Tech Spot

I begrudgingly upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11.  That decision was made because Microsoft will stop support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025.  I actually do a decent amount of work in Linux Mint, but my workplace uses a lot of Microsoft and other Windows-based software. After upgrading, I uninstalled various unnecessary items like the login screen widgets, Copilot, Xbox, etc. but I quickly found out the taskbar was not very customizable.  The main issue for me is that Windows 11 doesn't allow you to rotate the taskbar to be vertical.  This was actually a deal-breaker for me because I frequently switch between programs, and with a dual 22" LED monitor setup, it was inefficient and awkward to constantly move both my gaze and mouse pointer to the bottom of the left screen to select a program.  Of course there is the ability to Alt+Tab or Windows+Tab, but being able to just click on what you need in the centerpoint between the left and right screens is more...

While updating VirtualBox Guest Additions for a minor version upgrade on v7, I ran into an odd issue where I couldn't run a shell script with sudo or even as root, and the appropriate execute flag set. I ended up having to run in a separate shell to get it to work. I don't recall this happening before. Here's are my attempts below, along with a screenshot and the capture of it finally working. user@linuxmint:/media/cdrom$ ls -la total 48888 dr-xr-xr-x 5 root root 2742 Feb 6 05:09 . drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Mar 4 2024 .. -r--r--r-- 1 root root 1048 Oct 23 11:00 AUTORUN.INF -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 7003 Feb 6 04:40 autorun.sh dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 1468 Feb 6 05:09 cert dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 1252 Feb 6 05:09 NT3x dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 2828 Feb 6 05:09 OS2 -r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 5096 Feb 6 04:40 runasroot.sh -r--r--r-- 1 root root 653 Feb 6 05:09 TRANS.TBL -r--r--r-- 1 root root 2095024 Feb 6 04:49 VBoxDarwinAdditions.p...

I installed BlueStacks X to try and run some mobile games from my Windows 10 desktop, for purposes of saving my phone battery from being drained so quickly.  My initial experience was a little rocky as games kept crashing.  After some tweaking I was able to find some stability.  If you have plenty of resources on your desktop, great, go ahead and use the Performance setting and have everything at High.  I didn't have that luxury on my Windows 10 desktop with an AMD Ryzen 5 CPU and 16 GB RAM, as I have multiple apps running including virtual machines (on a similar note, I did try out an Android 9 x86 VM from OS Boxes  but most Android games are ARM-based and wouldn't install).  I read that BlueStacks will work because it's emulating ARM, but this does come at a performance cost. Here is a screenshot of the strategy game Puzzles and Survival running in BlueStacks: Initially, I had tried to get it to run using Medium (2 CPU) and 2 GB of RAM, but the game kept ...

  It's 2023 and I still keep my Hotmail email address around, mainly to use when I need to create an account for some app or web site. I have my Gmail account set up to sync the emails - Google's spam filters are far better than any other free email service I've used.  Recently, I've gotten emails with the subject line "Microsoft account unusual sign-in activity".  The links in the email do go to account.microsoft.com so I looked into it.  Each time, it shows the location of the activity as coming from Ireland (I assure you, I'm nowhere near Ireland!).  After I clicked "This wasn't me" on several occasions, I realized Gmail was no longer syncing my Hotmail emails.  When I went to Gmail's "Accounts and Import" section, it displayed a warning that emails couldn't sync for that account. In that section, I had to re-enter my Hotmail credentials and then go to https://account.live.com/activity to click "This was me" to ...

I recently started using Grav for a separate blog unrelated to this one.  It's been great so far, with an easier learning curve than other self-hosted CMSes (though not easier than a default Blogger/Blogspot or Wordpress site).  One thing that was strange to me was that there doesn't seem to be a default way to add a piece of JS code such as a Google Analytics tag to your Grav site using the Admin console. It's not readily apparent, but there are some plug-ins you can install such as "Custom JS", which I prefer to the Google Analytics plug-ins for future proofing and ease of adding other JS code snippets as needed. From the Grav Admin console, go to Plugins > + Add > (search for "custom" in the filter box) and then install it.  Note, the plug-in automatically has a <script> tag before and </script> tag after. So if you are adding a code snippet that already starts with <script> and ends with </script> then you will need to r...

I accidentally installed Debian 12 with GNOME on a "headless" virtual machine with only 10 GB of disk space with a low-cost hosting provider.  I would only ever need to SSH into such a VM. Rather than re-installing again I tried to see if I could remove the GNOME/X11 components.  Various Reddit, Stackexchange and Superuser threads gave some commands but they were far from complete, at least for the newer Debian 11 and 12 versions. Using "sudo apt list --installed" showed what else was remaining after I ran "sudo apt remove gnome". Some of these I looked up online to see if they truly were graphical only. Warning: Do not just run "sudo apt remove gnome*" or "sudo apt remove x11*".  One of these ended up doing a cascade uninstall of sudo itself!  Fortunately I had the root password and could re-install it, but if you don't, I'd try these commands separately.   sudo apt remove totem sudo apt remove xauth sudo apt remov...

Make your own backing cover plate for a Eufy doorbell (DIY) I recently upgraded my old LaView doorbell to a Eufy 2K Pro doorbell.  The Eufy is a tad slimmer and exposed some of the roughed up exterior wall.  Not only was it unsightly, but if you looked from the side, you could actually see and potentially pull out the power cables using something like a paper clip.  I looked online for some wall backplates and found some on Amazon with names like Wasserstein or Vomenc.   But most of these were for Ring or Blink doorbells.  I just needed something simple.  At first, I thought to find a piece of generic black plastic, but then found an almost perfect match. View after initial mounting with exposed hole You can just use a simple light switch plate that costs less than $1 at a home improvement store.  The screw holes almost line up perfectly - I ended up screwing one in at a slight angle and it was fine.  Also, I opted to use some stronger screws I h...