The new PS5 Pro is released at $699.99, and I’m here to ask a question: Is a gamer not entitled to sweat of —I meant— pixels of his consoles? Enough Andrew Ryan quotes, but it is a serious question nonetheless. At $700, PS5 Pro has a tough battle ahead of it to win the spotlight in the entertainment room. And that rivaling champion is no other than the TV itself.
How To Prepare VPN VLAN for Switch
In my previous post on how to setup VPN VLAN, I discussed the methodology of setting one for the first time. Now that it’s near Black Friday of 2024, some of the VPN providers have already started pre Black Friday sale in October. No doubt consumers are shopping for which service is right for their needs, and which one is the most affordable; it also means, you might be switching the provider entirely.
Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred Spiel
Diablo IV has a tall order to meet as a fourth installment in the franchise. Blizzard has added, removed, or changed some bits and that since 1996, but as a sequel to a 28 years old franchise, the game cannot offer new ideas without radical departure. Vessel of Hatred has even taller order, as an expansion to an existing game, the expansion is expected to have something new, perhaps little changes, and nothing removed.
How to Setup Expanded Storage for Steam
Recently I moved the m.2 SSD from a NAS to a Mac. A NAS running on Linux was better served with expanded memory, so I thought to use the SSD to expand the internal storage of my workstation. Upgrading process was straightforward, but there was a problem moving games from Steam Library to the newly expanded storage.
Diablo IV, Console Support, and DualSense
Part 2 on the most recent title from Diablo franchise, and frankly found more often on the indie games, the dubious controller support and lack of documentations thereof. As strange as it sounds, there are aspects of a video game where a spec is necessary. Not just “minimum requirements” and “recommended” specs of your hardwares, but specs of what a game includes. You could, in theory, play an 8 bit retro game on a surround sound system, but that would be an overkill.
Diablo, Controller Support, and Lock-on
With Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred just released, —and yes, “emergency maintenance” requires me to publish this story before I could give my fair share to the game— I though to ask where do games stand on supporting controllers. Or, more specifically, supporting features that are not bound by keyboard and mouse.
Mis-Recipes, Dis-Recipes, and AI Recipes
When ChatGPT-craze was still booming, there was a YouTuber who put the AI recipes to the test. It doesn’t take professional baker to immediately catch what is off with the recipe GPT-3 has written for her. Her video mostly focuses on the experimentation and information on where AI technology stands on food.
How to Fix Error 173 on Intel Mac Pro dGPU
Of many things Apple Silicon brought, I am still curious whether or not Apple is willing to bring dGPUs into Mac Pro lines of their products. Despite how useful other PCI-based cards may be, most users, at least the ones that are most vocal, express their desire to use more powerful graphics card on Mac Pro, like it used to be.
How to Troubleshoot WordPress Scheduled Post Not Publishing
No doubt different writers have different post publishing schedules, but we all do have a schedule —or at least try— to follow. What used to be simple ‘schedule to publish’ on WordPress is quite no more, however, with many hosting services now require WordPress hosted websites to take advantage of caching. Personally I find it odd that they do, considering caching does require some manual setup.
PCalc Spiel
Have you read any iOS, iPadOS, or watchOS rumors for this year? Behind all the ‘throw the pasta on the wall’ schtick, there was one I couldn’t laugh about. It’s the calculator app. Calculator apps on any Apple devices were either too old it was a place holder item for announcement of App Store, or it shouldn’t exist from the start. I suppose someone, or some team, in California wrote bunch of basic apps to show off what a new “smart-phone” is then forgot about it. The default app is finally brushed up for the future, but let’s talk alternatives.
Native Support, Bootcamp, and GPTK
As much as I appreciate native Mac supports in PC gaming, there is something to be said about the overall quality of the support. Some games are simply not optimized. Its performance is either subpar or some advanced settings are simply unavailable for native versions. Some games run into glitches that are unique only to Mac players. Bugs are bound to happen differently on each platforms, but it becomes problematic when the game chooses not to address it. Some games even drop the ball on cross play and cross progression, in order to release their PC version first.
App to Connect to Network Drive on Boot
This one belongs in the “there is an app for that” department. If you are an avid NAS user, chances are most of your drives are already connected via network. And that means, on every boot up, you will need to manually login to the NAS on Finder to mount the drives. One might call it a morning ritual to type in login credentials, but I think most people would find it less than ideal.
Frostpunk 2 Spiel
For a game set in the ice age, Frostpunk 2 surely is released at a weird time. I would imagine September isn’t particularly hot or cold in either hemisphere. Last installment for the franchise was released during the pandemic, and even for a DLC, the last scenario didn’t sit well with the world it has established. The ice age was coming to an end, and we were told New London fell victim to the problems of old. In Frostpunk 2, we are back in New London, but as the steward of metropolis, not a city.
How to Disable Windows Web Search on Start Menu
For unknown reason, Microsoft can’t stop shipping its OS without more bloatware. Both Mac and Linux can be guilty of the same crime, but I am more surprised that Windows doesn’t have a dedicated ‘lite’ version available for .iso on the website. To reiterate, Windows is shipped with Bing search embedded on the start menu. And there is no on-off switch button.
How to Upgrade RAM on Synology NAS DS1520+
Synology NAS is weirdly customizable for a NAS. This one is a compliment. Not only Synology offers various NAS models, each models have usually have few upgradeable points, namely m.2 SSDs and RAM. This piece is about choosing the RAM, why someone would consider upgrading the RAM, and what would be the potential downsides of choosing third-party RAM. All in all, I do recommend it even for general users, especially if your NAS has slowed down significantly with DSM 7.