ftbLinkAll

Some downtime errors (fixed)

Wed, 13 May 2026 03:42:21 +0000

If you had tried to visit or email in the last day, you may have seen errors on pages. Emails went nowhere in the timeframe as I had to renew the hosting payment. Still alive, just had some funding snags until I got paid. 🙂

logins by username

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 06:09:40 +0000

Send me an email to pic0o [at] this domain.com to recover your username to used email address. There is a Forum Option to allow username logins but it is a security vulnerability and that option is to be removed in future Invision Forum versions.

Desk in place

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 04:24:07 +0000

Finally got a main desk with primary PC setup. I have Resident Evil Requiem downloading now. RE9 on PC with my LCD and 4090 🙂

What's up?

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 22:02:32 +0000

I haven't been playing many games lately but I did platinum Paw Patrol World on PS5 with my kiddo. I also am near the end of story play for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It's been a bit so I figured I should make a forum post. I am waiting for GTA VI but that is looking to be 2026. I did download the GTA V Enhanced version. Upload of old save and download to the new game was useful. I don't play much on my PC as it's upstairs and Wifey stole my desk for work. 😛 I should get around to hooking up my retro console collection in the basement here at the house. I'm typing this on my laptop, that I remote up to my main desktop upstairs. It has been a crazy warm summer so far but today is a little cooler. I'm off to go pickup the wee one from the babysitter.

Oopsie kitty (php errors)

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 22:02:34 +0000

I've been busy but do still exist. I saw some PHP errors on the wordpress and forums. Changed my running PHP version to 8.1 and they are resolved. I was on an older PHP version so that is sorted.

Playing Final XIV

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 06:04:52 +0000

Forums still alive by loading. Previous thread a few months back is a different move boat, so still in the apartment and likely to fix up our house instead. I finally got my 12th Gen Intel CPU cooling well. There is a big old thread over like the last 2 years, TL;DR is add a mounting plate, then you can clamp the coolers well and have thermals not be terrible and remain under 212 F on full load. Avoid Reboots by having at least a 1000 w power supply. 750 watts will not do at all. This being the case with a 3090 RTX or RTX 4090. That's my recap. Dawntrail expansion for FFXIV (Final Fantasy XIV for the not regular forum folks here) releases here in early July. I got the Collector's Edition as I have regular income then a few months back when pre-orders opened. New graphic engine comes with expansion too. The benchmark looks cool if you want to see some of the engine in action before release. Forgot to mention. I am on the Endwalker content patch 6.x content. In Patch 6.2 (Buried Memory) currently. https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Main_Scenario_Quests is a good link for reference IF you have adblockers. Else probably scurvyWiki ads. Our Son is 2 now and I tend to play in the late hours of the morning, such as right now. Him and Wifey are sleeping on the couch behind me. I wanted to have another 1000 watt power supply with ATX 3.0 My understanding and take away from that standard, is you get a new PCI-Express power connector that is much smaller than the prior, 8 pin x2 setups. My Evangelon 3090 RTX has the older familiar power connectors, while the Nvidia 4090 RTX has the 3.0 slim connector. Much cleaner a case install. I have a 1200 Watt in my main setup now and I'm going to try the 1000 w PSU in my 11th Gen, to swap out and get the smaller but ATX 2.0 Power Supply into Wifey's 12th Gen PC with DDR4. Saved a bit of money (like 50% RAM cost) using 64 GB of DDR4 versus what 64 GB of DDR5 would have cost, when I did the builds in 2022 around American Summertime aka August. If you come to this site and not be prepared for me to type and talk about hardware... whew buddy. Welcome. Building is fun but can be chaotic when not able to focus and do the things to properly pimp and tweak your setup. I used to do bunches of clown and devoops stuff but that overwhelmed my free time and lack of needing to perpetually study and learn new stuff. Wonky things being passed as sound are not my vibe, but your pal OP is not a developer. That is not my brain, no thank you anymore. It's about self respect in the life place. The pay bumps I had were not big enough or worth the churn and burn. I enjoy thinking logistically about resources and like, how everything actually works instead of best-case scenarios until something becomes jammed up but; it is so jammed up in concepts that the actual flow is unknown. I hope you enjoyed my rant. Be careful what you may switch into and be sure to escape if it drives you mad. Once again, self respect over a pay bump. You can spend your money in hell, perpetuating a cycle of never relaxing just turning to dust on that grind. Keep your mind instead. People are unreasonable as fuck anyways and no one else going to have your back more than you. Particularly in the workplaces. You can carve out a trust faction as you get friends and expand your life. Workplace is not that realm. Illusions in the workplace and get gamed to big L on the GG. That is my word. Twenty-Twenty Four be an illusion of time with the last half decade or so. I about outputted freeform thought notes enough to game a bit before a morning nap. If you read the above do with it as you will and thanks for popping in. Extra ups to you for being on a forum reading instead of in a sea of butchered content for profit and exploitational doomscrolling. It is still possible? Wow I don't believe it is a post and https://funtimebliss.com/ is still online, either.

Doom Eternal

Sun, 19 May 2024 16:36:26 +0000

I was wondering where a forum reference to Doom Eternal was. I played it on PS4 then the PS5 version did not import from the PS4 save. But when I played on Xbox, I think it did to PS4 fine.

Open registration and shitposting

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 17:22:07 +0000

About to take the dogs out before afternoon meetings and debugging why some variables are not mapping through a terraform configuration. Your Admin, Pic0o here on Ronan's PC, the old 4th Gen Intel i5. I will add pictures since he has the same case I do for my 12th Gen Intel Main, short of it being the Black Corsair Cube Case. I have a Nvidia RTX 3050 in this case. Might swap back to the 980 TI for context since this case and build is in it's stable form. This PC does pretty good considering it's age and 4 CPU cores, Versus 16 and 24 in my 11th Gen Intel i9 and 12th Gen Intel i9 CPUs. Final Fantasy XIV runs alright on here at 1680x1050 in a Window as I type this post and have remote desktop open to my main desktop. Still rocking 32 GB DDR3. More of that into the original thread for hardware, linked above and here again for current Intel i5-4690k running a Nvidia RTX 3050. Back to the meaning of post, I re-opened forum memberships. Still has some administration flow to approve but using newer Invision forums is handy. I could turn on the use other site accounts API but I need not the pivot spam bot trash account creation. We played that game about 15 to 10 years ago, by meow. You also must be 13 or older to post here with the only exception being I personally know your parents and approved your account here. I am attaching screenshots for the Terms of Service for this site and they are as accurate today as they were in 2013, when last edited. Welcome back or to, here for your first time in awhile or ever.

Music and Twitch Streaming with Games

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 17:15:08 +0000

I have been streaming for a few years now with your +House of PLuS+ Pals on https://twitch.tv/pic0oplus https://www.twitch.tv/ph00lzlikeus for a bunch of us. Immortal Mod is doing some 3D Modelling in VR now. https://www.twitch.tv/immortalmod May play some games and or build out a spare parts machine tonight on stream. Take it easy! 🙂

FFXIV

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 06:20:20 +0000

Now in Beta client for Xbox Series X this weekend. I somehow did not see an existing Final Fantasy XIV topic ( finded it ). That is wild. I have been playing this since 1.0 Released before A Realm Reborn. Not very quickly, mind you. I just cleared Endwalker MSQ (Main Story Quest) Newest Expansion Dawntrail releases in 2024-06. Recent source for Approx. June 2024 to drop. https://www.pcgamesn.com/final-fantasy-xiv/ffxiv-dawntrail-release-date Silly me. Found the earlier threads. Had to search all forums and here we are.

Upcoming move to House

Sat, 06 Jan 2024 15:52:38 +0000

Moving time is upon my Fam as we are leaving this apartment and moving in with Wifey's Mom. Going to do some renovation before we join her at home but I am hyped to have Windows again. Yes, like the glass that lets you see outside. For context, web stuff to remain as is, I am talking about that IRL (In real life) I keep hearing so much about. Our current apartment has 2 rooms, a kitchen as part of the living room, the bathroom, a single bedroom and a single window in the bedroom. Cleaning up my desk and probably doing a hardware stream while I replace my motherboard and put together a spare parts PC that has everything, short of a Processor and some DDR5 RAM. If you want a computer for stupid-cheap, HMU. You just need to buy your own CPU and Memory, as I don't want to get a low-mid range Intel when you would be better suited paying $350 for a bomb-ass 12th or 13th Gen Intel CPU versus me spending $200 for a moderate one. Happy New Years!

Alan Wake 2

Sat, 11 Nov 2023 02:53:25 +0000

I only have about 3 hours in but I enjoy it. Creepy game too. The inspiration from Control is awesome, if you played that too. 5120 x 1440 is also supported. I stayed up a couple hours last night to get beyond chapter 1 but now I am watching Curious George and trying to get kiddo to sleep, so I can too. Cool game! It's on top of my active backlog between Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Spiderman 2. If you did spooky, Alan Wake 2 has your back.

49" Odyssey G9 DQHD 240Hz 1ms G-Sync Compatible HDR1000 QLED Curved Gaming Monitor

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 06:23:07 +0000

I came back to 240 Hz displays but went with a Samsung instead. Been using a 49" Odyssey G9 DQHD 240Hz 1ms G-Sync Compatible HDR1000 QLED Curved Gaming Monitor. I have been using this daily since June 15th 2023 / 2023-06-15 and continue to use it as my primary PC and gaming display. Split screen / PIP / PBP Works great. Downside coming from a 4K TV is that this PC display only has 1x HDMI Input. 2 DisplayPorts are nice but more HDMI would be more handy for console switching. I get by using a 4K HDMI switcher. I do get a clean 5120x1440 pixels at 60 Hz over HDMI. DisplayPort gives me 240 Hz at the same 5120 x 1440 resolution. Downside for consoles, you are really only getting 1080P on PS5, despite PC based resolutions being 2560x1440 when using Picture-In-Picture / split screen mode. This is excellent for daytime and multi-input use at the same time. Use case being to play Switch on one half and lookup Zelda Tears of the Kindgom shrines and info on the other side or to have streaming content playing. I see some slight text ghosting on PC at 240 Hz but it is pretty low a level to be seen. I don't notice it when playing console and particularly PS5 Games. This was my initial test when I picked up this Samsung Gaming PC Display. That being said, if you mess up and play PC at 60 Hz on games like Diablo IV, the ghosting from contrast changes would be huge and was immediately present. Making sure my PC was in 240 Hz mode at full or partial resolution, along with setting the monitor settings on device to Fastest Response Time, resolved this. In monitor settings, Turn the setting for Game > Adaptive-Sync to No to allow you to select the Fastest Response Time. The Samsung Device Menu on this monitor is also more robust yet easier to use for direct setting control, than the Asus ROG device was. With response time set to Fastest, the color contrast was cleared up. This applies to HDMI @ 60 Hz as well. Speaking of HDMI, you can do higher refresh rates for PC and OS X / Mac, but not on PS5 for 120 FPS mode titles. It does not have HDMI 2.1 support. but does have VRR support. Version of HDMI support is 2.0 on this model. The base gives some height and horizontal adjustment options. Vertical adjust is not too much but since you can raise the display and also change angle / pitch up and down, along with left to right, this is awesome for standing and angling the display away and looking at it from the side. I added a desk photo and also you can see my Secretlab chair that I got last week. 5 year warranty and it is also way more comfortable than any prior chair I have personally bought yet. Got Wifey her chair last month and she loves it, so I ordered mine last week in the XL model, as seen with the Minecraft Creeper cover included.

New Logo Up

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 07:33:45 +0000

I finally added a new logo with Radical Edward art thanks to a commission from Nono with her https://nonoworks.fanbox.cc/ and Twitter address. Nonorocks and the site runs smooth enough on modern php that I am not taking a huge performance hit with a logo again. Same logo attached as you can get the full size image from image properties of the active logo. Bonus in my making the main button color match a green shade from image. #1aa36f instead of being washed out by skin default of #232323 for Primary button. #316a60 for "Important button" aka New thread button. Link button changed to #1aa36f so the other options pop from the flat theme greys / gray. The Invision skin tools are greatly improved over the years so editing colors for a theme isn't "edit in css and good luck, dawg", anymore. Yay modernization! Graphic design is my passion, as you can see from added text font and logo created in GIMP from my commission 😛

Say you want to recover a saved password from Windows

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 21:14:54 +0000

Quick info as I forgot my Windows password and was going to fetch it from a saved Remote Desktop Protocol connection file (RDP). I have done this in the past to grab saved credentials from Windows Services using Run As User credentials. Theoretically, you could find the same for stored network shares too. I presume this still works for Windows 7 to 11 but now a days, this NirSoft recovery tool from 2014 flags as "malware". You can grab Remote Desktop PassView from NirSoft but you will likely need to disable defender to make it run. I made this thread as it followed my mental rule for making a note of something handy I used in the past. In my recent Windows 11 case this week, I forgot my main user password but logged in from another PC with saved RDP credentials, changed the password on a second local admin ( You can change another user's password without their old one, but while logged in locally as the same user, you need the current ( forgotten temporarily ) to change the current pass. Logging in as second admin, I could then reset local admin password to something new, without the existing pass being needed. I just made a crabby twitter comment ( as opposed to any other kind on there? ) about many No-CD fixes getting spirited away from Windows 7 onward and Defender's choice for 'bad files'. Typically removed with no notification or direct logging either. If you like it and want to archive it, store it on a Non-Windows based file server. Bonus random note of old: If you are logging into another device without a domain, you can set your username and password to the same on local and your network share or what have you. Most all the time, you will be able to connect without being prompted for a password, since they are already the same. Fun WiFi migration? Set your Access Point ( AP Network Name ) and password to be the same as a Wifi network you have already connected to. Your devices will be on the new access point without issue, most of the time. There are extra settings that could handle this change but the likelihood of them being a factor are very low. Save time migrating off access points and testing things or pretending to be an existing network, Auto-connect being a client default makes this extra handy based on whatever you may be working on or with.

Spooky 2023

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 17:33:43 +0000

Welcome to upcoming Halloween 2023. Our Son is 18+ months now so we get to Trick or Treat again 🙂 He will be a Trash Panda (aka Racoon) or wear a Fox outfit this year. We got him a Trash Panda outfit that is cute but he hardly fits in it, until the pop button legs open up. He is a big dude for 18 month sizes. I am typing this as he watches the 1st Paw Patrol movie and plays around on his horse. Granted he is making angry noises and climbing in my chair now. To be continued Edit: He is running around in the living room now. So to continue, He is back. lol. (starts playing Ylvis: The Fox to catch his attention and hand him my phone) Chuckie is a pretty good TV Series as I shot-gunned that season 1 pretty quickly. I am also a few episodes into Creepshow the recent TV Series on Shudder.tv. The 'Live channels' are daily repeats for like a month, but for $8 or so bucks a month they have at least 600+ movies in varying languages. I don't mean this to be an ad for Shudder but if you want exclusive and a good amount of TV and Movies of the terror, horror and suspense variety, it's one of the best streaming services for cost and focused selection. I have been playing iZombie and got hooked in on it being quite a bit better than I thought it would be. I'm wrapping up Season 2 today and was pleasantly taken in by character archs. I guess the comic book origins explain that. Warm Bodies is a cool zombie movie from 2013 I just saw this week. I know people who have more "damage over time" browsing history here, have long exhausted most of the traditional horror films for the holiday season. My Plex supplements most of the normal traditional films and offerings on streaming services. Speaking of the major ones, they sure have gotten really heavy in timebox availability for lots of content. For awhile it was a genuine pain in the ass to try and finally see Deadpool 1 and 2. Hulu wanted me to pay for the $55+ Live TV streaming plan before those movies came back into regular rotation. GTFO with that silliness. Game wise, I am slow playing but recently more focused on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TOTK). I have about 14 hearts now, 2 main temples cleared and the Dragon Tear quest completed for a decent weapon. Not to be spoilery but yeah it's a nice option as the boss fight and world map enemies will wreck you for 6 to 8 heart hits, pretty quickly. I started on the Wind Temple, then I basically grinded shines to get my Stamina to 2 wheels for a MSQ (Main Story Quest) I mentioned earlier. Then I poured into my hearts so I can put on an increased damage chest piece for the nastier gloom enemies. Looking forward to Spiderman 2 on PS5 here in about a month, and Alan Wake 2. I was going to do Alan Wake 2 on PS5 then I took into account my Nvidia 4090 RTX and 12th Gen Intel main desktop that is finally stable with the power supply issue resolved. I still see 212 F / 100 C blips when in a game like Cyberpunk 2077 but no reboots. Typical desktop / general use temperatures are 125 F / 51 C to 165 F / 74 C. I started some Final Fantasy XVI on PS5 but between daddy life, it's been on backburner. I did pickup the Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty expansion to play here in about a week. As with originally on PS5 playing, I switched to PC because frankly, the PS5 version was super shitty when it released and got incrementally better but not so much up until more recently. I played most of my Cyberpunk 2077 on a Nvidia 1080 Ti, my 3090 RTX Evangelion edition graphics card I got in 2022, up until I splurged recently to a 4090 RTX, because I was shocked to see one in stock at Microcenter. Granted costing $2000 likely helped it stay on the shelf. Haha I love hardware. My 3090 RTX is in an 11th Gen Intel Gundam Asus rig I built a few years prior to jumping into 12th Gen Intel and taking almost a year, before resolving very poor cooling CPU performance and reboots that were caused by not having enough power supply for the 3090 RTX and 12th Gen Intel setup. My 11th Gen CPU uses waaay less Watts than the 11th Gen around 150 W versus 350 W on the 12th Gen. Moral of the cooling story is, replacing the CPU clip with CPU support block will make better contact and give better ranges when cooling the 12th and 13th Gen Intel Watt eaters. To wrap that thought out, I updated the core thread for that build and just added post with current setup pictures. Speaking more hardware, Netgear Orbi devices are great for Wifi6 support and fast speeds, however their DOCSIS support with Comcast sucks badly. I would see drops from our 900 Mb/s line drop us to like 150 to 10 Mb/s while on a zoom call. Occasionally, the connection would just drop to 0.5 Mb with nothing else going on. So I got a leased modem this week and put the Orbi's into Access Point ( AP ) mode. Threw an Ubiquity Gateway Console Unifi device. This Ubiquity Dream Machine gives me NSG (Network Security Gateway) with firewall, routing along with traffic reporting for connected devices by category. It's fancy reporting and pretty performant. I had some annoying issues trying to custom network configure it in the past, but since the Orbi is running Wifi in AP mode I don't have to deal with funky networks and cross-subnet mangling gateways to blend into a dhcp range. Merry Spooky! This thread took some time to type and I saved edits. Daddy life hahaha. Enjoy a photo of the youth, dialing my cell phone from an Alexa that shows up as private number. My number is saved in the device but is luckily, the only one he is currently dialing. The call is coming from inside the house 🫣

Wish my RMA luck!

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 01:56:03 +0000

I just got a RMA sent out for an Asus Z690-E Motherboard. I dub this the Intel 12th Gen overheating saga. Thread if looking to see me grumpy my way through some hardware. I am on my previous 11th Gen Intel with my 3090 RTX and it does not hit thermal threshold or reboot. Been playing some Diablo IV and Legend of Zelda - Tears of the Kingdom lightly, as most nights I watch the baby and go to bed, once work is done. Tooling to stay up a spell tonight and continue into Act II of Diablo IV 😉 I was thinking about re-checking my 12th Gen thermal paste quick, as it still gets too hot on a new MSI motherboard with the 12th and 13th Gen CPU mounting block. On my adventures in the thread, I learned the issue is more specific to Intel 12th Gen chips with the block replacement helping get a better seal between the cooler and processor. I have been pretty busy and a bit tired to do that this week, as I got my Gundam 11th Gen Intel back and it serves well. I will probably switch my M2 SSDs out from my 12th Gen to the 11th Gen, since I have been playing Diablo IV on a 512 GB M2 SSD, with my 3x 2TB SSDs still in the overheating when max loading 12th Gen. Meanwhile I've been using remote desktop to login from the 11th Gen to the 12th Gen with my main drives. Switching my drives out will be fairly quick and all my apps, email and stuff are on the big drives. I'll throw the 512 GB into the 12th Gen so I can do burn in tests and all that good stuff, while still being able to game and main on the working PC. I sure typed 11th and 12th far more than I anticipated. I also just made a pizza that I pulled out of the oven. It has been a few since I made a site news based topic and I thank you for reading it. Lately I am on Windows 11 Professional and it works well. I do the day job as a Senior Consultant yelling at computers, largely in the DevOps space. It can be maddening since it seems everyone expects you to know everything, but as you work and learn, at least in my opinion - anyone who professes to know 'everything' likely knows next to nothing. Tons of abstractions, new tooling and all that stuff when messing with the various clouds, tools and clients. I try to keep the glue in my head functional so I can afford to take care of the family and facilitate my gadget tinkering at home building hardware. I have a 26" bike that is essentially a large BMX. It's nice to get out occasionally but once again, time and obligations get in the way sometimes. It is about 10pm now and the baby is still awake. That wraps up this post as I try to guide him to sleep with the potential effort of playing some games into the night, as I have him nap the nite away with his Mommy. Oh yeah, I have timers set to get laundry out of the timer and dry the next batch, so that gives me a midnight-ish to 1am window to be awake, potentially. We shall see how that lines up. Might pass out before that and put the other batch to dry in the morning.

Upgrade PHP worked

Mon, 08 May 2023 20:38:38 +0000

Heads up some of the older PHP projects I hacked up are not so happy on PHP 8.x. Granted those are the manual archive versions of FTB from 2002-2003 that need different calls to show the DB Data. Anyways, hello and and welcome. I am looking forward to all sorts of new games with the little time between baby and life time that I have to play around. I also scored Prototype 1 and 2 for PS4 from a local gaming store for a nice deal along with a Street Fighter IV Arcade stick for my PS3. I started replaying Prototype 1 last night and it's still an awesome game, 2009 and all. The PS4 release for 1 and 2 look to be from 2015 and it's nice since the PC Version of Prototype 2 is infamously crappy to run under Windows 10 or later. I believe I had Windows 7 when I could disable the HID Devices to it stopped crashing on startup. That being said, you can see why I was happy to grab a working console version that I'm playing on PS5. Going to get a fancy PS5 Arcade stick with the Street Fighter VI release. The Hori one is so pretty and fancy. https://stores.horiusa.com/spf-033U/ If I play my cards right tonight, I'll get a nap in, or at least 4+ hours or consecutive sleep 🙂 Diablo IV releases in June, this weekend is Zelda Tears of the Kingdom and Diablo IV server testing. I'll likely focus on Zelda as I got to level 25 from the prior beta weekends for D4.

Diablo 4

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 21:29:30 +0000

Played up to level 20 barbarian and what was in main story quest for act 1. Really glad I got a beta code from a KFC order because pre ordering and especially paying $100 USD, I would be sad and wish to refund. Queues were like 20 to 60 some minutes and that is ok. Computer was largely stable and maybe 2 disconmections between both weekends. My play enjoyment was just like, not fun. Main story and side quests felt generic and the few cutscenes that were not zoomed in engine views but actual main story cutscenes... it is hard to put into words. Typed this on my mobile. Not likely to see me hop on for release. Like I felt like I was playing Diablo 3 but instead of grinding familiar bosses and zones, the new ones were just dull. I read on some of the Blizzard forums and saw similar wording to my vibes playing. Maybe after June it will somehow pop, but I am sparce with gaming time having a kid. Takes some compelling narration and exploratation for me to rsvp deep gaming. Sleep is greater than mid-gaming titles these days for me. The pay for the Ultimate edition to speed up seasonal ranking is just grimey. Tell me I need pay extra to grind at a less spreadsheet rate. Pass because that is nasty dawg. DLC EXP always gonna rub me wrong. I've always been a story and content over perpetual multiplayer too.

cleaning my desk

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 22:24:50 +0000

I also just got an amazing art commission. @nono on Twitter ❤️

Might break site and a new 26" Bike

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 15:29:16 +0000

I have to upgrade to PCP I mean PHP 8.0. Wish me luck as I try to upgrade forum version after that. I got a new bike too. A 26" Kink Drifter. https://kinkbmx.com/products/drifter-2023 I still live in Philadelphia so I am buying the highest tier locks I can as stealing bikes is a local art form, even for quick store runs. Our baby dude is almost 1 year old now too. He is over at his Grandma's while we do the day job thing. I don't play may games lately as most of the time, I'd rather watch a movie with my downtime.

Twenty Twenty Three

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 17:25:51 +0000

Still getting used to writing out the new year. I did a build stream last week but other than that, I am trying to take it easy. Turns out being a parent is kind of busy and can make you tired. Enjoy your day!

Other socials

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 14:52:22 +0000

I try to be easy to find if you have intent to. https://infosec.exchange/@pic0o Made a Mastodon too as the current blue bird tweet land owner is showing a lack of knowledge and well I made the Mastodon account years back and just remembered the instance to login. New job and baby life keeps me busy. Little man is 8 months old now. He enjoys the lights and computer parts, granted there are not that many in this place. 😛 He has fun and explores while jumping and learning to stand on his own.

Horror Time delayed

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 13:26:53 +0000

Howdy and Hola. Sharing a list of movies I have watched over the last few days. Had an IRL funeral for a family member on Halloween so that upped the goth scaler a bit. The Thing - 1982, Prince of Darkness - 1987 In The Mouth Of Madness - 1995 I'm finishing up Prince of Darkness now as I did not remember and or forgot these were a trilogy. Terrifier 1 and 2 are good. Just be warned you will see some gore kills. Shit's legit just real bloody. A few scenes had me like 'damn that's brutal'. Art the Clown puts in work. I also rewatched Evilspeak. Cool for an older film with the whole cyber evil hook. 1981 based so you are going to see some sick computer art. I have a few more newer films I'm going to check out too. Hellraiser 2022 Halloween Ends 2022 Deadstream Glorious <- Read the overview on this one. Weird sex comedy-esc horror.

Busy few days and SSL had old HOP domain on it

Mon, 26 Sep 2022 23:19:46 +0000

Gen 12 Intel i9-12900KS vs 11th Gen i9-11900K Hardware with a 3090 RTX, plus a Nvidia Geforce 4090 RTX, Nvidia 3050 + 980 GTX

Sat, 17 Sep 2022 22:51:29 +0000

Got a 12th Gen Intel to go with my prior / other setup with a Gundam board and 11th Gen Intel. Specs for the 12th Gen Intel build ( as of 2023-09-26 ) : Honestly so far, the 12th Gen has been a bit fucky to have good temperatures using Corsair H150i Elete LCD and H115i (dual 140 mm fans and radiator). I have a 3090 that runs well but hot damn, long graphics card. By that I mean, most depth used in a case and I had to move radiator upward for depth for cases. Angry 12th Gen Intel. Edit! 2023-08-04: Keep in mind I only recently resolved the reboots. Power supply was too weak! I had a 750 W PSU trying to run the 12th Gen and a 3090 RTX. This works for an 11th Gen since that CPU pulls around 250 Watts give or take. 3090 will grab 350 W and a 12th Gen can pull about 350 W as well. Fun fact as the 212 F was not causing reboots but is more due to poor contact with the default CPU Clip. As I mention later in this thread, I added a 12th and 13th Gen CPU socket block to assist in an even mount. Be cautious of over-clamping to not spread thermal compound out from between cooler and GPU, even with CPU support block installed. Original post continues below: Corsair Crystal Series 680X is my primary case for the 12th Gen. I still have some airflow tweaks but main goals are re-gooping thermal paste. For a nice thermal cap test, run https://www.userbenchmark.com/ benchmark. I also learned Cyberpunk 2077 also has a benchmark now. It's in the settings in-game. Typing this wave of post on the 11th Gen before I redo thermal compound again. I saw the GPU price drops and things, went a little ham and got a 3090 RTX for $1350 instead of the $2000+ it debuted at in May of 2022. https://rog.asus.com/graphics-cards/graphics-cards/rog-strix/rog-strix-rtx3090-o24g-eva-model/ Specs: https://rog.asus.com/graphics-cards/graphics-cards/rog-strix/rog-strix-rtx3090-o24g-eva-model/spec/ The liquid smooth FFXIV Benchmarks are maddening. Baby watches them with me as well. Speaking on this GPU, check these dimensions. 318.5 x 140.1 x 57.78 mm 12.53 x 5.51 x 2.27 inches Haha yeah, 330 mm is the max for the Corsair 680X case. 4000x says 360 mm GPU but I would think front radiators would be tight. I moved mine to the top in the 680X case. Off to operation. Here are some UserBenchmark results from the 11th Gen Intel with a 3050 RTX in here. Peak Core i9 11900K Temperatures for package and Cores max was 155 F. / 68 C. Collecting these from HWMonitor. CPU Powers Package Max 195 W Powers IA Cores Max 181 W Editing in to share below benchmarks with 3090 in the 11th Gen Intel setup. https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/55377598 Current run 9/19:

disk free space

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 16:32:57 +0000

Check for disk free space on Linux. I forget my df and du flags so often when I want to recall them, so a thread for my usages. df I think of as disk free. This will check the volume. du I think of as disk used. Filtering output with this will give details on specific files as you widdle your free space down. Ubuntu based terminal implied for most syntax, as container wranglers know we getting more shells than bash with the extra trim. Be ready to drop some flags if container hopping in a docker and or kubernetes environment.\ du -a / | sort -n -r | head -n 20 df -h for your volume basic needs. A little more filtered example below as handy if triaging a host computer needing free space back. du -ah /var/lib/docker/containers | sort -n -r | head -n 20

Toys and Transformers

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 18:16:22 +0000

I have always been a big Transformers head but the recent amount of toys being made are fun and wild to collect if you go too pokemon-tier. Anyone else a fan of the old school and recent toys? Wifey got me a combo Daddy and Birthday gift of Megatron from the 2016 or so Masterpiece collection. I had Soundwave for a few years prior to start off the home collection. Those are higher tier toys of the $150 msrp+ range and some over time gets scalpy pricing, as collectors items do especially the last few years. More reasonable toys are in the $15 to $35 range, then another tier with more transformations and detail for a range of $35 to $65 usd. The variety is of options is great if you have some era and characters you especially like. Makes for fun toys to play with the young one with in a few years too. Always enjoyed a physical puzzle. https://www.youtube.com/user/emgo316 is fantastic for videos too.

Stray

Wed, 03 Aug 2022 07:58:16 +0000

This is a cat game in a future setting. The platforming and world exploration is great. Story pleasantly surprises with some good writing as well, considering you are playing a cat whom cannot talk verbally. Replay value is there for chapter select and unlocking extra hidden items. I have 20+ hours on my save, granted I was streaming the other day and doing my random baby and other pic0o life stuff 🙂 Awesome game. Very highly suggested as I will keep playing. Ronan also likes to watch the kitty cat game while I play it.

Attachment upload fixed

Mon, 13 Jun 2022 21:19:19 +0000

Found some ancient group settings restricting uploads to about 100kb. Fixed up for all active user groups to be more modern and image-heavy. Optional, of course. It helps that bandwidth concerns for here are less as primarily just text I may share. Old long form is nice to think out a thought without chopping characters for spaces or word fragments to land a perspective before a gotcha snap back. Keep up on naps

Rad comission avatar

Mon, 30 May 2022 07:10:00 +0000

First off, @cassettepunk is amazing. Peep this fierce art! Adding these here so I can update my twitch. AHHHHHH. I love these doodles s9 mucu

Gallery is back

Fri, 20 May 2022 03:55:31 +0000

I bought the Invison plugin for Gallery so I will upload all my old FFXI and other images, including RF ones.

20 years of FFXI - Playing again now

Fri, 20 May 2022 02:50:29 +0000

https://old.reddit.com/r/ffxi/comments/ajis5l/where_to_start_with_gear_fresh_99 Having a dive in to sync up on newer gear and things, since I have not played since 2013 or so. Luckily I did get to 99 on MNK so it's a matter of gear. I saw iLvl and thought I had to level subjobs more. Gonna beast with my NPC buddy shortly as I finish muling all my gear back to main, thanks to all the extra storage enhancements. https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Life_on_the_Frontier

Jolly 404

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 19:34:28 +0000

Pew Wew Mew. It's Four Zero Four. Welcome to Daddy forums. I got 12 hour banned for suggesting people who send nasty DMs, punch themselves in the face. Meanwhile that platform blasts photos of the dead from recent war, as if that is reasonable content. Break time from the angry bird site place, darn. Plenty of news and content to keep you reading on technical and computer information. I should get up and walk the dog here soon. Wifey is out in the living room and needs a nap from watching our babby mans. He is super cute and I love our son so much. Thank you for reading and visiting. Someday I should make this site more visual but I really also like simple themes and low-data big text.

Cyberpunk 2077

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 20:29:37 +0000

Kind of shocked I do not have a thread for Cyberpunk 2077. I saw posts in the what playing thread. Speed to current day, rumor on reddit has mention of new PS5 boxart and possible PS5 release, finally. I played a Corp on PC and will pick another class likely. PC played fine but I started on PS4 version on release. I saw the quality and draw rate, paused for a few and switched to playing on PC. My 1080 Ti did much better than I thought it would. Played the game to main story completion. Steam shows me with 116 Hours but realistically I'd throw 80 of played in there, likely.

2022 Salute

Fri, 07 Jan 2022 15:42:55 +0000

Reading this, you made it to 2022. We continue to live in infectious times and do what we can to stay healthy. Personally I have spent a bit of my time reading, gaming, napping and tinkering between. Not going to lie, my focus is all jammed up, as I have some sickness symptoms. Feeling a little better today but trying to take it easy. We got a few inches of snow here in Philly, so that is pretty rare 'round these parts. I am a little more used to a few inches of snow. I hear upstate NY got like 16 inches. Yikes. Keep on keeping on. I am going to get back to some work. Fun fact reminder btw, Comcast hard blocks network ports. Spent a few hours the other day verifying they hard-block SMB on port 445. Went to the house on Verzion Fios and had no issue connecting to the same destination.

Happy 19th Anniversary Funtimebliss.com!!

Sat, 27 Nov 2021 01:37:05 +0000

That's right friends Funtimebliss.com is celebrating its 19th birthday today. Normally Pic0o would be sharing such news but he is having internet issues as asked me to leave this message in his stay. It's been a long time, and over the years the good ol Funtime stayed active and a home for all of the worlds stray souls. So join me in celebrating and also thanking the host Mr. Pic0o for keeping her going for all of these years!

Kena Bridge of Spirits

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 15:13:18 +0000

I picked up Kena Bridge of Spirits for PS5 and played a little last night. Cool combat and similar feel to an Alice game. Met some in-story buddies to help clear out some infections (single player). This is also available on PC. Looking forward to playing tonight. Returnal also got a patch to let you suspend a run to resume later. Makes for better map exploration as building up to clear areas. I have to change some cat litter and get back to work. Enjoy you Halloweek 👻

SpOOky games

Sun, 17 Oct 2021 21:43:29 +0000

Are you into anything holiday themed? I am playing Returnal the last few days and find it creep enough to have Halloween vibes. Rougelike is common described by it and my description is, think of rooms that spawn connected differently. If you have ever seen The Cube movies, you get the concept of rotating connected rooms. Similar to that but without the movie mechanic, just as a description to how your respawns and zone map changes go. Controls are pretty good with rewarding kills. No saves so that give me more of a Demons Souls vibe of do you run or farm - take what you learn to improve later runs. Fortunately the rooms are not completely assorted since the contents remain the same, just different inter-connections. I had one game lockup playing about 6 hours so far. Picked the game up some weeks ago but wanted to finish other games before I came back to this one. I am also about to take a 2TB SSD 980 Pro out of my desktop and pop it in the PS5.

ROG ASUS 144 Hz Displays

Sat, 18 Sep 2021 02:45:53 +0000

Weird bit of a duplicate issue I see on PS5 when playing on ether my XG49VG or older PG248Q. Bit of ghosting I never saw on the Samsung PC displays. I only notice this at 60 Hz on HDMI with the PS5 so far. Going to retest on a TV display as I had flaky HDMI on the LG 43" I was using before the circuit issue on that model. Glad I get the extended coverage from retail so I can drop if it is hard not doing it to specs. I still see this for any input at 60 Hz, HDMI or DisplayPort. I put in a support ticket but I suspect this is a known issue on these screens? I can cheat by playing into my capture card to see the console do 60 FPS, while my desktop is running 144 Hz. No shadowing issue on the screen in that case. Keeping in mind I am tricking it with a capture card.

Reworked mainpage menus

Thu, 02 Sep 2021 00:25:57 +0000

Now if you go to non forum frontpage https://funtimebliss.com you get wp posts with sub-menus for archive stuff. Oh yes. I own rfhq.org these days. If someone snags .com I will host it too 🙂

Forum heads

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 16:09:42 +0000

If you have an old account or would like a new one, msg me on discord or twitter. I will set you up happily. Check this out. Lately has been nice for making progress on tasks and goals around the pad. Trying to not trip over all the daily subconscious traumas in day to day 2021 but keeping in mind my comfort is pretty high relatively. Took a covid test after waking up very sick last week but that seems like it was just food poisoning. All tests negative. Woot! small win 🙂 Friends and family are doing well too. Sometimes chatting on voice and video can be exhausting for me, so I do my hermit session recharges. Also took to cutting coffee out to try and hone my focus skills. Too often I would try to focus on a task and get side bombarded with other tasks or random things, that I would irrationally stack out to try and do all at the same time. Feels like my brain can execute clearer without the scatter-shot intent. Ha we can enjoy this forum in context to random thoughts and what I write about having done the things about. Hopefully you have been remaining safe and as well as you can. Keep in mind you have to be functional before maintaining capability to care for others. Little bit of a somber post but it is helpful to write and reflect on your human experiences, not just the fluff and ice. Listening to Bud Powell playing the track Ornithology Alternate take, as the track switches to Hey! by MF DOOM. I added some more vinyl to my home collection and added to a local stack of DOOM. I enjoy and have plenty of audio inputs and things, as I can rock the records on a headset wirelessly. Recently had the chance to speak with FactionFiles about my Red Faction memories. Did you know that you can STILL play Red Faction 1 online? Get Dash Faction 1.7.0 from their downloads for RF patches. Be excited for Mine Warfare: 20 Years of Red Faction Multiplayer that is the project they are gathering interview content for. It will be a trip for sure. Especially since most real members here are from that era. Thread got long and I got other stuff to work on. Enjoy 🙂

What about you playing?

Sat, 28 Aug 2021 20:51:16 +0000

Spam thread 🙂 I have been scattered in a bunch of games but nothing lately hard sticking since Ratchet and Clank. I have been working on home lab projects too and just got over a nasty bit of food poisoning. Just throw that chicken away 😮 Life wise things go well. I keep aging somehow and that is nice. Temperatures locally have been too hot for me and pet walking for too long. Hopefully this current Ida Hurricane tapers down, considering the wide radius and impact to Cuba, Louisiana and surrounding areas. Cats like to nap on my desk and around our apartment. I will take our lassie pal out for another walk since we have a break in downfall. I saw No More Heroes 3 launched last night. I have to wait for payday as I budgeted out pretty heavily on this new monitor. 👯‍♀️ This ASUS XG49V is precious. Essentially 3 1080P displays attached on one display. The Picture-In-Picture features are nice but due to requiring high refresh rate be off, I do not use it much in split mode. I paid $900 and it is essentially a steal. I say that based off my short time with an LG OLED PC Display. Prior monitor I used for a few months was a LG - UltraGear 38" IPS LED UltraWide HD G-SYNC Monitor. It looked great but has a persistent issue with HDMI signal quality dropping out and flashing black screens. Considering I paid nearly $2000 for it, that was unacceptable and I returned it. Here is one reddit thread from my digging where others confirm the power pull, temporary fix. You might know me if you been reading here for some time. I put some control tests in when HDMI would fail and it's fail to pull power pattern. tl;dr - That hdmi issue sucks. I also disliked that each time I turned the monitor on, the rear LED lights would always pop on briefly. It was cool but sometimes I wanted no flashing when I turned display on, too. Since this LG has an UltraWide+ resolution of 3840 x 1600 I lost a few pixels on my current 3840 x 1080 with the Asus ROG 49". In case I did not make it clear, I highly advise spending half the money for such a larger display, even with the vertical pixel hit. I see there is an ROG $2000 model of scale to the LG but let us just say, some recent life changes would have made that a foolish option. This new display works great both HDMI and DisplayPort. On Linux I get 110 Hz no magic needed. Just worked out the box with Ubuntu 20.x. When I switch to HDMI on this ROG, I know I will get the desired input. The LG made this an infuriating lottery. Thanks for reading pop up display review thread

Send me postcards or stickers

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 17:50:54 +0000

If for any reason you thought in your mind "Hey, I really wish I could send Pic0o stickers, letters or whatever random post card." Good news! P.O. Box 2422 Philadelphia, PA 19147 It is a few blocks away from where I live, so I can get there somewhat often. If by chance the mood strikes you, go nuts and pop some mail in the postbox. 🙂

2021 games fun thread

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 15:18:55 +0000

Starting off with current stuff, we play a bunch of games as I mentioned in other threads. https://houseofplus.com goes to our FB page while the main site work is a pending project. We have an active discord server too. Invite at https://discord.houseofplus.com This weekend we will be having a party with J0k3r and Fam. We play all sorts of games and stream on https://twitch.tv/freekshw. I have been playing a good bit of PS5 games and PC stuff too. If you wanted to find old +PLuS+ heads, hit up our discord at +Spleen+ jumped on this week and we were chatting too. There will likely be streaming this weekend while we are all in person together Spleen said FTB brought him to the discord, so I feel helpful this site pointed you over there 🙂

You!

Thu, 10 Jun 2021 01:11:35 +0000

Welcome to this reading. Current location had a weekend of very cold to a heat wave and heavy rain waves. If you like to play games and chill out, you can visit https://discord.houseofplus.com where friends and I play various games and chat on the weekends. Posting has been light as I do the things and keep on keeping on. Overall considering, going pretty well. I lucked out on getting a PS5 and am looking to play Final Fantasy VII remake expansion. I have some other projects to non back burner but to note them before done is a curse upon completion. Never wrote the headphone breakdown but my specs in a moderate budget: Arctis 7 by SteelSeries - Individual chat and game playback devices. Physical roll adjust on right ear set volume / balance between each. Can be used as 3.5mm too. Hours battery life. Physical microphone mute toggle on ear piece of headset with LED state. Larger head diameter friendly-ish (wireless and wired) Sony PS4 and PS5 headsets - Versatile compatibility 3.5mm or BLE dongle. Quality ear phone covers, sound, battery life and ease of use. (wireless and wired) Apple AirPods - Very versatile and works across most all devices without too many issues. I primarily use them with non-apple products. Battery life is moderate around 1.5 hours depending on volume. Use on Windows 10 can be clunky between me using an older ble 1.1 adapter due to the bug with some ble 4.0 devices being plugged in after boot. Non-issue with older adapters. Android works well but can have signal cut out slightly in heavily filled BLE locations. Particularly city density hotspots. Best of all for me, does not dig into ear canal and minimal discomfort with repeated use. Battery recharging with charging case boosts dead earbud back in 15 minutes. I tend to run one at a time to keep active all day and chat around, while still having beats up. (wireless only) Suddenly, finished that overview way overdue. ❤️ Thank for visiting to you

Blue Yeticaster microphone and retractable arm

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 17:12:22 +0000

Hola to you. I recently picked up a Yeti Microphone in a Yeticaster bundle. Starting out immediately, you will save quite a bit of money on this bundle versus buying each piece on their own. Included for $200 USD are: Yeti USB Microphone ($130 by itself) Compass Premium Microphone Boom Arm ($100 as a single item) Radius III Custom Shockmount ($50 as a single item) If you can find these in stock, $200 is quite a deal. The audio quality is superb based on my buddies in discord. The boom arm is awesome for having desk space and being able to push microphone out of the way when finished. This microphone has a physical mute button! You can also pull the USB out of the microphone as the arm also has a cable management guide and quite long USB cable. You can plug a headset into the microphone to test levels but I have not used that yet. 😛 There is a headphone volume control on the front of the mic. On the rear of the microphone you have Gain and Pattern. Gain being the level microphone activates. I have to test more to try and wash out my mechanical keyboard that comes it a little bit, but not super loud. Pattern is basically the waveform of range microphone will pickup on. Switchable Polar Patterns are: Stereo Omnidirectional Cardioid Bidirectional I have this as a recording source in Streamlabs OBS and adjust my microphone level to not wash out anyone else chatting from discord. If you are looking for a quality microphone with means to not eat space on your desktop, I would certainly pick the Yeticaster bundle up. As for software and drivers? Literally plug-n-play. Windows picked it up with no applications needing be installed, it just acts like a regular microphone, as ones that come on laptops do.

Closed requests feature

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 02:46:59 +0000

Forum level essentially lets me have bug capabilities, if not at least requests.

General Chat!!!1

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 02:15:10 +0000

I made well the ability to thread random topics here in Adventure forum. Direct link because https://funtimebliss.com/forums/index.php?/forum/29-adventure/ I installed and made default a dark theme. Especially since I saw the manual theme I butchered with neon yellow. I will delete the old one now too. You should be defaulted to custom dark theme, else can default blanco ipb theme. Be well and happy to have had you read here

NAS

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 01:12:22 +0000

Curious what everyone is running as a NAS. I have been running a Lenovo (rebranded Iomega) ix4-300d w/4x2TB hard drives for a number of years but the NAS is filling up and I need more storage. Looking at getting a Synology 920+ but don't know much or even if it is remotely better than QNAP, for my usage, which is way cheaper. WD also makes relatively cheap NAS's but from online reviews they are not great. I know I can build my own or repurpose an old PC fairly easily but I like the low power / small form factor as what I have now sits in a cupboard and just hums away. I use it for storage and network play via DLNA, not on the plex train...yet.

HouseOfPlus streaming

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 20:51:10 +0000

Hola all and shucks howdy. Welcome back and re-greets to any and all old lurkers 🙂 We have been playing some modern and old games on some streaming. J0k3r put the core streaming work in and has his up on Twitch. https://houseofplus.com forwards to our Facebook live page as well. @J0k3r Twitch page is https://www.twitch.tv/FreekNL33 We have Discord channel for text and voice chilling too. https://discord.gg/WGZ24By9Rn https://d.houseofplus.com resolves to the same discord channel invite. https://discord.houseofplus.com points to the same invite.

Watch Dogs Legion

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 00:27:28 +0000

I am enjoying a bit of vacation and playing Watch Dogs Legion. It's the 3rd installment of the series and this one takes place in London. Familiar game mechanics from the prior and especially last game are still heavily intact. No current multiplayer but that is showing to be sometime in December, based on the game menu for the MP option. I am playing on a PS4 Pro that I also replaced the HDD with a non-mechanical drive getting a little bit of a load boost for shorter load times using a SSD. Graphic quality and game performance is overall smooth. I only had one crash game instance but my autosave let me resume from where I left off. The character recruiter system is pretty cool. You get to enlist a wide range of people into DedSec and you can get through most any mission without the highly specialized characters. I tend to play stealth and count on my spider drone for most all take downs.

Oculus Thread - Quest Edition

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 01:39:27 +0000

Hey, Forums are up~! I recently sold my Rift S and got a Quest 2 headset. My jump was motivated by getting a Quest 1 headset a bit before the Quest 2 released. Long story short, the stand alone Quest headset functionality is pretty impressive but as a bonus, you can hook a Quest up to your PC and use it for PCVR / Rift Games. This morning I got the Oculus Link cable. This is an expensive ($80 USD) USB3 cable that has a fiber optic connection apparently. I was using the USB cable that came with thew Quest 1 and thought it was a Link cable, but I was quite wrong. The Quest 1 cable looks very similar until you see both cables side by side, as the Link cable is quite a bit thicker. Keep in mind the cable that comes with the Quest 1 is only USB2 and caps out speed wise at 360 MB/s or so. A Link cable connects as USB3 and the speeds are about 2.4 GB/s on my desktop. Oculus Link cable support is still largely rolled out for Quest 1 support and does not upscale to Quest 2 at a higher resolution yet... but there are some tools available in the Public Test Channel / Beta line of the Oculus desktop software. C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-diagnostics You can edit Oculus Link parameters here to increase your Encode Bitrate and Encode Resolution Width. Doing this on the USB2 cable is kind of a waste since it will not like being set to 350 to 500 for the Bitrate Mbps. If using a cable to your desktop sounds shitty, you can also use Virtual Desktop to connect to your PC for remote desktop but also actually play desktop VR games from SteamVR or your Oculus Library. Quick overview is you buy the app on the Oculus Quest store, run the streamer app on your PC then you can connect. If you would like some Quest diagnostics, feel free to sideload OVRMetrics to your quest headset. Freeze frame to mention sideloading apps on your quest! This Oculus guide shows you how to sideload from the debug console. Better yet you can also use SideQuest to install custom APKs and browse the custom VR software community. Huge amount of games and utilities available. When you have Virtual Desktop installed, you want to sideload the patch from the SideQuest community. The Dev added functionality for your SteamVR games to keep working well. Most all stuff works pretty well wirelessly however you will possibly want to plug in a cable for the more intense game like Half Life: Alyx That is a good overview for the time being. Speaking of Alyx, I'm off to play more of this with a mix of Tetris Effect. Tetris Effect is rad and I cannot even explain why it's so good. I play so much of it, especially on weekends for the community events. I'll add more as I think of it and feel free to ask any questions. 🙂 I also have a prescription lenses insert for my headset. Happily, the same ones I got for my Rift S, work on the Quest 1 and Quest 2. Glad I didn't have to buy a new pair of lenses.

Ooops all bandwidth

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 18:31:41 +0000

Audio files ate up my bandwidth really really fast lol. This as you can see is currently resolved 🙂 Back for spooky season

wat up

Mon, 20 Jul 2020 01:26:45 +0000

Been a bit. I have been in a linux life and steeping through containers, inter-connectivity and uptime debugging. It has been busy and I learned quite a bit, as I continue to make efforts in. Trying to be a sociable at least present person again more. Hope you are doing well currently. Keep it up

Final Fantasy VII Remake

Thu, 30 Apr 2020 00:51:15 +0000

I picked up the Final Fantasy 7 Remake on PS4 and wrapped this up around 44 hours of playtime. For conversation's sake I only played the original Final Fantasy VII back in 2013. Let us note this new remake is different from the original game and that this game installment covers Midgar. Not to get overly detailed or spoilerish, but this is a different title than the original. I was a little concerned when I started hearing about the remake, since I thought it would just re-tell the original but in a multi-game format. Also I have heard some friends describe this similar to Kingdom Hearts, but I never played any of those games. I had a good time playing this. The combat system is similar to Final Fantasy XIII with it's ATB system. One thing that took me longer to figure out than it should have, was that you can set your Party Leader in the settings menu. This will default your control to that party member in battles. This will make learning weapon skills and leveling weapons, much easier. Once you master a weapon by using the weapon skills associated to it, you can use those weapon skills with any weapon on that character. I played this on a PS4 Pro with a Western Digital 1TB SSD installed, as I replaced the standard 5400 RPM SATA Drive. Luckily, the PS4 makes replacing drives easy, like it was on the PS3. They even actually have a guide for it on the Sony site for replacing the drive. I did a little bit of post-game content too, but I doubt I'm going for 100% clear. It was a good time and I will check out the next installment. Granted by then, it will probably be a PS5 title. I attached my save game details too.

Quarantine edition

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 13:28:57 +0000

Quarantine edition indeed. Welcome to some odd 2020 that seems like quite a stretch. I don't have a ton to think of but I only woke up a little bit ago today as well. Been walking our dog and spending quite some time in the house. Getting sleep between working and trying to chill. Getting ready to push an episode out, as last night was a good time. Speaking of events you do not have to go outside for, check out https://twitter.com/PancakesCon Enjoy the content or maybe even submit a talk. Rules for submission can be found here. Stay well out there and as always thank you for visiting and reading.

Joycon drift on Nintendo Switch

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 02:24:52 +0000

I wanted to make a thread for Joy-Con drift issues on Switch gamepads. I have 3 pairs of Joy-Cons and 2 of the left controllers have heavy and significant drift issues. You can confirm joystick drift on your Switch too. I called Nintendo for support on the first pair and they showed me the diagnostic options. Go To Settings * Controllers and Sensors (near the bottom of list) * Calibrate Control Sticks You will be asked to press down on the stick you want to calibrate / test. Rotate the stick and if you have drift, you will see the cross icon move from center, without you moving anything. If you call Nintendo support, you would need to send them in for repair. The repair cost was $35 if I recall correctly, not including your cost to ship them in. So in that case, it's about the same price to buy a new one... or you can repair your own for about $20 in parts. The ifixit link has parts and also the guide to replacing the analog stick. I have 2 left sticks with drift. All 3 of my right Joy-Cons are working without drift from what I have seen. Telltale symptoms of drift, are when playing a game, my character would veer to the left without my pressing on the control stick or moving it. When I called Nintendo Support, I believe the warranty for controllers is 90 days. (Ahh, yes it is here in the States for Accessories Warranty). Console has a 1 year warranty that applies to the original Joy-Cons that come with the system are also covered for one year. I know there was online chatter about 'free' replacements of Joy-Cons but when I called earlier in November 2019 or so, paying to replace was my only option. Just for conversation's sake, the Switch Pro Controller does not seem to have this hat issue at all. I wanted to make a thread on this and my experiences. I am thinking about ordering some replacement sticks and installing those. Granted I am not a fan of the tiny ribbon cables but I do already have a Switch repair kit with all of the screwdriver bits and plastic tools.

2020 Countdown

Thu, 26 Dec 2019 23:24:15 +0000

Get ready for the roaring 20s to return. In current case, I'm playing Link's Awakening again but this time it's the Switch edition. The holiday was good to us. Random note if you have a Rift CV1. Amazon will give you $209 trade in credit for it. They even give you a free shipping label. That was a nice means to clear out some space at home and get some loot back, as the Rift S is vastly improved visual quality. Screen door effect be gone, compared to the CV1. Speaking of such, I'm still playing a bit of VR between other games and the old home project shuffles.

Arizona Sunshine

Wed, 04 Dec 2019 18:46:30 +0000

I spent a few hours playing Arizona Sunshine this week. For you Rift players, this will be a standing only title as sitting does not fair too well. As this is a shooter title (with zombies), you may be familiar with reaching to your waist or torso for actions such as reloading ammo and switching guns. For sake of context, I am playing on a Rift S headset with software purchased from the Oculus Store. Hardware is on a Windows 10 Pro Install build 1903 (10.0.18362.418) Intel Core i7-7700K CPU Nvidia 1080 Ti 11 GB model GPU 32 GB PC-3200 DDR4 500 GB NVMe SSD Oculus Rift S headset running non-beta Oculus software Nvidia drivers version 436.15 Starting out, I had a game crash upon getting my first achievement a few minutes in. One of those weird ones where the app stops responding and the game window is like a flat display and if you look around, the rest of your environment is blacked out, instead of the 3d world view you normally have. VR can be trippy like that. After the crash, I loaded back up and luckily it was after a level checkpoint so I lost minimal progress. I played for a few hours since and have had zero crashes since then. I don't want to spoil anything but I will say some levels get very creepy. Think Left 4 Dead style zombie rushes at some points. Since I normally play VR at night, my means to play standing games is more limited but I put some time in this week to dive into this game. I did not get any of the DLC content so far as with a few hours in, I did not finish the story mode yet. As normal for me, I play a little slower than many but have seen some youtube playthroughs complete in about 2 hours. I probably have about 3 in so far so I could see finishing the main story around 5 to 6 hours. Heads up this game has been on sale recently too. I saw some people in the steam forums mentioning issues with the Valve Index controls, but figure the Vive is probably fine and I have not really seen any control issues on the Rift. I may finish this up today as I picked up a couple more games this week to embrace while on holiday. Edit: Yo, that was a fun ride. I played on Easy and still felt it was a good challenge. Story was pretty fun too. Just to note, a few times, you will be facing infinite spawns, if you do not proceed to the next point. Most of them are pretty obvious so I do not consider that a strike against the game. As for play mechanic / movement, I went with the default teleporting option. Locomotion is an option but in that game it would not have suited me well. I do set locomotion in some titles but for the pace of that game, it would have been too fast and probably made me sick. Speaking of such, with teleporting and rotating with controller hat presses, I did not find myself getting nauseous. Zombie attacks are intense though and might give you a little startle 🙂 Rad game! I may get the DLC sometime soon as the 2 packs are $2.50 and $5.00. This recently launched on the Oculus Quest if you want to play it on an unwired headset. You would need to buy it again since there is no cross-buy promotion for this game. Speaking of wires, I certainly found myself turned around pretty often playing this. I use a fan to keep my sweat levels down and to also help me know what direction I am facing IRL. Even not on sale, Arizona Sunshine is a good ride. It has multiplayer as well but I only played single player so far. 6 hours of playtime seems to be pretty accurate for how long I played through the story.

52 Game Challenge. 52 weeks or less.

Sun, 24 Nov 2019 00:03:11 +0000

Typically you're meant to start this at the start of the year a game a week over 52 weeks, due to work and other commitments I've been putting this off for years while continually buying new games how ever this ended on Friday 22.11.19 and I'll be moving forward with this commitment and use here to post the games and what I think of them will be smashing out a bunch of game pass indies to give me leeway first over the holiday break. Will not be going for achievement completion on any of these titles just the main story line but any gamerscore increase that has been very slight since the 360 days would be appreciated 😂 This list will also include a bunch of titles I decided to play an hour of and never had the time to get back to either.

Xbox gang one

Wed, 09 Oct 2019 14:53:07 +0000

Thanks to some dope people, I am now a member of the Xbox One club. Been playing Borderlands 3 mostly. I was kind of shocked that a small portion of my Xbox 360 purchases were available for download on Xbox One. If anyone else cares, Culdcept Saga is NOT backwards compatible but I still have an Xbox 360 for that game. Before you buy many games, you should really check out the Xbox Game Pass plans. $9.99 a month for over 100 games to download. Bump that to the Ultimate plan for $15.00 and you also get PC Game access along with included Xbox Live service. There are a large amount of recent but not the newest games on the Game Pass service. Pretty good value, imo. Speaking of games, buying discs is funny. They will install to the internal storage by default. With a 500 GB model you will find space fill quickly since each game seems to average around 50 GB. I have a non-Slim or X model, so no 4k gaming output for me. If you want to spend $500 for this option, go for it. Since I had friends hook me up with one of the earlier models, I am more than happy with the choice. Now I have tough calls like, do I get Watch Dogs 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 on PC or console. Considering I have a 1080 TI and play on controller for most major pc games... this will be a tough call. Since my last XBL session was around 2011, I also noted the Xbox interface for friends and joining games has heavily increased. Good times so far. Same gamertag I had before, so if you see me online, you now have backstory.

Fresh up win10 Build 18362 proEd

Mon, 02 Sep 2019 02:02:56 +0000

Been a spell since last fresh OS install. You will find plenty of extra save files in %localappdata%. Save games and Oculus content especially, will tuck your save data into this folder. Direct link for the environmental goes into your local path of AppData is typically hidden in explorer views and command prompts. Happily we can run a cmd with a dir /a to show all files. Typing %localappdata% in explorer will also display the contents in AppData. Some of these folders have os bound configurations and links to other drive paths. For sane measure, select game or application specific content from these folders. Mainly your Local subdirectory of AppData. Most all of prior installed app and game items will be here, if not in your typical [yourUsername]\Documents path. 10.0.18362 Windows 10 fresh operating system installs will go very heavy in having you create an online account for machine login. Pro version of Win10 has an 'I will join a domain' option so pick this and continue making your new user account. Local machine will still create a username with no domain to authenticate with. This is cool if you wish to not have your credentials for login on an internet cloud username. Hard pass on that one. Speaking of domains, if you login locally and your account is not restricted for local login without domain, your domain password last used will remain as the local authentication. Pop onto your VPN at the office or bridge connection to said real domain, lock and unlock your workstation to update your AD (hopefully kerberos based) authentication to be synced. Local machines off a domain will keep their last login, until the next time they see a Domain Controller that does exist. However since you tend to need logon to a local device away from AD network before you logon, the cached previous version of your password will work until you try to establish new connections. Most of the time the password issues actually using a domain authenticated account, are not really clear from the error until you search for online common issues and causes. Save you some sanity there, when connecting back to an actual domain from your local computer, old pass works until you try and go onto other network devices and components. Skip Speaking of domains for being needed on a fresh install. I wanted to dump more details on how normal domain overview, in context to just using a local account with no active domain to authenticate login for. Sweet, you have an offline user account bound to your newly installed machine. The Windows10 installer will blast you with privacy options. Most all off disable sharing of resources to apps from the microsoft store and also your locally installed, traditional applications. You may very well want to disable Windows Store updating as well. While about turning off these privacy settings, you can also control this once the install wizard finishes from Settings. Control Panel still has most all of the traditional OS configuration options you are used to. However items like Cortana voice activation and web search by start menu can be controlled in the newer Settings area. Pressing Winkey + X will display the right-click list from your start button. If no mouse, arrow or shortcut underlined letters will work to open panels. Make a note of microphone and video camera use will be disabled if you decline privacy to allow sharing of default recording preferences. You can allow this for applications and moderate some to no Windows Apps from the store for these capabilities. I have been burned trying to use a new external microphone with the microphone permission to deny all sharing. It was quite sneaky and gave no clear indication of such when I tried to use it in OBS. [+| Draft up: Shortlist of common applications to be installed (can we silently and script deploy these?) Install graphics nvidia or amd driver. If using intel gpu you can leave in hands of os drivers. Moderate recycle bin options - Confirm before delete - Disable save to recycle bin What is the role of this install? - All-in-One multimedia - AV - Browsing Web - Editing - Games - Meme processing - ???

Fallin Up

Tue, 27 Aug 2019 12:30:26 +0000

Whew it has been a minute since I pushed any new-like content. Most stuff has been work or random projects as they come up. For conversations sake, if you ever wanted to use dd for creating a disk image to then be restored and booted from, I can tell you that would work. Just be sure to enable EFI boot in the VirtualBox VM settings (or your virtualizer (aka Hypervisor) of choice), otherwise you will probably get an error of Fatal: INT18: on booting in the VM. I say this as I did a Windows 10 dd clone and booted it up in VirtualBox. Disable transparency effects in Windows 10 once it boots or you will have funky display issues with some forms and start menu too. Once again it is getting a little cooler. Even considering it may be temporary, I'm always welcoming of the Fall season. It was around 60 F / 15.56 C today and that is my Jam. A few months ago you may have seen Wifey and I chilling at Circle City Con. It was a fun event, but in the future, I doubt we would drive the 11-ish hours from the east coast. Flying likely since the train routes seem all crazy to get to Indianapolis. Other than that, I've been making efforts to do more event stuffs but my work schedule so far has me occasionally popping up at local events, but I still make 2600 First Fridays with a regularity. It's nice to get out for some bullshitting and laughs. Lords know my social skills can use the socialization too. Nothing else too much going on for this little journal entry. Still helping with ThugCrowd podcast and doing some more virtualization projects at home and work time too. Speaking of such things, time to grind out the office things.

shuffle

Wed, 08 May 2019 22:40:28 +0000

Hola and may your current be well. I moved forums around to clean up presentation. A little better wording for sub-forums too. I keep forgetting I need to edit the css to remove the silly page limitation for printing content out. I'm a fan of PDF dump compliant content. Granted there is still a lite theme that gets invoked by your browser user agent, I believe. Site does still work on Lynx 🙂

Quality

Wed, 08 May 2019 22:21:52 +0000

Missing out on an old staple to gripe about things like Virtualization being off default each bios firmware update version increase flash. Thank you for this stroll, I know there is plenty of old babble here through the years. I keep on that though just less a so here

add Audio Chapters for podcasts

Mon, 06 May 2019 13:59:13 +0000

Total stub thread. Been working on adding chapter content to some files. https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-formats.html#Metadata-1 ffmpeg -i INPUT -i FFMETADATAFILE -map_metadata 1 -codec copy OUTPUT https://medium.com/@dathanbennett/adding-chapters-to-an-mp4-file-using-ffmpeg-5e43df269687 Testing: MP3 will work but VLC will not inherently show you the chapters. If you encode to mp4, it will. Other Audio Players do show chapters for an MP3 just fine though. ffmpeg -i 049_Hacks4Pancakes.mp3 -i metadata -map_metadata 1 -codec copy 049_Hacks4Pancakes00.mp3 note that the metadata before -map_metadata is my filename with the [Chapters] content. The math is a little silly, but each minute is represented by 60000. I used a spreadsheet in my case to come up with numbers.

Windows 10 patch cycles

Sat, 13 Apr 2019 15:28:23 +0000

Here is a thread to share any notable changes or concerns with Windows 10 or recent server builds. I start the thread with 10.0.17763.437 version of Windows 10. Two things jump out upon installing patches: “This app is no longer available.” message comes up about CPUID CPU-Z. I had version 1.80.0 installed. Latest is version 1.88.0 and updating should have resolved that. Still, the app removal feature of Windows 10 seems to be quite old based off the 2015 date for the build listed in the WindowsClub link from Version 1511. In my Taskbar applications, one of my pinned files said it was missing. Browsing to the path opened the file fine. To resolve, I removed the existing pinned filename, then I just dragged the icon for the file down to the taskbar shortcut and had a 'Pin to AppName' option that applied when I let go of the mouse button. For point of reference I wanted to confirm what recent updates installed on my PC. We could do it via Add/Remove programs and view them by date but we out here trying to notate this, so let's run some PowerShell. Get-Hotfix Running this will give similar formatted results. Source Description HotFixID InstalledBy InstalledOn ------ ----------- -------- ----------- ----------- COMPYX86 Update KB4483452 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 4/13/2019 12:00:00 AM COMPYX86 Update KB4462930 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 4/13/2019 12:00:00 AM COMPYX86 Security Update KB4493478 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 4/13/2019 12:00:00 AM COMPYX86 Security Update KB4493510 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 4/13/2019 12:00:00 AM COMPYX86 Security Update KB4493509 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 4/13/2019 12:00:00 AM Side note to add links for that Get-Hotfix syntax at SS64 and Microsoft Module Documentation. There are some nice flags on there, especially for managing multiple machines. Oh hey. My laptop installed the same 5x updates and also prompted me with a 'Welcome to the October Update' banner in Edge. Keep in mind I deliberately change my home machines to Semi-Annual Channel that means 'ready for widespread use in organizations' instead of the default Advanced Updates setting for Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted) that means updates are ready for 'most people', as that namely tends to mean Public Test Channel. Perhaps one of those 5 updates invoked the compatibility check feature to run again but I will stop here for now, since that is a good jump off point.

Remove meta data from videos

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 01:52:21 +0000

I have some threads about removing metadata exif info from images with exiftool by Phil Harvey but if you try this on some .mp4 videos, you may find the details are still present. In this case, if you have a DJI drone, I highly suggest checking the exifdata. GPS and all sorts of other data is present and you may very well want to remove that from any content you upload. Remove exiftool metadata: ffmpeg -i in.mov -map_metadata -1 -c:v copy -c:a copy out.mov Once this finished, run Exiftool again to confirm that sea of data, is now much smaller than it was previously. For extra fun and confirmation, look for DJI_ images and have fun confirming GPS coordinates from those photos or videos to GPS coordinates on Google Maps.

grub-efi-amd64 error OS Install

Fri, 15 Mar 2019 12:31:04 +0000

Howdy. I wanted to share some issues I am having installing Parrot OS. Long story short, the partition tables are being setup wrong to allow Grub to install. If you search for grub-efi-amd64 error you may see people suggest rebooting and selecting the non-UEFI usb boot to install. This turns out to fail too. What we want, is a drive with: 1st partition: bios_grub 2nd partition: boot, esp (EFI is esp based drive) Your OS partition and other partition choices are yours. Be it one for OS and another for Swap, or carve out a dedicated /home partition. A buddy told me a dedicated home partition makes life easier if you have a multi-boot linux environment config where you want home directory data to be shared between each Operating System running a Linux-based OS. This guide on is very nice and detailed partition layout and configuration for GRUB. It also show us how using gdisk or fdisk -l will show the defined parition configuration. gdisk -l /dev/yourDrive to cross reference the raw partition values to what you may see in Gparted. Partition results should look similar to below: Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 2048 292863 142.0 MiB EF02 2 292864 2390015 1024.0 MiB EF00 3 2390016 275019775 130.0 GiB 8300 4 275019776 288692223 6.5 GiB 8200

SQLite crash-course

Tue, 19 Feb 2019 20:14:03 +0000

Backstory for this thread is I have a project where I want to review SQLite data. SQLite is more a less, a compressed database in a flat-file. Usage tends to be for storing application data, especially in the case of mobile apps. In my case I wish to query quite a bit and to do so across multiple databases. As I have the most database experience in MsSQL, I am exporting data from SQLite so I can place it into a MsSQL Database for better querying and results. There are a few GUI tools for reviewing SQLite databases but if you want to collect data from them outside of their native application, this is where and why I am exporting and importing the data into Microsoft SQL Server. You could do the same with MySQL and your usage would be slightly different (in the case of using ` instead of ' [single quote]). So pick the database platform you are the most comfortable with or like more. Task 01: Reading the SQLite Database. You can open up the .sqlite in a text editor but as I noted it being compressed, your results will essentially be gibberish characters. While there are some plaintext values, we want the actual raw data set. This will look like your standard database dump / csv / tables view. Task 02: Running SQLite. Let's grab a download of the SQLite binary. Pick your OS of choice. In my case I am a Windows main user so I grabbed the sqlite-tools-win32-x86-3270100 windows binary and extracted it to a target folder. Once extracted we will see sqlite3.exe. Get used to running this, as this will get us into the SQLite console. Task 03: Reading the SQLite database(s). Starting off, let's grab a copy of the .sqlite file you want to read and paste a copy into your extracted SQLite tools folder. I tried full path loading to my sqlite data file but it was giving me issues. Instead of fighting with that, I just pasted a copy into the same folder as sqlite3.exe we will be running. This is a helpful document on the SQLite website for querying as well. Once your .sqlite file is in the same folder, bring up a command prompt (cmd.exe) into that folder. I recently learned a nice trick about getting a cmd prompt into a current folder in explorer. Browse to said folder and in the address bar, replace the filepath with 'cmd.exe' (without quotes) and you will get a command prompt into that folder. Saving you from changing your drive letter and folder path in the command prompt. In this cmd window, start by running sqlite3.exe. By doing so your console will change to sqlite> as you are now running sqlite. .help will give you all the available options. Below I will give you a cheat guide in the case of how to: Load a database, select a table, set your export mode and to export the table contents to a flat file! Yeet .open 'SQLite_DB_in_folder.sqlite' .tables .mode csv .header on .output filename.csv select * from table; .quit - For the above console / code example, we start by opening the .sqlite database file. - List the tables in said database. - Set our export mode to CSV. - Export with header / column names as first row. - Output results of next line query to target flat-file. - Enter the query with desired table from listed .tables results (You can review these in console by just typing select statement in console, before you enter the .output line). - .quit exits sqlite3.exe console. I suggest exiting after an export or your output file will remain in use by the sqlite3.exe console connection. Step 04: Review your output then import to MsSQL, etc. Open up your output .csv files and they should look like plaintext output. With that being the case you should be able to import them into the relational database system of your choice and go wild querying away! I should end noting you can also query from the SQLite console too, but since I am looking to compare a large amount of data from various databases, I will import these exported tables into one database on MsSQL with different tables for each. Note: Your exported .csv will NOT have column labels. It may be easier to just add them to the first line for each of your exports! Thanks for reading and have fun heccing all the things!

Forums back up

Mon, 18 Feb 2019 19:46:21 +0000

So you may have noticed the forums were offline since the 13th of Feb or so. Long story short, my host changed their environment and denied any changes broke all the site database connections. After a few days of not helpful back and forth, the forum DB connection just started working again. Just wanted to mention in case you were trying to browse but either saw DB connection issues or a blank white page. March update. Had to bind correct PHPMulti config to allow forums to not white-page out again. 🙂

GitHub I Has

Wed, 30 Jan 2019 08:09:00 +0000

Hey yo, peep my soundcloud Github. https://github.com/botsama I do have some pretty dope playlists made on SoundCloud though. Haha. Most all of the PowerShell scripts, I showed and explained on ThugCrowd (Twitch). Get back episodes on your favorite podcast service! https://thugcrowd.com

Podcast and Encoding guide

Tue, 15 Jan 2019 23:29:27 +0000

Encoding Guide. Overview on encoding video, stripping audio and preparing to submit a podcast. Prerequisites: Use whatever OS you like! I have encoded using the same utilities on Linux, but in this case I'm using Windows. Mac support should be comparable as well. mplayer ffmpeg your favorite text editor some patience while files encode A means to download source stream files. I am using Twitch Leecher in our case. Since I am talking about Twitch being our source file, I use Twitch Leecher to grab the raw .mp4 file from Twitch.tv servers. For point of reference your 720p video if it is 2 hours, it will be approximately 2.2 GB! Shit, that's a pretty big file. Your size to time ratio may vary but that puts into perspective the next step. Encoding to .avi files. Before we start, make sure you grabbed mplayer and ffmpeg. For the Windows heads, let's make this easy and pick a folder for encoding files. Let's say D:\encodes You can set paths and stuf for mencoder and ffmpeg, but let's be lazy and drop those extracted files into D:\encodes. As you may guess, we will also copy the raw .mp4 file we want to encode into the encodes folder too. Next step: let's prepare the encode scripts. Considering you might be doing this for more than one episode, let's just gear up to batch this process out for multiple files and to make your task easier, for each new episode. Pause for giving an overview of our process: Download the raw file Encode it with Xvid to trim some of the file size down Make an MP3 to strip the audio Run a maintenance task to make sure the timing index (You'll see why below) Upload your files somewhere for people to get them (Optional) Make an XML RSS Feed for your Podcast submissions Sample Windows Batch file to make an .Avi: @echo off echo Cooking it up mencoder "041_AndrewMorris_GreyNoise_io.mp4" -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=1800 -o "041_AndrewMorris_GreyNoise_io.avi" -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=192 The 1st .mp4 is your source, I'm setting the bitrate for video to 1800 kbs, -o is outputting the encoded Xvid .avi and the the audio track is being encoded at 192 kbs bitrate for the same .avi output file. Neat. So now that we have a newly encoded .avi file. Be a good encoder and test it! Granted if one works, you should be golden for your other encodes. Remember, that's why we are scripting it too. Nice way to save some sanity while gaining consistency. This will not be an instantaneous process. I want to say my average FPS encoding is about 70 to 90 FPS when encoding the video. So be prepared for that. Next up: Let's cook up some tasty MP3s. In this batch script, we are going to extract the audio from the raw .mp4, but label it as fixTimings.mp3. Try to just run that encoded file and you will see the timing for the track is all broken and randomly changing. that may have been fixed in a later version of mencoder, but I call ffmpeg to fix it. @echo off echo Cooking it up mencoder "041_AndrewMorris_GreyNoise_io.mp4" -of rawaudio -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=192 -ovc copy -o "041_AndrewMorris_GreyNoise_iofixTimings.mp3" echo Sync Audio ffmpeg -i "041_AndrewMorris_GreyNoise_iofixTimings.mp3" -acodec copy "041_AndrewMorris_GreyNoise_io.mp3" As you can see in the ffmpeg call, I use the source file with bad timings and make a corrected .mp3 with the proper time tables. Luckily, encoding just audio is crazy faster than doing video and audio. On an Intel i7-7700k setup I do about 550 FPS in respect to speeds. As I mentioned previously about the videos TEST YOUR OUTPUT FILES! Once you have the first few good, you should have no shock or issues processing later files. Getting into writing an RSS feed in XML: Let me stop here for now, as the next steps would be uploading your encoded files, writing a RSS feed in XML then submitting that to various podcast services (iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts). You can always view source of your favorite podcast (Duh, it should be ThugCrowd) and edit to your whim. While most web browsers do not display RSS feeds in a nice format anymore besides OG Firefox engine (IE: PaleMoon web browser), you will see the XML displayed that is key to being processed by the podcast services. None of the podcast services host your content, they basically point to your RSS XML feed and the file paths you specify for each episode. So you will want formidably reliable a host. As I mentioned, there are some specific tags for iTunes you should specify to make sure your podcast gets listed. Out of respect for your listeners, be sure to add the date of episode, file size and track length. It should also help you get listed since you gave good info out of the gate, before submission. Then when you have a new episode, just add a new Item block with the relevant criteria and you have updates or all your subscribers to know there is a new episode! Ok that is the end of this guide for now.

Jolly Dec End-ish

Tue, 18 Dec 2018 18:18:29 +0000

It's that time of year. Shop for stuff, see a bunch of 'year in review' articles and keep an eye out for extra awful legislation to pass. Besides all that, 2018 is riding out to a close. Security wise, hmm. Diversify your portfolio. By that I mean make sure your credentials to login are really different between sites. Even if they are moderately doing password security correctly in the database, that doesn't say the rest of the login stack is authenticating properly or some component is not vulnerable to exploit. Just for the sake of repeating it, be sure to contaminate data you give to free sites and not like your real name, or other identifiable attributes. Even if that company is not intending to correlate all that information to build a profile about you, surely some scammer and or data analytic company is looking to. This year has been stressful but fun. Considering I haven't been a teen for a little bit of time (hahaha), the old scope of life is a little more complex than to wake up, do as I wish, have no obligations, etc. On a fun note I have been hanging out on Discord servers and chatting up with people and being on some Stream chats. ThugCrowd is one of the main places to find me as I also am the AV person who archives the show episodes, in case of issue with twitch or if you just want them to play offline, by video or mp3. There are some very cool and smart people on that server, I'm happy to be around these chill people. I also lurk around The Many Hats Club. Good people to be found there as well, just many many more people and a faster chat. Final plug for ThugCrowd, is to peep the archives. I like archiving stuff, so it gave me a chance to normalize some of my scripts. Other stuff? I noticed today I am pretty bad putting content on the front page of the site, so I will back fill October post to the Wordpress front end today. :p I still drive a good bit, dabble in powershell and like setting up raspberry pi devices for various purposes. Sometimes I sleep too, well ok, I take naps.

Fallout 76

Sat, 03 Nov 2018 03:21:22 +0000

I played the beta and wanted to share some of my experiences. It was only a few hours worth but I came to a decision. Canceled pre-order. Not to be dramatic about it, but reasons I canceled a pre-order and release are: Always online Fallout. I got the feeling people were shooting at me as I explored the starting content and I was right. Luckily you can sleep on a bed and not get killed by other actual players. Food and Water mechanic. So if I AFK, my character will need food and water and potentially die. Recovering items from your corpse. Building mechanics. VATS completely changed. Since always online, you cannot slow time and aim for parts. VATS now works like an enhanced aim, but with really limited functional use. While most of my reasons for disinterest are pretty popular in other games... I do not wanted a forced always online experience. Co-op as an option would be great but I am hard-passing on a persistent online environment where I have to manage food, water and getting player killed. Maybe if there is an offline option so I can enjoy the content and like actually pause, I would be interested. I am not a huge fan of MMO like mechanics in a game I feel is built for single player. Granted if I were playing an MMO, the PVP is established as a mechanic with some sort of consent, but if I were to AFK in a town playing something like a Final Fantasy or World of Warcraft, I would not have to feed a food and drink bar to stay alive. Survival mechanics as a game mechanic are not my speed. Hopefully you enjoyed my opinion and moderate rant about Fallout 76. Perhaps it helped you make some choices too. I like to pause and take IRL breaks, walk the dog etc.

Merry Spooky!

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 17:55:30 +0000

Hopefully you are having a nice Halloween! It's about mid-60 F temperature wise today. I will step out for a break shortly. Game wise, Fallout 76 had a Beta that was kind of a failure, since console and PC players had to download the same 45 GB multiple times. On the upswing, the next beta window is increased to be from 2pm EST until 11PM EST tomorrow on 2018/11/01. Most of the other ones are only in around 5 hour blocks, with a release on 11/14. Speaking of such, Bethesda has their own launcher client now, instead of you being able to just get the game on Steam. I guess they want in on those market demographics and not paying Steam a cut of sales. Tech wise, Hmmm hahaha. Red Hat was bought by IBM. Kind of big news as I figure that recurring service contract income is a big deal for IBM to be able to attach to their financials. Red Hat is only going to get bigger, well at least they were poised to before the purchase. As a mainline Windows systems person, you kind of have to have your head in the sand to deny Linux computing in the server stack. I have to say the inverse applies to thinking Microsoft is not going to remain in the business stack for some time as well. But enough of my ideologies. :) I recently got a better webcam so I can play Magic the Gathering with some buddies, using actual cards. It's a good time, I just tend to be out a bit between work and the occasional local tech event I like to turn up for. I also helped the missus install Windows 10 in a VM on her Manjaro install. She loathes windows so my powers grow stronger by enabling her to do so. Bwhahaha! Have a nice week! Oh yeah, we are on the 4th Nightmare on Elm Street film for our Halloween sessions. She is getting to enjoy them for the first time.

Starlink: Battle for Atlas

Mon, 29 Oct 2018 18:48:36 +0000

I picked this up for Nintendo Switch this weekend. I got the physical edition with the Star Fox toys. Despite some hate the game gets, it is pretty fun and also looks quite nice. Do be warned it is mainly a toys to life game, so you can buy IRL ships, pilots and weapon toys, or go all digital and save some money. Common reference points are to No Mans Sky, but with story dialog instead of just exploration and minimal objectives. Fair disclaimer: I am only on the second world. I played a few hours and 100% explored the world 1 map. Extra ships do not appear unlockable from story, but are tied to the toy or digital dlc. Weapons may be the same case, but weapon power ups are found in-game. You can get some nice weapon power ups if you register to the Ubisoft Club site and use the gold coins you get from in-game objectives. I had plenty for the items from other Ubisoft games I have played. I may get to try out co-op as well soon. When I do, I will share details on that too. FYI. To use your second ship, remove the right joycon and it will put you into Digital mode, instead of Physical and you can fly other ships.

Powershell Log collection

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 18:25:41 +0000

I have been doing a bit of powershell to configure and interact with various Windows versions. I built up some core scripts to use as my own kind of workshop for system review and administration. I wanted to drop an example script to chat about. One of the things I struggled to understand starting out was string substitution and being able to define a variable that would also consistently output to a file path of my choosing. TL;DR on that resolution is to wrap the other variable you are calling (example: file paths) in a $() block. As seen below, I call my Computername environmental variable so it can be used in the output of file names and logs. # getEventLogs: Maintenance collection script. $boxName = $env:COMPUTERNAME $outEvt01 = ".\$($boxName)_EventLog_Apps.csv" $outEvt02 = ".\$($boxName)_EventLog_System.csv" $outSvc01 = ".\$($boxName)_Service-RunStates.log" $outPorts01 = ".\$($boxName)_Network-Ports.log" $outTask01 = ".\$($boxName)_Tasklist.log" $outSchTsk01 = ".\$($boxName)_Scheduled-Tasks.log" Filter timestamp {"Logs collected at $(Get-Date -Format "yyyy-MM-dd HH mm ss")"} # Application Event Log most recent 100 messages. Get-EventLog application -newest 100 | Export-Csv $outEvt01 timestamp | Out-File -Append $outEvt01 -Encoding ASCII Get-EventLog system -newest 100 | Export-Csv $outEvt02 timestamp | Out-File -Append $outEvt02 -Encoding ASCII # Collect service list and current state of each. Get-Service | Sort-Object status | Format-Table -AutoSize | Out-File $outSvc01 timestamp | Out-File -Append $outSvc01 # Get process list with relevant details at time of script exec. cmd /c netstat -aon > $outPorts01 timestamp | Out-File -Append $outPorts01 cmd /c tasklist > $outTask01 timestamp | Out-File -Append $outTask01 Get-ScheduledTask | Select TaskName, State, TaskPath | Sort-Object -Property TaskPath | Format-table -wrap | Out-File $outSchTsk01 timestamp | Out-File -Append $outSchTsk01 # Wrap all these output into update state / append single file. # Stamp date and Time into said merged output. Starting out at the top, I defining a variable for the powershell equivalent of environmental variables in the OS like %computername%. Trust me here, you don't want to try and call a %variable% in a powershell script. That's what line 1 is for. Each of the following defined variables are my output paths for the collections. I use .csv exports for larger data sets, since the default Table outputs can heavily chop data to fit the terminal output. Brief OCD DBA note. Being a fan of Databases and Microsoft SQL, I really value a good | (pipe) to run: | Select * after a command. You can filter that raw output for fields you want to have outputted by writing a custom Select pipe. There is an example of that for Scheduled Tasks, I just wanted to word out the logic as that took me some time to figure out that is how I can see what my options are for selecting output fields. The other variables for file path are so I do not have to add the same string twice or more. As you can see on the actual commands, I add an Out-File -Append to insert the Date string to each file. Filter timestamp is my means for defining the date output string. That time will be for when the script is run, so each file will have a matching output time. Think of filter in this context as an easier Function. The rest of the script uses either Powershell cmdlets or OS level commands to obtain the data I am looking for and saving to the output files. I experimented both ways to see what output best matches the task and output I want to work with. The Export Events logs are pretty simple in calling the 100 most recent events, saving that to a .csv, then adding the Date string at the end of said file. Service list is sorted and exported to a .log file with the Date string added (as the date will be added for the other 4 output files as well). ' cmd /c ' calls a windows command but ignores keywords for powershell on that line. Huge helpful thing to know when trying to process content by use of an OS-level command. Otherwise you will see really esoteric issues you would rather not have to figure out the secret means of why they are failing. cmd /c is quite nice. FYI. Neat. We are at the part I rambled above in relation to databases and filtering content. I did not need many of the details in the raw output from showing all the parameters of that Powershell cmdlet. Selecting the relevant fields, I then sort based on the TaskPath field (to put the non-OS tasks first in the list), apply a -wrap text for the Format-Table output of that cmdlet, then output the data into a local file. I have done some scripts with loop and condition evaluations but I will stop here for the moment. If you want to gather some information about an environment, hopefully this example gets you in the right direction for your data collections. Let me end with a link to a great resource. SS64 has some good resources and examples. They have been very helpful in conjunction with the Windows Powershell manuals.

Profile fields

Fri, 21 Sep 2018 17:08:16 +0000

I spruced up the profile fields to be in this century. I also removed stuff like AIM, MSN and ICQ. All of those are dead, well short of ICQ that last I loaded, was some weird bot advertisement network. Current version Invision Boards is nice for managing all this stuff. Even the items I added a long time ago, are well accessible in current version. Oh yes, I condensed the subforums in here too. I had too much shit in here that no one really used. I nested the old ones under the Welcome forum.

2018 D33'z Build

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 23:02:45 +0000

Attached is the specs of the new build! Last full build was Sept 2011 (In a older post here) CPU: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X Processor (YD295XA8AFWOF) COOLING: Thermaltake Water 3.0 Ultimate 360mm Aluminum Radiator Triple Curve Fans AIO Enthusiast Liquid Cooling System CPU Cooler MEM: Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 3600MHz C18 LED Desktop Memory MOBO: ASUS ROG STRIX X399-E GAMING AMD Ryzen Threadripper TR4 DDR4 M.2 U.2 X399 EATX HEDT Motherboard with onboard 802.11AC WiFi, USB 3.1 Gen2, and AURA Sync RGB Lighting HD: Samsung 970 EVO 1TB - NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD (MZ-V7E1T0BW)

Traffic break

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 23:21:30 +0000

This post is coming to you from a mobile hotspot as I wait out traffic to ease up. I am guessing everyone is rolling out for their Labor Day (Labour Day for you Canadians) Monday Holiday. Hmm. Normally I guess one should not bait upcoming topics but in this case, I figure I will be more likely to write them up if I do so. I want to throw together a headphone quazi-review thread. It will cover various brands and types of headphones, be them wireless, wired, earbuds or over the ear style. I also recently put a little time into continuing the VM Lab project by teaching myself to read Wireshark pCaps (Packet Captures) better. I'm going to skip to the cut here. Doing short captures and defined tasks heaps greatly. As I mentioned, doing this in a VM lab also helps cut out extra cross chatter you would see in a live production environment. The fun part I got into was running pCaps for MSSQL connections between a client machine and server on a domain, running SQL Server 2016 express. Funny part being, I could see the Databases and Tables being accessed in the pCaps. Table results were obfuscated from being displayed in clear text but let me tell you... this will make working on migrations very beneficial since I can jump into seeing what is connecting where, along with the Databases and Tables being invoked. I imagine there are plenty of potential settings to prevent the tables and database names from being read raw in packet captures. Let's be real here though, you will see plenty of default rolled configurations in the wild. Security hardening tends to be either a bucket list item, or something that gets turned on, once there is a direct cause and effect to have someone look into enabling extra protections against sniffing out data over the network, semi-in the clear. We can look to our pal SMB1 for an example of that in the Windows Server World. Snark aside, I have been chilling. Working, driving, sleeping and getting that life on in-between. It has locally been in the 90 F range with temperatures that feel 100+ F. Needless to say I am especially ready to welcome the Fall temperatures. Keep tinkering, asking questions and checking shit out. Be sure to take a break and appreciate yourself and those around you too. I try not to be too grumpy but that does not always work out that way. :p

Windows 10 Settings error Apps and Features

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 18:06:47 +0000

Say you are trying to use Settings | System | Apps and Features but you get an error along the lines of "windows cannot access the specified device path or file. you may not have appropriate permissions" trying to uninstall a program. You can also get a hard error and better search cross reference by clicking Manage optional features when in the Apps and features screen. This applies to Windows 10 and Server 2016. In my case I am on Server 2016 Standard Eval Version 1607 OS Build 14393.2273. Stepping back on the error, you might thing it a permission issue but in my case I was logged in as domain administrator. Base searching might have you remove and recreate your user profile but that is a waste of time and irrelevant to the issue. Don't waste your time messing with the profile. You can confirm in Control Panel that using that Programs and Features works without error to uninstall programs. Thanks to clicking the Manage optional features of Apps and features, I got info on the systemsettingsadminflows.exe to better search against my issue. Thanks to this page, I followed the secpol.msc steps to change a local policy to allow access for 'Admin approval mode'. Once I enabled that option and did a log out and back in (shutdown -l), I could use the Apps and features portion of settings without cryptic error. Local Policy Security Options User Account Control: Admin Approval Mode for the Built-in Administrator Account Enable this then logout then back in Hopefully that helps you avoid the black holes that can be searching for unable to uninstall program in windows with via settings, or similar strings.

Round up to Fall

Sun, 19 Aug 2018 00:50:15 +0000

I don't know about you, but it has been pretty damn warm around here lately. In respect to Fall, Southern Tier: Pumking is out again. I have bought a few 4 packs and enjoyed them rapidly. The Mrs had a few but I kicked the last 4 pack solo in the night, last week. Haha. So yeah when not working, I have been playing a few games and flying a DJI Spark drone. I have about 4 hours of flight time and am having fun dabbling with recording video, taking pictures, testing range and flight maneuvers. Game wise, I fly my drone like I'm playing Watchdogs 2. Granted I have not strapped a Wifi Pinapple to it (yet). Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is awesome. I love that game and I think I made that apparent in it's thread. I also have about 9 hours into Octopath Traveler. I got it a few weeks after it released but I am enjoying it so far. Good story, each character has their quest line / initial meet sequence, the battle system is pretty good with it's accrued tactical points and well, I was impressed and liked it much more than I did the demo. I heard Diablo III / Diablo 3 is coming to Switch. I'm a sucker for portable dungeon crawling so count me in there. Rumor has it you can play local multiplayer without an internet connection too. If I come to your house to visit you, get a Switch lol we can slay some demons and shit. Reminder I still have HouseOfPlus.com thanks to ImmortalBob scoring the domain back. If anyone is playing games and wants to network it up, go nuts those forums are all you. You are welcome to post here too, obviously if you have an account still but I know it's wild here :bunny; I'm chilling for now but may have some more content going up soon. Mostly random stuff I wish I saw around more. I gotta finish this beer since the cat almost knocked it over. We might get around to watching John Wick tonight. Netflix horror movie selection, kind of sucks.

Cubans getting online

Wed, 15 Aug 2018 20:53:25 +0000

I don't get to post a bunch about actual Cuba but I did see a story of new internet access becoming available and it being promoted as free for a day (Yesterday 8/14/2018). via this Reuters article.. I can only hope more online access comes to Cuba at a reasonable to free rate and more people get online and share their opinions for it. I'm always down to read some more observations from different people and regions. If by chance you ended up here... drop me an email to my username at this domain and I'll make you an account if you like. This site tends to get generically blocked on most web filter systems. I do what I can to get it cleared up when I learn about it. Tech and Games would probably be an accurate category, granted it's not like I host flash games or anything here.

Burn in on Samsung S8 screen

Thu, 09 Aug 2018 19:15:35 +0000

Quick topic to share that I have a Samsung S8 and have an issue with icon burn in from my bottom deck of icons. If you have any icons with white in their icon, I really suggest not putting them in the persistent icon bar. Searching around, I found some people on the Samsung forums noting a similar issue. I tried the whole 'flush your phone cache by pressing {Up Vol, Bixby then holding Power Button} on the Android menu but flushing cache made no change. For grins, I'm trying the Cycle Red, Green and Blue with a program called OLED Tool to see if it allegedly resets the pixels, as is a rumor with AMOLED screens. The specific icons that caused burn-in on my shortcut dock are Clock and Riot (chat messenger). I moved all my icons off there for now but do not to appear having any residual pixels on the bottom of my screen for the Email, Messages or Camera icons. Most apparent will the burn in be, when you are looking at a white page. At first I thought it was some sort of desktop transparency thing, until I looked up the issue. I made the thread for something to keep in mind, as this is the first phone I ever noticed this issue on.

Make a VM Lab for Active Directory

Mon, 23 Jul 2018 19:06:54 +0000

Ad Build Guide: Primer: I see quite a few people talk about wanting to do vulnerability research, yet not having much Windows exposure. It could be heavy bias on my part but for the roles i have seen, Windows is pretty dominant in the wilds of the business world. The intent here is to learn more about Windows domain environments by building a test environment of our own to test on. Disclaimers apply to why we want to make a test environment: I really really really do not want to read about you getting arrested for poking a stick at some Windows environment you found in the wild, without having been granted permission to do so. It is really minor effort to find a server with Remote desktop protocol port open to the internet. Granted at this point in time, that should be considered negligence on the part of sites with that port open, but alas, that would not work as a defense for your sake. I have intended to write this guide with a minimal technical background being required, for the sake of welcoming more people to utilize it. Now that we got out of the way, let us start with the hardware and software used to build your Virtual Machine lab. + A modern desktop or laptop running an x64 processor. You can be running Windows, Linux or OS X for your desktop operating system, as we are going to use VirtualBox to build the VMs. The following guidelines can be applied to your Virtualization platform of choice, but I like VirtualBox for sake of cross-OS Virtual Machine migration and price point for running VirtualBox. + 16 GB RAM or more is preferable. You could get by with less but may find your VMs running low for resources and have less options for multiple, concurrent running VMs. + A SSD drive. Running on an SSD will greatly speed up time to copy an existing VM and also improve desktop performance of the VMs. You can get by on a HDD, but you will wait much longer to clone a virtual disk image and your virtualized desktop OS might be laggy. Getting started, we want to install VirtualBox, make sure VT-x support is enabled (likely a BIOS setting you can set when your PC is booting up) and to download Windows Server 2016. We could go with older versions of Windows and poke those with a security stick, but if you are trying to get some viable business experience, I would jump into the more recent OS, particularly as many businesses have been lagging on their migrations from older Windows Server versions. There is no shame in learning and trying to also be marketable at the same time. VirtualBox: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads Windows Server 2016 Download the ISO image. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2016/ This will give you a 180 day trial install. So long as not doing so on the Domain Controller server with that role active, you can Sysprep the install to reset the timer and OS back to it's initial state. More on that further in this guide. While those download and you install VirtualBox, let's step back to overview your intent with this test lab. We are installing an initial Windows Server 2016 virtual machine. Once that is up, we will clone that image so we have a master control image. For the sake of this lab, let's leave the Master image intact then create 4x master clones. I'm going with 40 GB disk size for the VM, so roughly 200 GB will be used. Master Image (Do not change once all patched) Windows Domain Controller Microsoft SQL Server AppServer. This is optional if you want to save space and piggy-back your potential test application from the SQL VM. Client machine. Not necessarily on the domain. This will be your client device / scan box / non-domain network sniffer. Let's get started: From VirtualBox, click the New button to create a new Virtual Machine. Type: Microsoft Windows, Version: Windows 2016 (x64). Name this initial VM 'masterControlImg' for sake of reference. Click the box for 'Create a virtual hard disk now'. Let's set the Memory option to '2048' AKA 2 GB. Then click 'Create'. I want to add a note that the virtual machine name you enter here will also be the subfolder in your VMs folder for VirtualBox on your storage drive (on your actual main machine). You will get weird errors if you try to make a VM the name of a folder that already is in that folder. FYI to save you headaches on that note. Next will be the Create Virtual Hard Disk screen. Leave the path as-is since it will match the prior line about being in a folder named to your VM, 'File size' of 32 GB is fine (but I suggest 40 GB for when you start adding Active Directory services and Replication), 'Hard disk file type' to the default of VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image) is good, as is the 'Storage on physical hard disk' remaining set to Dynamically allocated. Good, now we can press 'Create' on the virtual hard disk screen. Now that VM is created, let's go into it's settings then onto the Storage tab. The second drive should be a CD icon and on the right side you will see a drop-down when you click the CD icon. Select 'Virtual Optical Disk File...' then browse on your local computer to where you saved that Windows Server 2016 ISO, click OK until you are back to your VMs listed on the 'Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager'. With the ISO mounted for Windows Server 2016, boot your VM to install. Hurry up and wait. Follow the prompts (you want Server 2016 with desktop experience) and select an Administrator password. For the sake of this lab, we can use 'Babydonthurtm3!' without the quotes. You will want to take note of this for later use, as this is the local administrator account for this install and your cloned virtual machines. Wait for the installer to finish and when done, it will let you login and see your desktop. Now the install process for Windows begins. End of the Windows install process. Let us login to this VM. Minimize Server Manager for now. We do not want to add any roles or features yet. Clicking the Settings Gear, we want to install Updates for our Template OS. This will likely take quite some time. Better to do it now than to need patching every other machine we make as well. Install the most recent windows update patches, reboot and log back in. Once the patches finish, shut this VM down. Avoid booting this VM into windows, since it will be our Source VM for new instances. Then back on the Oracle VirtualBox VM Manager, go to Settings for your VM, then Network. Change the Attached to from NAT to 'Internal Network'. You can make a custom name for 'intnetLab01' for ease of reference later, if you expand your VM labs. This setting will allow all the other VMs we spawn to communicate with each other. If you forget to do this step later for other VMs, come back here if you wonder why your VM cannot see the Active Directory Domain Controller. Clone machine image prompts: With all of this done, let's make a clone of this VM. We will name this Clone 'WinDC01_testFTB' or the like, as it will be the Primary Domain Controller for our Windows Domain. Be sure to check the 'Reinitialize the MAC address of all network cards' because you do not want the same MAC address trying to talk to another computer. That would also cause issues with DHCP and all sorts of networking issues you do not want. You do want to make it a Full Clone instead of a linked clone. Wait for the clone process to finish, then boot up your newly spun 'WinDC01_testFTB' VM. Log in to the desktop. Before you get started making this a domain controller, we want to SysPrep this machine. The action of this command will make it seem like a new windows install with the most important result being it will have a new SID / Windows Install ID. As you dig into active directory, you will see AD links the machine name to it's install ID / SID as a unique identifier. If that didn't make a lot of sense, know that running Sysprep will allow us to join each of our copied VMs into this test domain, without machine conflict issues. Click Start and then Run cmd.exe. If it's not prefixed with 'Administrator: Command Prompt' in the title bar, click Start, type cmd then right-click to Run As Administrator. In this prompt type: cd %systemroot%\system32\sysprep then type: sysprep /generalize /oobe A brief prompt will come up as it prepares your install then it will shut down the VM. Once that happens, start the VM back up and it will take you through a prompt similar to when you installed the OS. Once done, you will be back at the desktop. If it asks for an Administrator password again, take note of what you use and write it down. You are welcome to use the Haddaway example from above again. Jumping back to the Sysprep process, you will need to do this for each image you clone from your VM template. I also wanted to mention %systemroot% that is an environmental variable in Windows. If you get to writing scripts, environmental variables are quite the blessing to your sanity. You can use them in powershell to some extent also, so the fun pays off there. Final ramble about SysPrep. If you try to do this on an Image that had AD Roles and Features installed, it will likely not re-activate the 180 day trial for Windows Server and if it was an AD services image, it will likely error on the sysprep process. That's why we have our base image 🙂 Let's wrap this up getting you a domain created. Starting off, let's set this machine to have a Static IP Address. In the TaskBar down in the lower right by the Time, right-click the Network icon and then click 'Connections': Ethernet. On the Ethernet status page, click Properties then Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) In the screencap you can see I went with: 10.0.2.10 on a /24 Subnet (AKA 255.255.255.0) Pick a default gateway that will be the same for all other VMs made, intended to connect to this AD setup. For the DNS, I put it's own IP but 127.0.0.1 (loopback) works too. If and when you add a second DNS and AD Server, I highly advise making your second DNS server be the IP of that other DC. It will make domain fail-over really easy and reliable if you shut down your primary DC or practice a patching cycle like as would be done in a production setting. Another good thing to do, is Changing the Computer Name. By default it will be something like 'WIN-StringofTextandNumbers'. For sanity's sake you can rename this to 'WinDC01FTB' or something more descriptive. To change the computer name, bring up an Explorer window then right-click on 'This PC' then select Properties. Click Change Settings to change the Computer name, then reboot as it will ask you to do. When you run the AD wizard without setting a static IP address, it will give you a warning about resolution issues. So that's why we took care of that before using the Server Manager to add roles and features. Take my word on it being annoying to change a computer name, once you add roles and services. Planning to do the PC name change before adding roles will save you headaches. Since we are in VirtualBox, select Devices menu then the 'Insert Guest Additions CD Image' if you would like to use options such as 'Shared Clipboard' and 'Drag and Drop' files. Once the image is mounted in your VM, run the installer from it's CD drive then reboot when it's finished as it will prompt. This is helpful for when you want to get or send files and text to the VM and your actual desktop machine. Unless you like manually retyping scripts, I'd suggest adding these Guest Addons. Wrapping this guide up, I am pivoting to a helpful guide for Installing AD Services: http://www.rebeladmin.com/2016/10/step-step-guide-setup-active-directory-windows-server-2016/ Jump to Step 4 and it will show you click for click on adding the Active Directory Domain Services under Server Manager | Roles and Features. I am going to present a bit of a shortcut / cheat. Instead of clicking lots of next boxes, we can supply the config options by use of Powershell. The below is the script I saved from the Wizard when it presented 'Export Configuration Settings'. You can run this in a Powershell ISE window or save it to a text file and add a .ps1 on the name to make it a powershell script. If you get an error, be sure the AD Directory Services modules are installed. Install-WindowsFeature AD-Domain-Services will run the PowerShell so you don't have to add it by using the server administration wizard. # # Windows AD DS Deployment # Import-Module ADDSDeployment Install-ADDSForest ` -CreateDnsDelegation:$false ` -DatabasePath "C:\Windows\NTDS" ` -DomainMode "WinThreshold" ` -DomainName "hivelan.int" ` -DomainNetbiosName "HIVELAN" ` -ForestMode "WinThreshold" ` -InstallDns:$true ` -LogPath "C:\Windows\NTDS" ` -NoRebootOnCompletion:$false ` -SysvolPath "C:\Windows\SYSVOL" ` -Force:$true This should let you spawn your Domain as if you entered these values in the Wizard. In this setup we are calling the domain 'Hivelan.int', with a classic domain name of just Hivelan (for Window NT level old support). On a reboot you should be able to login to the Domain you just created. From here, the virtual domain is your oyster. You can make another clone of your Template machine, sysprep it, then join it to the domain. Since we didn't add the DHCP Server role to the current DC, go into your IP options and set all the IP info the same, except the IP address where you want the last octet (4th block of 3 digits) to be different than .10. Then once on the same IP Space (your 255.255.255.0 subnet, means you can have an IP of 10.0.2.1 - 10.0.2.254). Go into System Properties on this new VM. Change your Computer name if you wish but the real objective is to change from a Workgroup to a Domain. Enter 'Hivelan.int' as your domain and it should prompt for the Administrator account and Password. You can always make a second domain admin account if you wish, but that boils into using Active Directory Users and Computers in Administrative Tools. Once you add this machine to the domain and reboot, jump back into the Server Manager to add the Active Directory Domain Services on this machine, but we will say 'Add to an existing domain'. Click Next until it's finished. This guide got a little longer than I intended but I will stop here for the time being. You can then make another clone of your Template VM and use that as a machine not on the domain. Give it an IP address in the allotted space and you can use that for running Wireshark to see what kind of traffic you see. You can then add that machine to the domain or make another VM clone to see how the traffic differs for a machine that is added to the domain. Hopefully that helped get you into a test Windows environment and gave some help on getting started with VirtualBox. If you have the funding and another Virtual Machine platform you like more (like XenServer or VMware), most of the concepts and options should be transferable and have similar naming.

Task details grep-like output filtering

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 11:54:10 +0000

Say you are checking you tasklist output for a certain Windows process id (pid) that matches your netstat -o output. These commands are helpful but matching the output can be annoying, even if you output them to a text file. By the way, context wise this process is a throwback to the Bitcoin Miner Malware removal thread, as it could help for any open port you want to reference back to a running process. If you want to see what said PID in your netstat output is with a single CLI string, here is a helpful pipe option. tasklist | findstr "PID#" IE: running tasklist | findstr "812" on my system throws details on wininit but also shows other process IDs with 812 in them. I think of this as a light grep-like command you can do in Windows. Like Linux, '|' (piping) will take the output of your first command and run the 2nd command against it. The tasklist find is a common and moderately easy grep-like thing you may want to do often if you are checking a machine for open ports and trying to correlate what process details are for said PID linked to those open ports.

July greetings

Sun, 08 Jul 2018 05:07:55 +0000

As usual I have been slacking on posting to the front page of the site. The forums are the active place for newer content. Some threads of interest so far this year are: A Youtube channel for video benchmarks An Android security overview of privacy and security settings Macbook Pro 2015 Update issues to 10.13.4 and warranty screen repairs Using an Elgato HD60 S capture HDMI device, as used for video benchmark videos and POST videos. Raspberry Pi used for dd imaging of data drives Hunter83 asked about some memory, system diagnostics and stability tests while in Windows I fixed an ‘ipmap-binding’ error on my Pi-Hole Raspberry Pi setups Some extra details on Firewall log processing with use of MSSQL and Python Better elaboration on Cisco ASA configuration and light management Outside of those threads, I played some games and floated around some Discord servers. A bit of fun chatting and light doses of trying to help people work on various projects, while learning tons from everyone else. I think that’s a hearty site news update so far! Playing some Skyrim on Switch before the point I should soon go to bed for the night. Ah yes, HOPE is coming up in about 2 weeks! Looking forward to enjoying the weekend of 7/20 – 7/22. If you are going and want to IRL chill, drop me a msg or find me wandering around and say hello.

Video Channel and this Forum

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 14:23:50 +0000

Starting off, whoops! I accidentally set this forum to a category and as a result, it hid a bunch of older threads 😮 Just fixed that up today. Also, I started a Youtube Channel to upload videos. Mainly bug check video captures and some Benchmark videos. Having a capture card now, I can put to video stuff, you would normally need to record on a video camera and it would be kind of shaky. Now you can enjoy POST video captures and seeing benchmarks run at their native frame rates on some hardware. Here is the FTB Video Channel. It has a crazy long URL I cannot define until 100 subscribers. So for now, just make a bookmark I am one of those people who does not really like people talking over videos, so I will explore adding subtitles to them instead. Bonus points since that may make them more accessible in the long-run as well. So far I only have some Tails videos covering boot issues with Nouveau laptops with dual video cards (Razer v5 1060 GTX laptop). Enjoy a bunch of old threads about movies and TV as well, since that got fixed today.

Android security overview

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 01:28:06 +0000

I will edit this over time but I wanted to have the thread up to start with. Overview objectives: - Stop camera from saving GPS to photos. - This is in your Camera App Settings, not System device settings. - Device Settings: - Lock Screen and Security: - Set lock mode and passcode to unlock device. - Password, PIN, Pattern, Swipe, None. - Biometrics. Face, Iris or Fingerprints - I do not use or particularly like any of the biometric means for device locking. - App Shortcuts: Define what apps can be used while phone is locked (IE Phone calls and Camera) - Find my mobile. Anti-theft and traacking options for your phone. - Remove controls: Allows phone to be remotely controlled via your Samsung account - Google location service. Allow GLS to give more accurate location info to where your mobile is. - Send last location. Allow your phone to broadcast last location when battery hits a certain level of charge. - Encrypt SD Card. Your files on the SD card will only work with your phone. If phone is reset to defaults, you will not be able to read the encrypted files anymore and would have to re-format the card. - Secure Lock Settings - Secured lock time - Auto factory reset. After 15 failed passwords (will also erase all your data on phone) - Lock network and security. Prevents disabling Wifi and mobile data when your phone is locked, to make someone stealing your phone easier to track by device. - Notifcations. Choose to hide notification messages on lock screen. - Define what apps can put notifcations on the lock screen. - Hide content of message on lock screen from displaying. (Highly suggested to be on) - Notification icons only. Just show app icon without details, on lock screen. - Device Settings - Location - Turn GPS on or Off. Besides privacy and tracking being less accurate, this can save a large amount of battery life. Turn this off when not needed for directions. - Google Location History. You can disable this from saving where you have searched and have been. - Google Location Sharing. Can share 'Real-time location' with someone of Google. You can turn both of these off and GPS maps will still work fine. The sharing and history are not needed, just GPS being turned on. - Device Settings: - Apps. - See installed apps - Review and define App-specific system-level Permissions granted to device. - Decide if you wish to disable some apps completely or uninstall them. - Review battery usage and mobile data use, per app. - Device Settings: - About phone. - Shows phone number, model, serial number and IMEI. - Software Information. - Show Android version - Android patch level - Various system level information.

Mac OS X screens and updates

Sat, 02 Jun 2018 12:35:45 +0000

I have done some maintenance on Mac laptops before and have a Mac Mini myself. I haven't had any issues with the Mini, but I did with a 2015 Macbook Pro. Initial issue was some screen damage that looks like a residue stuck on the screen. Turns out that was an issue with some Mac models, including the Macbook Pro 2015 model due to the anti-glare coating they used. Fortunately, since they got their laptop at an Apple store, they had 4 year coverage and the repairs were free. There is also a recall / free replacement for the logic board. That repair was $575, before the cost was zeroed out because a warranty repair. The new screen was crystal clear again and the laptop continues to soldier on. We got this repaired in January of this year. Item Number Description Price Amount Due S1586LL/A Labor Charge, PBG4/MBP15" $ 100.00 $ 0.00 S5741LL/A Flat Rate 2 Repair Charge MBP15/MBP17 $ 475.00 $ 0.00 Total (Tax not included) $ 575.00 $ 0.00 Lo and behold, I was visiting a couple days ago, and the same MacBook Pro (2015) rebooted to give the following error: [auth] failed to write file At the bottom of an error log display. if you have an nvidia MacBook Pro 2015) and update to 10.13.4, you're gonna have a bad time. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8338509 I followed the suggestion to select the Boot Disk option, then to pick the Mac Hard Drive to have it boot normally. This 10.13.4 issue looks to have just started again the other day (5/30). Hopefully an update will address this, because a recovery log screen is pretty daunting, especially for someone who does not normally see error logs, as I will generalize and say is the case for many Mac users who do not work in tech. Needless to say they were happy when I got it to boot back up and she will continue delaying the prompts to install updates on OS X.

GDPR details

Sat, 26 May 2018 03:23:55 +0000

Here we strive to put the FU in FuntimeBliss. Ideally typing 'fu' in the address bar auto-completes you to here. I've never sold nor will sell user data. Shit I don't even run advertisements, because I honestly loathe them and find online marketing creepy. As noted before, I'm pretty sure this site has been excluded from Google search results for years now. The closest thing to mailing lists I have, are when I have sent admin emails out to members. I mostly wanted to make this thread as a joke, since everyone seems to have gotten a huge swath of emails about 'updated privacy policies'. Here I'm just trying to make information available. Thanks for reading and visiting. Special thanks to the forum members as well.

Elgato HD60 S

Mon, 21 May 2018 18:43:35 +0000

I've been toying with getting a HDMI video capture device for some time now. Checking around I decided to go with an Elgato HD60 S - USB 3 capture device. I considered the PCI-e options but I wanted the USB 3 option for my laptop use also. I was also able to pickup the capture device locally so that was a nice bonus. If you want a 4k capable capture card, the 4k PCIe device goes for around $400. I got the HD60 S for $180 and if you want the PCIe HD60 Pro, it's normally +$20 for that PCIe model. Now that you know about their capture line of products, we can get into usage. There is a power connector USB type-C connector, HDMI input and a passthru HDMI output. You can use the Game Capture HD software from Elgato to play your input device on your desktop monitor (as a window or full-screen). I did notice the frame rate seems lower than if you play directly on your monitor by changing the display input to use the pass-thru (raw display). Mostly I noticed this playing faster rate game likes Naruto Storm Trilogy. This this being said, I did not notice any input lag or audio delay. Just the seemingly lower frame rate, despite the device capturing @ 1080p 60 fps (frames per second). If you like muxing audio with your game playing, I tend to open Game Capture HD or OBS Studio, so that I can play music while listening to in-game audio. Basically what I did on the Xbox 360 as it had it's own media player. If you would like to see video quality via streaming, check out my Twitch channel. I started out streaming with the Game Capture HD software from Elgato and then switched to OBS Studio, once I figured out Sources control. OBS Studio works very well with this. I did notice a glitch where you want to have the HDMI device turned on, before opening OBS Studio or you will hear a weird static noise. I would say OBS has better control options but the Game Capture HD is much easier to use. A nice feature of the Game Capture HD Software is it will let you change your Twitch.tv info in the program, without needing to navigate your way to the Dashboard | Live settings on the twitch site, for each stream. Speaking of Game Capture HD software, it will write temp files out while running, so be sure to have free space or change your settings to write them out to a disk with space, HDD or large SSD. I'm writing to an HDD currently. If you ever wanted to play something in VR on a big virtual screen like BigScreen or the Oculus Home environment, both of the viewer programs will go full-screen and you can play away with your headset on and potentially stream that environment out as well. Game streaming is cool but since this is a HDMI capture device, you can also plug in a computer or laptop and capture that as well. You can capture BIOS video as well but that will depend on your device and if it outputs POST info over HDMI. I say this as my laptop does not do this, but my desktop will, so long as I don't have a DisplayPort monitor connected. If you ever dealt with desktop capture software and found some of it wonky, this is a nice method to outright capture anything you would typically see on a display and record it to video or a stream. If you want to blank the screen or show a title card, OBS Studio will allow you to do this while recording, if you wish to avoid doing it in post-editing. I started dabbling with that on my twitch stream as well. Wrapping up, this is a good device that works well. I noted the framerate drop when playing on your desktop but want to note it's not unplayable at all. Audio and Input button presses register without any lag I could notice. The included software is quite nice and gets you started without having to learn the ropes around using OBS Studio for Streaming and Recording. The USB HD60 S makes a great option if you ever wanted to be able to record a PC boot process and desktop environment without using desktop capture software, thus removing an OS-specific means to record. Using the recording software and drivers, Elgato has native support for Windows and OS X. I have not tried to record anything in Linux yet. Using the output passthru port lets you play at native console resolution and frame rate, while you record or stream on your desktop. It's a fun device and highly suggested if you want to get into some video capture for under $200 USD. FYI this will not allow you to capture video from a HDCP device like a Google Chromecast. You will see a black screen and the Elgato Game Capture HD and a red icon that says HDCP with a line going through a circle icon. A Roku will allow you to record it at the OS-level but if you try to play video, it will honor the HDCP request not to show video and put an overlay over the video, noting HDCP lockout. So long as HDCP is not restricting your device, you should have no issues capturing video. Searching around it appears you have an option to disable HDCP for Playstation 4 consoles. I do not have one so I cannot verify this but Elgato has a PS4 guide to disable HDCP.

Final Fantasy XV

Sun, 22 Apr 2018 21:29:49 +0000

I recently wrapped up main story play and half of the DLC expansions. I feel it started out slow but by time I hit Chapter 04 or so, I was enjoying myself and the uptick in play and story. Of note, I played on Easy because I'm not a fan of grueling RPG combat. I wrapped up main story in around 45 hours. Semi spoilerish but the total amount of chapters is . I played the game in 4k resolution. Roughly averaging 45 FPS the whole time, while enjoying insane quality looking gameplay. If I had any slowdowns, it was with cut-scenes as opposed to combat. I did have some game crashes (4 total), but not until the final chapters. Checkpoint saves do a good job but I suggest manually saving to be safe. Especially after a boss fight, etc. The skill trees are quite robust. There is also a Wait menu combat system, but I stuck to action mode, short of trying the wait system when I started playing. If you want to try the game out, there is a demo as well on Steam. I mentioned crashes and performance. To note I'm playing with 32 GB DDR4 with an Intel i7-7700k and a Nvidia 1080 Ti (with 391.35 drivers on Windows 10 Pro Build 16299 / 1709) . Running the HD assets along with the main game has my total install folder at 148 GB. I am playing from a Samsung 840 Pro Series SSD that the game is installed on. My Main OS is running off a Samsung 960 EVO M2 SSD. I did not have the courage to see read speeds from a mechanical hard drive. Quick note, there are performance display options in the FFXV menus. I recall seeing load speeds be around 240 MB/s on the load screens. Back to graphics, my card's memory usage for 11 GB hit 96% usage and 100% GPU usage. Mostly when I had in-game crashes, I would see the 'nvidia driver stopped working' error come up. As I mentioned I saw this 4 times total, so I would not consider this game-breaking, since I would reboot and be fine afterwards, until the next crash that typically were hours to days apart. With the tech details out of the way, I feel the game was enjoyable, looked excellent and also plays well. If you want to run at a higher frame rate, you can set your game options up to 120 FPS. I did not really try playing @ 1080p, largely because I used the benchmark utility to get as close to a playable 4k resolution as I could. If you would like an RPG to scratch your itch, I would suggest giving this a play if you haven't yet. I also played Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and really enjoyed my time with it, but Final Fantasy XV is going to be more kind to your time, with less grinding mechanics than Xenoblade Chronicles 2 had. Granted XB2 now has an easy combat option too, so that might bring that main story playtime down. Wrapping up, Final XV uses some classic Final conventions while also taking some liberties with story and play mechanics. I was glad when I had time to sit down and play, as those sessions tended to be pretty lengthy.

Forensic drive imaging with dd image and backups

Thu, 05 Apr 2018 16:42:41 +0000

Raspberry Pi dd imaging guide. Preface: This guide is for sharing a forensic approach to imaging a hard drive or solid state device. I tend to not see many forensically tooled guides, so this one covers imaging from the perspective, that you need a verifiable image of a drive you will be working with. I am writing it will full intent to be useful without needing to have a Write-blocker or needing to run and wait for the sha256 signature checks to be run. In effort to be accessible I will cover the imaging of a Raspberry Pi with Raspbian and getting that running. If you are familiar with that process, please jump ahead to the Action section. My logic for using a Raspberry pi is because they are some of the cheapest functional computers one can get. My logic for imaging the Pi fresh from an ISO, is to be sure no extra data is left over on the Pi from any previous projects you might have been doing in the past. I want to add a side-note that you can follow the steps under action for almost any Linux distribution on various hardware. I have done similar on a current era laptop running Tails before. Your CPU heavy tasks like sha256sum will likely run much faster than on the Pi 2 I used for this guide. USB hard drive performance may also run higher based on your USB drive connectors and laptop, versus a Raspberry Pi 2. Just for point of reference, I wanted to mention this. I also have done a fire talk on imaging with dd. The slides are shared and also transcribed in the linked thread. Preparation: Tools needed: Raspberry Pi SD Card A USB to MicroSD reader (to image your Pi) Power Supply HDMI Display Keyboard and probably a mouse Post-It notes to label your drives A USB powered hub (you want this for use with the external drives) A USB SATA Dock USB Write-blocker to prevent making changes to source drive. (or you can use a second USB dock but cannot count on the full unchanged integrity of the source USB drive.) As I mentioned the Write-blocker, that will increase your cost quite a bit. Roughly $300 if you are going to use a Cru ComboDock 5.5 that I use. You are still fully able to follow this guide without one, but minor changes to your source drive may happen while you read data from it (especially if you browse the drive contents and it generates thumbs.db files) and that would cause a problem in the sake of capturing a forensically sound image of that source drive. With that noted, let's get the Raspberry Pi ready to go with a fresh install of Raspbian OS. Download latest Rasbian to your main computer you are reading this from. Install to sd card with etcher imager (resin.io is the imager I used to write the .iso to MicroSD Card) Put sd card in your Pi and boot it up. Bring up a terminal and set pi passwd (default password is: raspberry) Raspberry Pi Configuration can be found under Preferences on the menu of Raspbian Desktop. On this first tab of System you can change the bottom options: Disable auto login Boot to CLI Now that we have the Pi booted and setup, let's jump into the Actions portion of the imaging. Actions Hook up source drive (If no write-blocker, use a USB drive bay / or external drive). Follow the below steps to identify your source drive. No gparted on Raspbian anymore, so use Parted in the terminal. sudo parted -l Typically the first usb drive will be /dev/sda. Also cross reference the output to make sure it matches to the size of the drive you just hooked up. (500 GB source drive in my case) You can also type ls /dev/sd* in a terminal to see what drive is connected. Now that we know what the source drive is, go ahead and hook up the destination drive you are using to be the clone of your source drive. In another terminal, type sudo parted -l again. In my case I now see a /dev/sdb. This is my second drive I will be using to write the clone of the source drive to. (1000 GB destination drive in my case) For your sake, this is where I recommend using post-it notes to write a note to put on each disk, stating what one is the source and it's /dev/path. Also doing the same for your destination and it's /dev/path. Source drive is /dev/sda Dest drive is /dev/sdb With that out of the way, we are ready to jump into the long haul of running a dd command. This will copy the data from your source drive, block for block to the destination drive. dd is quite a serious command and can result in data loss if you do it wrong. Here is where a write-blocker is especially useful to prevent overwriting the drive. Also this is where the notes on the physical disk are helpful. Below is the command for the setup we outlined. dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=16384k status=progress Let's break this command down. I look at the if= being equal to Input file. That's our source drive. of= being Output file. This is where our destination drive is being overwritten. bs= is Block Size. I go with 16384k as it is a block size I have seen around good for imaging. status=progress is a nice add-on so you can see the results of the dd command. Otherwise you would be waiting for the progress to output once it is done. This will take quite some time. 500 GB source to a 1TB destination drive. Easily took about 8 hours as the finished results state: 27184.1 s, 18.4 MB/s. Divide that by 60, then again by 60 and I got 7.55 hours to image a 500 GB drive to a 1 TB drive. Hurry up and wait as you are doing a block for block image, so it even will copy the blank space to the destination drive. Once done, verify each drive matches (Especially for forensic sake and use of write blocker). Drive to drive sha will not match, so you want to do it for the partitions specifically. Once again, be warned that it took around 7 hours on this Pi setup to run sha256sum against each one of these partitions. Below are the commands I ran to generate the sha256 signature, followed by their matching results. sha256sum /dev/sda1 sha256sum /dev/sdb1 813dcb6470f62c7c12623a0ef092551965b83e501e70dff4e01e1220cebf0129 /dev/sda1 813dcb6470f62c7c12623a0ef092551965b83e501e70dff4e01e1220cebf0129 /dev/sdb1 Bingo! Image is a success and the source partition is a match to our cloned partition. For conversations sake, if you were to run sha256sum against the entire disks, they would not match up. Keep in mind the destination drive I used is a 1TB disk, so it has more free space than does the source drive. Here are examples of mismatched checksum, because we compared the entire disks where one was larger than the other. 83b3b53d577d0ae793c947220b4ef3aa3d323e8349e0d3615b77964ec5baeb80 /dev/sda f24189b6160b9a91bf5037ade4d4ab2f45a9bad9ebe254c0a349688f8987bc10 /dev/sdb That concludes this guide. If you have an questions or feedback, reply in this thread or hit me up online. Thank you for reading and visiting. 🙂

CLOUD Act

Fri, 23 Mar 2018 22:56:44 +0000

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/responsibility-deflected-cloud-act-passes

Switch dock warning firmware 5.0

Fri, 23 Mar 2018 19:28:52 +0000

I've seen some mention on reddit but some of the posts are getting deleted... anyways I have seen issues myself on my switch. I posted in a couple of the threads on there too. Error 2162-002 (x1) (x2) 5.0.0 Lock ups of the system have happened to me a few times. Removing the system from my dock, the bottom port smelled like warm electronics and I never noticed that before. I also had what looked like dead pixels the other day and was flipping out. They did go away after 30 minutes. For the time being, I am plugging the system directly into the AC adapter and not leaving it on the dock idle, as I used to do before the firmware update. I wanted to make a thread of warning, especially since I have seen the issues first hand. Hopefully they find a fix for this, as the theory going around is that the check for updates and pre-release software is keeping the network connection active much more often. P.S. I have Mario Odyssey and have played Balloon Mode, just in case that is a factor. As I know that relies on online functionality.

Memory Info / Diagnostics

Sun, 04 Mar 2018 16:35:42 +0000

Hey guys, Looking for recommendations on a freeware program for live memory info and/or diagnostics, in Windows. Currently, only running CPU-Z.

Learning Linux Issues

Wed, 21 Feb 2018 16:40:27 +0000

One of the biggest issues you will encounter learning Linux, is how most anything you may search for, will fall in 2 camps of info: Pre-Systemd and Post-Systemd. Guides and articles from 2013 or earlier will especially be based on older utilities that have been decommissioned but may still exist on recent distributions. It can be a little maddening but that's where more specific and newer articles are your guide. Ideally, the newer write ups will reference the older method too. Both for the sake of showing up in your search results and showing how both old and new work, so you can get to your solution. Case example for me here, is setting up a NTP server to do internal time synchronization for machines not able to contact a Windows Domain Controller. ntpd exists but not as a stand-alone server, as it's part of ntp services. tzselect works to set your timezone as a command but does not impact anything, since timedatectl is the current handler for system time on Raspbian and other more recent distro releases. Once you set the right timezone, ntpd -qg will connect to your defined external ntp servers, so your local service will have accurate timing to share with the internal machines you want to clock sync. To check your status for the ntp service to see it's running state, you want to: systemctl status ntp I just wanted to share a potentially helpful rant, as searching for information online, tends to bring up the older linux tools. It can be extra rage inducing when the original stuff is still around but has no impact on what you are trying to change.