By Rian

Gray, a writer.

How to Use Alphanumeric Passwords with Windows Hello

This is yet another documentation-related post. The information surrounding Windows Hello, especially why the use of PIN is recommended, is simply out of context for users who would be actively looking up the answers. On Windows, traditionally speaking, a user would create an account for a Windows machine, then the login details would stay on…

AI Translation Poisoning Search Results

If you have been plagued by the recent YouTube’s AI dubbing, video title and description, that’s the kind of problems that is happening across all Google platform. I am talking about the Google Search results. And believe me when I say it, when I google something in Korean, I expect it to pick up Korean…

Dollmare Spiel

It’s yet another horror game from yesteryear with a ‘find an anomaly’ mechanic. However, Dollmare is less an anomaly game than more a job simulator game. Job simulator is a subgenre which focuses on “simulating” real life job — in this game, a doll inspector. The premise of the game is rather straightforward. The protagonist…

How to Workaround Windows Hello Webcam Error during Sleep-Wake

This post is for documentation purposes. I suspect there are completely different cases out there other than mine that simply print the same error message; message is vague at best. Unless the error log is detailed enough to pinpoint the issue, it would be nearly impossible to troubleshoot because of the number of configurations possible.…

Indigo Park: Chapter 1 Spiel

With the release for Chapter 2 finally set for coming December, I believe it’s a great time to revisit the mascot horror that went viral last year. Indigo Park: Chapter 1 is technically in playable teaser state, where the first chapter only debriefs the premises of the game. It is relatively short and free to…

Asset Flips, AI Slops, and Exit 8-likes

Even before AI slops became a known issue for wider internet, I believe the gamers saw it firsthand how a new tool, in the name of asset libraries, can be easily abused. These days, most developers use a game engine such as Unity, and with it, they use purchasable assets that would have been needed…

Who’s at the door? Spiel Pt. 2

Who’s at the door? shows what is possible with AI generated contents in Exit 8-likes, and to discuss how the game used the AI contents, it’s bound to touch on some of the spoiler territories. If you want a spoiler-free review, there is a separate piece for it. This one, on the other hand, I…

Who’s at the door? Spiel

After I had played the demo version of Who’s at the door?, I wanted to see for myself how much more could the game offer for an indie horror game. The demo, the decision which I personally appreciate not to abuse Early Access on Steam, had shown different take on Exit 8-likes as a horror-centric…

How to Encrypt Disks on Windows

One of the trigger points behind my decision to build a dedicated PC has to do with general cybersecurity. To clarify, Boot Camp Windows running on Intel Mac is not particularly more vulnerable than the other Windows machine; it is simply more dated. And being dated, for the sake of security, means not gaining the…

How to Change Default Shell to Zsh

Bash had been the staple of CLI shell for macOS until macOS Catalina in 2019. For unpublished reason, which is speculated to be Bash’s license, Apple has decided to change the default shell to zsh. Regardless, since the adoption, Terminal would display a short warning and a method to switch over to zsh. The command…

App to Find Tmux Key Shortcuts and Commands

Many CLI-based apps on Unix-like ecosystem tends to have long keyboard shortcuts list; it also means being an experienced user in these worlds come with some tall orders. Personally, I think vim and tmux are the prime examples of being useful if all the keys are etched to your muscle memory. For mere mortals like…

App to Access exFAT on Raspberry Pi

For some odd reasons, Raspberry Pi OS does not include exFAT support out of the box. It was the most bizarre experience I had not expected; FAT32 is definitely not going to cut it in this day and age, and most commonly used platform-agnostic file system would be exFAT. It was quite reminiscent of the…

App to Add Incompatible Drives to Latest Synology NAS

Synology, as of April 2025, Synology announced newer models will have tighter restrictions on what drives can be used with NAS. It appears only the Synology branded drives are touted as “compatible”, albeit Synology, the company, does not manufacture any physical drives. The new policy will not retroactively affect older NAS, but seeing as Synology-branded…

App to Test Drive Capacity Legitimacy on Windows

Though I tried to find a similar app for macOS and Linux, it wasn’t such a big surprise apps to test legitimacy of drive capacity is mostly reserved for Windows. For context, the idea behind the test is that there are customized illegitimate firmwares installed on drives to trick OS, thereby users, into thinking the…

App to Create Bootable Disk

While it is possible to use dd command on Unix-like systems to make a bootable disk or installation disk, the method has flaws. And apparently I wasn’t the only one noticing the issue. With larger files, dd can inexplicably fail without much notice. Current USB drives are fast enough that few transferring gigabytes would take…