The terminal isn't as difficult as it's made out to be

People are sometimes afraid of Linux because they associate Linux with a command line window or a terminal. And while it's true a lot of things can be done in a terminal window, these days most tasks can also be done graphically. Why use a terminal at all then if most jobs can be done graphically? The terminal uses fewer resources to accomplish the same task. The terminal is also almost always a faster way to do the same job.

About the 38th GM48 game jam

The 38th GM48 game jam is the 38th 48 hour game jam put on for developers who use the GameMaker game engine. Developers have 48 hours to create a game. Before the 48 hour jam starts participants up and down vote topics. The topic chosen for the 38th GM48 game jam was "Sixty seconds."

Media Library Redux

I've been collecting movies on DVD and Blu-ray for many years. Years before I started this collection I amassed a little over 400 VHS movies (which I donated to a small local video shop that I'm happy to say is still in business today). If memory serves me correctly I was pretty happy with this VHS collection for awhile, despite the fact that DVDs had come out several years before. There was no reason at that point for me to move to DVD since the televisions I owned were not great quality.

Remmina, a popular program used to RDP into Windows systems from Xubuntu (and other flavours of) Linux, has a default maximum resolution of 1400x1050. For years I just assumed I was stuck at this maximum resolution until I looked a little closer. It's possible to add your own resolution sizes to Remmina, and it's as simple as a few mouse and keyboard clicks.

One of the things that often confuses people new to Xubuntu Linux is that the screen goes blank after 5 minutes of inactivity. This blank screen is actually Xubuntu’s default screensaver setting. Both the blank screen and 5 minute setting can be changed through the screensaver and power management settings.

The good, bad, and ugly side of the Vivitar 4K Dual Screen Action Cam as purchased at Walmart. The DVR922 was pretty cheap, I bought mine for $39.99 CDN (however I also spent this amount on a 128GB Micro SD/TF card, but more on this later). As an action camera it can take 4K video at 30 frames per second. The camera comes with more accessories than are marketed on the front of the case. Thankfully one of those accessories is a USB cable that can be used to connect the camera to the computer. Once connected the camera can be used as a USB drive, as a web cam (see details in bad section), or to charge the battery. The battery for the DVR922 is removable, but there's more bad news in the bad section. It's worth mentioning that I tested the DVR922 under Xubuntu Linux, so Vivitar gets points for not using some proprietary protocol to lock the camera to particular operating systems.

There is a bug in the archive plugin for the XFCE-based file manager Thunar in Xubuntu 20.04 and Linux Mint 20.1. The bug appears when you right click on any LibreOffice file. Normally you should be able to "create archive" when you click on a file in Thunar, this is the case for most files, but not LibreOffice files (.ods, .odt, etc.).

My Linux bookshelf on January 19, 2021

Like so many people my collection of books has mostly gone digital. When we moved to our apartment 12 years ago we condensed two apartments into one. At the time I had about 10 small boxes of mostly tech-related books. Most apartments don't have the storage space a house does. Ours in particular has one small storage unit. Merging two families into one of the first things to go was my book collection. It was an easy choice to make in order to make space for more important family items (mostly Christmas decorations).

Piper, configure your Logitech G502 Hero mouse

Several months ago I bought a Logitech Hero 502 mouse on sale ($49.99CDN was $99.99) at Canada Computers. Recently I discovered Piper, a program that provides a graphical way to configure the Logitech Hero 502, and several other Logitech (and a few other brands of) mice. For a full list of Piper supported mice see the libratbag list of devices here: https://github.com/libratbag/libratbag/tree/master/data/devices. Piper is a graphical front end to libratbag.

Diablo III on Xubuntu 20.04 Linux brief overview

It works, not as good as it does on Windows 10, but it's very playable with some changes. I had to make some changes for to increase performance, but this might not be as much of a factor if you have a better video card.