Windows 10 Blank Screen Showing Only Mouse Pointer

That's the best I can describe the issue.

I boot up my PC/laptop. It shows the blue Windows 10 logo with the spinning dotted circle below indicating that it's booting up. The logo goes away and normally the Windows desktop with the start screen and taskbar should show up. But this time, all I get is a blank screen. I jiggle the mouse a bit, and my mouse pointer shows up. So I know Windows is running, and it's not a screen issue.

What I did notice is that when I move the mouse, I can see that the pointer actually goes off-screen. This tells me that issue has something to do with the multi-display feature on Windows. Very possible that after a Windows update, the default screen was not set to my current display. So here's how to fix it.

Bring up the Project menu by pressing Windows key + P shortcut. You might not see it, as there's a chance it'll show up on the "main" display. Either way, just press the up or down arrow key a few times and press Enter.  If nothing happens, that's fine. It only means that you haven't selected the correct option. Keep trying a few times, until the desktop shows up on your display.

In my case, I'm the only user on my laptop and has configured auto-logon, so I don't need to log in to Windows. However, if your account is protected by a password, you'll have to log in first. You do this by pressing the spacebar or the Enter key or clicking the mouse, then typing in your password. This might be a difficult as you can't see the logon screen, but once logged in, you can follow the steps above to get back your desktop.

Microsoft Surface Pro No Audio on Headphones

Watching YouTube video using Firefox browser on the Surface Pro with audio coming through the built-in speakers. Plugged in headphones on the 3.5mm audio socket. Audio stops from the speakers. No audio on the headphones. Unplugged the headphone, audio is back on the speakers. Strangely enough, this doesn't happen on my other laptops and tablets.

The theory here is that when Firefox is first started, it chose the built-in speakers as the default audio device. Play YouTube and it routes audio to the speakers. When you plug in the headphones, Windows add a second audio device and makes this the default audio device. However, Firefox is not aware of this and continues to send audio to the speakers, which are now muted by the introduction of the headphones. Most likely a hardware/firmware/driver issue somewhere?

In my particular case, this was fixed by shutting down Windows, plugging in the headphones, and booting up. Windows installed some updates during the reboot, so the issue might've been fixed with some new driver, or maybe it just needed a reboot.

A few things you can try if the above didn't work for you:

• First of all, make sure the headphones are not the problem. You never know. Try them out on a different laptop (or phone).
• Have a look at the headphone plug. Give it a clean if it's dirty.
• When you plug in the headphones, does the audio device switch from speakers to earphones? Check by hovering or clicking on the audio/speaker icon. If it's still on speaker, right-click the audio icon, then Open Sound Setting. Choose earphones as the output device.
• If that still doesn't work, try the "Troubleshoot sound problems" option. Windows will most likely reconfigure or reinstall or reset the audio driver, which should fix it.

Mom's Banana Cake

Ingredients:

• 1½ cup all purpose flour
• ¾ cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3 - 4 bananas (mashed)
• ½ cup butter
• 1½ teaspoon baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teasepoon salt
• 3 tablespoons evaporated milk
• 1 teaspoon banana flavour

Sift flour into a large bowl. Add in sugar. Make a well in the centre. Add in all the other ingredients. Stir until just combined. Pour into an 8"x4" pan. Line with baking paper if not non-stick.

Bake at 350ºF for 40-50 minutes or until  a skewer inserted into centre comes clean. Set aside to cool down.

Mom's Basic Chiffon Cake

With the chiffon cake, you basically have two parts - the egg yolk mixture and the egg white mixture (meringue). Mix the two and bake.

A few things to remember:

• Used chilled eggs, instead of room-temperature ones. This results in a very smooth meringue without the need for cream of tartar.
• Best to use a proper chiffon cake pan. Do not grease the pan, or the the mixture won't stick to the sides and can't rise as high.
• For the same reason, do not use non-stick pans.
• Let the chiffon cake rest upside down. This helps the cake maintain its height, instead of deflating.

Now, on to the ingredients.
For the egg yolk mixture:

• 3 egg yolks
• ⅓ cup sugar
• ¼ cup cooking oil (vegetable or canola)
• 5 tablespoons water
• 1 cup and 2 tablespoons cake flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• a few drops of vanilla

Whisk the 3 egg yolks together with the sugar until creamy pale yellow color. Slowly add the cooking oil. Then the water. Add in the sifted cake flour and baking powder. Keep whisking until thoroughly mixed.

For the meringue:

• 3 egg whites
• ¼ cup sugar

Whisk the egg whites using a hand mixer using medium speed until opaque and bubbly. Slowly add in the sugar. Mix using high speed until stiff peak is formed when whisk is lifted.

Next, fold in a third of the meringue with the egg yolk mixture and mix. Then the next third, then the last third.

Pour mixture into the chiffon pan. Bake at 350ºF for 40 - 45 minutes until ready.

LRC Support

Not sure how widely supported LRC is. Not much, I guess, as I don't see it mentioned much anymore. IIRC, LRC files came out pretty much soon after MP3 was introduced. Nowadays, it's not so easy finding LRC files for songs.

For those who  don't know what I'm talking about, LRC is basically a specially-formatted text file that allows song lyrics to be displayed in sync with the music. For example, a folder/directory would have song.mp3 together with song.lrc. When song.mp3 is played on an LRC-capable MP3 player, it would also display the synchronized lyrics within song.lrc. An LRC file is basically a collection of text entries - a timestamp in brackets, followed by a line from the song. Sort of like SRT for video files, though SRT is more complicated.

On the PC, my default MP3/OGG player is foobar2000. LRC support is through an extension called Lyric Show Panel 3. It can automatically search for, display, and optionally save timestamped (LRC) or text-only (TXT) lyrics. On my Android phone, I used to have HikiPlayer as my default music player. Recently switched to Musicolet when I found out it supports LRC files. Simply tap on the album cover image to display the lyrics. By default, Musicolet displays the lyrics embedded on the music file. Change the settings to LRC if you have LRC files and want to display synced lyrics instead.

My Hisense smart TV also has LRC support for music files. However, Chinese lyrics shows up as weird characters. Strange that it can't decode Chinese LRC files properly because the song title and song artist (also in Chinese) are displayed onscreen just fine. Tried looking for character-encoding settings to change, but didn't find any. Hopefully this is fixed is some future firmware upgrade.