TomTom Map 2019 Update

Been a few years since I last updated the maps on my TomTom PNDs. Not that I use them much these days (or at all), since it's more convenient to use Google Maps on my smartphone. I figure it's probably better to use a dedicated GPS unit when going on long drives, so might as well do a refresh.

Normally, I would update the NavCore on the unit, then install the latest map. Then I realized/remembered that since 2010, TomTom has switched the internal filesystem from FAT/FAT32 to Linux, thereby restricting external access to the device. As such, my XL330s and XXL TomToms are stuck with v9.530 with no hope of further upgrades. For the maps, I usually go to GPS Underground and NaviTotal to check out the latest maps available. On an aside, turns out the owner of GPS Underground is retiring, and is looking to sell the forum (vBulletin license and the domain name). Hopefully it stays around for a while longer. Would be sad to see it go, along with the collective knowledge accumulated over the years.

Before downloading any map, make sure that:

• it's compatible with your device and/or NavCore version (check the compatibility matrix)
• has the features that you want (TTS, ALG, and IQ Routes being the most important ones.)
• the meta code is already available (or else the map won't work)

Simplest way to update the map:

1. Connect the PND to a PC.
2. Make a backup of the device.
3. Delete the current map folder.
4. Copy over the updated map folder.
5. Update meta.txt with the associated meta code for the new map.
6. Copy over the safety cam files from the backup if you have them.
7. Run FastActivate.
8. Profit.

I can't stress this enough. Always make a backup of the unit before performing any work on it. In my case, the folder structure got borked while transferring the new map and I ended up with garbage files and folders, which Windows can't even remove/delete. Solution? I had to format the whole drive and restore from backup.

In case FastActivate is not able to update your maps, make sure you're using the latest version of FastActivate. Another common issue for incomplete map errors (dct errors) is due to missing and/or wrong meta codes. If the integrated meta.txt file does not come with the meta code you need, insert the new ones into meta.txt. DO NOT manually add meta codes to integrated_meta.txt because in my experience, FastActivate won't read it.

Movie 2019.06.25 - Men in Black: International

Wasn't really expecting a new MIB installment. I mean, aside from men in black fighting aliens, are we expecting anything new here?

Well, they added some female actors for a start. Moving along with the times and all that. The movie also focuses on the London branch of MIB. So don't understand why it's called MIB: International instead of MIB: London. That way, they can do a different city every year. In any case, Chris Hemsworth is Aussie and Liam Neeson is Irish. International enough?

Now, let's talk about the movie itself. I've got one word for you: sloppy. Chris and Tessa waltz in, fresh from their Thor: Ragnarok high, and take a walk in the MIB park. I know it's hard to act when it's all green screen, and you're interacting with things that may or may not be there. But c'mon, put in some extra effort. I'm looking at you, Chris. Maybe he feels that after that stint with the Avengers, he deserved a break.

And a lot of the scenes in the movie are not really relevant to the plot - M's first visit to the London HQ and seeing all those aliens for the first time, the normal subway car transforming into a futuristic rail carriage, H's intro scene at the gambling den, etc. The CGI is pretty good, but in this day and age? Not enough. Could've worked 10 years ago, but aliens have lost their wow factor. There were some attempts at humour - H throwing the mini-hammer at the Tarantian goon a la Thor, references to the political incorrectness of the name Men in Black, etc. These are merely distractions and don't bring anything solid to the table. Pawny? A sidekick here and there would be helpful, but could've been done much better.

Yeah, things definitely went downhill for the franchise with the absence of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. I guess Liam Neeson can see that, too, which might explain his unceremonious exit. Now that Aladdin is out, I say bring Will Smith back for the next installment, if there will be one.

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.

New Life on Old ThinkPad T41

Found my old IBM ThinkPad T41 in a cupboard. Wanted to see if I get it back to working condition.

Installed Windows XP on it, but couldn't get WiFi to work. I mean WiFi work, I can see the WiFi LED on. I can see the WiFi icon in the notification area. However, it's not able to see any WiFi access points.

Clean installed Windows 7 to see if it's any better. Wireless not even detected. Have to get the install the driver packs from my Windows XP disc to get that working. Ended up with a similar situation. However, after resetting the wireless interface, Windows was able to detect wireless networks, and go from there. The next issue I'm experiencing is that the laptop runs too slow on Windows 7. Opening a simple webpage takes ages (relatively speaking). And after installing Windows Defender, it became even slower (if that's even possible). CPU is almost always at a 100% and the hard disk is always active. Hard to believe this is the same corporate laptop running Windows and Office and Wireshark (Ethereal) back in the day!

Tried to load CloudReady via USB, but it won't boot up properly. Looks like Linux is my only option. My first choice would've been Linux Mint, but I reckon it's still too "modern" for the T41. We need something that is built/designed for old, slow 32-bit PCs from the ground up.

• Damn Small Linux seems to be dead.
• Read somewhere that lubuntu doesn't have the WiFi drivers out of the box.
• Tried Puppy Linux, but the BionicPup variant I downloaded won't install because it comes with a PAE kernel, and the CPU on the T41 doesn't have PAE capability.
• Finally settled on antiX. Based on Debian, but totally free of systemd. Now that's a feature.

Booted up antiX from USB stick just fine. Installed it on the hard disk with no issues. Got the WiFi working using ceni. Memory usage is really low, and CPU is pretty much idle if you're not doing anything. Firefox takes up a few hundred MBs of memory. Web browsing is slow, but works. Watching videos over the network or YouTube pretty much maxes out the CPU. Looks like this is only going to be useful as a text editor.

Uploading Clash Royale Matches to YouTube

Started off with me wanting to put my Clash Royale matches on YouTube. As always, wanted to go with the simplest, easiest, and cheapest way to do this.

First off, recording the gameplay. Two ways to do this - Google Play Games or as I'm using a Galaxy S9+, the Samsung Game Tools. With Google Play Games, you select the game from the carousel, then click on the floating videocamera icon to start recording. Quality setting is either 720p HD or 480p SD. You can also record yourself (audio and video) via an in-game round selfie window, if that's what you want. With Samsung Game Tools, these are the options:

• record format (mpeg or gif)
• audio source (mic or game)
• video resolution (720px or 1080px)
• choice of different bitrates and aspect ratios

Went with the latter, as I want the recording to be as hi-res as possible.

Now that gameplay recording is sorted out, I needed a way to edit the video - basically trim the start and end portions. I know that the Photos app that came bundled with Windows 10 is able to trim videos. From the app, click on the Edit & Create button, then select Trim. Move the blue marker and align the starting point with it. Do the same for the endpoint. When ready, click on the Save as button. Aaand it spits out an error message. "It looks as though you don't have permission to save changes to this file. Try saving a copy instead." That's what I'm trying to do! Tried saving to a different location/folder. Tried changing the filename. It just won't save the edited video clip!

A search on Google shows that I'm not the only one having this issue. Didn't find any solution that worked for me, so had to look for other software that can do the job.

Found mostly trialware that requires either payment or a subscription. Some of the software/websites looks dodgy I don't even want to try them even if they're free. I did play with the open-source OpenShot a bit, but it keeps stalling and freezing. In the end, I went with Sony Vegas Pro. After a few YouTube tutorials, I was trimming videos like a pro. One thing I noticed - Vegas Pro won't render your vertical video when you use the Sony AVC/MVC format. Made sure the render properties match the project properties, but still kept getting "invalid parameter". Switched to MainConcept AVC/AAC and 1080x1920 resolution works just fine when rendering the final video. The only downside is MainConcept only supports 30fps, while Sony AVC/MVC can do 60fps.