Gosh, stubborn software can be the worst. As it tuns out, Air Display really isn’t compatible with Windows 10. It’s not listed as compatible, and many people have complained that the Windows 10 Upgrade Assistant had blocked them from upgrading over Air Display. Trouble is, I was already running Windows 10, and now the uninstaller would never complete – instead rolling back without a single error message. Furthermore, its driver would never remove from Device Manager – scanning for new devices would make the Air Display monitor device reappear!

Today’s BSOD of the day is APC_INDEX_MISMATCH. I encountered this during a casual Windows update today. How annoying! In particular, this update was the Windows 10 version 1607 feature update (aka build 14393), which corresponds to the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. This was the very first day of the update rollout here in Australia – 3rd August. The APC_INDEX_MISMATCH “stopcode” presented itself on each attempt of a Windows Update, where each time it failed with this BSOD and consequently rolled back.

Update: Xilinx have published a support article ISE Install – Guide to Installing and Running ISE 10.1 or 14.7 on a Windows 8.1 or Window 10 machine which documents the same workaround as has been described in this YouTube video. Follow the instructions in the article, particularly the section titled “ISE 14.7 64-bit – Turning off SmartHeap”. Xilinx does not plan to release any further updates – sending the message that ISE has well and truly been discontinued.

So, what are you guys doing now? Uh, “Staring” #COMP3211

Figured out how to increase the font scale – and smoothen out the fonts – in the Spotify Linux client. It goes something like this: $ /usr/lib64/spotify-client/spotify --enable-font-antialiasing --force-device-scale-factor=1.25 Much the same arguments as from Chromium. 🙂 You can set the parameters on the application launcher by editing /usr/share/applications/spotify.desktop Exec=sh -c "spotify %U --enable-font-antialiasing --force-device-scale-factor=1.1" Make sure you restart gnome-shell – it seems to otherwise cache entries. This trick even works for the WordPress client app for desktop!

I have just completed a redesign the old Minecraft Server Dashboard website! It is something I have wanted to do for some time. About three days of work, starting from the initializr boilerplate. Enjoy.

Hello COMP3222! Pictured: Windows 3.0 running on the FPGA. The Zet project is, loosely-speaking, a FPGA implementation of a x86 processor. Most fortunately it was compatible with the DE-1, after much fustration of trying to understad “what the FPGA board was”, and its flashing tools. Complete with VGA display and PS/2 Keyboard input (no mouse due to lack of ports). Re-living the horror of being able to delete the Control Panel once more!

A user interface is like a joke – if you have to explain it, it’s a bad one. No features were harmed in the making of this new UI. [source]

Some of my notes on hacking with openwrt: The TP-LINK WR841N is probably one of the cheapest routers, available for around ~$28 AUD. Have not had a single problem with it ever. It’s not Gigabit tho. TP-LINK WR841N v9 – runs Chaos Calmer 15.05 RC2 just fine. There is enough space to install LuCI, but not much else. TP-LINK WR841N v8 – prebuilt images from the openwrt website include LuCI already.

When my dad first bought the iPad 2, he thought is was the most amazing thing ever. Now it is just _screaming_ to be replaced – the system software is extremely sluggish (constantly lagging), unresponsive, or apps just plain crashing. Here’s a table (sourced from http://colourclassicfaq.com/mobo/mystic.shtml) which describes the system software versions for ye ol’ 1993 Apple Mac Classic: Strikingly, this table resembles the state of affairs of iOS on the iPad 2… even the 7, 8.