Movie 2016.08.12 - Edge of Tomorrow

Just from the trailer, I wasn't too impressed going into the movie. I mean, with a Groundhog Day-type scenario, anyone can win the fight against the aliens. And then, there's Tom Cruise.

Having come in contact with the blood of an Alpha, Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) gains the power to live another day every time he dies. Together with Sargeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), who used to also have this power, they try to figure out a way to get through the daily grind, and locate the Omega, which controls the whole alien Mimic army. Of course, there were some funny moments when Cage first realizes he's in an endless deja vu. Then, the obligatory romance when Cage falls for Vrataski when he gets to know her more and more.

On the day that Cage gets the long-awaited vision and pinpoints the location of the Omega, he gets injured and after a blood transfusion, loses his power to reset the day. Back to Day 1, with no power to reset, he and Vrataski, with the help of the the J Squad, head for The Louvre on a suicide mission to neutralize the Omega. Against all odds, Cage manages to blow up the Omega, and with another dose of alien blood, he goes back in time to witness the defeat of the aliens.

Not too much heavy acting required from the leads. The members of the J Squad are pretty much disposable. I quite liked the moral lesson that human perseverance and tenacity eventually win out. Despite knowing the eventual failed outcome, just having a go at it again and again might make the difference. And if you try hard enough, she might even tell you her middle name.

Softmodding the Wii

Got hold of a refurbished Nintendo Wii console system from EB Games for $28. Proceeded to hack it for maximum gaming pleasure.

Lots of ways to hack the Wii, but the easiest, cheapest way to go is diskless softmod. For this, I used ModMii by XFlak. For n00bs like me, ModMii will do (almost) everything for you. It comes with a graphical front-end for point-and-click convenience. Choose what options you like, and type in the Wii MAC address. The required installers and patches are then downloaded on-the-fly from the internet and packaged nicely for you, ready to be copied over to the SD card and/or USB drive. Then it's all just a matter of connecting the media to the game console and following the custom-generated guide.

In my case, I just want the Wii soft-modded and a USB loader installed, so I can play my game backups.

1. First step is to install the Homebrew Channel (HBC) via BootMii. Copy all the necessary files onto the SD card. Boot the Wii with the SD card inserted. Go to the Messageboard, navigate to Yesterday, then click on the envelope with the bomb icon. This runs the Hackmii installer, which will install the HBC and Bootmii as IOS. In some cases, Hackmii doesn't run after clicking on the envelope. Make sure the SD card is formatted as FAT32 and not write-protected. If that doesn't work, try another SD card.
2. Once HBC is installed, first thing you want to do is do a NAND backup of the Wii, in case something goes wrong and you need to do a restore. Within HBC, press the Home button, then select Launch BootMii. You'll be presented with four icons. Press the Power button on the Wii (not the remote) to go to the last icon, then press Reset button to select. Press Reset again to choose the first option and start the NAND backup process. Copy the BootMii folder, nand.bin and keys.bin from the SD card, and keep them somewhere safe.
3. Next, we run the IOS236 installer from the HBC. If this doesn't work, run the Simple IOS Patcher instead.
4. Install Priiloader to enable some system menu hacks.
5. Install Multi-Mod Manager and install all the WADs that ModMii has downloaded.
6. That's it. The Wii is now soft-modded.

Like everything else, there's a YouTube video on how to do this if you need further clarification.

All that's left to do is to copy your game backups (ISO or WBFS) to the wbfs folder of your USB stick/drive. This is best done using a WBFS manager like Wii Backup Manager. This tool can convert between different file formats. It can also split game backups that are greater that 4GB.

At this point, you're probably saying, "I've misplaced most of my game discs. Where can I find game backups?" Your best bet is to check with your favourite torrent sites. Also try wiiuiso.com. Between ISO and WBFS, choose the latter as they're always smaller in size, as they only contain the game partition, and not the full disc dump. You might even come across some games in WIA (Wii ISO Archive) format, which is even more compressed. For these, you'll need WIT (Wiimms ISO Tools) to decompress into WBFS. Command syntax is: wit copy game.wia game.wbfs

By the way, the Wii has two USB ports. Make sure your USB drive is connected to the "outer" USB port. From the main menu, run the USB loader and play away.

HP Deskjet 3520 Won't Print Black - Solved

The other day I noticed that my black printouts are getting fainter and fainter. So I switched to printing in colour, while I want for the replacement cartridge to arrive. I installed the new ink cartridge, and my first black printout turns out blank. Not faded or faint - the page is totally blank. I thought maybe it takes a while for the ink to go through the system, so I printed a few more sheets - still blank. Printed a few test pages with colour and grayscale. They all came out fine, except for the parts where there's supposed to be black ink.

A quick Google search tells me this is quite a common problem. Some suggestions:
 - Reseat the cartridge as it might not be installed properly.
 - Run multiple passes of "clean printhead" as it might be clogged.
 - Check the vent of the cartridge as it might be clogged. In my case, I noticed that the whole upper sticker/label on the cartridge was peeling off, so I taped it back on to provide a better seal/suction.

As part of my troubleshooting, I put back the old cartridge as it should be good for at least one or two pages. Still blank, so definitely nothing to do with the cartridge. At this point, I'm thinking the firmware/software must've decided NOT to allow black and white printing for some reason. Did a partial reset using this procedure from YouTube, then did a couple of "print status report", "print qualit test report". At one stage, I started getting black print again. Then the printer said ink is low and cartridge requires replacement. Put back the new cartridge I bought, and everything is good from then on.

MD5 Checksum

Lots of ways to generate md5 checksum for a file. Easier to do on Linux than Windows. Just run md5sum.

Normally, I would download and install software like:

• HashTab (http://implbits.com/products/hashtab/)
• HashCheck (http://code.kliu.org/hashcheck/)
• HashMyFiles (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/hash_my_files.html)
• Summer Properties (http://www.frozenlogic.org/summerproperties.shtml), or
• File Checksum Integrity Verifier (http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/f/4/cf454ae0-a4bb-4123-8333-a1b6737712f7/Windows-KB841290-x86-ENU.exe) from Microsoft itself.

If your system is locked down with no admin rights to install new software, try the built-in CertUtil utility in Windows.
Syntax: certUtil -hashfile pathToFileToCheck [HashAlgorithm], where HashAlgorith can be MD2 MD4 MD5 SHA1 SHA256 SHA384 SHA512

Recipe 2016.04.10 - Scrambled Eggs

I hear you saying, surely everyone knows how to make scrambled eggs. Anybody can make scrambled eggs, but not everyone can make great scrambled eggs.

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 1/4 cup milk
• salt and pepper
• 2 tsp. butter
• shredded cheese

Steps:

• Beat eggs, milk, salt and pepper until thoroughly mixed.
• Heat butter in non-stick skillet over medium heat. Pour in egg mixture. Sprinkle some shredded cheese.
• As egg mixture begins to set, gently pull the egg across the pan with a wooden spatula. Continue pulling, lifting, and folding eggs, until no visible liquid egg remains. Remove from heat. Serve immediately.

Pro-tips:

• Do not allow the butter to burn, or this will discolour the egg.
• Do not stir the egg mixture for the first 20 seconds. Lift and fold every 10 seconds afterwards.
• Pull the cooked  outer edges IN towards the center. Uncooked eggs will flood the area you just pulled back.
• Never leave a surface in contact too long with the skillet or it will become overcooked.
• Don't overcook. Remove pan from heat when egg softly set and slightly runny. The retained heat in the pan will continue to cook and firm up.

Cyanogenmod on Samsung Galaxy Tab GT-P1000

Picked up a stock Samsung Galaxy Tab (GT-P1000) still running Froyo. That's a quite a novelty nowadays. Quick check on the Cyanogen website shows that KitKat nightlies are being built for this tablet. There's even a Marshmallow-based OmniROM for it on xda developers, but I don't it's stable enough to run on the tablet. So KitKat it is.

CyanogenMod installation instructions here:
https://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_p1

First thing to do is to get the Froyo device updated to Gingergead. For the complete instructions, check out this YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI79j97R4qw
Basically, you install the Samsung USB drivers, so your tablet will be recognized by your PC. Download Odin and the Gingerbread image, and flash it to the tablet. In detail:

1. Download the Samsung USB drivers from here: http://www.androidrootguide.com/download-samsung-usb-driver-samsung-device-drivers, and install on PC.
2. Download the Odin flasher and stock Gingerbread 2.3.3 ROM from here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BzJut_BZm8NTUjc1OVl6VzRsa0U, and unpack on PC. (Archive password is vio)
3. Put the tablet in download mode by holding the VolDown button when powering up the tablet.
4. Run Odin. Use gt-p1000_mr.pit as the PIT file. Use GB_Stock_Safe_v5.tar as the PDA file. In my case, I used the modem.bin file under JPZ modem as the Phone file.
5. Once everything is set up, connect the tablet to the PC. If the USB drivers are installed properly, Odin should detect the tablet automatically, with the correct COM port.
6. Click on Start.
7. Once flash process is complete, Odin will indicate PASS, and device will reboot automatically. Disconnect tablet from the PC. Power down the tablet.
8. This time, go into recovery mode by holding the VolUp button while powering up the tablet.
9. Using the volume buttons, go to the "wipe data/factory reset" option and press the Home button to select.
10. Then, select "wipe cache partition" option.
11. Then, select "reboot system now".

First boot takes a relatively long time. Once done, you now have a stock Gingerbread Galaxy Tab.

For the second part, we'll be installing ClockworkMod Recovery on the tablet. Full instructions here: http://theunlockr.com/2012/05/07/how-to-root-and-flash-the-clockworkmod-recovery-on-the-galaxy-tab-p1000-running-gingerbread/.

Pretty straightforward after we've gone through the first part though. Download the ClockworkMod Recovery tar file from here: http://www.mediafire.com/?q8s0wnj1s6109gc, then flash it to the tablet using Odin, while the tablet is in download mode. Make sure the Re-Partition tickbox is unchecked. Use the downloaded CF-Root-TAB7_XX_OXA_JQ1-v3.3-CWM3RFS.tar file as PDA.

Third part is to install CM11.

1. Download the latest p1 nightly build from here: https://download.cyanogenmod.org/?type=nightly&device=p1
2. Download the OpenGapps Android 4.4 pico package from here: http://opengapps.org/?download=true&arch=arm&api=4.4&variant=pico (Don't bother getting the bigger packages like micro or even nano because they won't fit on the P1000's system partition.)
3. Set up the tablet to use the USB connection for mass storage, instead of Samsung Kies.
4. Transfer the nightly build and the gapps package to the tablet.
5. Boot into recovery mode using the VolUp + Power buttons.
6. Select the option to "wipe data/factory reset".
7. Select "install zip from sdcard".
8. Select "choose zip from sdcard".
9. Select the CM11 file you transferred and confirm to flash.
10. Repeat above steps starting from step 7 to flash the gapps package.
11. Select option to reboot system.

In my case, I ran into a bit of issue. After step 11, the system keeps going back to the recovery menu. After some headscratching, I realized that Step 9 was happening too fast. What's happening was, the first flash actually installs a newer version of the CWM recovery, but didn't actually flash CM11. So, when I did the second flash for gapps, CM11 wasn't even there. What I did then is, once presented with the newer CWM recovery after step 9, I had to flash the CM11 file again, before proceeding to step 10.

Once done, you now have CM11 KitKat running on your Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Booting to Sony Vaio's BIOS

So the wife's Sony Vaio VPCSD has been running Windows 8.1 for a few years now and it's getting a bit long in the tooth. About time to upgrade to the latest and greatest Windows 10. I already have the installer on a USB stick. All I have to do now is to change the boot order to USB.

For the life of me, I can't remember how to get into the BIOS. Some quick Googling tells me to press the Assist button instead of the power button when booting up. Didn't help - went straight to Windows. What I noticed is that after restart, Windows 8.1 boots up very quickly. There's seemingly no time for you to press any of the function keys. I didn't even see any type of splash screen which would normally tell you which button to press to access the BIOS or the startup boot menu.

The Internet forums say to try holding F2 during bootup, or F8, or F11. I must've restarted the laptop more than 30 times, and using all of the function keys to no avail. Boot from DVD drive definitely works, but the Windows 10 won't fit on the standard 4.7GB DVD disk, so no point.

After hours of experimentation, I finally nailed it. Restart the laptop, then quickly press Esc. Once the Insyde H2O logo pops up, press F2 to access the BIOS setup pages.

Movie 2016.02.18 - The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Read the book, now watched the movie. As usual, I prefer the book over the movie, as it has more content. As the story is being narrated by an introvert through letters to an anonymous friend, I feel the book's the better medium. Nothing wrong with the movie version though. It's a faithful adaptation of the book, given it was written and directed by the author (Stephen Chbosky). A few portions were removed here and there, but that didn't alter the main story much. For readers of the book, like me, the feeling is that Chbosky merely translated the book to the big screen, and left it at that, which is a bit of a letdown. Not sure what I was expecting, but I was hoping for more.

Story is about an introverted loner with mental issues going through his freshman year. He made a few good senior friends who helped him come out of his shell. First high, first girlfriend, first theatre performance, first dance, first kiss from a girl, first kiss from a guy, first breakup. Ended the year with an epiphany of what's the likely cause of his mental problems, so hopefully it's all smooth sailing from then on.

Some choice quotes from the book/movie:

• We accept the love we think we deserve.
• You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand. You're a wallflower.
• But because things change. And friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody.
• You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think it counts as love.
• And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.
• So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them.
• Try to be a filter, not a sponge.
• Nobody felt sad as long as we could postpone tomorrow with more nostalgia.
• It's nice to have things to look forward to.
• I don't know the significance of this, but I find it very interesting.
• And I closed my eyes because I wanted to know nothing but her arms.
• And I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn't matter.

Passwordless SSH Login

There comes a time when you're managing so many servers and you're typing in the passwords every time you log on, and the passwords keep on changing, and you think, wouldn't it be nice if you can log on to all your hosts securely without typing in passwords?

With SSH keys you can. Basically you use a key generator to generate a key pair - a public key and a private key. The public key is copied/installed on the remote host. The private key you keep on your local client. You then configure your SSH client to use public-key authentication, based on your private key, instead of passwords. As passwords are never sent across the network, this method is more secure (and convenient).

On Linux systems, you'd be generating the keypair using ssh-keygen. On Windows, I used PuTTYgen. By default, PuTTYgen will save the private key using its native format. There is an option to export the private key in OpenSSH and ssh.com formats though, so they can be used with other applications. I tried the OpenSSH private key generated by PuTTYgen, and it does work with another SSH client like SecureCRT. On SecureCRT, go to Options --> Global Options. Click on SSH2, then under "Public key", select "Use identity or certificate file", and enter the file location of your private key. To start using public-key authentication, go to session properties. Under SSH2, escalate PublicKey to be the first authentication method. (Interestingly, the PuTTY private key works with SecureCRT v7.x, but not with v6.x. Go figure.)

For PuTTY, load your saved session, then go to Connection --> SSH --> Auth. Configure "Private key file for authentication", then save your session. Obviously, you have to do this for all your saved sessions.

SecureCRT also has the capability to generate SSH keypairs (under Tools). The key generation wizard gives you the option of two private-key formats: VanDyke Private Key format or OpenSSH Key format. If you plan to use the OpenSSH private key generated by SecureCRT with PuTTY, you'll have to convert this first to the proprietary PPK format using PuTTYgen.