I have a thing against Mini DisplayPort. Ah, the cause of so many of my problems. I’ve been through broken mDP (Mini DisplayPort) cables, broken mDP ports, and “non-working” mDP to HDMI adaptors causing havoc. It’s things like having to drive to a shop just to buy a working adaptor when you really need it, or figuring out what angle to bend the cable to get a projector working for a 21st party (yep).

Stumbled across Philip Guo’s blog, as I was (initially) searching for programming interview tips. Worth visiting for any software / computer science-y people out there, with insights into Phd and academia life. Hard work! http://pgbovine.net/programming-interview-tips.htm https://www.youtube.com/user/pgbovine/

Summary: Get a really good computer for ProPresenter. A dual core laptop with integrated graphics does NOT work very well with ProPresenter 5 / 6 Windows. Whilst the Mac version is proven but not perfect, the Windows version is generally “slow” as my volunteers tell me. Test things out before going live!! Editorial note: If you’re thinking about buying ProPresenter 6 Windows, I recommend you take a look at the official forums beforehand to get a feel for the kind of problems others have/are facing with the software.

Early into this semester I bought a HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8. A few months after, everything seems to running well! 🙂 This is a huge upgrade from the Noontec N5… oh, _exFAT_ as a 24⁄7 single disk NAS filesystem? NEVER AGAIN. Especially as it definitely wasn’t running any of Microsoft’s OSes! I purchased the most basic option, with a Celeron G1610T processor at ~$310 AUD (incl. shipping), and thanks to ozbargain for an eBay discount coupon, the deal included 8GB RAM (up from the 4GB base).

Xilinx’s tools seems to always come with their fair share of problems. I installed the latest version, Xilinx Vivado 2016.4, hoping that I could avoid hacky fixes to get it running (and playing nice with Windows 10, too!) I was wrong. (Turns out that this is normal, just look at the sample projects in “Zynq SoC Training” from EmbeddedCentric.com!) Current grievances: Bad workflow when developing a custom IP. Plenty of “Vivado Internal Exception” messages popping up every now and then.

If you are one of the few people with the Logitech Wireless Rechargable Touchpad T650, and on Windows 10, you’ve probably been wanting some Windows 10 gestures like I have – particularly Virtual Desktop switching. Logitech’s SetPoint software is unfortunately closed-source and not very customisable. This particular device has no method of hand editing the xml files to redefine the special touch gestures. Lame. I have posted this feature suggestion to Logitech (a “Precision Touchpad” driver would be seriously amazing), but in the meantime, here’s my own solution, which piggy backs on SetPoint’s hotkey send events:

Dual booting Windows with Mac? Getting duplicate Windows Boot Manager boot entries appearing on every boot? Is your ASUS BIOS sometimes completely freezing on boot due to these boot entries building up (what a dumb bug!)? Eventually I got pretty fed up of unplugging every non-boot hard drive just to unfreeze the boot sequence, so I ventured to find a solution. After much research (there is a good thread over at tonymacx86) this is my write-up on the solution.

Here are some of the activities I used some lessons aimed at a class of school kids learning coding skills. All activities were coded using the special micro:bit version of TouchDevelop. The ability to “click-to-code” using the on-screen keyboard was excellent as an entry-level coding environment, considering that some are slow typers. However, the advanced text (actual code typing) mode was disabled on this special micro:bit version, which was a bummer for the older kids (and myself…)

Explain what NAS is? NAS is short for Network Attached Storage. It’s a server optimised for file storage. You plug one of these NAS units onto your network, and insert a couple of hard disks. You can access these disks from any computer or device over the network. Using your internet connection, the storage can also be accessed remotely from internet. NAS solutions are commonly found in all kinds of SMB/SOHO businesses, used to store data like client details, photos, documents, etc.

Work uses Macs exclusively, so it was time for me to brush up on some macOS skills. It gets a bit confusing when your jumping in between macOS, Windows, and Linux DE’s… Basics Get to know the funky symbols Control Option Command fn The command key is the primary modifier for shortcuts. (e.g. Cut, Copy, Paste) command + x command + c command + v Spotlight Command + Spacebar Text movement