Gray, a writer.
As much as I appreciate native Mac supports in PC gaming, there is something to be said about the overall quality of the support. Some games are simply not optimized. Its performance is either subpar or some advanced settings are simply unavailable for native versions. Some games run into glitches that are unique only to…
This one belongs in the “there is an app for that” department. If you are an avid NAS user, chances are most of your drives are already connected via network. And that means, on every boot up, you will need to manually login to the NAS on Finder to mount the drives. One might call…
For a game set in the ice age, Frostpunk 2 surely is released at a weird time. I would imagine September isn’t particularly hot or cold in either hemisphere. Last installment for the franchise was released during the pandemic, and even for a DLC, the last scenario didn’t sit well with the world it has…
For unknown reason, Microsoft can’t stop shipping its OS without more bloatware. Both Mac and Linux can be guilty of the same crime, but I am more surprised that Windows doesn’t have a dedicated ‘lite’ version available for .iso on the website. To reiterate, Windows is shipped with Bing search embedded on the start menu.…
Synology NAS is weirdly customizable for a NAS. This one is a compliment. Not only Synology offers various NAS models, each models have usually have few upgradeable points, namely m.2 SSDs and RAM. This piece is about choosing the RAM, why someone would consider upgrading the RAM, and what would be the potential downsides of…
Apple Silicon is more than a mere brand name for Apple branded chips. It’s now a platform that is synonymous with every tools that come with it. This, in turns, has a side effect of “killing off” Windows compatibility softwares, for the lack of more broader term, on Intel Macs. Not that it doesn’t have…
If current generation consoles didn’t have that kicker exclusive, now we have one; and it’s called Astro Bot, and it’s on PS5. The game takes advantage of all the features introduced with the new controller and the console, most notably haptic feedback and seamless loading. It’s quite literally so good it should be illegal to…
I’ve had few iPads of my own. I’d like to believe each was better than the last. Front facing camera and mic helped for video chats. Touch ID and Face ID were nice additions, when Macs didn’t offer biometrics. Retina display also landed on iPad lines first, and iOS apps were first to adapt them…
While Astro Bot is truly a GOTY contender for 2024, there are several quirks the game didn’t iron out. I think “Splashing Sprint” level is the epitome of such issues. Here is how I managed to get past the level, perhaps the hardest level I have seen so far in the game. Walkthrough The time…
This piece is not a technical explanation on what is happening. I wanted to document what I found and hear from other people as well on the potential fix, and possibly Unity and game developers’ input to actually fix the problem. Apple Silicon does make an enticing platform, hence, more the reason why this will…
I still do not understand what was the reasoning behind the exclusion of simple ‘update’ button, but not only iRobot has decided not to include the button, the company uses bizarrely phrased error message for a software update, like “Software update is currently unavailable”. This message is somehow equivalent to “your device is up to…
Continuation from the previous post on music streaming and licensing, I thought to add a bit more on geoblock —perhaps another form of licensing issue— to the mix. I have consistently expressed my distaste for geoblock, and what’s at stake here for music streaming services are quite larger than what it was for video streaming.…
The whole shenanigans behind encrypted shared folder (ESF) goes way back. Personally I would start counting from pre-unicode era, during the period when each developers had whipped up its own solution for the problem. It is a problem that most developers did not truly understand, therefore most of their solutions were either flawed or limited.…
Synology introduced full volume encryptions (FVE) as of DSM 7.2. There were some testings in the community surrounding the performance, and the actual effectiveness of the security itself. The real fun part, and frankly the part that matters for many users, of the Synology’s new implementation is its innate capability to support 255 bytes in…
As a fan, part of the fun in classical music is to listen to the same score performed by different artists: their different interpretations, changes in styles as the time goes by, and in more recent years, enlightening interviews and tidbits behind performances, performers, the music, and the composers, and etc. I’ve really come to…