By Rian

Gray, a writer.

How to Block HDMI-CEC

This week is a home theater special. If you have just upgraded your home theater during Black Friday, chances are you are probably facing the same problem as I do. The infamous HDMI-CEC; it doesn’t work. The last time I had the pleasure of working with HDMI-CEC, which happens to be today, it was waking…

How to Add TV Button for Apple TV on Logitech Harmony

Logitech Harmony remains to be few semi-functional universal smart remote —that is mouthful— currently available, even though the Swiss-based company has decided to pull Harmony from production years ago. I’ve seen some new candidates since, but not all remotes offer the big database Harmony has, let alone offering both RF and IR functionality. But today’s…

How to Convert SAMI (*.smi) to ASSA (*.ass) Subtitles

This is yet another “Korean” problem I encountered, because I am yet to find non-Korean SAMI subtitles. SAMI is a closed caption format developed by Microsoft back in 1998. As far as I am aware, Microsoft hasn’t updated the format since, and frankly I don’t think the format has seen much usage outside of South…

How to Randomly Generate a Pattern Lock pt. 2

The last how-to I published had some backstories. It’s always easier to input a pattern lock when it only has 8-direction: up, down, left, right and 4 diagonals. But security-wise, having more options is always more preferable. This is one of the weakness of the pattern lock; you might as well use a simple PIN…

How to Randomly Generate a Pattern Lock

PSA before we begin: if you are using pattern lock on your device as primary method of authentication, find alternatives. Pattern lock is unsafe. There is a reason why password managers don’t try supporting it. Compared to that of PIN, the safety provided by pattern lock is mediocre at best even with the best of…

iRobot Roomba j7 Spiel on Solving Problems pt. 3

The high bar set for Roomba’s software can only be resolved by upgrading its hardware. Features such as “linked clean” would have been entirely unnecessary if iRobot pioneered the combo market and concentrated its efforts only on the combo models. In the previous posts, I have discussed about iRobot’s software solutions in part 1 and…

iRobot Roomba j7 Spiel on Solving Problems pt. 2

When iRobot launched its gen. 3 navigation system with forward-looking cameras, the robot duos needed a software update to stay competitive. In the previous post, I’ve talked about problems that could have been solved by softwares without significant changes to the hardware. Now we are talking about problems and solutions that sit somewhere in between.…

iRobot Roomba j7 Spiel on Solving Problems pt. 1

iRobot, possibly the frontier of consumer robot vacuums, is now just about late in all the robot games imaginable. The company’s lack of direction in developing either hardware or software solution to the average household problems has left the latest iRobot vacuum, Roomba Combo 10 Max, with poorly received reviews. Seeing as iRobot made it…

How to Add Korean Calendars (24 Solar Terms, Lunar Calendar)

It’s that time of the year: the holidays and the calendars. Before we begin, I do want to emphasize the links I am sharing are not “universal”. As I was going through different kinds of calendars, one thing I noticed was that a lot of English sources often lumped “solar terms” as one and “lunar…

Data Center, NIMBY, and Due Diligence

There was a letter addressed to the resident of my family condo unit, asking if we would be willing to hear them out. There is a plan drawn, and possibly already under way, to build a data center near my family home. The condo is in a small village with measly 40k population, —that’s considered…

Amnesia: Rebirth Spiel

I personally did not like the first Amnesia game when it came out. The Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a game published in 2010 was most popular on the new platform called “YouTube” and played by the up and coming online stars called “YouTubers”. I recall having a stock YouTube app, a social media app I…

App to Test Outgoing Port Blocking

I was thinking of adding a category for ‘app for that’, but after some research I found out Apple had already trademarked the phrase “there’s an app for that”. So no luck there, and this time around this isn’t about the app either. It’s a web utility that is concise and beautifully designed to serve…

How to Adjust Aspect Ratio for Image Class in WordPress

If you are posting regularly on WordPress-run websites, you are most likely also posting an image as visual aid —best way to describe what the post is without a single word. And as I had discussed it in an op-ed, aspect ratio is a thing for modern readers, and images will play a major role…

CE Ultrawide, Aspect Ratios and Photography

What is the aspect ratio of your display? Was it ever the core concern behind a purchasing decision? I am aware of this rave behind the ultrawide displays, canonically “21:9”, but mathematically “64:27”, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It only became a concern not because I was in the shop for new…

How to Replace WP-Cron with Linux Cron

In my previous posts, I tried fixing WordPress’ weird behaviors with scheduled post not publishing correctly when the site uses a caching plugin. One such attempt was to add hooks to activate cache purging, and another was to forcefully activate wp-cron.php. I had hoped this would solve the problem, but I couldn’t get the stable…