Dave Jansen

Quick: Use badblocks to check larger hard drives (8TB+)

Checking newly purchased hard drives can be a smart move, especially before adding them to a pool. While this does not guarantee there won't be any issues, it might help catch some before they could potentially cause for a headache day. I recently purchased two additional drives in preparation for

Life

Life and Loss / Watch Me Play

When after years I brought back my blog I wanted to do so to be able to share "technical stuff" that you might find useful. From little snippets, howtos, scripts et al that I've had to write, find, or figure out, to sharing more general findings based on the tools,

Gaming

Hitman 2 (2018) on the GPD Win Max (Manjaro)

I've been slowly putting the Win Max through its paces, mostly by sitting in my living room or in bed before sleeping playing through some games I never got a chance to play through. I have several of the older Hitman titles, and they run well as can be expected,

Linux

Installing Manjaro on the GPD Win Max (GNOME)

A detailed guide on how to install and set up Manjaro on your GPD Win Max.

Linux

Using a Logitech StreamCam on Linux

Last week I finally purchased a webcam for online meetings, something I had been holding off on for quite some time. I was using a 12" MacBook for these up until now, but I wanted to get a webcam for my main computer as I sometimes need to look over

GPD

The GPD Win Max

I have always had a soft spot for (near-)pocketable devices that –successfully or otherwise– punch above their weight. From the pre-smartphone Pocket PCs days, to the short-lived UPCs and UMPCs, there have always been companies trying to bravely attempt to pack a tremendous amount in an as small as

Exploring Star Citizen #1: New Babbage, MIC-L1 Shadow Frontier, Lorville (Ubuntu)

Star Citizen is one of those games whose ideas just captures your imagination. The game is still under development, and it is being done in an open fashion, meaning you get to play very early builds as they progress through their incredibly daunting todo list. Last week I finally decided

Linux

Quick: How to fix screen tearing in Ubuntu with AMD GPUs and X11

Every now and then you run into a little oddity that reminds you you're running Linux. Something that you really shouldn't even have to think about, but somehow lacks any GUI configuration, and is tucked away behind a config file you have to create yourself. This feels especially noticeable because

Learn With Me

Converting a WordPress site into a static website

Recently I had to convert a website powered by WordPress into a static site, as I wanted to host it in an archived state without having to maintain it on a service that supports all the bells and whistles that WordPress requires. Since the content cannot be updated any more

Hackintosh

Install macOS Big Sur 10.0.1 public release in a VM (QEMU)

This is a small addendum to my main article on how to install macOS in a VM, which I'll keep as-is as that's effectively the normal way. But, if you'd like to jump on the fresh-off-the-press public release of Big Sur, here's what you have to do to make that

Linux

Increase thumbnail cache in Ubuntu

You might have noticed that with the thumbnail view enabled in Ubuntu (or, the Nautilus file browser) that thumbnails seem to have to be re-generated quite frequently. This is due to the cache size limit being set quite small by default, at just 512mb. This quick guide is to show

Development

Audit & Fix your NPM packages when using Yarn

Yarn is a nice alternative to NPM, with pretty much feature parity and, depending on the version, some speed benefits too, though these days perhaps slightly less so as compared to a few years ago. While there's pretty much feature parity, there's one area where Yarn is missing one somewhat

Hackintosh

Install macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 RC2 in a VM (QEMU)

A new macOS release is nearing release, and it's a big one. So big that this time it's really, completely and definitely not OS X any longer. With the death of Kexts looming and the transition away from Intel CPUs spelling disaster for Hackintoshers and multi-OS users alike, it's certainly

Linux

Install a Linux kernel of choice under Ubuntu.

Checking this one off of the "did not expect I'd ever have to figure this one out" list. Here's a quick guide on how to install a Linux kernel version of choice under Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Alternative title: Fix amdgpu issues and related system stability woes with your Radeon

Gaming

Grand Theft Auto Trilogy Unboxing (PS2)

It's a bit of a quiet season for my blog. I've been mostly busy with work and personal life things, and as I mostly keep this blog to technical subjects only I haven't been able to share much. I've got multiple projects lined up that are just waiting for final

Quick

Quick: Give full filesystem access to Flatpak-installed applications

When installing applications using Flatpak you'll sooner or later run into a situation where the default filesystem access permissions the application has been given can get in the way. Sometimes you just want to use applications like Handbrake or MusicBrainz Picard with files located outside of your home folder. For

Gaming

Grand Theft Auto 3

I have recently gotten my hands on a PS2 again (a few actually, but a story for another day), and have been rediscovering it. It’s been so much fun. The PS2 is actually the first console I ever purchased with my first ever internship “salary,” (in its entirety, all

Development

Setting up MonoDevelop on Ubuntu for SMAPI Development

As with all things Linux, you occasionally run into a quirk or issue that is either caused by the project not primarily being developed or maintained for Linux, or more directly due to a Linux oddity. Today I'll run through the steps I took to get MonoDevelop set up correctly

Linux

Enable Korean input on Ubuntu 19.10 & 20.04

Here's of those things that are on the surface straight-forward but in practice require a few steps that might not be easy to remember for future (re-)installs. Here are the steps needed to get Korean input working under Ubuntu 19.10, 20.04 and presumably 19.04 too. Installing

Quick

My Recommended Firefox Settings

A bit of a minor post today. I have been meaning to write down my preferred settings for Firefox as its defaults leave a lot to be desired. This is unfortunate actually, as it might throw someone off if their first impression is less good because of this. Firefox is

Learn With Me

Ubuntu: Day 1*

Continuing my foray into trying to switch to using Linux full-time, it is time to give Ubuntu a new and proper try. Continued from the Manjaro series, the last post of which can be found here.I have been using Ubuntu in one way or another for quite a few

Learn With Me

Manjaro: Day 3

Spoiler: This is the final part of my Manjaro series. Continued from the second post, found here.So far I have not been describing the many issues I've been having during this whole process. To be honest, I wanted to give it my best try, so often chose to ignore

Learn With Me

Manjaro: Day 2

Well this took a while. Work happened, then Manjaro itself got in the way too, so this project had to go on the back burner for a bit. I had a day available after building my new computer, which allowed me to continue the whole Manjaro journey. Let's dive in.

Learn With Me

Manjaro: Day 1

I've been meaning to try Linux as my primary desktop OS again, to see if it has come to the point I am able to actually do this. Previous attempts at doing this failed due to a combination of things, most of which are related to my personal preferences, but

Quick

Quick: How to dump & restore a MariaDB/MySQL database from a docker container

In the same vein as my previous post on dumping and restoring your PostgreSQL database, here are mostly copy/paste-able commands for when you're using a MariaDB or MySQL database. Check out this quickie here if you're using PostgreSQL.While the following commands have "mysql" in their name, they're actually