zzpxyx
Recently, I’ve managed to repurpose an old 2014 MacBook Air into a Linux home server. I have a 2014 MacBook Air whose battery performance has deteriorated and the last available macOS version feels very sluggish on it. Its official trade-in value has gone down to zero. However, it is still a functioning computer, so I want to repurpose it as a home server to beef up my home computing power . An…
I’ve been running a Linux desktop environment exclusively for half a year. Despite the minor issues along the way, I’m amazed by how much Linux desktop has improved over the years. I have been using Linux desktop for a long time, but it has always been a dual boot with a Windows install. I use Windows mostly for games and some specific use cases. I tried Wine back then but it wasn’t ideal. This…
This is a memo to myself that I should use the correct USB port for a USB 3.0 flash drive. The other day I plugged a USB 3.0 flash drive into the USB port on the front panel of my desktop. It didn’t mount. Instead, it gave an error that looked like device descriptor read/64, error -110 . I didn’t know how I acquired this knowledge but my first thoughts were about insufficient USB power supply. I…
Recently, I’ve had a couple of lessons learned when running Rclone in Termux on Android 6. A bit of background story. I’ve been using an old Android phone as a tiny home server as mentioned in my previous post . It has been running an old version of Rclone in Termux to share a security camera view . Recently, something has changed on my cloud provider and Rclone gives an error about authentication…
I troubleshooted a display driver issue the other day. Here are some notes in case I see it again in the future. The other day, the monitor turned off after I booted the machine to Arch Linux. My immediate thought was that the graphics card died as that happened to me before. However, I tried typing in my password to log in, and the hard disk light did flash happily, indicating that the system was…
I’ve changed my TeX Live setup again to accommodate typesetting Chinese. Recently, I wanted to typeset a Chinese document. It has been years since the last time I did that. Not surprisingly, pdfLaTex still doesn’t support CJK characters out of the box. I remembered using XeLaTeX with the CTeX package back then, so I tried to do the same this time. As mentioned in my previous post , I use the…
I’m on my journey of finding the best way of sharing a security camera view. I have an acceptable solution at the moment. Problem The core problem I’m faced with is very simple. I want to view my security camera from anywhere, and I would like to share the view with a small group of people. There are some restrictions though. First, privacy is of the utmost importance. Second, anywhere really…
Recently, I’ve repurposed an old Android phone as a tiny home server. I have a Nexus 5 that still functions well. For various reasons I didn’t trade it in over all these years, and the trade-in value for it has long gone down to zero. It has always been my emergency phone in the case that my current main device is broken. I haven’t found a better use for it until now, when I need a tiny home…
I’ve found that using text replacement is an acceptable way to write code on small mobile screens. Recently, I had to write some code on a small phone screen. Typing code on such screens is a pain since symbols are hard to find and auto-corrections always get in the way. On Android, the problem may be mitigated by a good keyboard such as Hacker’s Keyboard , but I couldn’t find its alternatives on…
Be aware of the pre-configuration that may happen on a virtual private server (VPS) instance. Recently, the tipping point has come for me to set up my own RSS aggregator. I’ve paid for a cheap VPS to host a FreshRSS instance. I just spun up a Docker container for FreshRSS, and I was immediately faced with some network issues. I used the technique in this post to confirm that the host machine and…
I’ve just realized that Poppler has command line utilities and they are perfect for manipulating PDF files. I was trying to extract a few pages from various PDF documents and combine them into a single file for easier double-sided printing. I had used PDFtk before, so I typed in pdf hoping that the shell autocompletion can remind me what the executable is. Several candidates popped out without…
Recently, I’ve realized a quick way to transfer some files within a private network. Occasionally, I need to transfer some files from a MacBook to a Linux/Windows desktop. They are in the same private network. I always used a USB flash drive, and it worked just fine. The other day, I suddenly realized that a simple HTTP server could help since its directory listing is probably turned on by…
Yesterday, I had to match the kernel and the display driver versions when downgrading the Arch Linux kernel. Now I’m jotting it down as a memo. I did a system upgrade yesterday on my Arch Linux install. The kernel was updated to version 5.16.16. After rebooting the machine, I noticed that the WiFi connection kept dropping and reconnecting, and it was very hard for me to open any website. I looked…
Here is my productivity setup on a Mac. It is just a personal memo, not an endorsement or an advertisement. Tools and Apps Here is a brief list of some productivity tools. Further sections will discuss combining them to achieve powerful workflows and setups. Gmail Desktop : a third-party Gmail client. Rectangle : resize windows using keyboard shortcuts. Karabiner-Elements : keyboard customization,…
Recently, I’ve found an acceptable workflow for converting a markdown file to a non-markdown-fashioned document. I’ve been using markdown format for writing documents lately. I use heading level one for title and level two for “the top-level sections”. One problem is that sometimes I need to convert the document to a non-markdown-fashioned format like Google Doc. I tried rendering the markdown…
I’ve just found a way to ignore local packages when upgrading packages using Yay in Arch Linux. I use Yay for managing packages on Arch Linux. As mentioned in this post , I use tllocalmgr to manually install some CTAN packages, mostly fonts. The consequence is that these packages only exist on my local machine. Every time I upgrade packages in Yay, it will prompt me that those packages don’t have…
Recently, I’ve found that compiling an AppleScript file may help with its performance. I have this arguably weird workflow on a Mac where I can press Command+2 and Command+3 to switch to specific applications. I didn’t find any open source solution for it, so I had to create some custom AppleScripts and bind them to global hotkeys in Karabiner-Elements. The setup worked for me until I upgraded to…
I’ve just switched my TeX Live distribution from the official one to the one on the Arch Linux repository. I was just updating the packages routinely on Arch Linux, and I noticed that Texmaker now requires texlive-core , which in turn requires texlive-bin . This was problematic for me since I had already installed the official TeX Live distribution. This not only took more disk space, but also…
I’ve finally had the chance to jot down my adventure in reviving a very old MP3 player. The player is made by Philips. I think the model number is something like SA2SPK02S/93. It is almost 10 years old, so by the time I tried to turn it on, nothing appeared on the screen. Not surprised at all. Apparently the battery is already depleted and possibly over-discharged. It has a USB port for charging,…
I have an idea about using YAML Schema to organize data. I came to this idea the other day when I was asked whether I had a certain vaccine in the past. All of a sudden, I wish I had organized my personal medical data in a structured way so that I could easily look it up. For easier discussion, let’s use personal medical data as an example here. First of all, I choose texts rather than database or…