I am using an Android phone, specifically Vivo. I found that when I play the MOV video transferred from iOS, only sound is able to be played properly but the picture is not showing.

None of the solutions from the Internet helped me to solve my problem. After trial and error, I found that the MOV file can be converted to MP4 format using ffmpeg with some parameters. Eg,

fmpeg -i input.MOV -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -vf "scale=720:1280,fps=29" -ac 1 -x264opts "ref=0:cabac=0:b_pyramid=0:bframes=0" -profile:v baseline -pix_fmt yuv420p output.mp4

Based on my experience, the most crucial parameter is “-pix_fmt yuv420p”, so the MP4 video is 8-bit depth.

I don’t really like social network services, especially Facebook, though I am using Twitter. Those social network services just push any useless feeds, which they claimed to be personalized based on our surfing behaviour. However, they are just like junk food, which MAY favour my appetite. That’s why I prefer RSS news feeds, which I choose my own preferred websites (especially blogs) and follow the news.

During the lent season (today is Easter Sunday), I try my best to spend more time on spiritual readings, in order to strengthen my faith. There are too many temptations in the world, and there are a lot of challenges from the atheism. That’s why I spend more time to read the articles from Catholic Answers.

Just tried fly.io. It is super nice, because it allows to “run small application for free”. Since I have a hobby project (bible related), I dockerize it and deploy on fly.io. And it works well. Here is the link.

The hobby project above now only supports Studium Biblicum.

Bye-bye Openbox, welcome IceWM.

Due to the recent upgrade of glib2 on Arch Linux, it crashes my Openbox when I am running Wine or Proton. Downgrade to 2.74.6 is not a solution, because Nemo, Caja, Nautilus are using 2.76.0.

As a result, I have to find an alternative. From Wikipedia, I found that LXDE can be configured with other window manager rather than Openbox, eg Fluxbox, IceWM, or Xfwm.

I tried Xfwm, but it fails to run. Probably needs extra configuration, but I didn’t continue trying. I tried Fluxbox long time ago, can’t remember the feature. Then I found that, compare to Openbox, IceWM is still in development. Hence I decided to try IceWM.

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.

Recently I was doing online booking using Malaysia Airlines (MAS). In summary, the experience is too bad.

• I cannot login using GMail with password.

• Sending email as feedback to get support, but never get reply.

• Passenger name cannot be too long. Need to use initials.

• The first name and last name is super weird. The last name suppose to be family name. For Chinese with Christian name, such as James Wong Hang Seng, the family name is Wong, the last name suppose to be Wong, but the instruction says to fill the last name as James Wong. This doesn’t make any sense.

(I wrote a related post in Chinese here.)

I recently finished a visual novel (a game genre). It is a great game with fully voiced feature, and it has good ending. However, after I finished the game, I felt depressed and empty until now (around a week now). The feeling is just similar to grief. I believe that, how good the game is, then how empty it will be. This is because the fictional and realistic are totally different thing. Whatever you feel through fiction, when you come into reality then they are just gone. And you found that, what you gained was just emptiness.

I like to use Twitter, but the new Topics and Interests feature of Twitter is damn annoying. It keep showing something I am not interested of.

I looked for the solution from Internet, and finally I come out with this bookmarklet, which can be used in Settings > Privacy and Safety > Content You See > Interests.

javascript:(async()=>{const sleep=ms=>new Promise(r=>setTimeout(r,ms));const inputs=document.querySelectorAll('section[aria-label="Section details"] input:checked');for(let i=0;i<inputs.length;i+=1){const rand=Math.floor(Math.random()*2e3);await sleep(9e3+rand);const input=inputs[i];input.click()}})();

After trigger the bookmarklet, just leave the page there, it will slowly deselect one by one.

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”,

I never know that migrating from one phone to another phone also spends a lot of time. One for the issue is transferring the photos. Previously I don’t need to transfer the photos.

One thing to note, WeChat, LINE, and WhatsApp only allow single device login. Transferring data from old phone to new phone on WeChat and LINE are simple. Do not logout on the old phone, generate QR code, sign -in in new phone, scan QR code, then wait for transferring.