After cleaning up my NAS I was greeted by a warning after restarting my DS2413+. My pool was in a degraded state, but all drives were fine? Checking the total pool use also did not give me any hints, as I still had plenty of free space.
Turns out none of my drives were reporting any health status anymore (“Health status not available”). Trying to open the S.M.A.R.T. values would just show an error about a failure to communicate with the drive. Those messages popped up for every drive. Did I kill my NAS during cleaning?
Of course not. Manually updating the S.M.A.R.T. database via Diskstation fixed the issue. Somehow the database got corrupted, possibly during an automated update?
Anyway, after updating the database the status turned back to all green. For good measure, I did run a scrub on my pool.
I have been plagued by this issue for a while: After closing OBS, a zombie process would continue to block the TCP port previously used by OBS’s websocket plugin. Trying to query the process ID never yielded any results. So what gives?
In my case, it turns out that the likely culprit was the OBS Droidcam plugin, which just received an update to mitigate exactly this misbehaviour.
After installing the update I can confirm that the zombie process and the listening TCP port no longer occur.
I recently wondered why my Playstation 3 would turn on and stay in limbo. Turns out that the console was trying to update its firmware to version 4.90 and failed repeatedly.
The reason for all the commotion is error 8002F1F9, which turns out to be a faulty WiFi/Bluetooth board in the console itself.
On a PC, you would utter a sigh and replace the faulty component. On a Playstation 3 Slim you are shit out of luck. The console is now junk because the corresponding components are soldered right onto the motherboard, thus not being user-serviceable.
This is a sorry trend with mass-market electronics. I can get another second-hand Playstation 3 or try Sony’s awful cloud-gaming service, or I will have to dump all my games and use an emulator.
Only one of these routes ensures I can play Blur in 10 years: Emulation.
After Sony removed purchased video content from user libraries and given how fickle and stupid licensing agreements are for cloud-gaming, there is no way I will ever trust Sony with Playstation Now.
Similarly, there is no point in buying another set of ageing hardware, hoping it will last me this time.
Thankfully, my entire Playstation 3 library consists of physical media. Platform holders like Nintendo or Sony have a track record of dropping support for older devices, locking people from accessing their purchased digital content. This is why physical media is the way to go, and going through the process of dumping all your media is a must.
This way, you can play games and watch movies on a PC through emulators. The only digital storefront I have any trust in is Valve’s Steam. In the 20 years I have used Steam, it never failed me once. Meanwhile, Sony has repeatedly screwed me over.
I would also like to address that exclusivity is a cancer. Alan Wake 2 can be the best game of a decade – if it is locked to the Epic Game Store and unavailable on Steam, I do not care for it. Bloodborne is awesome, but I could not care less since it is trapped on a dead platform with shit FPS, forsaken by its creators and publishers.
Developers and publishers should bring their games to the only platform that has shown to be consistently backwards compatible over the last 30 years: The personal computer. Especially since newer generation consoles are essentially neutered PCs anyway.
Because whether you like it or not, your little black box will fail. And when it does, it will lock you out from playing your digital purchases. Not because it is impossible to provide you with proper backwards compatibility on newer systems but because you will begrudgingly buy the same game again and again. Nintendo knows it. Sony knows it.
The SmoothVideo Project is pretty awesome. My only gripe as a passionate user of Zoom Player is that the combination of LAV decoders and the ffdshow raw filter to inject SVP into the pipeline can be pretty unstable. Seeking around in playing media often leads to the media player crashing.
The culprit seems to be ffdshow. While the filter was an absolutely incredible and indispensable part of every afficionados’ filter graph a few years ago, the project is pretty much abandoned. So what are our options to mitigate the crashes without switching to mpv or another 64bit media player?
Open Zoom Player’s Smart Play options and select a video decoder to test with. In this case, let’s alter the H264 configuration. Click “Configure”.
Select the LAV Video Decoder profile, click “Add Filter” and select the “AviSynth Filter” from the list. Make sure that LAV Video Decoder is the first filter and AviSynth the second.
Afterwards, click “Save active filter(s) as a New Profile”, give it nice name, increase the priority to top and select the profile to activate it. Close the dialogue with OK.
Apply the settings, restart Zoom Player and play a h.264 video file to test. You should see that SVP is active. Seeking in the video should no longer crash the entire player.
Kagi, the search engine I was pretty hyped about a year ago, recently added support for loading up on credits via Paypal and other European-friendly, non-credit-card ways.
I have a ton of things to say about the way they flip-flop about their pricing model but that is neither here nor there. Today’s topic is all about adding Kagi to Vivaldi’s list of image search engines.
If you define the following image search URL for Kagi, the reverse image search will work in Vivaldi:
That is some pretty hype stuff because that means I can fully kagi-fy my browser usage.
If you have Kagi’s Chrome extension installed, you will most likely need to uninstall or disable that extension. For some reason, Vivaldi (at the time of writing) ignores the search engine definitions created through the extension.
Gunfire Games’ highly anticipated Remnant II is close to launch. If you are not fond of having to start it through Steam’s URL handler or Steam directly, you will quickly notice that simply launching Remnant2.exe leads to the game being offline/in a different mode.
The Unreal Wiki provides the answer as to why this is: The game expects a steam_appid.txt with the corresponding ID of the game (in this case: 1282100) to be present in the main executable’s directory.
You can easily create a Remnant2.bat in steamapps/common/Remnant2 with the following content:
@echo off
set APPID=1282100
echo %APPID% > "%CD%\Remnant2\Binaries\Win64\steam_appid.txt"
start "" "%CD%\Remnant2.exe"
Starting this batch file will automatically create the required steam_appid.txt. The game will consequently use the Steam-specific profile and save directory and launch with full Steam support.
When running VMware Workstation 16 or 17 on a Windows host, you perhaps encounter the following error:
PANIC: VERIFY bora\vmx\main\hostWin32.c:559
This error happens when you have a Windows VM running and then try to launch a second Windows VM. As soon as the second machine boots into the desktop/login, it crashes, and the machine stops.
Luckily, this VMware forum post gave me a workaround that solved the issue. Hopefully, it will be helpful for you as well.
I am using an Nvidia graphics adapter and have set the “Max Frame Rate” and “Background Application Max Frame Rate” settings via the Nvidia Control Panel to values other than “Off”. This is what caused the issues for me.
The solution: Simply add a program-specific customization for vmware.exe, ensure both settings are set to “Off” in the customization, and you should be good.
When I am not busy contemplating suicide, I am a sucker for good-looking, case-appropriate fonts. Especially, when you are staring at code pretty much all day long.
Besides looking good, fonts can also carry additional glyphs and ligatures that can make source code easier to read or render the terminal more beautiful. If you want to see why not every monospace font is equal, you can check out various free and commercial options over at Programming Fonts.
A Font For Code
For programming, I really like MonoLisa. Across Sublime, VS Code and all my JetBrains IDEs, this is the font for editing code. Yes, it might seem pricey, but it also has great customisation options and gives me those nice, wide characters I crave.
Unfortunately, MonoLisa does not have the old DOS-style glyphs for drawing boxes and stuff, so using it on a terminal is not an option for me.
Someone did go through the trouble of creating a Nerd Font patcher specifically for Mono Lisa, which is highly appreciated.
I Command Thee
For the command line, I have found no better font than Gintronic. Yes, it is not the newest font anymore. Mark Frömberg has stated that the font is essentially finished and that he has no plans for ligatures, but that is okay. Gintronic has all the beautiful bits and bops you would expect for a terminal-ready font.
And it can be patched with Nerd Fonts‘ font patcher to add all those nifty icons for Powerline. Cool stuff!
Too Expensive?
“But tsukasa”, I hear you laugh, “Hack is a fine free font! Why would you pay for fonts – twice, even. You big dumb buffoon! JetBrains ships with a perfectly fine monospace font, to boot!”.
And that is a totally fair point. If you are happy with your fonts and see no reason to change them, paying 150-200 EUR per font might seem steep.
I stare at these beautiful characters for about 8 to 10 hours per day, so I need something that is easy on my eyes and pleases my aesthetic senses. Both fonts (or is it font families?) fulfil these requirements and have their own respective strengths. This might seem incredibly nit-picky, but your eyes get hung up if characters are “wrong”. Finding a good font is like finding a good keyboard or pair of shoes – they might all look the same from afar, but the differences become clear when using them.
Plus, I have no issue compensating the fine people making these fonts for their hard work.
Do you remember the hype in 2020 when VMware announced their own OCI-compliant, Docker-compatible container support in their desktop virtualization solutions? I even wrote about it in 2021 after it had some time to mature.
So where is Project Nautilus in 2023, a good three years later? Dead, in the grave.
In 2021, I called vctl “a promising disappointment”, but in 2023 I will have to change that title to “an ambitious stillbirth”. After three whole years and a new major (paid) VMware Workstation version, vctl is still exactly where it was back in 2020.
When people poke VMware staff about this on Twitter, the response pretty much shuts the door on any further development:
I wish I could say it were in a better state. […] We’re taking the time to address this in a more holistic way.
Now, just in case you do not know what “taking the time to address this in a more holistic way” means in plain old English: There are no plans to put another second of development time into it, but marketing says it is a bad look to deprecate it after just one major version, especially since VMware already removed Shared VMs from the desktop virtualization solutions.
This is such a shame. VMware had an admittedly early but incredibly compelling feature in the pipeline that perfectly complemented its core technology and gave developers another reason to love Workstation or Fusion.
Rest in peace, Project Nautilus. I bemoan the waste of potential and awesomeness.
1Password is a great password manager. For a little less than a year 1Password can act as your ssh-agent, meaning that you only need to store the public keys locally, the private key comes from 1Password itself. There are a few things to note and set up if you are on Windows.
I hope this post will help people interested but somewhat bewildered by some parts to get it to run and understand the relevant bits and bops.
Please note that this post assumes that you already have Windows’ own version of the OpenSSH client installed and possibly updated to a newer version. I also assume that you have already imported at least one SSH key pair (public/private key) into 1Password (under the SSH Key type).
Windows Hello
A requirement for 1Password’s ssh-agent is that you have Windows Hello enabled. The documentation on 1Password’s end makes it sound like you need a Windows Hello-compatible webcam or some kind of fingerprint sensor or whatnot.
This is not true, you can also use a simple PIN as your 2nd factor. This is easily set up via Windows 10’s Settings – Accounts – Sign-in options.
Disabling Windows’ SSH Agent
Open the Computer Management, browse to the services and ensure that, if it is present, the “OpenSSH Authentication Agent” is disabled.
This is required because the ssh-agent on Windows is published through a pipe. If the OpenSSH Authentication Agent is running, the pipe is already present – causing an issue with 1Password trying to fill that role.
Enabling 1Password SSH Agent
Within 1Password’s desktop client, go to the settings – Security and enable “Unlock using Windows Hello” as well as “Show Windows Hello prompt automatically”.
Now switch to the Developer tab and tick the box “Use the SSH agent”.
Configuring the SSH Client
For the sake of argument, let us assume that you have a dedicated ssh key for communicating with GitHub and that you already imported that ssh key into 1Password.
How do we get the Windows-version of the OpenSSH client to use the agent for this?
Edit your ~/.ssh/config file and generally enable the agent:
Host *
IdentityAgent //./pipe/openssh-ssh-agent
We want to specify the exact key to use for GitHub, though. So let’s return to 1Password, select the public key of your ssh key and save it locally. Move the file to your ~/.ssh directory and rename it (i.e. id_ed25519_github.pub).
Edit the ~/.ssh/config file again and add/alter an entry for GitHub:
Save the configuration. If you still have your pair of pubkey/privkey in the ~/.ssh directory, move it aside for a test. By instructing the use of the id_ed25519_github.pub, 1Password will look up the matching ssh key from it’s archive.
Otherwise, like other ssh-agents, it would try several keys. We do not want this.
Now you should be able to connect to GitHub via ssh and have 1Password provide the proper key:
ssh -T git@github.com
If you see the input field for your Windows Hello pin, things should be peachy:
Hi XXXXXXXX! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.
Sweet stuff! You should also be able to check the contents of your 1Password ssh key archive:
ssh-add -l
Even better!
Git
Git for Windows ships with its own copy of ssh. We need to make sure the Windows version of the OpenSSH client is being used. So, as per documentation, we explicitly set the path to the ssh client:
If you have downloaded a newer version of the Windows-version of the OpenSSH client, point it to the appropriate executable.
Pageant
But what about applications that use Putty’s Pageant? Having two instances provide keys is not what we want.
Thankfully, WinSSH-Pageant is able to bridge between the two tools. Simply install WinSSH-Pageant, make sure to close Putty’s Pageant and… well, that’s it.
If you use WinSCP or other software using Putty’s components, WinSSH-Pageant should relay the agent requests to 1Password, meaning that the Windows Hello PIN will be prompted and keys will be delivered from 1Password’s archive.
Since the year 2022 is finally coming to a close and everyone seems to like these stupid lists, here is my list of software picks for 2022. The software products listed here are not necessarily made in 2022 but have been my most used applications throughout the year.
Please note that this list specifically targets Windows applications.
Wavebox
Unsurprisingly Wavebox makes the list. The modern worker needs a good browser and Wavebox is the best choice, in my opinion. Unlike lesser products like Sidekick, Stack, Shift and whatnot, Wavebox is the real deal with its powerful Cookie Containers feature, powerful app routing rules and the ability to let Chrome extensions run in specified containers only.
It is the application that always runs on my machine. Whether I am using it on a personal level for Discord or professionally for Teams.
Instead of installing several dozen of Electron garbage applications, just install Wavebox. The developers make sure to keep Chromium up to date, so you never run into the risk of using an outdated browser.
This year saw some questionable changes in Wavebox. I did not like the fact that you have to enable the new, rounded interface to use the web dock auto-hide feature. Especially since the rounded interface is buggy as fuck and does not render/hide properly ever so often.
I also do not like that you cannot have two main windows.
The price is a little steep as well, however, if you do make use of web applications on a daily basis and want to keep them isolated from each other, there is virtually no better solution than Wavebox at the moment.
Windows Terminal
Signs and wonders! I never thought I would recommend Windows Terminal before 2025 but here we are.
Previously I scoffed at Windows Terminal for being a somewhat buggy mess with strange bugs and limitations that made it impossible for me to use on a daily basis. I am absolutely delighted to report that all of these issues have been resolved, making Windows Terminal an absolutely incredible choice for command-line aficionados.
Mouse emulation works fine, all applications seem to render properly now and the superior Unicode/emoji support makes this a great package.
I feel comfortable recommending Windows Terminal over ConEmu unless you are specifically looking for one of the awesome ConEmu features.
It is also easier to coerce corporate administrators into installing a Microsoft-developed piece of software than what many would see as a “suspicious Russian-made application”.
JetBrains IntelliJ
JetBrains keeps flexing on us with its portfolio of great IDEs. I love the new UI they introduced in 2022 throughout their products and the packages have become more stable and faster throughout the year. Rider has had some slight issues with newer SDK versions but these issues have been resolved.
Especially when having to work with Eclipse on occasion, you learn to appreciate and yearn for IntelliJ. Or Visual Studio Code. Or anything… but please, not Eclipse! Not Eclipse!!
Not really much else to say here.
OBS Studio
OBS Studio is without a doubt the best streaming software around. Sure, other packages provide neat built-in features, but no other package has the amount of community and manufacturer backing that OBS has.
With the built-in support for virtual cameras and powerful third-party plugins, OBS has essentially become my go-to for ensuring my virtual webcam only shows what I want it to show (and when I want it to show!). It also powers my streaming endeavours on YouTube and Twitch (hopefully I will be more active in 2023!).
You could use Xsplit or Wirecast… but why spend money on these packages when you can use that budget on a good microphone or an Elgato Stream Deck instead?
Zoom Player Max / mpv
There are many media players out there, but my favourite is still Zoom Player Max. It simply behaves exactly as I would expect from a great GUI media player. A great runner up is mpv. Both players have hardware-accelerated playback, support Advanced Substation subtitle rendering and have a delightfully minimal UI.
If you are still sitting on Media Player Classic or even VLC, you owe it to yourself to give at least mpv a try.
Zoom Player stands out for the integrated component installer that makes setting up a fresh installation as well as maintaining it really easy.
XYplorer
Come on, did you really think XYplorer would not get mentioned? Not a single day goes by without me using XYplorer. It is still one of the mightiest Windows graphical file managers, next to FAR and Directory Opus.
If I had to voice a single complaint about XYplorer, it would be the lack of catppuccin themes available. And the fact that I spend so much time in the application sorting files. I would rather do something else, thank you.
Closing Thoughts
I tried a lot of possible alternatives to my application stack. 5 years ago, I would have dismissed Wavebox in favour of Franz. The fact that some of these programs have kept their spot for a decade is a testament to how great they are and how little my workflow actually changed over the years.
Perhaps in 2023, there will be a disruptive new file manager or productivity browser. We will see.
The development and support teams at Microsoft have become so daft that a very simple question seems to be too much for them. Several users inquired about how to uninstall the browser extension because even after removing Power Automate, it kept automatically registering itself on new browser profiles. Really not hard to understand.
Here is how to remove the extension from your user-profile for good:
I honestly don’t know why the Power Automate team does not simply remove these references upon uninstall. Or why they seemingly dodge answering the question altogether when it is very clear what the users are asking.
Then again, the Microsoft forums are the biggest cesspool next to Facebook and Reddit, so I probably should not be surprised.
mount: /run/miso/sfs/livefs: can't read superblock on /dev/loop0. dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.
I have been struggling with this and similar issues for a while now. After checking the affected ISOs, the thumb drive and all, I finally chose the nuclear option: Completely re-installing Ventoy.
Turns out this was a good call. My Ventoy thumb drive has always been updated for roughly 2 years and somewhere down the line, something did go sideways. After completely re-installing the entire drive (partitioning and all), all ISO files finally work properly now.
I recently did a livestream where I was unearthing the (probably) forgotten mIRC script VirusScript by Virus. It is the mIRC script I used back in 2000 and it always held a very special place in my heart, in good part due to nostalgia.
I figured that I could at least turn this into a nice blog post since a lot of the heavy lifting was already done during the stream and the story has, for all intents and purposes, a happy ending. Plus, this way we can all browse history together.
If you are in the mood for reminiscing about an obscure Turkish bit of mIRC scripting from 23 years ago, today is your lucky day. Otherwise, you might want to stop reading here.
The Year: 2000
Ah, the year 2000. Back then, people actually had a sense of taste and played games like Unreal Tournament, Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike. Usenet was still drawing some measurable amount of breath. We were chatting on ICQ, IRC and Roger Wilco. And imagine that, the hot smartphone of the day was the venerable Nokia Communicator. Fancy that.
Back then, I used mIRC as my IRC client of choice. IRC clients are a somewhat strange breed of application, as most of them have kind of scripting language or plugin interface to extend their functionality. My choice of mIRC script was the aforementioned Virus Script by Turkish programmer Virus.
The Year: 2022
Fast forward to the present day. A lot of the “old web” has been lost to either time, page rank irrelevance or data rot. With many services ceasing operation in the mid-2000s, we lost a ton of historic data.
So, how do we find the website of a script, that has been defunct for more than 20 years? With a name that brings up all sorts of irrelevant search results?
Thankfully, some remnants still remain – given you feed search engines with the correct term.
Obviously, searching for “VirusScript” does not really help much. “VirusScript ME” is a better search term because that is the full name of the script.
Depending on your search engine, you might get a relevant result… or nothing at all.
Bing, StartPage and Kagi fail, with no relevant search results. Google gives us what we need, though:
Angelfire! This looks good!
Bingo, an Angelfire hit that lists “mIRC Scripts -Just The Best-“. But do we get a link or a download?
Why does this page look significantly better than tsukasa.io?
Luckily, we do! A link to the homepage on a cjb.net subdomain. The story of CJB Management and mIRC-X is a great and interesting tale for another day, so let’s just press on for now.
Unfortunately, CJB.net stopped the entire subdomain and hosting thing back in the mid to late 2000s. So we need to take a slight detour through archive.org‘s Wayback Machine to proceed. Since VirusScript is old enough to drink, there is a fair chance we can unearth a fully working copy of the website.
After checking the Wayback Machine’s records for vscript.cjb.net, we come up with these possible snapshots:
56 snapshots – 56 chances!
After stabbing a 2008 snapshot, we can see a barely-working landing page with nothing behind that. Let’s try a 2004 snapshot instead… same result. Perhaps 2002 is a lucky year – and indeed, it is!
Bingo!
We get an (almost) fully-working snapshot of the webpage which allows us to read some more information about Virus, his hobbies and even spy his graphics card from back in the day.
With shaking hands, we try the download. A white page. A moment of silence. And then…
Atari!
Yes, this is a working download for VirusScript ME by Virus. A script not only forgotten by most people but also lost to the internet’s constantly shifting sands.
Unfortunately, though, VirusScript is true to its name and contains a few nasties. So I recommend some caution if you are interested in this.
So, let’s fire up a virtual machine, install the script and see what’s up. It turns out VirusScript comes with a few “hacking tools” that were the talk of the town back in the late 1990s – all of which VirusTotal still has a grudge against. Windows Defender is a lot more lenient and only complains about one tool.
There are also some false positives due to the age of the mIRC executable and the fact that this specific mIRC version was also used for malicious deeds back in the day.
h4x0R t00Lz
I suppose these tools are considered harmful due to being “hacking tools” or “attack tools”. So how does VirusScript look? Well…
VirusScript ME up and running, almost like in 2000!
Launching the script is no issue, it does try to do some funky stuff with the vmm_32.vxd – but to no avail, thanks to NTFS and the fact that this is not Windows 98 anymore.
Shareware was such a beautiful thing.
The script comes with mIRC v5.8. Surprisingly, this is not a pre-cracked copy of mIRC or anything. So, let’s take a look at the script editor…
Yeah, that makes sense.
The script editor’s font has been changed. Combine that with some strange default settings for DCC (auto accept and auto run) and we’ve got ourselves a bit of fun. Even back in 1999/2000, automatically running received files was bad practice. So it is reasonable to assume this setting was chosen deliberately to possibly infect users.
There are some shenanigans going on with the script. I do not recommend people to run it. If you must, at least run it in an isolated environment that you can discard later on.
It is still a cool script, all things considered. Especially all the ASCII art fun stuff is as neat as it was 20 years ago. And it is great that archive.org preserves these otherwise forgotten parts of internet history.
Dither me beautiful
So there you have it. From a memory to a broken link to a full download. All the emotional highs and lows you want from a good story.
