro 5459 revive

Sat, 18 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I was using Dell Vostro 5459 previously. However, it has some hardware deficiencies. The battery capacity keeps dropping drastically within a year. That’s a very bad experience. Now, the fully charged battery is only 1% of the designed capacity. Then I purchased an external power bank from Dell. But that’s not an ideal design for a laptop that you need to bring extra gadget to everywhere, and charging external battery is too troublesome.

Reviving Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (GT-P7500)

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 many many years ago. But recently, I am trying to revive it so that, it will be a possible solution to allow my son to watch cartoon on an old tablet, in future.

Reviving this Galaxy Tab (P7500) takes me so much time to try out those custom ROMs and the apps. But it is an interesting experience.

I tried several ROMs, flashed with TWRP.

Brave browser

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote a post about Brave recently, and found that Brave browser is interesting. So, I am switching to Brave from Chromium for a trial.

A brief introduction about Brave: Brave is developed by Brave Software, which is founded by Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and former CEO of Mozilla Corporation. Firefox is the product of Mozilla Corporation. However, Brave is built on Chromium, the open source project for Google Chrome. So, I personally perceive Brave as the Chromium with the soul of Firefox. That is why, it makes Brave different from Chromium and Firefox.

Lenovo Legion Y7000 (2019)

Mon, 27 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In my previous blog, I mentioned I changed a new laptop. My older faulty laptop is Dell Vostro 5459, which was four years old. My current laptop is Lenovo Legion Y7000 2019 PG0 model 81T0, which as higher spec than the old one. Besides that, I added another 1T HDD, just in case I may doing machine learning study, or my work requires large disk space.

Note: All the instructions should follow official Arch Linux Wiki. The followings are only based on my experience of this installation.

Chinese New Year and new laptop

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This was a disastrous week. Firstly, internet network cable broken. Secondly, my laptop went wild. Internet network cable broken, I still can online through mobile hotspot. But my laptop, it was catastrophic problem. Because I have a lot of valuable data, and I have to work.

Chinese proverb, 旧的不去，新的不来, but it was damn pressure. Because the old laptop had unpredictable behaviour. The problem was that, the keyboard will trigger some keys unintentionally, especially Alt key. I thought it was software problem, but until I reboot, and saw the GRUB menu cursor moving by itself. Damn! This means, (i) I am not able to work, (ii) I have to spend money to buy new laptop, and (iii) I need to get my data out.

MacBook Air 11-inch (Late 2010) revive

Sat, 08 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, I revived my old laptop HP Pavilion dv3, due to the need of second computer to do my research study.

Since it is revived, and works smoothly, I then revived a tablet which was not used, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (P7500). I flashed the AOSP 7.1.2 Nougat. And it is revived also. However, the hardware specification is too antique, it can neither install Google Chrome nor Firefox. Most of the apps failed to run. 😩

AAC audio file and ID3 tag

Mon, 27 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I just found that, if I have an AAC audio file (technically M4A), and if I added the ID3 tag 2 (aka ID3v2), then the audio file will failed to be converted by ffmpeg.

It can be either converted to mp3

using DeadBeef audio player, or
remove the ID3v2 tag then convert

So, how to add the metadata like ID3 tag? Use the Kid3 and add the Tag 3 (aka APE tag). This will not affect how ffmpeg to read the file.

Openbox + tint2

Thu, 18 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Previously I was using Xfce4. Then, because of the heavy working environment, I tried the lighter desktop environment, LXDE. But still, it has some limitations that made me choose to use Openbox window manager only.

Pros and cons of Xfce4

Xfce4 is lightweight comparing to GNOME or KDE. I like it, because of the conventional design like the task manager. Furthermore another thing I like is the “aerosnap” feature like Windows, which I can view the two windows side by side. However, when running Windows in VirtualBox and other applications, I can feel the obvious slowness in the computer. It is really reducing my working performance. That is why I decided to change to LXDE.

Cloud9

Thu, 21 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Cloud9 is a web-based IDE good for collaboration and online development. You can store your large project on the remote server, and use any computer including netbook with a web browser to develop your system.

Now, the problem I faced when using C9 on my Chromium. Firstly, the address bar, tabs, and bookmarks occupy some space in the window. This results a non-editor look and feel. This makes me feel lacking of something. Secondly, the worst part is the shortcut key like Ctrl+W. By pressing this shortcut key, it will invoke the web browser closing window instead of the C9 shortcut key. Meaning, the shortcut key of the web browser has higher precedence than C9 itself.

External HDD struggling

Fri, 10 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I have an HP 1T external HDD. It is dying. Sh*t!

So, I made my final struggling onto it. Though it is not 100% work as planned, I still have around 320G usable space.

Symptoms

Firstly, I found that some files cannot be deleted, I had no choice but plug out the USB cable manually. Try to chkdsk with Windows since it is NTFS partition, but the chkdsk stopped and no response during the progress. Then I know, these were the bad signs. So, have to avoid using it and get a new HDD, and move whatever files able to be moved.

Search song that plays on your computer (Linux)

Tue, 31 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Since I am working as freelance developer, I spent most of my “otaku” time with Animenfo Radio. Now, when listening with some nice songs you like, and you would like to know what the song is, then you can use Shazam to detect it. But using Shazam requires you to turn on your volume and use your mobile phone to detect it.

What if, you are listening the songs with your ear-phone?

Technology that you must know

Sat, 16 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Linux, git, ssh, and Docker.

Linux is the most flexible OS kernel in the world right now. It is used in supercomputer, personal computer, server, embedded system like smart vacuum cleaner, mobile phone, smart TV, etc. Firstly because it is open source, everyone can study it, modify it, and redistribute it. Secondly, thanks to GPL (license). Because of GPL, anyone who use Linux need to open source their code. Those bossy people who knows Windows only and like to earn money without paying any efforts, and never understood programming and programmers, they will never understand the power of Linux and GPL.

Dell Vostro 5459 review and setup

Mon, 15 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Due to the changes of the career, I invested on Dell Vostro 5459, after a long survey. I chose it because it is compatible to Linux. The compatibility to Linux meaning that, all the hardware devices are accessible by Linux. Besides that, it has the NVIDIA graphic card, which allows me to use GPGPU to do my research and study. Moreover, I can play high quality 3D graphics games.

Ubuntu

So, the laptop I bought was pre-installed with Ubuntu. And, I was impressed by the Ubuntu first boot video, which can be found here.

Best ever programmer text editor: Emacs

Sun, 24 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I was using jEdit. And once willing to change to, so called modern text editor, Atom Text Editor. Then I did some comparisons among the text editors. At the end, now my primary text editor for coding is Emacs.

Emacs requires some time to learn and practise. But at the end, I love it too much. It is so powerful, no other text editor to compare with it. But the primary usage is for coding.

Ubuntu with BCM43228

Fri, 20 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

My campus lab has the Dell desktops. I am not sure the model, but the network devices are Broadcom BCM43228. As a result, after installation of the Ubuntu (they were not installed by me), Ubuntu cannot get WiFi connection to online.

Since my student mentioned that Windows can use the ethernet cable to share the wireless network, I asked him to help to share the wireless network from Windows on the other Dell desktop, and connect to the target Dell desktop.

Xfce4 Power Manager, NVIDIA, Nouveau backlight issue

Sun, 08 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I move back to use my (around) 4 years old laptop, HP Pavilion dv3. It has NVIDIA graphic card. But since I (re-)installed Arch Linux 64 bit on it, I failed to run the X11 with the proprietary NVIDIA driver. As a result, I used the Nouveau module instead. Then, I tried several times and finally successfully run the X11 with NVIDIA driver.

To use the Nouveau module, in the mkinitcpio.conf, we have to add in “nouveau” module, then build the initramfs (refer to wiki page). And use the “Xorg -configure” to generate the xorg.conf.

Facebook chat list

Sun, 23 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I am not a Facebook fervent user. I use it because of some of my friends are using it.

So, if you want to enable your “available to chat” status to your group of close friends or special group of friends,

Go to Friends an create a list that you want to chat with.
After creating the list, add your close friends.
Now, turn on the Chat.
Go to Chat Options > Advanced Settings
Choose “Turn off chat for all friends except…”, and add in your target chat.

[caption id=“attachment_1168” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] Custom chat list in Facebook[/caption]