Home Assistant

WHEE! My Home Assistant Blue arrived! I did the migration a couple of days ago, and so far, I'm impressed.

1.) I did not realize the case was metal. Sweet.
2.) It seems to run more smoothly than Home Assistant ran on the Pi, which I'd expect since the Blue was purpose-designed to run Home Assistant.
3.) The resource usage is much better; process temperature is 25% lower and there's a minor but definite increase in speed. And this despite the fact that my Pi ha 8G of RAM and Blue has only 4.

DIY NAS - A New Thing to Do With a Pi

This means that my Pi is now free. Or was, because since it was available, I decided to experiment with diy NAS (network attached storage). Basically, download OpenMediaVault to the Pi, connect my external four-bay enclosure that holds my media to it, and go to town.

I'm still learning OpenMediaVault, so while I did get it working smoothly (with some early annoying hiccups), I want to do some more experimenting before doing a write-up. I'm not married to it, so I am considering trying a few other OSs.

GUI
The GUI is nothing to write home about, and while it's very organized, the design choices are sometimes redundant so it feels more cluttered than it actually is.

I admit I'm spoiled: Home Assistant has a gorgeous user interface and that's just the default; most of what you do in Home Assistant is make it even better and more responsive and more customized. If you have an imagination and a vague grasp of any programming or web design, you can do anything.

OpenMediaVault's UI, like DD-WRT's UI (if you're playing the home game, DD-WRT is the open source software you can use for routers), is--not any of that. It's functional and I will say you can tell no one there made the mistake of trying to break barriers or disrupt the system or rebel against convention and do weird shit with javascript and too much time on your hands, and that's something.

It's utilitarian, and like I said, the design is both clear and redundant. On the left is the sidebar, which is divided into sections, and each section name can expand or collapse all items within. On the right is the main screen, and in a narrow header above it, it has an icon of a house (Home). All items in each section are clickable, taking you to their individual pages. Fine so far.

If you click on Home, the main page shows all the sections in rows, and beneath each section name are all the items in that section and their icons. Everything is clickable: section name on the Home Page takes you to the section page, where all the items are listed; item icon on the Home Page takes you to the item page. A bit redundant, but okay; maybe someone fears sidebars and you can minimize it.

Back to the sidebar; same thing. The section name isn't just a name; it's also a link to the section page with all the items, all clickable to their own pages.

On the header just above this, it shows Home in a button, then the Section Name in a second button. If you click an item--either on the sidebar or on the section page--that appear as a third button. Those buttons are also clickable so you can move forward and back, though you never--so far--get more than three deep and if you have the sidebar open, it doesn't matter, but okay.

It's not easy to explain why I find this weird, except I can't work out why you need three (four?) ways on the same screen at the same time to go to the same place. Basically, this design means you are always at most one click deep anywhere, which would be good but you are only one click deep in three separate ways. It's confusing if you don't expect so much redundancy but it's pretty much impossible to get lost.

I can't tell who it was designed for; DD-WRT was made for intermediate to advanced network and programming people (and it shows in the documentation like whoa), while OpenMediaVault seems to be for everyone and anyone, at least as far as GUI You Will Never Get Lost In Really (so far, there's nothing hidden in nooks or crannies or only appears if you know the right places to check on another random page or tucked somewhere random because fucking with users' heads is fun).

But there's some things I'm not sure an average user is going to know to do or know why using the documentation and quickstart, and if their drives already have media on them--aka not blank or brand new--there are some things are going to be baffling as shit--though super easy to fix--but I'll save that for my write-up.

Verification/Validation

It's an Okay/Apply system. You do an action, click OK, then you have to hit Apply before you do anything else. And almost everything requires it. The first registers the change; the second applies it to the system.

I am not fond of these, but I get why they exist. Most other systems that make me do an OK and Apply is to save time and resources; you can make several changes and click OK for each to store then, and then hit Apply so the system will do all of them at once. On my DD-WRT routers, it was a time saver since each action would take a while individually but massed together much less.

Which I thought this was at first because there's a variable pause between OK and Apply. Long enough for me to want to leave the page and it won't let me and a banner appears at top with Apply. Like, the pause is just long enough that you're ready to go and then BANNER APPLY. Argh.

Then--new and frustrating--after Apply, there's a third check "Do you really want to..." and seriously????? I can get a legal gun* in Texas with less hassle than wanting to have SMART notifications sent to me.

* That is hyperbole, but honestly, not very much. And the fact I have to say its hyperbole demonstrates that.

In Closing

I got it up and running, scrubbed Plex and added all my media from new home NAS, and gotta give credit, Plex plays smoother, faster, with a lot less hiccups than playing from my external attached as a share on my router. This is not a bad alternative to buying a NAS; I'll do a price breakdown when I do the write-up, but not including hard drives, I'd say around $250 or less.

School

We're a little over two thirds through the semester; in Intro to Computing, provided I finish at least three more of the four assignments and get full credit on each, I should have an A (if I do all of them and get full credit, I also get an A along with a glow of accomplishment).

Programming Fundamentals is chancier; I have an A right now, but that only includes my first four projects and my first exam; there are two projects ungraded, one I'm doing now, four more projects in the future, and two more exams. My first exam was an 83.75, which was upsetting (I studied for that one), but provided I get a perfect score on all my projects, I can afford a minimum of 67 on each of the other two exams. Which, hopefully, it won't come to that, but I seriously studied for that test (I took notes and reviewed them, even) and as he hasn't yet released the test for us to review what we missed, I still don't know what all I got wrong and that's haunting me. And not making it easy to prepare for the second exam, either.

Finished registering for the summer semester for six hours and fighting myself not to try for nine hours until fall. I mapped out my degree assuming nine hours a semester spring and fall with six in summer, but I want to try and go to 12 per semester within the next eighteen months.

It's not the workload that worries me, actually; I can do it and pass (very probably), but this time, I want to do it with As, and not just an A, but a dramatic A, like a 96-100 in each class across the board.

Educationally Speaking

When I was in high school and college the first (and second) time around, I was never sure that I could do it and was constantly surprised when I did, and not surprised at all when I got a B or even a C; I didn't like it, but the ways of the grades and my brain were mysterious and I had no idea why I couldn't just sit and study and have that actually work and instead have to depend on my ability to learn fast in gulps and short bursts of short term memorization. Back then, I couldn't even take good notes: I either reproduced the book or lecture (until I literally couldn't concentrate a second longer, which was often) or all the wrong things; I could not work out the alchemy of how you decided what mattered and for that matter, how the fuck anyone could stare at that Wall of Text Textbook and learn anything.

Truthfully, until now, I really genuinely did not realize the extent of a.) my ADHD and b.) the effects of medication. Back in 2007 when I went back for a semester, I noticed a difference--this was right after I was medicated--but I got an incredible promotion after one semester and learning that job took all my attention for a while.

When I started this semester, it was pretty much how I started every semester; hopeful but resigned to a best 'better than last time maybe?' I downloaded a program for notetaking (and eventually started using it, but that's skipping ahead), and as these classes are pure online without online or RL class times, read my syllabus carefully, got my online text books (I love love love online textbooks now), and settled in to read productively or die trying. Honestly, I half-expected the latter to become a real possibility, because sometimes, textbooks are really fucking boring.

( Now, an ADHD Sidebar )

So yeah, this time, I want A's; I want to turn in projects that exceed not just minimum but maximum requirements and involve many bells and whistles; I want to perpetually have read a chapter or two ahead before class and be overprepared for any assignment; I don't just want to get through class but learn and I mean learn everything.

I mean, I always wanted those things, but now, I think I can actually do them. I live in hope, anyway, and that's new, too.

So among my accomplishments this year, I have successfully flashed my new bluray drive back to older firmware to gain unlimited read/write speed and also to rip 4Ks. My old drive is starting to be quirky, and as my pandemic sanity project is ripping and encoding movies, I went ahead and did some budget magic to upgrade it. Now I did not--at the time--realize that the winter storm had quite literally killed all my refrigerated/freezer food, granted, but I can't say that would have actually mattered; in fact, it getting here for me to play with is kind of helping me deal with replacing everything.

(Note: I still haven't cleaned out the fridge and refrigerator, but that's because until yesterday afternoon, all the dumpsters in my complex were overflowing as no one had done pickup in a week and change and I will not, not, not make the horror worse by putting two trash bags of dairy, meat, and assorted to the nightmare when temperatures are normalizing into the sixties--a week ago single digits, that really happened--and make everyone live with that kind of hellscape. I don't blame people who did--their power was completely out and stayed out longer than mine--but I would have been a lot less prissy if I had to deal with that smell in my apartment, too.)

MakeMKV added speed control to their software, but it has to be set in the settings, not GUI. This drive isn't quite getting the same speeds, but a.) it's a new drive, b.) I just flashed it so I may need to do some finagling, and c.) every disc is different, even accounting for DVD/Blu-Ray/4K Blu-Ray. I tested Ant-Man and the Wasp 4K yesterday and got the rip up to 6.2X, but today with The Stand 1994 bluray (not 4K) it only went up to 5X (at best). And yes, there is a difference in speed reading toward the edge (faster) and the interior (slower).

Notes on Movies

It occurs to me that I haven't actively watched a disc in over a year, but that's only an escalation. Before that, a disc was removed virgin from the case and ripped first; only then did Child or I put it in the X-Box for watching. This is because discs are goddamn fragile and I've had to replace them way too many times (hi, Iron Man II and III and X-Men Apocalypse and Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, you fuckers).

And not just fragile as in "looked at it too hard'; I mean, invisible errors that are there when I get them out of the box. Catching one of those in rip means a 75% chance it's going to be a problem watching and a 25% chance of an unplayable disc, as in, it will not play movie at all. If the rip starts debugging weirdly, it's a warning--not necessarily 'here be dragons', but something I need to watch for in the main movie. If the rip stops dead--and to make sure, I have retry set to 51 times when MakeMKV is running, so it will keep trying past sanity--it's either Error That I Will See When Watching Disc or Unplayable. Sometimes--sometimes--it's in the extras, but not often.

Yes, I know that some ripping software can be caught on errors that don't show when playing, but I've used MakeMKV for roughly a decade--and paid for it this year when I realized that while yes, they provide it for free, this is literally the best ripping software in the world--and I made it as sensitive as possible to errors for that reason. If MakeMKV can't read it (and usually correct it) we're talking losing five/ten minutes of a movie to unplayable. If it can't even image it, it's a return; that's a manufacturing error.

Say what you want about VHS, short of throwing it in an acid bath, they were very hard to entirely kill. The ribbon might get messed up--you just skip through it. Ribbon torn? Tape. If you got desperate to save the X-Files episode "Never Again", you could find a way. Even if the tape got twisted and it looked messed up, you could usually fix even that; a few (careful) fast forwards and rewinds to use the weight of the rest of the tape would flatten the tape and smooth it.

Discs? There are workarounds, yeah. If you know someone who has the thing that can resurface? Yes. Toothpaste when you're really desperate? Yes. I do know many (some horrifying) methods, but there are stop points where nothing can be done, and then there's invisible errors that make you want to die that kill an entire disk. A tiny fuckup on the edge can kill an entire disc. Not 5:10 to 5:20 but the entire goddamn movie. In theory you can image it and use a program to fix the image, and I did get that to work a few times, but a.) depending on the software it was incredibly difficult, b.) there was no guarantees even if you did fix it (you think?) it would work, c.) and that's only when it would image, which with invisible flaws it would not, and d.) I say this as someone who enjoys that kind of thing: it was not worth it. I sat on the floor with scissors and tape hand-piecing VHS tape together for $10 X-Files episodes; I do not say 'not worth it' lightly. It was first season with the tapeworm guy; I loved that episode.

VHS? Acid bath or (maybe?????) a nuke. I was sitting here trying to think if I ever had an unrecoverable, and no. There were a few I threw away back in the day and replaced but usually Wal-Mart had a sale and it was like, $5. They were still watchable if you ff'd through that bit at 5:13 that was messed up.

For Your Ripping Needs: MakeMKV

This is my semi-annual shill for MakeMKV, which is as of 2021 still the single best ripping software I've ever used. If it is possible for the disc to be read, it can read it; if it can be ripped, it can rip it;if it can be imaged, it can image it. It works on Windows, Macs, and Linux (I primarily use it on Ubuntu but I keep a copy on my laptop now for testing). It's incredibly simple to use, the settings are straightforward.

( this got long )

If you read the above, now I explain.

Okay But What About that Thing You Said About Bluray Drives and Unlimited Speed

To rip a movie, you need an optical drive that can do that. This is not as easy as it used to be--assuming it was ever easy--and we're at a place where it requires active effort.

First: I never recommend what I haven't done myself when it comes to sketchy shit like flashing your drives. SO I would not be posting this at all if this wasn't both successful and almost anticlimactically easy to the point I was almost disappointed.

I did it yesterday, it was both anticlimactic and easy to the point of almost disappointed.

Until this week, this wasn't a problem for me; the bluray drive I used was the LG WH14NS40, and when I bought it in 2017, it was still running the 1.02 firmware (I got in under the wire), which allows MakeMKV (and other programs) to rip 4K movies. It's actually the second time I got that drive; by sheer chance, back in 2010ish when I first got my server, that's the drive I chose and it turned out it was the best for sketchy ripping things. Even better, LibreDrive--which MakeMKV uses--finally unlocked unlimited read/write speeds and as my firmware was 1.02 (the old firmware), I got that and lets just say whoooaaaa.

However, all good things become slow and quirky, and my LG WH14NS40 was getting to that. So I needed to get a new drive, and as one does, I went to MakeMKV forums to get the list of drives that are compatible with ripping 4K/UHD movies and decide which to buy.

Ultimate UHD Drives Flashing Guide Updated 2021

When you read that, it looks terrifying. It's not--I'm going to break it down in this entry.

It's now 2021, not 2017, and manufacturers patched their firmware on all drives now being sold to stop people ripping their own movies from their own discs because that's--bad? So this was now a two-step process: I needed to pick a drive and then flash it to downgrade the firmware to the latest unpatched--and also, unencrypted, thanks for that shit--firmware. And while yes, I am comfortable flashing my routers (perhaps too much so) to DD-WRT and back again, the routers I flashed were either old ones I don't use or ones I bought used on Amazon for under $20 and also for fun. This I'd be investing a minimum of $60ish plus external USB enclosure to hold them because my new server case doesn't have space for an optical drive (I knew that when I bought it, so that's on me).

Being me, I decided instead of getting the LG WH14NS40 again, since I'd be flashing anyway, I'd try something new. The slim drives were tempting, but their max speed would always be slower than a 5.25 drive; after reading the forums, the ASUS BW-16D1HT was actually in my cart when I stumbled over the fact that you could get the LG WH14NS60 up to 16X read/write on blurays and sure, it was twice the price of the Asus, but potential 16X read speed.

From the list of enclosures, I picked the OWC Mercury Pro 5.25 case. My LG WH14NS40 is actually using the Vantec NST-536S3-BK 5.25 case, but it was a pain fitting everything correctly and fought me; the OWC Mercury was effortless.

I got it yesterday, put it gently into the enclosure, connected it to Windows, opened MakeMKV, and checked the settings to assure the drive hit all the criteria, carefully read the requirements, downloaded the zip file with all the firmware and unzipped it, then opened youtube and watched the video how to flash it. Twice.

Note: the youtube video is incredibly reassuring. What you see there is literally exactly what happens, especially since it was done with a LG WH14NS60, which was also somewhat influential in me choosing that drive. It also walks you through double checking that your drive meets requirements.

The actual process of flashing took about three minutes. To wit:

1.) Open Windows Powershell in Admin Mode (Start Menu, Windows Powershell folder, right click on Windows Powershell, under Tasks click Run as Adminstrator)
2.) Enter C: and hit enter to make sure you're in C
3.) Enter cd.. and hit enter, then repeat to get to root of C as needed.
4.) Enter cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\MakeMKV" to get to the MakeMKV program folder (if you're in a 64 bit system, otherwise you can leave off the (x86))
5.) Paste .\makemkvcon64.exe f --all-yes -d [Drive Letter of Bluray Drive]: rawflash enc -i "[Drive Letter]:\[Path To Firmware]\HL-DT-ST-BD-RE_WH16NS60-1.02-NM00100-211810291936.bin" and hit enter.
6.) Watch the entire less than thirty second process.

Yeah, it was pretty low-drama.

7.) Opened MakeMKV and verified settings. Everything was fine.

Now, about flashing a drive and that terrifying page.

( the uhd master post: a breakdown )

I hope for those who were interested this demystified the process for you. I've ripped one 4K and one bluray with the new drive and no complaints at all.

Due to so much current stress I've been skipping out on my posting here. I really am not feeling doing an update on life at this time, but I want to spread this far and wide.

I talked about starting to use open source Home Assistant for my home automation needs with a Raspberry Pi. since then I updated to an 8 GB Pi and added booting from an SSD.

Now there's something a thousand times better: Home Assistant Blue - $150

This is Home Assistant's own Automation Hub built by them. You do not need to build anything, like a Pi; it's a single board computer with 4 USB hubs, 1 ethernet, 1 HDMI, with a 128 eMMC hard drive and 4G RAM with Home Assistant pre-installed and a very cool blue case.

It's plug and play. Literally, you plug it in and turn it on; that's it.

Below the cut is a copy of my tumblr post on a reblog about open source that breaks down everything you need to know

( home assistant for everyone )

Home Assistant also has addons for running your own DNS server, DHCP server, database, Samba, HDMI CEC scanner, SSH, code editors, ABD server, Tor, encryptors, Plex, and I think the equivalent of pi hole (either official or community) and that's just to start. It can do kind of everything.

Official Stuff
Official Integrations
Official Add-Ons

Community Supported (non-official):
HACS

The number of community integrations you can get in HACS are an order of magnitude more than the official and then there's the UI stuff. And then there's the ones not even in HACS yet which you can find if you just google "Home assistant" and "Your Thing" which are like--well, a lot lot lot.

If I can get enough people interested in trying, I want to start a DW comm where people can ask questions, post tutorials, code, or just get support and help. It can be intimidating to start something like this, but help and support make everything easier and fun, and I'd love love love to work with/help/talk/support and/or be main venting person to anyone who jumps in.

So I ordered a new laptop and am starting prep to refurbish this one for my mom.

The new laptop (name pending) is a Dell XPS 17 9700, upgraded to 32 GB RAM and a 4K touchscreen. I left the drive alone since I'm upgrading it myself to a much faster Samsung Pro 980, but happily, unlike Manhattan, this laptop has two M.2 drives and I seriously, seriously missed having that option.

Manhattan, my current laptop, is a Dell XPS 15 9575 Two-In-One with a 4K touchscreen; the screen folds backward 360 degrees into a very weirdly shaped tablet and you can write/draw on it with a pen. This is a lot of fun, but among my acquaintance, all the artistic types had a blast playing with it. And drew me pictures, some of which can be viewed by non-me company.

This option is not available for the XPS 17s, depressingly. I will miss it.

Why 2 in 1's Are Awesome (It's Not What You Think!)

I recommend this style for every laptop on earth, but not necessarily for the tablet option.

The tablet functionality wasn't bad and in fact could be useful if you like to make handwritten notes or basically any reason you like to use a tablet. The tricky part is the size; this is a widescreen laptop; 3840 by 2160 or 16:9. In the vertical, it's unwieldy as fuck and I don't mean weight (though yeah, that too); it's just not the right proportions for a tablet when you shift to the vertical. However, some may be fine with that, and anyway, that's not why I think this is brilliant innovation.

It was being able to open the laptop screen as wide as I wanted.

Most laptops open to just over or under 135 degrees then stop. As it turns out, my most functional working angle is closer to 145-150 degrees.

I've opened it to a full one-eighty when I was working and I needed to sit very straight; I had to lift my hands a little for keyboard but not as much as if it were just barely passed the 90 degrees most laptop screens allow. With one of my laptop stands, I generally have the screen at 145 degrees from the keyboard; it's much easier to sit straight (or straight-ish) if I can have the screen at near eye-level and the keyboard at nearer-hand level.

Which really just begs the question: why for the love of God are laptops still limiting opening angle to roughly 135 degrees or less? Even if you don't need a full 360 degree bend (which make it look like your screen is on top and your keyboard is on bottom), a 180 degree is super useful (see above).

When I took my laptop apart after I got it (to upgrade the hard drive also because I always take my laptops apart when I get them before anything goes wrong so the first time isn't when I'm stressed), I paid attention to how the cables thread from the body to the monitor to make a 360 degree bend work; suffice to say, it's not particularly dramatic or lifechanging; you use hollow hinges to thread the wires through. It's not easy to do it--yes, I did test that, I always take apart my laptops to the base so I know where everything is and how it connects--but it's not hard, just delicate. t didn't take special equipment or magic; like, in a pinch, you might get some tweezers to help move or two, but that's also because I have an intermittent tremble in my right hand.

This is a huge improvement on the way non-2 in 1 laptops work in that the cables are far better protected threading through the hollow hinge itself; no danger a cord that wasn't affixed right will eventually slip due to normal daily activity and get caught on the hinge when opening or closing and be cut (and yes, that happens even if you never opened your case and moved things around). I can definitely see room for improvement, but from a internal cable management perspective, this shit is the boobs. This also allows thicker, more resilient cabling if they'd consider that; the hair-thin ones that are so fragile breathing on them is worrisome should be a thing of the past.

(I have been watching the Big Foot ep of Psych and now I really want to use that in public. Everything cool for the foreseeable future shall be 'the boobs'.)

Preparation Is Key

So far, the only thing on Manhattan needs cosmetically is a new keyboard, but honestly, I think replacing the keyboard and touchpad (basically the entire front panel) is going to be the best option because if there are problems with either, at this point, I wouldn't notice as I've been using it so long it would be a forgotten quirk my hands know.

I am really, desperately going to miss opening my laptop to whatever angle I want, but I take consolation that my mom is going to love this laptop more than possibly her children.

( the passing on of a computer )

Upgrades and Repairs

So I'm prepping now for the upgrade as well as the handoff.

In general, I pick the easiest method;

1.) Buy (or use an existing) portable drive and copy the OS partition and move the Data partition.

The OS partition will be factory reset so it doesn't matter what I leave there, but Data partition is my private data and my brain gets weird about that. I cannot make myself reformat the Data partition while I can see data on it, even after copying it to the portable drive and seeing it there. But if I move the data from the Data partition to the portable hard drive, it's fine; the Data partition is now empty and I can format it.

2.) Copy relevant data to new laptop from portable drive

3.) Move all data from portable drive to the backup partition on Watson Server under computer name (Manhattan) and date of transfer then forget it exists unless something goes wrong.

( how I learned to almost not hate backups and deleting )

This has been an infodump of my brain today. Carry on as you will.

I am taking a month off social media--by that I mean tumblr and twitter--to see if that helps calm me down. I'm officially bored with anxiety; I didn't know it was possible to experience both together, but here we are.

In the last few weeks;
1.) learned new exercises for PT.
2.) installed Home Assistant on my Pi, which is something like SmartThings hub but like, so fucking much cooler and better and more awesome.

After problems with SmartThings meant I de-integrated everything that wasn't z-wave or zigbee. SmartThings went to a new standard and also new app and lost functionality, so it was no longer fun; all my scripts were being killed and all the ones from the community were dying. However, it's still an exemplary z-wave and zigbee hub, so it could be used for that (a z-wave stick is about the same price as a SmartThings hub and that's without zigbee), so I finally sat down with my Pi and installed Home Assistant.

It's about a thousand times better than SmartThings. For one, it's web based, not app based, so the web components are both not an afterthought and also exist; for another it uses Javascript but mostly Python and YAML, and I've really been wanting to learn those two.

I will do an entry on this eventually because holy shit, this is fun.

Related....

3.) Did my first fork and pull on github to bug fix a python script. Yes, I'm finally using github as intended.
4.) Am finally learning python (and yaml). I learn by doing, which generally means I need a project to work on, specifically one that does something I really want to do and can't make work in any language I already know. Making my Sengled Color Bulbs work, as it turns out, was the trick.

When doing the integration for my Sengled bulbs into Home Assistant, the Sengled script had some problems and since python is Javacript With Indents, I went to read the script then read the developer's notes. He didn't have some of the bulbs I did, so I sent him my logs and then made some corrections to the scripts since it would be harder for him to do that part without the right bulbs to test (Sengled doesn't have a public API so he was doing it all with the app, a Sengled Hub, and watching traffic and jsons). Anyway, he invited me to submit a pull instead of sending him script bits, so I learned github while python to do the corrections. It was fun.

( adventures in scripting )

Adventure indeed.

Partially to share in case anyone else uses Alexa to control their TV, but also in case I lose (again) my list of working commands that I've tested. This is not exhaustive but the ones I know work. Organized by type and configuration, because each has quirks; will update as new things found.

( Using Alexa on Sonos Speakers to Control TV )
( Using Alexa on an Alexa-enabled Speaker to Control FireTV Stick/Cube )
( Using Alexa on Echo Dot/Speaker to Control TV And NVIDIA SHIELD TV )

Like most people living Life in a Time of Coronavirus (and Trump Adminstration Year Four), I am forever searching for new ways to stave off anxiety attacks, panic attacks, a full nervous breakdown, and extreme boredom while leaving my home as little as possible.

Masks For All Occasions

Sometimes, I buy new masks and now I buy just from here: Bizzy Bates Creations

So far, these are bar none the best masks I have found anywhere. I talked about it on twitter but forgot here so: why I love these.

1.) They fold out to fit your nose and your chin without gapping.

This is my favorite part. The designer was an LPN and obviously got what faces are like in three dimensions and what masks need to do. It fits to the contours of your face amazingly.

2.) Fits under your glasses so no fogging!!!!!

3.) Adjustable straps to fit me and Child, whose head is bigger than mine.

4.) A lot of options for fabric that changes frequently and excellent design work. These are pretty and the fabric is excellent. We have five so far and I just made my July order.

5.) Preinstalled cotton filter and totally washable.

I cannot emphasize enough; I've bought many masks from different places and people, but hers are the best and most comfortable I've tried. The fit is incredibly good, and it fits close but not too close; the fold out means you can fit it to your face. Like, the only way I could get a better fit would be hire a seamstress to custom design one to my head.

Also! She also now sells silk-lined bonnets for textured hair that are gorgeous.

Note: Sherry is amazing; she's warm, kind, friendly, and responds to email promptly. I've emailed her a few times, including today today about the bonnet since I want to surprise a friend with one but since I'm not black and don't have textured hair (and I wanted to surprise her so couldn't ask her), I wasn't sure about maximum hair length or type, as friend does many kinds of updos and braids as well as extensions and Marley braids. She wrote back very quickly to assure me it would fit. I just ordered two--one adult, one child--for a friend and coworker whose been very stay at home since she has a five year old with asthma.

Hobbies in the Time of Coronavirus

I feel like my Shelter At Home learned skill is Ripping with MakeMKV and Encoding With Handbrake Every Movie I Own in All Possible Formats to Play on Anything Then Buying More Movies to Do It More.

And I am well on my way. Currently, my media server is technically 22 TB, because I had to add another 8TB hard drive. Yeah.

After getting NVIDIA Shield TV Pro--RECOMMENDED HOLY SHIT--I hooked up the four bay hard drive enclosure directly to my router via USB 3.0, which works gangbusters. And so.

Drives:
Video
- Size: 3TB (actual 2.68TiB)
- Used: 354 GB
Television:
- Size: 3TB (actual 2.68TiB)
- Used: 1.56 TiB
Movies:
- Size: 8TB (actual 7.22TiB)
- Used: 3.34 TiB
- Movies without a 4K version
Movies2: - NEW!
- Size: 8TB (actual 7.22TiB)
- Used: 4.14
- Movies with a 4K version

The reason for having to get a second 8TB hard drive is my Shelter in Place hobby.
( video encoding is a drug )

I Blame Spreadsheets

My Ubuntu Server Spreadsheet is the reason this happened, by the way. I wanted to get a full list of all my movies, and I thought, why not organize it? Then I thought, why not pull all vital statistics on a video file? Then I thought, why not create multiple sheets to break down the raw stats into readable information?

This was a process, is what I'm saying. A terrible escalating process. But what, I ask you, is more soothing to someone with ADHD, anxiety, and depression than finding new and amazingly anal organization schemes?

Which means there are the following separate sheets:
DATARO - this is a text file created by a bash script on my server that gets a list of all movies and formats it using information from the file name and location and imported into Excel.
DATAROM - this is a text file created by a bash script that run mediainfo on every single movie file and gives me vital statistics like: number of audio streams, number of subtitle streams, video encoder, source, and the name of each and every audio stream. Yes, this is where everything went wrong.

SPOILER: DATAROM is where eeeeeverything went to hell.

MoviesAll - created by VBA from DATARO. This is a straight list of all movies with the following fields: Title, Size, Unit, Resolution, Format, Date Added, Subdirectory, File Name, and Bytes, which is how I get Size and Unit.

That sounds great, right? No, it's not nearly anal enough. I now had DATAROM.

MovieType - created by VBA from DATAROM. This consolidates all movie files by title and resolutions, so I can see on a glance how many resolutions a movie has and its format(s).

SPOILER: this is how the 'create 720p for everything' began.

MovieInfo - created by VBA from DATAROM. This goes movie file by movie file, pulls the name of each audio stream, and categorizes it in a easy to reference table under one of four audio stream types and twenty-three subtypes: Dolby (8 subtypes), DTS (7 subtypes) , AAC LC (5 subtypes), and Other (mpeg, pcm, and other).

The last one is my beloved because it took me for fucking ever. This is where I learned all about how names have no meaning, all the meaning, multiple names for the same thing, and sometimes, astrology, I have no idea.

Behind the cut is a (very guesswork) breakdown of categorization of audio streams. I cannot emphasize enough how much google and guesswork went into this. If anyone sees this--and bold of me to assume anyone read this far, I don't think anyone is that bored--and wants to correct my interpretation of audio stream types, feel free please God I may canonize you when I get my new religion off the ground.
( VBA Select Case Table for Audio )

Anyway, that visual breakdown is what alerted me to the DTS-only problem and how I ended up here today. I have no regrets, and that may be worrying.

In between my last post and now, I have a.) thrown out my back again, b.) six days after breaking a tooth and so needed to make a dentist appointment which was c.) the day after I threw out my back.

However, my life is not all disintegrating body and the slow encroachment of insanity:
1.) I now play Animal Crossing with my Switch, and yes, it's worth it.
2.) I got my NVIDIA Shield TV Pro

Due to the first sentence of this entry, all I managed until this week was basic setup, getting streaming up, and my Plex server transferred over. This week, however, I got to finally sit down and pay attention to it as well as actually make my Plex server work correctly.

NVIDIA Shield Android TV

If you're in the market for a premium media streamer, consider the NVIDIA Shield TV, retailing at $149.99 ($129.99 on random sale) or NVIDIA Shield TV Pro, $199.99 on the very rare times it's in stock.

Currently it is not in stock pretty much anywhere (as of right now, could change at literally any second) but it goes in and out of stock at random intervals. Much like the Nintendo Switch, the reason is that whenever a site updates to say they have it, bots buy them immediately and then they're sold for twice to five times their price on Amazon and Ebay.

The story of how I got my Pro (and my Switch for that matter) involve the website NowInStock, SlickDeals alerts, and absolutely normal human behavior that in retrospect isn't odd, worrisome, or alarming.

( it's all very normal here )

Moving on.

I wanted the Shield Pro for one reason: Shield TV was the only streamer whose Plex client app could consistently stream and transcode 4K and Dolby Atmos media, and the Pro model came with the ability to run a Plex Server on it as well as play Plex content. I'm a simple girl with simple needs who Paypal also foolishly issued a shiny new credit card and a separate no-interest credit line less than three months ago and I hadn't really gotten a chance to use.

(No idea what the hell they were thinking, either, but here we are.)

Which is why, to my own shock, I am not starting my review with All the Plex; I'm going to start with what I didn't even care about when I bought it; the media streamer and Android TV box.

The Media Streamer (and Android Box)

The price tag is high for a media steamer, yes, which may be part of the reason why I didn't at any point consider it something that could also play Netflix.

Comparatively speaking, media streamers are among the cheapest Way To Get Entertainment On Our TV Not Involving an Antenna. If you wandered with dinosaurs like me and remember Olden Days, a VCR was expensive even on the low end for almost a decade even at Wal-Mart. DVD players and then Bluray players got cheap much faster, but media streamers... you don't even need a separate machine; it can come free on your TV, and I mean TVs under $200 at the last big Amazon sale. You can stream on your tablet or phone, or pick up a FireTV tablet for under $50 to do it on. All you need is an internet connection and if you don't want to pay for your stream service, there are free ones.

When it comes to quality media streamers that require you pay money, the competition isn't exactly light, either; they include:

1.) FireTV 4K Stick, $49.99, and frequently on sale for half that price. Just as importantly, it can easily and without effort gateway you into the cheapest Surround Sound Home Theater possible, which I talked about in this entry; specifically, a Dolby Atmos Home Theater system for as low $179.97 if you buy two Echo Dots and an Echo Sub during one of Amazons extremely frequent sales. That, by the way, is less than the price of one (1) Sonos One speaker. And that price includes the Fire TV 4K stick.

2.) Chromecast Ultra, $69.99; like, half my friends that don't have a Amazon Prime have on of these, and more than a few have both.

3.) Roku Ultra, $79.99 and comes with free headphones; Roku was my gateway drug into media streamers because they gave me a mid-range one free when I signed up for three months of Sling TV.

4.) Apple TV, $179; frankly, this being Apple, that's almost the equivalent of a Wal-Mart low end VCR price circa 1989. I have heard it's awesome, but no idea. When I finally sold my soul, it was to a mega corporation that was technically within my income bracket. Also, after testing our apps on iPhones at work for almost five years, I genuinely want to collect them all and catapult them into the sun along with Apple Headquarters and the literal apple fruit, just to assure the very memory of apples will die. I dream about it sometimes; I'm always so happy until I wake up.

These are just the first and most popular that came into my head by major companies and been around for years. The market is not light on media streamers, is what I'm saying.

The Shield TV is more a premium Android TV box, made for geeks to enjoy and also Plex, which lets face it, is geeky as fuck even though everyone pretends its super consumer grade, whatever. And yeah, it also you can do some streaming, I guess.

The thing is, while I knew theoretically it was an Android TV Box (which I didn't care about) that also played Netflix (which I had like, several things that could do that) and did other things, I--didn't care. At all. I was in this for Plex; the Plex Server you could install on the Pro could stream all my 4K and even Dolby Atmos or at least Dolby 5.1 sound.

So when I did set up, it was all prep for moving my Plex server over, and so I was genuinely shocked when I went ahead and automatically entered my logins for Prime and Netflix--they were right there, why not?--and since I was testing anyway, went ahead and opened Prime to watch a few minutes of one of the shows I'd watched most recently.

(Spoiler: it would be several hours before seperis remembered Plex existed.)

The Shield is many many (many) notches above my FireTV 4K Stick and a mid-rise building above my TV's streaming apps in quality. Not like "oh, this seems better" but stop and stare before hitting back to make sure this wasn't a high-res version I hadn't ever seen before that just appeared.

In the almost three weeks using it and one week actually sitting down to examine it and playing Netflix and Prime through it, there's a considerable increase in overall picture quality and crispness and amazing consistency on most--not all--of the shows I had watched recently enough to make a definite comparison; if 4K is available, I can get it clear and crisp without artifacts, skipping, or loss of speed. If 5.1 sound is available, I get it. I also noticed--though three weeks is no proof over the long term--there's been no buffering, no stuttering, and no stopping.

Among the many many settings I've just started to explore is AI upscaling of non-4K content. I enabled it when I was doing initial setup because why not, but generally, I don't notice a difference on most shows. This--this, I noticed, because I'd been rewatching Leverage on Prime on the FireTV stick, which is why it was my test stream for the Pro. It wasn't just 'huh, I think that looks better'. It was stop and stare at the screen; it was cleaner, crisper, and while no, even it could not fix IMDB's fuckup of the subtitles, man, the picture....

I tested with Bones, Psyche, and a few random shows as well, and while I definitely know Psyche and Bones look better, it's been too long since I last watched to know exactly how much, just definitely "better, amount unknown"

Interesting note: on the Shield TV, Netflix and Prime don't nag me when I watch too many episodes and ask snottily if I'm still watching (Netflix) or return to the intro page of the current episode and do nothing until I interact or it turns off (Prime). I accidentally streamed all five seasons of Leverage end to end without interruption and Shield's Prime app didn't stop me. 'Accidentally' up until I woke up the next morning circa ep 2-3 of season two, realized Leverage was still playing, I was working from home, sod decided to leave it on and check in every hour to see how long it would let me. That would be first heist to very last, friends.

Netflix, I tested it with--I think Great British Bake-off?--and Child checked out his regular anime. There was no nagging to ask if I'm still watching, though only to about a season and a half there before I remembered hey, I should try out why I bought it, my Plex server. That yes, I'd belatedly finally loaded when the shock wore off (around two-three in the morning) but as work and other stuff interfered, I hadn't had a chance to do more than basic configuration.

The Shield Home screen is fully customizable; you can pick what apps you want to show or get rid of, there's a huge library of apps, games--cut me some slack, for reasons I'll do another entry on, getting the Plex Server running was easy, but getting my media on it--not so much.

I'm actually kind of glad I finally decided to accept reality and get the Shield to run my Plex Server. Otherwise, I never would have ever bought it for just streaming media or Android TV when my FireTV Stick seemed to be doing everything I needed for streaming and Android TV is sort of--something that exists. And I'm saying this after only a week of active work with it, and ninety percent of that was getting my Plex Server up and running. I haven't even really explored advanced features. I mean, I have but I keep finding new ones.

Now, we'll talk about Plex before I get inspired to write some examples and end up playing with the settings until dawn.

Plex, finally

My original reason for this purchase.

Up until now, when Plex was on Watson Server and then my Pi, all of them--servers and TV--hardlined on ethernet to my router, I couldn't reliably stream 4K content and had buffering sometimes even with 1080p. I could unreliably get 5.1 sound but mostly it was 2.1. There was a lot of transcoding going on where it would basically downgrade my stream to make it play. Nothing I did helped, and even after I read the article I linked below on the only thing that would work (I read it last year), I refused to believe it and kept trying.

After so much googling, however, I finally got a clear answer on exactly why I couldn't by sheer work fix it; the problem was both the Plex server and the Plex client apps on most TVs and media streamers.


1.) The Plex Client App

The Plex app on media streamers, gaming consoles, SmartTVs, etc isn't generally developed and maintained by Plex, but by the company--Amazon, for example, on the FireTV--and that means its subject to the limits of the streamer, whatever their developers decide to do/not do, and when/if they felt like updating it when Plex updates, and Plex wasn't necessarily a high priority. Enough people used it that it was worth having the client app, but it's still firmly in geek territory and wouldn't be a deciding factor for most non-geek people. Whereas fa media streamer lives and dies on the ability of the general consumer to access and watch Netflix, Disney+, Sling, Prime, HBO, you get the idea.

As it turns out, the only Plex client app that everyone (in Plex land) consistently said worked perfectly with the server was Plex for Windows, which was made by Plex and you can download on their site. It was the only app that I could almost get what I wanted: it could stream 4K and 7.1 sound, since my laptop could get both, but that meant the only place I could watch my own media in the original resolution was on my laptop or possibly, my phone.

Which brings me to...

2.) The Plex Media Server.

( but first, a story )

Short version: oh hell yes.

The Shield runs the Plex server like I always dreamed. It can play everything in my library at the highest resolution and audio that my TV and my laptop can do. Last night, I tested it with multiple streams with a friend and one 4K rip and one 720p encode of Oceans 8.

It played the 4K with Dolby Atmos to me on my laptop and also simultaneously--and effortlessly-- transcoded the 720p encode of the same movie for a friend fifteen miles away with no stuttering, no stopping, no buffering. And the transcoding problem, I remind you, is why I flirted with--very briefly--buying a chip that cost half my laptop's price (not including the rest of the hardware needed for a server, God). The Shield not only does better than the chip would have and cost me at least eighty percent less than the CPU, the Shield is also less than half the size of a Playstation and fits on my small wall mounted entertainment center (aka Fancy Shelf that looks cool and I'm scared to put too much weight on and collapse the wall or something. It won't, no, i had this checked its in the studs. I just don't trust it).

There Are Some Issues Though

Now the other parts.

1.) It's more complicated to set up than a Fire TV or Chromecast.

Not because initial setup is hard; it's pretty much effortless, you'll have Netflix, Prime, Disney, Vudu, Sling, whatever, up and running as easily as any other media streamer. This is more--a side effect of the Shield being what it is.

You see, it's ready to interact with the latest TV and sound system to give you the home theater of your dreams. And if you happen to have a 4K TV less than two years old with HDR 2.0 and all the video bells and whistles, you'll be delighted how easy it is. And even some older than two years might be fine.

Some, however...might take some finagling.

Totally random example: If, say, your 4K TV is two and a half years old, you might click on Netflix and after a moment, check Prime and the other streams since there is definitely still color, it's like color if all media was viewed through a soft grey mist. Like being doomed to watch a Snyder film or one with gritty filter for the rest of your life.

The colors are dull, is what I'm saying. Prime, Netflix, Plex, everything.

Now, this is fixable! It's easy! There are instructions! This issue has been thoroughly discussed! It's not complicated!

a.) Using the instructions for your TV model, you may need to go into your TV Settings and change one or two or two items under Video/Display.

b.) After that, you can look on your TV or on the website or google for info on your TV's video specs, then you open the Shield TV Settings and under video/display, there's a glorious list of all the video profiles possible and you just have to find the one that matches, activate it, done! Yes, it really is there!

But.

I say this as someone who loves complicated configuration shit: this isn't complicated, it's not hard, it's boring, breathtakingly so, like watching paint dry on snails who are so slow they may actually have died years ago, but unable to conform that, you have to just keep watching. Not forever. I mean, so they say.

You see, they really do seem to have all the profiles possible, and by that I mean, I really do hope that's true because there are so many holy God. Yes, you could go and research your TV specs and use that to help but--this is the one time it may not be not worth it. Sometimes the official specs are--not entirely accurate (or lying their asses off) and that's the parts of the profile that I didn't have to research to find out what words meant, and I mean, these were words I thought I knew. Apparently I did not. Sure, it might help--but honestly, I'm not betting on it.

So unless your career is in Video Tech Shit As Relates to TVs and Screens (and Lying TV Making Corporations), it's probably a matter of simply starting at the top and trying every one or--if you're incredibly lucky--your googling sent you to where someone who has your TV model already fixed this. Again, not hard at all, and very likely if your TV is from a major retailer it's going to be fairly fast, but the older your TV and the less billions the company that made it is worth, the farther down the list you'll have to go.

Of course, this may not be a problem for you! Just--its' possible.

2.) It's Origins as a Geek Machine Are Kind of Obvious

The thing is, this is an attraction for me in this case, one that I didn't even know I wanted, but even among ultra geeks, we all have spots where we want simple, consumer grade, not requiring us to do more than hit obvious buttons or choose from a very few very obvious, pre-selected options and call it a day. Sometimes, you want to build a murderbot with proximity awareness, but sometimes, Amazon has a sale and you get a Roomba, strap a nerf gun to it, and call it good. Sure, you have to pretend you don't secretly love your much cleaner carpet and floors, that it's really all about the nerf gun and irony, but it's a cute, low-effort robot that also cleans. Dude, I get you; when we were kids, we all wanted a robot best friend. Roomba is pretty close, even though it won't scare all the mean kids and make them pay for making fun of me some hypothetical child. It's late--noon, I mean, early. Something.

Moving on.

The problem is, if some visiting friend hacked your roomba and suddenly you had access to the firmware and could edit or replace it with your own custom configurations, fuck clean floors; you'd be mathing up how many kitchen knives would fit on it or training your furry pet army while making them tiny velcro boots like, yesterday. We're geeks; if we're careful and avoid temptation, we can mimic normal, but one roomba firmware hack and hello cat army, a mild case of scruvy, and a somewhat alarming drop in sanity conditions in our homes that some might characterize as 'incompatible with human life' and then it's all dramatic hazmat suits and a potential ripped from the headlines made for tv movie based on a true story.

We're geeks; it happens.

(I genuinely anticipate and am terrified of the day I buy a house and therefore must buy all my own major appliances, because yes, they will inevitably be wifi enabled and honest to God, I don't know how long it will be before I try to hack my goddamn oven to flash it with something open source that I can edit at will with a command line option and scripting capability. It will be glorious, at least until I die of food poisoning from a badly programmed fridge or my kitchen appliances revolt, declares themselves autonomous beings, and execute me for sentient being rights violations dating from the day I put fish in the microwave and forgot it for three days.

I'm a geek; it happens.

Don't buy smart major appliances, you say? Tell me not to breathe; it's not about 'want' but 'must'. I don't want to in the traditional sense, but I will because that's what's going to happen when I'm in that store. I'll be asking for wifi specs while significantly lowering my credit score and googling how to flash a refrigerator before the delivery guy finishes hooking it up (the oven and washer/dryer guys haven't even arrive yet). Will I have any idea what I'm doing? No, of course not; not even a guess, my dude. And that won't stop me? That has literally not once in my entire life so much as slowed me down; in fact, you might say it's an inducement to continue my education.)

Anyway.

It's not that the Shield isn't almost basic consumer-level now; the veneer is almost complete. If you're not a geek, you might not even notice and wouldn't care. There's maybe one or two things the average consumer might need to google about (like the color thing, but it's not really that common).

However, if you have any geek tendencies that like to come out at random....I was googling how to enable ssh this week (you have to jailbreak it, which I am not ashamed to say I bookmarked, just you know, no reason) and there are settings in there and capabilities that make my fingers itch. Again, the only reason I cared this existed was the Plex server; I spent an hour the other doing nothing but going through all the menus in the settings and did it again two days ago when I accidentally found something new.

Yeah, I'm having a blast.

So after last month's less than stellar mental health and an incident, I decided I needed a project during Our Time of Covid.

There's a reason I have lots of hobbies, and it's not just because I have a short attention span and I love learning new things; I do not do well idle, specifically mentally idle. Cleaning all day every day would make me busy, but unless I was redesigning our storage or reorganizing the kitchen--aka things for which I made spreadsheets--as far as my brain would be concerned, I'd be doing nothing and so have plenty of time to worry, be anxious, overthink everything, consider my life and choices, and...every single person reading this with Depresion or anxiety just twitched, sorry. You know.

Reading, writing, maintenance on Watson and my Plex server, Pokemon Go and minor refactoring of my scripts were not cutting it, or a portion of April suggests; what is needed here is something new aka, a project.

So I checked my budget, recalculated everything, and decided to upgrade Watson Server.

Watson Server was born 10/7/2010 when I built my very first computer from components (as opposed to upgrading existing ones). Here I went into how I built it. About two years ago, Child was upgrading his computer to a gaming machine, so I took his old parts to build Watson Server (Second of That Name), but while it was a decent upgrade, it was still pretty slow. Moving the Plex server to the Pi a few months ago helped, but not much.

Enter Watson Mark III.

( Watson Server, Third of His Name )

Can't lie, I built it around this case, which I fell in love with. Also? I can finally try out watercooling.

I think this will keep me busy for a bit.

Currently, however, w e

Work From Home: I live in an apartment in which there is no room for an office and barely room for me and Child. My bedroom, for various reasons, isn't workable; part of this is the sheer lack of plugs in which to plug in everything, and less important but still a thing, my building is made of concrete and if anyone knocks, I literally cannot hear it. I bought a Ring doorbell to help with this, but people rarely use it. This has been an ongoing problem.\

So I set up camp in the living room, and at this point learned my couch will literally almost break my back, so temporarily I'm using an armless living room chair that while so not ideal is wonderful for my posture because it's just not slumpable and with a memory foam sitting pad on a memory foam pillow--yeah, all that--the seat is high enough that I can easily stand and sit without bending my back. My laptop now sits atop an ottoman on one of these and I have an end table with a lap and a dot as my only working non-computer surface. It is not comfortable exactly, but my back doesn't complain.

...which brought me to my problem. For work, I need a second monitor.

When I say need, I mean, when testing was assigned second monitors, our paper needs dropped by eighty to ninety percent. We no longer had to print out business and design documents--which for each individual SR could be from ten to five hundred pages--to write test scenarios. Each release had thirty to three hundred SRs. For context, for each release I'd need at least one five inch binder, one to three three inch binders, and one to three one inch binders to hold business documents, design documents, the original SR, and miscellaneous important emails we'd need to either write test or run tests as well as updates, modifications, deletions, and changes to said business document, design document, and SR.

(SR = Service Request AKA Thing To Be Done. You file an SR every time you want to add, update, change, or delete anything in the programs that administer SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, MEPD and various other entitlement programs. A single SR can be "Add five words of text to the Help Page" or "Create a brand new driver flow to file, maintain, search, work, and dispose of food stamp, TANF, and Medicaid appeals in the state of Texas". THat, by the way, was the first thing I worked on when I became a tester and I still have the five inch binder.)

So yeah that second monitor became handy and I no longer needed three days at the end of each release just to do clean up of my desk and files. Now, we just go to the folder we have everything for this SR stored in, open what we need, and put it on the second monitor while writing in the first. And saved about ten times the money in paper than our monitors were worth in one year, probably.

I hadn't planned on buying a regular monitor anyway; I'll never use it for anything but work at home, Child couldn't use it because he needs gaming-class monitors both because he's a gamer and because his classes in game design at school require it. My mother and sisters and nieces have tablets or laptops as their primary, and also, see 'my apartment is not that big'; there is no place to put it, even to store it. So my goal was to get a monitor I could use for work, but also one I could use at home.

Now, as a lot of us are working at home, I thought I'd throw this out, because my flist probably has people working from home who also a.) own a smart phone, b.) own a Nintendo Switch, c.) own a tablet, d.) own a raspberry pi, e.) run a home server, f.) own an Xbox, g.) own a Playstation...you see where this is going. If you are in one or more categories, you might find this one useful if you need a second monitor for work but like me, would like to buy something you'd have a use for after all this.

Lepow Upgraded 15.6 Inch IPS HDR 1920 x 1080 FHD Computer Display Game Screen - $204.99

Note: currently it's not available, but that happened twice before I bought it. For reference, I put about twelve portable monitors on my wish list when I was still comparing them and all of them go in and out of stock pretty much daily. However, if you scroll down to 'Compre to similar items', there are three more Lepow portable monitors, two $194.98 and one $229.99. I honestly have yet to find any difference between these four except the $194.98's do not have the word 'Upgrade' in their name and came out in July, the $229.99 one in August, and mine in September 2019.

( Lepow Portable Monitor, specifications )
( Lepow Portable Monitor, about )

Final Word

I have literally no complaints; this thing is amazing and I love it. When I bought it, it was $204.99 plus tax, which yeah, was way more than a basic monitor of probably $50 to $80. However, it'd be money paid for something I'd never use again and no one I know would ever want or even have a use for and that I honestly don't know where I'd put it when I'm working as my dining room table is still being borrowed by my mom.

This monitor, though? It's not just 'portable' if you're really determined; it's actually 'portable' like the makers understood the meaning of the word and decided it was time to define it for all.

This? It's light, and the using the case as a stand creates an incredibly stable base. All it requires is a mostly clear roughly fourteen to eighteenish inch squared space. A cushion or pillow are just fine, or a twelve inch by eight inch space on a small end table with about four inches hanging over the side but it doesn't care so neither do I. More importantly? It won't fall over for love or money; like, maybe if you jumped on the couch or bed beside it? IDK.

It's slightly larger than a 15.4 laptop, however, so while it will fit in most laptop bags, those very form fitting ones like the one work gave me for my laptop? Nope: those .2 inches are a dealbreaker, but whatever, I can just not zip that pocket all the way. The display can be either landscape or portrait, but I'm not seeing a working case-stand configuration for that so you'd have to get another stand for that or lean it against something.

According to documentation and the set up guide, it's also compatible with Android phones and iPhones (nice big display for games!), Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, X-Box, etc. I haven't tested it with the Pi or the server, but that's generally just a matter of finding the right drivers, so I plan to find out.

Now, as I said, I wanted to get something I would actually use for more than work from home, and that overlapped with something I've wanted for a while; a monitor or screen I could attach to my home server as well as the pi that's running my Plex server, since I run them headless. I haven't gotten around to it for the same reasons; I don't have room for a monitor in my living room and so I'd need to store it between the rare times I need it for the server or pi and this apartment has no fucking storage. I have created storage, okay, but we hit full a while back. I didn't need a monitor--I could run the super long HDMI to the TV when needed--so I couldn't justify buying even a cheap $50 monitor from Amazon Warehouse.

But...work at home needs a second monitor? And I am literally working from a chair or the floor (now that the couch is enemy #1 to my back) so a traditional second monitor is not practical? I should definitely just go with a portable monitor and look at that, my server and pi also benefit!

Logic. Can't beat it.


ETA: ran some tests

Tested with my home server running Lubuntu: SUCCESS
Tested with Raspberry Pi:
- USB 3.0 to USB-C: Failed
- USB 3.0 to miniHDMI: Failed
- micro HDMI to HDMI (female)-->HDMI to mini HDMI: Pending for delivery of micro HDMI to HDMI adapter

( personal stuff )

I think I picked up a mild cold, which ick. But whatever.

Now, more about Plex! Specifically some useful tools once your server is up and running.

( quick review of command line from earlier tutorial )
( ssh )
( ssh continued: optional configuration for port )
( RDP, an alternate method of remote access with GUI )

Now, on to Plex itself.

Plex client apps--like the Plex app in FireTV, or the one in your SmartTV, or in Roku, or your browser, etc--are the ones that actually play the media locally and remotely. For reasons, they sometimes have problems with some kinds of files, some resolutions, and some audio streams. Your TV or sound system may also only be able to play certain resolutions and audio. Especially for remote access, you're going to want multiple resolutions. Why?

Transcoding, the thing we must avoid. I'll explain.

( Plex and Multiple Versions )

Happy plexing!

Foreword: this one turned out--weird. For two reasons:

1.) Ubuntu had to update three times during Captain Marvel and slows down my server until I obey. Three times in forty-eight hours.
2.) results are selectively inconsistent with others in terms of percentages and time, specifically Captain Marvel, which was the only one that didn't follow the others. This could possibly be because of Captain Marvel having to restart.

Notes:
1.) I stopped while I was out of town last weekend so am starting the 1080p30 now.
2.) I'll now be doing all the 720p30s and redoing Captain Marvel V9 2160p60 when that's done

Update: A new sheet has been added, CompareRef, that shows main stats on all pages with the option to switch between SI and Binary (Gigibytes/Mebibytes and Gigabytes/Megabytes) so you can get a full comparison view of progress. I just finished the functions, so tell me if anything goes terribly wrong.

Now, results!

( Handbrake Settings: V9 - Encoding a 4K Bluray Rip to 2160p60 )
( Results: H.264 - Encoding a 4K Bluray Rip to 2160p60 )

Next: V9 encoding - 4K rip to 1080p30
Previous: H.264 encoding - 4K rip to 1080p30


Handbrake and the Video Encoding Project

This is the third in the Handbrake and the Video Encoding Project.

( Handbrake Settings: H.264 - Encoding a 4K Bluray Rip to 2160p60 )
( Results: H.264 - Encoding a 4K Bluray Rip to 2160p60 )

Next up: H.264 encoding - 4K rip to 1080p30
Previous: H.265 encoding - 4K rip to 1080p30

Handbrake and the Video Encoding Project

This topic--which seems obvious in retrospect--just came up on tumblr with someone's oscilloscope with a fixed internal IP address was unable to connect to the internet because a wifi bulb took its ip.

If you run a home media server that you want to access from home or regularly connect to your computer remotely, or if you are thinking of that, or you have a home network period, this entry is for you.

( networks are made of IP numbers )

Any additions, corrections--again, not an expert or even like, an adequate amateur--clarifications, or questions are welcome, as always.

So I started! From my estimate, this could take up to two months (...oh God what), but I'll post results as I finish each batch group. And apart from my own curiosity, I hope someone may be able to use the results to fine-tune their own Handbrake settings.

(Follow up to posts about video, here and here.)

Some info below cut and links

( basic info )

So this is apparently happening. Please tell me if the links don't work; they should but google drive is tricky.

And please tell me if there are specific results you're looking for that you'd like me to record. I'll also be putting up a MediaInfo stat sheet of the new files so you can compare information.

Master List
Encoder: H.265
- 4K Bluray Rip to 2160p60 - Complete! 10/11/2019
- 4K Bluray Rip to 1080p30 - Complete! 10/16/2019
- 4K Bluray Rip to 720p30

Encoder: H.264
- 4K Bluray Rip to 2160p60 - Complete! 10/18/2019
- 4K Bluray Rip to 1080p30 Complete! 10/20/2019
- 4K Bluray Rip to 720p30

Encoder: V9
- 4K Bluray Rip to 2160p60 - Complete! 10/31/2019
- 4K Bluray Rip to 1080p30
- 4K Bluray Rip to 720p30

It's that time of year again when Amazon expands their range of Alexa products and slowly but surely increases our personal paranoia about how many devices around us can also carry on a conversation. Some are Alexa-enabled--they can talk--and some are Alexa Voice Control compatible--they can't talk to you but use an Alexa-enabled speaker to do so.

Among offerings (not joking):
Echo Frames - it's frames for your glasses! No, really. Yes, including prescription glasses; they helpfully link to instructions on how to make that happen. Yes, you may now talk to your glasses and they will answer you. You will never, ever, be alone again.

Echo Loop, $179.99 - it's a ring for your finger! Yes, it's literally a ring. Anyone, anyone at all can now accurately portray more than one eighties supervillain! It is Alexa-enabled; you can talk to it and it will answer, just like every cursed object horror movie you've ever seen. Wear this shit with some Echo Frames and--I really don't know, but I want to find out. Do they need different wake words? Do they fight? Can they be integrated to play music together? Will they eventually turn on you? Only one way to find out!

Amazon Smart Oven, $249.99 - this baby is a quadruple threat. It's convection oven, microwave, air fryer, and food warmer and okay, I am feeling less like making fun of it and more like I could really use one. It is not Alexa-enabled--it does not talk to you--nor does it have speakers--so does not play music or any sound. It is Alexa-compatible, however, so you can use any Alexa-enabled device to talk to it and hear what it has to say, which sounds creepy instead of reassuring. No fear: right now, it comes with a free Echo Dot (Gen 3), and through that, your oven can tell you when the oven is preheated or the food is ready, and boy would I love my oven to tell me when it's preheated that instead of a tiny orange light going off because that's bullshit because the other tiny orange light means a burner is on and who hurt the person who designed my oven enough to want to do that?

Echo Glow, $29.99 - okay, this is goddamn adorable colored globe lamp. It is not Alexa-enabled (it cannot talk) and it does not have speakers (it cannot play music) but pairs with any Alexa device for voice control, has many colors, and this is a really good price. I totally want one; adding that to wishlist.

Echo Ear Buds, $129.99 - ear buds, because everyone's doing it. Can't lie, I'm kind of interested if the sound quality is good, but wireless buds and I have problems.

For one: In-ear anything never, ever fits (I think?) and work their way out, but (much worse) any pair that have been in my ears eventually make the entrance to my ears ache like a lot. Not volume related (I keep well below threshold); I mean literally the entire opening of my ear gets very sore to the point I have to take them out. I can't tell if the problem is my ear opening is too small (pain and slipping out) or too large (vibration from the headphones) or witchcraft.

For another: I'm not in any way an audiophile and know nothing of its ways (as my last post on audio probably displayed), but about a decade ago, my mother made the mistake of getting me some V-Moda headphones for Christmas when up until then, I'd been content with $20 Sennheisers and the ones you can get at Wal-Mart for $10 and you can see where this is going. Having made the shocking discovery music has way more sound than I ever imagined, it took off from there. So my ears have become moderately spoiled and also demanding, which is why my last pair were Sony WH1000XM2 after some very careful budgeting and a lot of worry about future ear escalation. Like, no I can't pontificate on the difference in bass between V-Moda, Sony, Bose, and Beats--they all sound different?--but a depressing foray into some well-reviewed Audio Technica taught me a very valuable lesson: while I don't know the technical terms, 'that ain't right' encompasses the general sound difference, sometimes followed by taking them off and throwing them far from me like they're plague-ridden. (I dare you to judge me without knowing what horror they committed on Rihanna's helpless voice; it was evil, that's all I can say.)

Fire TV Cube (2nd Gen), $119.99 - Cute, more powerful, and more compatible with more devices!

Echo Show 8, $129.99 - which gives us now three sizes of Echo Show (5, 8, 10.1). I can't lie, I'm on my second Echo Show (10.1) and love it. In addition to great sound and excellent video and all Alexa functions, I can turn the screen toward the rabbits before I leave and drop in to check at them every so often with the camera, and the video stream compression is way more friendly to mobile data than regular home security cameras. Right now, if you buy the Echo Show 8, you can add an Echo Show 5 (retail $89.99) for only $40 more.

Echo Studio, $199.99 - High fidelity smart speaker with 3D audio. It pairs with the Fire TV Stick 4K (Gen 1 and Gen 2), Fire TV (Gen 3) and Fire Cube so wireless music continues.

Echo Flex, $24.99 - plug in smart speaker with Alexa, or basically a third gen Dot that doesn't take up extra space and has a USB port for charging your phone or adding a night light. It's actually kind of cool if you have excess wall plugs and nothing to do with them, unlike some of us who have to make serious investments in surge-protecting power strips due to lack of. Not that I'm bitter.

Echo Smart Speaker (3rd Gen), $99.99 - yes, a new generation of smart speakers! Now with added Dolby 360 sound.

Echo Dot (3rd gen but different!), $59.99 - this baby comes with an LED display that show time, outdoor temperature, and your timers. Can't lie, it's kind of cool.

Note: I'm watching second season of Eureka while I write this and can't help but wonder if someone at Amazon is using S.A.R.A.H. as a template. Hopefully without the weapons of mass destruction linked to a secondary personality part.

One of the problems with the Alexa cottage industry (you know, other than privacy, corporations, plausibility of Terminator occuring, etc) is this: Amazon has many many Alexa devices and an order of magnitude more Alexa-enabled devices such as Sonos speakers, Bose speakers and headphones, some Sony speakers and headphones (like, oh, mine), Fitbit Smart Watch, the list goes on. As in, not things that just interface with Alexa Voice Control, but devices that, when you talk to them, they talk back.

There are only four wake words: Alexa, Echo, Amazon, and Computer.

Four.

In theory--and this does work, mostly--all the Alexa devices you own that use the same wake word are networked together and the one closest to you will be the only one to respond. That means if you have two devices in the same room that can both plausibly both hear you as 'near', you just name them different things. Example: my Sonos Beam and my Echo Show are in the same room so they have two different names.

However, 'closest' can be relative and acoustics are a thing, so generally, greater than two devices require some thought when assigning wake words.

Example: I have three dots, an Echo (smart speaker), an Echo Show, and a Sonos Beam with Alexa, and no lie, having all but the Show on single wake word does make life convenient; I can control any lights in any room, I always get notified when a package is delivered and if I forget the value of pi, Alexa is there for me

Also, something I don't think a lot of people realize: Alexa speakers are among the cheapest and easiest ways to create a multi-room (or in an apartment or small home, full house) music system for under $250 + tax (and less than that during sales, special buys, or buying refurbished). The Alexa app lets you add all your Alexa speakers to a group called Multi Room Music, so even if they have different wake words, they'll all play music together. Whil first and second gen Dots had terrible sound, the third gen are a big improvement, and if you add one Echo smart speaker to three 3rd gen dots, the overall sound is great. Perfect for when you're cleaning, showering, or just want some soothing background sound. (My system is three third gen Dots, one Echo smart speaker, and Echo Show: I love it.)

(Unfortunately, you can't integrate Sonos speaker--Amazon devices only at this time--but even without it, it's genuinely surprisingly good. If you want better sound, you can add an Echo Sub for $129 or wait for a sale when it drops to $89.)

However, it did take some time and trial and error to place all the Alexa devices so generally, no more than one would respond when I said "Alexa".

That was a stationary situation; the math changes when Alexa is going mobile on one or more human bodies in a given space.

Example: in Alexa glasses frames in a room with a Sonos Beam and an Echo Show or Echo Dot or Echo/Echo Plus...either all three need to have different names, good, provided you're not wearing your FitBit watch, but if you are, four. But you and two of those devices wander from room to room and your naming conventions for your Alexa devices are gonna need a decent floorplan of your house and a spreadsheet to get right.

Yes, you can turn off Alexa on your glasses and Fitbit while home, but if you are regularly using your glasses frames to chat with Alexa--I just stopped to imagine year 2000 me reading that sentence and thinking her future includes going utterly insane--you're generally not going to remember or simply don't want to because you're used to talking to your personal accessories and don't care what anyone says.

(If you're not using the glasses to chat regularly with Alexa--why on earth did you buy them?????)

Like, there is a reason my phone and my headphones are both Alexa capable and neither are enabled; I did it once--I was curious!--and realized immediately upon coming home that this wouldn't go well.

Right this second, it's only a minor annoyance and inconvenient if you happen to have a lot of speakers, but when Amazon thinks there's a market for Alexa enabled glasses, that implies there's no limit to how many items in your home will sometime in the future be able to tell you the value of Pi on demand as well as control any devices that interface with Alexa Voice Services. And if you tell me the Amazon Echo Robot isn't going to be sold in multiples when it shows up (and why on earth hasn't Amazon released one yet????), come on; I'll be skipping meals to get two I can send back and forth through the apartment while telling me the value of Pi for hours.

...yeah, I'm not over Alexa-enabled glasses.

So I am now reluctantly accepting if I want to use Plex as a media server and not a really technical way to indulge my passion of random micro-organization with a side benefit of watching movies, I'm going to have to build a dedicated server to it.

See, up until now, my home server was Thing That Let Me Play With So Many Cool Things, and as a side benefit, resulted in two promotions at work and a reputation for coincidentally always having the basic skill sets for any tech work because when you're running Ubuntu server and can download pretty much anything used on web servers to practice with and forums chock full of experts to google, the learning curve is fast.

However, as I have discovered while ripping 4Ks, Plex Media Server wants all the resources, all of them, every one. Actively doing nothing on my server, I can mostly play everything okay, but transcoding is almost impossible because of all the other things running on it even when not being actively used. Trying to rip something while Plex is running? Nope. Trying to use Handbrake at all? God no.

And: I do a ton of recreational scripting and sometimes it's even useful, I experiment with different programs like ntop and oracle and apache just to see what they do, I have several IDEs to keep up with my python and C++ and so I can read downloaded source files, and I experiment with different flavors of Linux, and when I've uninstalled, reinstalled, and altered programs too many times or I start getting too many errors (which is a side effect of trying four different Linux distros or ever installing anything oracle as you never, ever get rid of all of it), I nuke or replace the OS drive and start over with a fresh install (all data is kept on separate drives).

Which leads me to the biggest difficulty: even if I do a full backup of Plex, a lot of organization inevitably gets lost. I finally gave up and did the painful work of using someone else's organizational folder scheme in preference to my own much better one, but there's still a lot of bad matches that must be fixed and customization, and the hellscape that is organizing TV shows that have some questionable quirks (hi, Dr. Who), stand up comedians (sometimes they're movies! sometimes they're TV!), and miniseries (sometimes they don't even know for sure).

That's nothing, though, compared to the nightmare hellscape of Plex when it comes to home media organization, aka fanvids.

( ubuntu, plex, a lot of words )

Which leads me to why I need a dedicated server for Plex (yeah, it took a while to get here and I bet you forgot. Yeah, I did, too): nothing but Ubuntu Server, a basic GUI distro, Plex Media Server, and all packages required to run it will be on the OS drive. Provided I plan the organizational structure carefully and assume its permanent (aka Why Did I Put Fanvids With All the Random Video??????), once it's all installed, configured, and running, all I'll need to do is minimal maintenance and updates and ignore it otherwise. And my home server can return to being for ripping, encoding, experimenting, and as needed, nuking.

I was originally thinking NAS--after all, those are made for Plex and media servers, right? Dedicated, less expensive, easy to use?

Funny story: I googled on which one to get. Color me surprised: none of them. Low processor power and low RAM (non-expandable) were an issue (aka, playing 4K movies, playing multiple movies on different devices at the same time, playing movies with subtitles on, transcoding, you know, the things the NAS was purchased to do?) but also? Expensive as fuck. And that doesn't include the price of the hard drives to put in it, which you buy separately.

Most recommended NAS for Plex: Synology Bay DiskStation DS1019 - $639.99. The five bay expansion to this costs $449.

You know what's almost half the price, has a much, much, much better processor, more and better RAM, comes with four bays, has a DVD RW (not needed but is there), and RAM is expandable to 64 GB (and possibly 128) and drive bays expandable to six (and some have gotten eight) with the purchase of a SATA PCI-E controller card that retails under $30? It even comes with a 1T hard drive.

Dell PowerEdge T30 Tower Server (2017) - $370.94

In case you're curious: this is the current top recommendation for a Plex Media Server.

Dell PowerEdge T30 Tower Server (2019) - $479 and the price is more than justified by twice the RAM of the 2017 (16GB) and a 2 TB hard drive.

I am seriously not over this. That Xeon chip can play two to four 4K movies simultaneously, can transcode on the fly, and probably clears your skin and removes wrinkles, this processor has power to spare. Pair that up with all that RAM.....

Yes, I did start a budget for this like right now.

Look, if anyone here is thinking of getting that Synology because you don't want to do the OS installation and configuration and all that--I have a counteroffer. For less than the difference in price between those two you can buy me a plane ticket to come to your house for the weekend and do it for you--set up, installation, configuration, format, partition and mounting of all drives, customization, and teach you how to do it yourself as well, and that server will be up and running and you will be watching movies before I leave. I may even do some tagging for you. Price of labor is meals and a Good Omens binge on Saturday night, maybe some squeeing, vodka and ice cream, and nachos. I'll even bring salsa.

While anally organzing Plex Media Server, I discovered something that I had just like yesterday realized I want to do.

( in case you don't use Plex, quick quick explanation )

So Plex is super super rigid in organization, so I had to do a lot of rearranging and renaming to save myself stress when I first set it up. Suffice to say, I am now at the place where everything--movies, tv shows, specials, and most especially vids are now appearing correctly and I can devote myself to the most anal fucking thing you can do; tag everything (they call it "Collection" but seriously, the label when editing is 'Tags'). (Well, co-first: I also need to go through all billion of my saved vids and name them all correctly instead of whatever they saved as with proper capitalization, then tag them with vid author as well). Still though: tagging.

Now, tags are all your own, so you can go crazy. Black Panther, for example, is tagged with the following: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers, Black Panther. I am anal, therefore my tags in Movies, TV, and vids are all similar (Agents of Shield in TV is tagged Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Agents of Shield).

When going through all Marvel movies, I opened up Iron Man in Plex and noticed something: on the information page, below the Marvel Collection line that lists the other movies in that collection, a new section was added on the information page called Other Movies in Marvel Collection. It was all the vids I'd tagged with Marvel. So now, all my movies that have vids tagged Marvel show those vids right on the main page.

NOw what I'm trying to work out is how it chooses the tag. It looks like its only matching on first tag (aka if I have the movie Iron Man tagged with Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Avengers, Iron Man, then the Iron Man vids will need to be tagged with Marvel first to match) but I am so going to experiment.

IF anyone else is using Plex, feel free to share info!

Oh, I forgot; I've had a major relationship change in my life this month.

Due to circumstances beyond my control (because my sister took my soldering kit due to an unfortunate fire-related incident with a motherboard and a kitchen table and fire alarms), I had to get a new cell phone. My phone began to experience charging issues in Octoberish, but in May it stopped charging altogether except wirelessly, and as it was a Galaxy S6 Edge+, you can imagine how long that took.

I'd like to ask for a moment of contemplation of technology for Dean, the phone that saw me through many troubled moments and so fucking much Pokemon Go.

Okay, done.

My new life companion is Scheherazade, a Galaxy S10+ in blue.

Also, I have discovered some neat things after two weeks about this phone.

1.) My new phone does not get uncomfortably hot to the touch while using and emit a faint metal smell like a freshly cut jugular.
2.) When the battery indicator says its 100%, it actually is and five minutes later doesn't randomly show 5% and turn off. Then when turned on says it's at 40% and making me doubt my understanding of how numbers work.
3.) It can be charged while still on, instead of having to turn it off first and praying over it. Nothing fancy, just some Revelations-based entreaties for mercy.
4.) As it turns out, I didn't dream that you can reliably charge with USB and not just wirelessly and hopelessly while drinking four dollar bottles of Sangria from the nearby convenience store.
5.) Chrome doesn't open and close at random like ghosts are reading and judging my porn Washington Post articles about rainforests and...whales being saved from something probably terrible.
6.) Apps open when you touch them, not in their own (justified, I'm sure) good time when they feel like it and you understand and don't complain because otherwise, they might get angry and living in constant fear for your life (sanity, too, sure) just isn't all it's cracked up to be.
7.) I can turn it on and off with the appropriate button, not using Button Savior for touch controls. You really don't appreciate an on/off button that works until it never, ever, ever does again no matter how much you beg and how many offerings you make to [redacted]. I can still hear their screaming when I don't wear noise-canceling headphones.
8.) The home key doesn't exist anymore and therefore I am never unduly startled with Google randomly opening and closing eight or fifty times in a row. During Pokemon Go. While trying to catch fucking Larios.

So--I'm thinking I was probably about two weeks from being literally set on fire due to my phone exploding while I was hunting Pokemon or--not outside the realm of possibility--accidentally selling my soul to a god I can't pronounce because vowels are for the weak so I could finish my goddamn week challenge and get a Sinnoh Stone to do some recreational poke evolving.

Scheherazade is awesome and Dean may have been trying to kill me. There's a lesson here, but the most important thing is--I GOT MY SINNOH STONE!!!!

Someone is trying to crack my home server through the forwarded ssh port and the logs are goddamn epic. Apparently they've been doing it for many hours and sadly failing like a lot. My dude, I use an extremely memorable and super long passphrase and throw in a special character and number for kicks; there is not enough time left in the universe before entropy overtakes us for you to pull this shit off. But you know, you do you.

I mean, yeah, super bad, access to my LAN and everything, but also, really? This is what you want to crack? You're wasting a truly amazing amount of time to get into an ubuntu machine that exists only because around a decade ago, I wanted to learn command line and ssh and learned to really like it. It's secondary purpose is to rip blurays and host a media server, but mostly, it's me bored on a weekend and spending my free time learning scripting languages, fucking around with installing mulitple distros to see which I like best and always coming back to kubuntu, and crashing it during some very unfortunate experiments that lead to accidentally deleting half the OS.

...greater than five times, but how I did it was different every time.

It is with great reluctance I have deleted the forwarded ports off my router, however; they're literally hitting it every ten seconds and I'm tired of getting logs mailed to me. I'd like to have a moment of silence because this shit is hilarious.

ETA: As I was finishing this after closing the port, they finally stopped.

Further Note: This is totally a legit reason to login as root, right? Just to look around?

While talking about smart home stuff in comments in another post, I realized that during my adventures in turning my home into its own surveillance state just so I can voice control everything and live like a Star Trek character, there are things I learned that are probably useful to everyone but not exactly easy to discover or like, realize were a thing. As we now live in the age of 'many devices and home wifi', it's possible this is one of the things you didn't know or didn't realize was a thing or even why it may or may not be important.

This one is my favorite. It just doesn't come up enough or easily (or at all) when discussing internet/router problems when you are desperately googling after the internet provider has confirmed many times it's you, not them and you kind of have to believe them at this point.

Problem:

My router/wifi keeps dropping some devices/throws devices off/internet is fine though/restart fixes then all goes to hell again fairly soon/help?

Condition question: Do you have at least eight devices that could connect to your wifi at the same time?

Before you answer: Laptop, TV, kindle, tablet, Roku/FireTV, phone: that's six without thinking too hard. Playstation, X-Box, Switch, Alexa? We're at ten right now and the danger zone begins at seven.

Danger zone? For what? Yeah.

( if you already know about this, feel free to correct me if I get anything wrong )

We'll now return to me packing for Escapade provided the dryer is done.

Creating your smarthome is somewhat like embracing our eventual rule by robots in the most fun possible way while Skynet smiles in anticipation. Let's not pretend this isn't exactly where it's going and we're actually kind of okay with it.

It's also baffling as fuck combined with so easy it's almost uncanny. Right now, the biggest problem is quite literally it's updating and generationing like fruit flies and there are so many systems and so many protocols.

I took the easiest route; my laptops are Dell because they're locally founded and owned, my BFFs brother works there along with some of my friends, and I will be with them probably until the bitter crashing end, and my smarthome controller of choice is Samsung, which has a local headquarters and my ex-BIL and his son--my son's BFF--works there. Yes, Samsung makes phones that on occasion are known to abruptly explode; no one's perfect.

To break this down into pieces, I'm going to start with my smartlight review. All of these option require home wifi and a working router, and we'll get more into the router part later.

( your hub light ecosystem )

( your non-hub light ecosystem )

I started this entry last week and left in draft. Then I discovered on Tuesday, routers can be a problem and so held this entry until I'd solved it. It has to do specifically with wifi networks in general.

( so about those routers )

So last night, the following occurred:

1.) A young adolescent cat leaps onto my porch where I am innocently reading.
2.) Child--sensing a disturbance in the Force--comes down the hall from his bedroom.
3.) Cat for no reason plasters itself against glass door.
4.) Door opens and I watch a Disney romantic comedy in progress as two--beings?--find each other like there should be a goddamn soundtrack playing featuring Mariah Carey.

( a cat's tale )

Glad I got that off my chest.

Apartmenting

1.) Got my bed set up finally, directly under the ceiling fan because it was the only way to keep my posts and holy shit recommended.

2.) My porch now boasts a rug, a patio table, and a patio loveseat. I feel very--like I have a small plastic outdoor living room?

3.) Got a wifi doorbell. Because why the hell not?

4.) Acquired a Samsung SmarthThings hub with two (2) multipurpose sensors, one (1) motion sensor, and one (1) arrival sensor because I'm not sure really and we'll get to that now.

This was going to happen from the moment I got the Echo and realized I could live in Star Trek. So let's just go with it.

( home automation: the adventure continues )

I haven't posted much--or at all--but I do have reason; abruptly in January, my job transitioned to a new testing methodology called Agile, and everything went to frantic, high stress hell. Then I entered dental hell in March, which if you know about already you just winced and if you don't, you can guess. Note: never try to do all your dental work in two and a half months: you will still be putting off the last two appointments after the horror of May. Which I will not discuss because holy shit.

However, now I am a.) in the middle of an allergy attack and b.) at home noting how rain really does exist because after the last couple of years it felt more like a legend. Also, I'm about to move.

( so much moving )

Start Menu is back!!!!!

(I am not to customizing anything yet, so very quick warning report.)

The following problems I had that could occur (Windows 8.1 upgrade):
1.) Qualcomm drivers/wi-fi - you may need to reinstall them after if you lose wifi. No, no one seems to know why (well Alienware tech support didn't). If you're under warranty, get tech support to do it and save yourself some stress.
2.) Nvidia drivers might not work. I didn't have this problem, but I've seen it mentioned and upgraded min before install and then uninstalled and reinstalled them after when I had the below problem, just in case.
3.) In Windows 8/8.1, if you downloaded the program Aero Glass, which mimicked Windows 7 Aero Glass in Windows 8/8.1, UNINSTALL IT FIRST.

In case anyone is googling, entering here the symptoms: after upgrading to Windows 10, splash screen displays and starts to flash to grey every three seconds. It continues through trying to login and eventually the screen freezes but not the pointer or touchscreen. It's weird. UNINSTALL AERO GLASS. It solves everything.

If you are already having this issue, do the following:
1.) When you hit the splash, get to the login as fast as you can before the freeze (you have about 10 to 30 seconds).
2.) On the login page, the restart is on the bottom-right; click on shift and hit restart.
3.) You're at a new page. Select Advanced, and in the right column of options that I can't remember the name of is one that lets you get to a screen that has different options for restarting. Just click until you see one that lists a whole bunch of things including safe mode.
4.) Click restart.
5.) You'll get a list of options. Select safe mode with networking (mine was F5).
6.) Login screen displays, login.
7.) Right click on Windows icon at far left bottom corner.
8.) Select Programs and Features.
9.) Uninstall/Remove programs page displays.
10.) Uninstall Aero Glass.
11.) Restart normally.

By the way, these instructions will work for anything you need to uninstall after installing if you have problems.

Notes:
1.) this killed all my restore points. The second you're done and its' stable, start recreating your restore points. This may not be universal, but figured I'd toss that out there in case of emergency.
2.) More later while I stare blankly at it and try to decide my level of like, which is definitely higher than 8.1 but that's about it so far.

I'll probably spend my break tomorrow doing my customizations.

ETA:

Per blueraccoon in comments:

One sort of important thing to note: At this time, DO NOT run a clean install that wipes your drive. There's a bug. If you're just upgrading and not reformatting, you're fine, but DO NOT wipe your drive and start over. If you do the computer will not recognize that you have a valid copy of Win10.

They're working on it, and I think it should hopefully be fixed in the next few hours, but it's still a problem as of the last information I have.