[X] My Assistant

I finally finished watching animes from a saved old version of a result of the search engine of a site.

Anime is the singular and the plural.

Having to sort my anime folder to make it comprehensible to PLEX annoys me...but I guess it's my own fault for being a slob.

Sans the plex, I also have a pretty bad organization system. It's been evolving slowly over time though, and now has several useful tools written for it. It still sucks though overall.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Mar 29 2020, 13:51

I think I'll try using my AC-powered fan to degauss this CRT I'm playing with right now.

Edit: didn't work. The red gun is still impure in one corner. Green and blue look fine though. Not sure what's up there.

Sorry about triple posting. One of those I should really have edited together; then this one is the next day.
Anyway, I broke a trimmer potentiometer while drilling 'access holes' in the back of my CRT monitor for easier adjustments. So that's on order. Thankfully I have a service manual.

Also in the meantime it's not actually a potentiometer I use unless I'm using it with my Amiga. Currently it's in use with my PC, where I have just gotten it to run 1024x620 interlaced successfully. I can't actually even tell it's interlaced at a glance with how close together the lines are.

edit, again:
Fixed the color purity problem on my CRT.
Moved two magnets that were taped by the manufacturer to the side of the tube as a corrective measure to new locations, and then added a convergence strip I had floating around in my my toolbox. Looks better than ever.

I managed to zap myself in the process, but "only" on the deflection circuitry, not the flyback transformer. So it could have been a lot worse more painful. And it just went through my thumb and out again.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Mar 31 2020, 02:39

My brother surprised me greatly a few months after I helped built him his first custom PC. In two ways. Firstly, he's into PUBG now. Last time I saw him playing games was around 10 years. Second, he revealed he's interested in trying out RGB and plans on replacing the current CPU cooler with a Cooler Master MasterAir RGB. I thought to myself, why waste money? Just replace the fans, not the entire cooler. Can case fans be used as replacement for radiator fans? If can, which brand & model are suitable? E.g. guaranteed strong airflow, probably won't fail from heat generated by the CPU.

My cheap ass UPS failed during a power outage and cost me almost a year of uptime. I know it had plenty of battery left, and I actually connected more.
It made an awful sound, shut down, and refused to turn back on. After getting my stuff back up via inverter, I carefully disconnected the UPS, cut it's power cord, and drop kicked out my door into the parking lot.
Ordered this setup here...


Not these exact units, but the US version of them.
In my analysis of the pile of UPS parts, I've concluded it either overheated, or had some form of timer instead of monitoring the battery. There were two tinnny heatsinks inside of it... It likely relied on the internal battery, heatsinking, and thermal mass just balancing out.

My cheap ass UPS failed

sorry to hear that.
Never had any real luck with them to be honest. That's part of why I don't bother with RAID on my server. Too risky.

I spent around $20 today on a few BNC adapters, a trimmer potentiometer to replace one I broke inside my monitor while working on it today (i was drilling holes in the case for easier access), and some parts to build a sync separator so that I can connect a SNES/Sega Mega Drive/PSX to my Commodore monitor (which only takes separate H/V sync signals).

Gas was under $1.50/gal today, so that was how I justified the purchase even though I don't really need to be able to use that monitor with my SNES. It's just something I haven't gotten around to doing for a long time but have wanted to.
I think I'll make it bidirectional, so it can combine separate H/V sync pulses to a composite sync line as well. All I should need for that is a 7432 or derivative, which I'm pretty sure I have.

Ah, I dropped 300 on the UPS total. That's the first time I've been pissed enough at an appliance breaking to kick it out the door, so figure it was worth doing right. Also, my home phone is voip- So it's base, the ATA, the router, and modem need juice for me to reliably make a voice call at home. Cell service f'n sucks in my village.

This post has been edited by Wayward_Vagabond: Mar 31 2020, 08:42

I think I'll try using my AC-powered fan to degauss this CRT I'm playing with right now.

Edit: didn't work. The red gun is still impure in one corner. Green and blue look fine though. Not sure what's up there.

Sorry about triple posting. One of those I should really have edited together; then this one is the next day.
Anyway, I broke a trimmer potentiometer while drilling 'access holes' in the back of my CRT monitor for easier adjustments. So that's on order. Thankfully I have a service manual.

Also in the meantime it's not actually a potentiometer I use unless I'm using it with my Amiga. Currently it's in use with my PC, where I have just gotten it to run 1024x620 interlaced successfully. I can't actually even tell it's interlaced at a glance with how close together the lines are.

edit, again:
Fixed the color purity problem on my CRT.
Moved two magnets that were taped by the manufacturer to the side of the tube as a corrective measure to new locations, and then added a convergence strip I had floating around in my my toolbox. Looks better than ever.

I managed to zap myself in the process, but "only" on the deflection circuitry, not the flyback transformer. So it could have been a lot worse more painful. And it just went through my thumb and out again.

My thought: "that guy should just build "persocon" like the ones in Chobits already, seems like his skills are going that way"
May scale wrong though (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

My thought: "that guy should just build "persocon" like the ones in Chobits already, seems like his skills are going that way"
May scale wrong though (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

I'll take that as a compliment. Chobits is one of my all time favorites.

Never had any real luck with them to be honest.

I've always had luck with APC brand (not counterfeit) since the 1990's and have bought them all via warehouse shopping clubs such as Sam's Club. It's what I am still using. Since those places sign contracts with the actual company, the distribution sources are probably going to be genuine product and not counterfeits like on some of the marketplace items on Amazon. The other problem was that early chinese versions of UPS were poorly made. Originally, Cyberpower (china) had a product out that was accused by some users as being a scammy product in that its advertised features weren't as advertised since normal users wouldn't be able to verify features or prove that their product was damaged by ringing spikes on the high harmonics square wave output. Their products kept on improving, even if some of them looked like repackaged copies, but now their products are probably "good enough".

Since the APC units don't break down and have nice features such as automatic load factor compensation and AC voltage adjustment without using the battery, I simply buy replacement batteries. Naturally, those replacement batteries are cheap as they are made in China. The APC units have built-in battery load testing and show that despite the model # on the batteries, they are about 1/3 their official specification capacity.

You can always claim to trust a chinese company product, but you should also validate. For example, the Harbor Freight house brand Li-Ion power pack jump starter (see picture below) claimed to have 12,000 mAH power, but opening up the package showed that it only had 2,900 mAH power inside. So, for power products, many of China's brand name products says one thing, but may be something else.

I've always had luck with APC brand (not counterfeit) since the 1990's

My last one was APC as well, but I did get it secondhand so it was likely in use for a long time. I think it was a real one, but I haven't had it in four or five years. It probably was just the battery. I gave it away.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Mar 31 2020, 21:07

My battery expansion showed up early today, but the unit proper is still in transit.

APC seems to have a thing where the unit is solid and the batteries never go low from self discharge- but they overcharge slightly. Batteries get iffy after 3 years in em.

I'm not totally against the removal of 3.5mm audio jack. Just that it has to be replaced with its own standardized digital port. Much like how both GPUs and PC monitors now support either HDMI or DP or both and PC monitors are always bundled with either cables.

I'm not totally against the removal of 3.5mm audio jack. Just that it has to be replaced with its own standardized digital port. Much like how both GPUs and PC monitors now support either HDMI or DP or both and PC monitors are always bundled with either cables.

I'm against it unless the digital connector also is required to provide both an analogue and a digital sound signal.
USB C not requiring 'both or neither' is a major annoyance.

Also the connector on my Pixel 2 XL doesn't work for data anymore (it's broken, but just working enough to charge). So since I have no headphone jack I can't use it with my headphones _at all_ anymore.

IMO it's a bad move to consolidate to begin with.


Also, been playing around with transistors to try to build a video amplifier circuit today. I think I need to get some more PNP transistors; all I seem to have in my collection is a ton of NPN's.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Apr 1 2020, 07:33

After using Impacket and Scapy, just gotta say: Scapy nice when it comes to easy frame construction and plentiful documentation and resources, but holy fucking hell does its performance suck sweaty balls.

Impacket on the other hand... A bit tricky, but MUCH faster (order of magnitude) due to backend compiled bindings. Major downside though: Jack shit in terms of resources and the few resources has people asking "Why not use Scapy?" as an answer. Ffs...

At least their code is documented though.

UPS seems to performing well, but I'll have to see what it's claimed runtime is when I get home- all the batteries started at roughly 50%.

After using Impacket and Scapy, just gotta say: Scapy nice when it comes to easy frame construction and plentiful documentation and resources, but holy fucking hell does its performance suck sweaty balls.

Impacket on the other hand... A bit tricky, but MUCH faster (order of magnitude) due to backend compiled bindings. Major downside though: Jack shit in terms of resources and the few resources has people asking "Why not use Scapy?" as an answer. Ffs...

At least their code is documented though.

Added to my lecture about "why good documentation is important" - thanks.

Added to my lecture about "why good documentation is important" - thanks.

The single biggest problem I have with Python code.

The next biggest is speed of course.

The single biggest problem I have with Python code.

I laughed hard. That lecture *is* on python.

460 minute or so claimed runtime, with my laptop plugged in. Not bad. Maybe I can get the data cable and software to do auto-sleep after $foo minutes of power loss or remaining run time..