languor.us

I was trying to install Amazon Games on my Lutris installation on my old laptop and ran into a curious situation. I was able to complete the installation ok as I was able to log into the Amazon Games launcher and install a game. However, I noticed that there was a command line terminal window from the installation process still running in the background even though the installation had proceeded successfully. According to this window, the installation was not complete and the only option I had was to Abort.

I was trying to install Epic Games on my Lutris installation on my old laptop and ran into the following error message:

(This appears to be a common issue and is not necessarily limited to Epic Games.)

I actually removed my default Ubuntu package which was a few minor versions behind the official packages. I then installed the latest version of Lutris directly using a .deb file from their website.

The Japanese lyrics in Polyphia's amazing song "ABC" go as follows:

[The phonetic bit]

あいうえお 
かきくけこ 
さしすせそ 
たちつてと 
なにぬねの 
はひふへほ 
まみむめも 
やゆよ 
らりるれろ 
ぱぴぷぺぽ

This translates to:

yt-dlp downloads the best available format by default. However, if you use something like

you might find that it's not necessarily downloading the format with the highest resolution. This might very well be because it is unable to handle the codec of the video format in question. To fix this, install FFmpeg.

However, this might result in the "best format" being in a codec that you don't want or your device cannot support. In my case, my TV can't handle newer codecs so I need to do something like this:

Across:

1 Leave after finding nothing in big rambling empty space (4,6)

(G(O)BI)* DESERT

6 Tolerate swimming in sea that tastes of tarragon (9)

BEAR + NAISE*

13 Exterminator has drink within Denmark's borders (5)

D(ALE)K

14 Round a great deal, turning out hit that's within hearing (7)

O + TOL< + ITH*

15 Some heat to cook rice, getting address in Spain back (7)

C(ALO<) RIE* [anagram of rice]

16 People fail to perform with that woman's leaderless energy (8)

CH((-H)ER)OKE + E

So I had a bunch of audio files in mono and wanted to convert them to sterero. This is pretty much just a case of copying the single-channel mono stream and pasting it into the two separate channels of the stereo track. I then also wanted to add a fake effect that makes this new dubious stereo track sound something like a genuine stereo track. All this is possible in Audacity. What's more, the program allows batch processing which allowed me to automate this task across a bunch of files.

1. Create a batch file named turnoff.bat on your desktop.
2. Open it and add the following line
   powershell (Add-Type '[DllImport("user32.dll")]^public static extern int PostMessage(int hWnd, int hMsg, int wParam, int lParam);' -Name a -Pas)::PostMessage(-1,0x0112,0xF170,2)
3. Save the batch file.
4. Run the file to turn off your screens.There will be a brief command-line window that pops up during execution.

Tested on Windows 10.

You sometimes want to check if a program that you've installed is doing anything funky. While you could install a full-blown packet analyser like WIreshark, sometimes, that is overkill. A quicker and handier option would be to just rely on good old netstat. Like so:

as well as

-b: displays the program name (executable)

-n: displays the IP address

-f: displays the resolved form of the IP address

So, I've been facing some DNS issues with my Ubuntu box and needed to do some debugging. While I was certain that my router was assigning the Google DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) via DHCP to my machine, I needed to make sure that they were actually being used. Usually, I would be able to tell by looking at the output of /etc/resolv.conf oslt. However what I found in resolv.conf was

An ASUS ROGSTRIX B450-F gaming motherboard that I have had been working perfectly fine for a year. Suddenly though, booting up the system resulted in the following message on the POST boot screen:

The system would shutdown and restarting would result in the same message. I couldn't get into the BIOS either as the del and F2 keys did nothing.