AlaskaLinuxUser's Scratchpad

Continued hacking with a hex editor

alaskalinuxuser — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 08:00:00 -0800

Since I finally beat the game, I decided to look a little deeper at hex editing the saved games of Phantasy Star for the SEGA Master System. While I am generally not a big fan of cheat codes and game hacking, I just kept looking at this hex data and …

Hacking with a hex editor and why I needed to cheat

alaskalinuxuser — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 13:00:00 -0800

After doing all that work to make the "SaveRAM" function of Gearsystem work on Ubuntu Touch, I figure I better give it a good test by playing through a game that uses it. If you are unfamiliar, my previous post is all about how I fixed the SaveRAM function so …

Saving persistent RAM in Gearsystem

alaskalinuxuser — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 06:00:00 -0900

As I have been playing around with Gearsystem on Ubuntu Touch lately, I decided it was time to tackle a way to save the game. If you are unfamiliar, you can check out my previous posts about Gearsystem, but it is an emulator that was originally written by Ignacio Sanchez …

Gearsystem Start Button Fix

alaskalinuxuser — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 13:00:00 -0900

A while back, I had the pleasure of updating the Gearsystem app from Xenial to Focal and then pushed it up to Noble for Ubuntu Touch phones. If you are unfamiliar, Gearsystem is a Sega Game Gear / Master System emulator, which allows you to play old games from those consoles …

Ubuntu Touch works on AT&Ts whitelist

alaskalinuxuser — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 06:00:00 -0900

One of the biggest hangups for using Ubuntu Touch in the USA has finally been overcome! Through all the years that Ubuntu Touch has existed as an alternative to Android or iOS, it has always had one really big problem in the USA phone market: it coulnd't phone. Oh, for …

Kaidan 0_6_0 is ready for testing

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 06:00:00 -0900

Earlier this year, I spent a lot of time working through a ton of apps for Ubuntu Touch that were "left behind" on Xenial, and updated them to Focal, and most of those to Noble, for the new UT system. However, one of the apps I really, really wanted to …

Speeding up x11vnc

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 06:00:00 -0900

A while back, I had made a post about making my own x11vnc service. The service file I made was called /lib/systemd/system/x11vnc.service

[Unit]
Description=x11vnc service
After=display-manager.service network.target syslog.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/x11vnc -forever -create -display :0 -auth <EDITED …

picoEngine gets an update

alaskalinuxuser — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 06:00:00 -0900

If you've been around my blog for a long while, you may remember my old chess engine I made back in 2019. It was called picoEngine [1] and was written in C++. It wasn't a very good engine, to be honest, mostly making weighted moves, but could handle searching for …

Fix clipping and build for Focal and Noble

alaskalinuxuser — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 06:00:00 -0900

One of the apps I upgraded from Xenial to Focal needed a little bit of attention. Fortunately for me, a fellow Ubuntu Touch enthusiast was quick to help point out some of the bugs/issues with the click, so I had a good idea of where to start looking. The …

An IPP printer app for Ubuntu Touch

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0900

One of the things that is a must have for me, when it comes to cell phones and using them, is the ability to print something from my phone. People will email me something, or send me a file in a message that I need to print while I am …

Gitlab CI for building clicks

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 11:00:00 -0900

Since Ubuntu Touch has upgraded from Focal to Noble, all of those apps that I updated to Focal have to be updated, again. Fortunately, the process is going fairly quickly, with most apps just requiring minor tweaking here and there to be Noble ready.

I have been going through the …

Updating and Emerald for Noble

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 11:00:00 -0900

Now that Ubuntu Touch has upgraded from Focal (20.04) to Noble (24.04) as their base, all of those apps that I updated from Xenial (16.XX) to Focal have to be updated again. Fortunately for me, the list is much shorter this time!

I decided to start with …

All those Pelican themes

alaskalinuxuser — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 06:00:00 -0800

As you've already read in previous posts, I switched my blog from Wordpress to Pelican, for a simpler, smoother, static page interface that can still be built in an automated way. One of the cool things about Pelican is that it does allow themes and there are a lot of …

Updating UT apps: More to do lists and some errors

alaskalinuxuser — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0800

Now that I am done with updating the 199 Ubuntu Touch apps from Xenial to Focal, I am waiting 7 days for a response from each developer, and then releasing the clicks on the open-store. You can check out the progress table below, but I'm really close to closing out …

Updating UT apps: Blackjack and more

alaskalinuxuser — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 13:00:00 -0800

I am nearing the end of my journey to update about 200 Ubuntu Touch apps from Xenial to Focal. All of the apps have been updated that I can update. However, to clarify, that means I have updated them, not that they are released on the open-store yet. You can …

Updating UT apps: uHome and Lomiri action

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 13:00:00 -0800

As I continue on my journey to update about 200 Ubuntu Touch apps from Xenial to Focal, I once again released more apps on the open-store. One of those updates was for an app called uHome, which is sort of like an old school Android launcher application, making your screen …

Updating UT apps: GearSystem and other apps

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 13:00:00 -0800

Continuing on my journey to update about 200 Ubuntu Touch apps from Xenial to Focal, I once again released more apps on the open-store. Among them was a personal favorite, which is GearSystem. GearSystem is a Sega Game Gear and Sega Master System emulator, so you can play all your …

Trading in WordPress for Pelican

alaskalinuxuser — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 05:00:00 -0800

Since 2018, I've been using WordPress as my CMS, Content Management System, for my blog. WP is a really handy program for writing blogs, it comes with tons of features, and great add ons, as well as a lot of documented support. It also comes with PHP requirements, JavaScript, and …

Ubuntu Touch: Are Clicks Secure

alaskalinuxuser — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 19:00:00 -0800

I've been spending a lot of time working on Ubuntu Touch clicks lately. For those who don't know, a click is the UT name for an app. If you've been reading my blog, then you'll notice that I'm on a mission to update about 200 apps from the old UT …

Updating UT apps: OhSteem and a dozen other apps!

alaskalinuxuser — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 10:00:00 -0800

Continuing on my journey to update about 200 Ubuntu Touch apps from Xenial to Focal, I have released a dozen apps on the open-store. Of course, I didn't build these apps, I'm just updating them, so I make sure to write in the description of the apps that all the …

Updating UT apps: PopThatWrap! and Pulse-app

alaskalinuxuser — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 06:00:00 -0800

Continuing on my journey to update about 200 Ubuntu Touch apps from Xenial to Focal, I once again released two more apps on the open-store. Pulse-app is an application for tracking your pulse over time, and PopThatWrap! is an entertaining application where you simply pop fake bubble wrap... it even …

Updating UT apps: Chess Clock and SimplePrint

alaskalinuxuser — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 06:00:00 -0800

Continuing on my journey to update about 200 Ubuntu Touch apps from Xenial to Focal, I recently released two more apps on the open-store. Both of these apps were useful for me, and that is why I decided to do them next.

Of course, I forked the repositories, updated them …

Updating UT apps: Ambient and Sudoku

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 12:02:00 -0800

In my continuing quest to be useful to the Ubuntu Touch community, I recently found that there were about 300 apps made for Xenial, the 16.04 version of UT, that didn't get updated for the current version of UT, which is Focal (20.04). Of these apps, I went …

Updating a gem to an emerald for Ubuntu Touch

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 08:39:00 -0800

After switching to Ubuntu Touch on my phone for a daily driver, I realized that there was no app in the open-store (open-store.io) for UT that allowed you to surf/browse the gemini protocol. I've talked about gemini space and gemini blogs (called gemlogs) here before, so feel free …

Convert your Firefox passwords to PASS for UTPass

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 09:26:00 -0800

Recently I switched to Ubuntu Touch as my daily driver for a phone. Whenever you change phone operating systems, there is a steep learning curve and an extended process of moving your digital life. If you use Android and Google, moving to another Android Google phone is fairly simple, or …

Startup hangs on "systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service"

alaskalinuxuser — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 06:28:00 -0800

My last update on Ubuntu didn't go very well. After the typical sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y, the system downloaded and installed the usual assortment of packages. When it was done, it required a reboot to finish the installation, because of the updated kernel. So, I clicked the …

Installing Ubuntu Touch on the FLX1

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 10:34:00 -0800

Recently, I came in possession of a Furi FLX1 Phone. It is really cool in many ways, and yet, still has a ways to go to be a useful phone, in my opinion. One of the things I was able to do with it though, was load Ubuntu Touch. Ubuntu …

Clickable - "template" is no longer a valid configuration option

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 10:32:00 -0800

Recently, while playing around with a new to me used phone, I tested out UBports Ubuntu Touch again. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it worked really well on this particular phone, but I noticed a stark lack of any SIP related apps. Long story short, Linphone was the …

Workaround for DVDStyler crashes in Linux

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 01 May 2025 08:09:00 -0800

If you are not familiar with DVDStyler, it is/was a great tool for creating your own DVDs. It allows you to add videos, create titles, use themes, custom buttons, and more. But I say is/was because it is still around, but was working great before, and does not …

Is it really open source?

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 09:24:00 -0800

Recently, while looking around F-Droid forum, I found a post about a person who wanted to build Android apps, but did not want to use Google's Android-SDK, which comes with an EULA, or Google's Android Studio, because it is proprietary. You can read their forum posts here:

https://forum.f-droid …

Advantages of using FLRIG verses allowing each app to control my radio.

alaskalinuxuser — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 09:23:00 -0800

I've decided to make a few changes to my setup in regards to controlling my HF transceiver. I'm using the FT-991, which is a great shack-in-the-box radio, I highly recommend it to anyone looking to shrink their shack, get on the air, and just for the fun of ham radio …

I ran over my snowplow.

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 09:19:00 -0800

A few weeks ago, I did something I've never done before. I ran over my own snowplow.

I don't mean that I ran it over because it was sitting in the yard, and as a stationary object I drove over it. What I mean is, I was snowplowing WITH it …

Fixing A Toaster

alaskalinuxuser — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 20:18:00 -0800

Not my usual post, but a fun one none the less. My in-laws moved away and left behind this really cool toaster. Unfortunately, it was super cool, as in, it didn't get hot. In fact, it didn't work at all.

After taking it apart, I was able to find out …

Remounting system r/w on a super image.

alaskalinuxuser — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 05:53:00 -0900

Just a quick post for my own reference later, though hopefully it is useful to others. Many new phones have a super partition and the way they are designed makes it difficult to remount the system partition as read and writable. I didn't come up with this, but it took …

A little soldering practice...

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 13:10:00 -0900

A good friend of mine asked me if I could put some of my soldering skills to work for him on this little project of his. It was a simple job, and of course I said yes. It only took a few minutes and the new USB connector was attached …

Using Conky to check my NextCloud status

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 07:13:00 -0900

For any long time readers of this blog, you'll know that I love to use Conky. It is a fun and useful desktop tool that can display the status of just about anything that you want, provided you can write a few scripts or bash commands. It has lots of …

Major Upgrade Part 5: Wordpress Issues!

alaskalinuxuser — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 05:19:00 -0900

Now that the Piwigo server photographs were moved, and the Piwigo server disbanded, I went back to looking at my Wordpress blog. Up till this point, I actually thought I was mostly done. Unfortunately, my problems were just beginning....

All I was going to do was log into my Wordpress …

Major Upgrade Part 4: Ditching Piwigo

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 05:33:00 -0900

As I'm sure you already gathered from the first three posts, I am performing a major upgrade to my server setup. I know that I said in the last post that I would talk about my Wordpress, but as I review my history and logs, I actually had an intermission …

Major Upgrade Part 3: PHP problems and updating Nextcloud

alaskalinuxuser — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 04:55:00 -0800

As I have spent the last few posts explaining, I recently undertook the task of upgrading my home servers, and it quickly became a very painful process. One of the main purposes of my server is to host my own Nextcloud instance, which my wife and I use as a …

Major Upgrade Part2: Operating system and LAMP stack.

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 05:03:00 -0800

If you've been following along in the previous posts, I recently underwent a major upgrade for my home server system. One big part of that was updating the operating system from Ubuntu 20 to Ubuntu 24.

Before starting this entire process, I had, of course backed up my entire previous …

Major Upgrade Part 1: Hardware

alaskalinuxuser — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 09:30:00 -0800

As I wrote about a few days ago, I recently undertook the task of performing a major systems upgrade of my home server system. Today I wanted to talk about the upgrades and changes to the hardware setup.

Originally, I was running my home services (Nextcloud, Jellyfin, gemini, web servers …

Revisiting Owon HDS242 oscilloscope and Linux with osci-SCPI

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 16:57:00 -0800

A few years back, I purchased an Owon HDS242 handheld oscilloscope. Being a Linux user, I thought there surely would be some programs that would allow you to interface with this o-scope from your computer, but for the most part, the good stuff seemed to be Windows only.

I did …

Struggled through a major upgrade!

alaskalinuxuser — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 00:50:00 -0800

It's been a while since I posted, which isn't terribly unusual, but in part it has been due to performing a major systems upgrade on my home servers. I upgraded the operating system from Ubuntu 20 to Ubuntu 24, the Nextcloud from 25 to 30, and had to deal with …

Taking the ROOPHLOCH Challenge....

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 15:49:00 -0800

My brother (LibreHacker) and I both run Gemlogs in Gemini space. If you are curious about that, I've written about it on here before, or you can check out websites like: https://geminiprotocol.net/clients.html and https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/geminiprotocol.net/ to get a better idea, but …

Connecting my Signalink USB to a HTX-212 2m Transceiver

alaskalinuxuser — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 21:42:00 -0800

Recently, I decided to play around some more with digital modes while mobile, using my Signalink USB device to connect either laptops or cell phones and tablets to my HTX-212 2m transceiver. It is an old radio, so I had to dig around for a manual online to find the …

Hacking a retro game stick, editing the miniGUI

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 21:01:00 -0800

If you are following along from my previous posts, you know that I have been hacking this "retro game stick" all in wonder console that you plug into the TV and play thousands of games with built in emulators. Technically we met the goal already, which was to get rid …

Hacking a retro game stick, editing the database....

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 20:26:00 -0800

If you have not read my previous post, I recommend you start there, because this is a multi-post challenge to remove and add games to a "retro game stick" that I bought. Hopefully we will do a few other hacks as well, but we will see how it goes!

Previously …

Hacking a retro game stick, getting the files....

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 16:32:00 -0800

Recently, I purchased a "Retro game stick" online. For reference, you can find them here with these non affiliate links:

Retro Game Stick

Nostolgia Stick Game

It is a pretty good deal, costing roughly \$40 and it comes with two wireless controllers that look like the original play station controllers …

Re-review of Chess Digitizer, now called Chess Scanner

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 14:52:00 -0800

A few days ago, I reviewed several Chess related OCR scanners that convert hand written chess score sheets used in chess tournaments into pgn files that can be used by chess programs and engines for review. Here was the last article, if you missed it: https://alaskalinuxuser3.ddns.net/2024 …

A quest to find the best OCR to convert handwritten score sheets to digital pgn files

alaskalinuxuser — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 18:21:00 -0800

I've been on a chess tech quest.

After every chess tournament or quad that I play in or run, there are handwritten scoresheets. Each of these scoresheets are like a diary of the game, they contain all the moves that were played, who played, when, where, what board, and the …

Robot Rampage! Another video game completed while learning Godot!

alaskalinuxuser — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 15:27:00 -0800

As I've mentioned before, I am trying to learn about 3D game development by completing Udemy.com courses to learn how to use Godot. Today I finished another course about 3D game making and built this science fiction first person shooter.

While the course did come with artwork and models …

Work around for SubViewport issue on Godot 4.2 in compatibility mode

alaskalinuxuser — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 18:17:00 -0800

If you can see the above image, you will note that the subviewport is accurately displaying the revolver AND the 3D world is still visible. If you are trying to use a subviewport to prevent weapon clipping in Godot 4.x, and you see the below image (or similar to …

Use rsync to backup a Nextcloud server?

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 15:45:00 -0800

I don't wear a tinfoil hat. But I also don't trust Google. Or any big tech, to be honest. There are a lot of advantages to using something like Google to sync your pictures, your documents, your life. There is also the disadvantage that potentially any Google employee, or some …

US Chess Federation Tournament Software for Linux?

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 19:00:00 -0800

If you've followed my blog for any length of time, you will know that I personally use Linux - exclusively. That said, I recently became a certified club level Tournament Director (TD) for the US Chess Federation. One problem that I noticed was that all the software for running tournaments fell …

Can you still register a 4th generation Kindle (D01200) on Amazon?

alaskalinuxuser — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 17:26:00 -0800

While I do have a love/hate relationship with Amazon, the ability to purchase kindle books and read them is very handy. I have several older 4th generation Kindles, D01200 models, that I recently had to switch to a new Amazon account. Unfortunately, registering them was painful.

TL;DR - Yes …

Kicked off of Amazon?

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 17:14:00 -0800

I have a love/hate relationship with Amazon. I was using it exclusively for years, a happy prime customer, renting and buying movies, using the Amazon Music, etc. All was great. Then, out of the blue, they one day banned me from Amazon. They locked my account, and sent me …

ERROR: Pack created with a newer version of the engine

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 18:28:00 -0800

While doing a lot of work in Godot, I recently ran across an interesting error. I was attempting to upgrade from using Godot 4.1, which was the version used in my Udemy class on Godot, to the newer version 4.2.1. After downloading the newer version of Godot …

More Godot Learning with Barbarian Blaster!

alaskalinuxuser — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 15:08:00 -0800

As I continue to learn more about using Godot, my Udemy course took me through building a tower defense game. It was really fun to work on, and I am really enjoying the course! It was interesting though, that at the end of this segment, for the tower defense game …

Fixing my phone with MTKclient

alaskalinuxuser — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 17:14:00 -0900

While trying to build custom roms for one of my cell phones, I managed to soft brick the phone. It was a Cat S42G, and I somehow managed to get it stuck in a preloader boot loop while attempting to change a stock kernel to have a TWRP recovery image …

Learning Godot 4 with Projectboost!

alaskalinuxuser — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 19:26:00 -0900

Recently I started learning Godot 4 by taking a 3D game development course on Udemy. It's been a lot of fun so far, and it is helping me reach another goal of mine relating to making my own 3D game. I'm certainly not ready for prime time, and I'm a …

Fixing a fake Nintendo controller

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 19:53:00 -0900

Kids and cats and fake original Nintendo controllers don't mix.

Well, at least that's my experience.

Not much to write on this one, but the kids are rough on the controllers. I can't blame them for that, it is hard not to jump to the right and drag the whole …

Godot3 with GLES 2.0 on Old Hardware

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 19:56:00 -0900

One of my side hobbies is learning how to make video games in Godot. I was going through a great tutorial, but I got sidetracked due to the usual life circumstances. Now I have a little more free time again, and I want to get back into learning Godot. One …

Command line foo, and updating Ubuntu Touch clickable apps automagically...

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 19:12:00 -0900

I would like to start this post by saying I'm not that bright. Further, there are way, way, way brighter people, of whom you should be following their blog. However, for what it is worth, this is my script for automagically updating my clickable app for Ubuntu Touch. You can …

Modded Arduino-TNC finally sends the first email!

alaskalinuxuser — Sat, 02 Dec 2023 22:18:00 -0900

After many hours of fiddling with my modded Arduino-TNC and my HTX-212, I finally got it to transmit a test email from my cell phone using WoAD.

I adjusted the HTX to "high" for transmit, half volume output, squelch full counter clockwise (off), turned of "T" and "T-Squelch".

I used …

tnc1-python-config

alaskalinuxuser — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 22:18:00 -0900

While trying to troubleshoot my Winlink packet connections with my home-brewed, slightly modified Arduino-TNC, I found that mobilinkd has made a GUI tool in python that allows you to adjust the settings. The only problem was following the instructions to install it!

First, you can download this great tool here …

Modification to the home-brewed Arduino-TNC

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 19:14:00 -0900

The other day I modified my Arduino-TNC, which was already a modified version of the Mobilinkd Arduino-TNC. You can find their version here:

http://www.mobilinkd.com/2014/09/11/arduino-kiss-tnc/

And you can read my modifications post here:

https://alaskalinuxuser3.ddns.net/2022/10/27/arduino-tnc-part-1-hardware/

Essentially, what I …

Backup of the Android 10 stock firmware for my CAT S42G phone

alaskalinuxuser — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 17:42:00 -0900

Here is a backup of the stock firmware for the CAT S42G super partition. It is gzipped to compress it from 8 GB down to 1.4 GB. I took this backup after doing a fresh wipe of the phone, so it is stock and clean. Make sure you unzip …

CAT S42G LineageOS 19 build errors

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 15:44:00 -0900

From my previous posts, you can see that I am enjoying the journey of trying to build a custom ROM for the CAT S42G cell phone. In particular, I am building LineageOS 19.1, because that is the version that matches the OTA update that I pulled and extracted with …

Using aospdtgen to create a device tree

alaskalinuxuser — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 20:39:00 -0900

Last post we looked at extracting/downloading your OTA zip from your phone. Now, if you have your OTA zip you can use dumpyara to extract it, and then aospdtgen to create a LineageOS tree for it. Here I use my OTA zip which I downloaded (cf1f7c3fa1596c87f045cee1508823c98667fa06.zip) :

\$ pip3 install …

How to extract an OTA package

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 18:25:00 -0900

One of the many tools in the toolbox of the Android phone developer is that of downloading OTAs. An OTA is an Over The Air zip file that contains an update for your Android phone. This zip file will have a lot of very useful information and files in it …

Adding external SD card to TWRP build for CAT S42G/H

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 20:19:00 -0800

When trying to use my CAT S42G TWRP build to back up my phone, I realized that I forgot to add lines in the file system tab for the sdcard, so I could back the phone up to it. Fortunately, that is pretty easy to do, like so:

# Add external …

JustChess - Add quit dialog for back button presses.

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 15:38:00 -0800

One of the issues on the issue tracker for my app JustChess is a comment about back button behavior. Technically, their problem is that if they press the back button to leave the game, the game is gone when they try to play again by choosing to play one or …

JustChess 2.3 - Fixing a castle.

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 16:59:00 -0800

Well, rather fixing castling, I suppose. There were quite a few problems with castling in my JustChess engine. In fact, it was so bad, I probably should have removed the function altogether until I fixed it. However, to God be the glory, it is fixed now. You can download the …

Justchess 2.2 - Fix "problème en fin de partie"

alaskalinuxuser — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 16:49:00 -0800

In case you didn't catch that, don't feel bad, I didn't either. It is French for "Endgame problem". The rest of the issue on the tracker went like this: "Quand il n'y a plus que les deux rois, la partie ne s'arrête pas." Which translates to "When there are only …

JustChess 2.1 is out with en passant bug fixes!

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 14:43:00 -0800

I haven't worked on the JustChess app in about 5 years. However, I was recently made aware that there was a custom ROM, named DivestOS, which suggested my old app as a good open source chess playing app. Unfortunately, when I left off working on this app 5 years ago …

CAT S42G TWRP Custom Recovery

alaskalinuxuser — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 13:45:00 -0800

There was no custom recovery (TWRP) built for my new phone, the CAT S42G, so I decided to build one. To God be the glory, it even works! Since I built one, I thought I'd share it with others, because that's what I feel is the right thing to do …

Where do I start? Zero to TWRP for a phone with no custom roms or recovery....

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 18:32:00 -0800

Because I created the video series on how to build custom ROMs and kernels, I get a lot of questions. Most of those questions are exactly the same. One of the most common questions that I get a lot in regards to building custom ROMs for Android phones goes something …

Install a GSI on a CAT S42G

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 19:15:00 -0800

I'm trying to install a GSI on a CAT S42G. One might wonder why it matters, but with AT&T locking out a lot of phones with a whitelist of approved models, this one is on there, and if you are like me, you might want a rugged phone, which …

Differences in numbers between Windows and Linux in Godot

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 15:45:00 -0800

As is often the case when taking online classes about programming, the instructor, and probably most of the class, use Windows. Usually, I am one of the few, if not only, Linux user(s).

This typically doesn't present too much of a problem, but can occasionally cause an issue, especially …

Send someone an email with JS8

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 17:46:00 -0800

I've heard about doing this for a while, but I haven't been able to make this work until recently. In today's technological world, I found out it was possible to send an email to someone using JS8. More specifically, you can send a radio signal, from your JS8 computer controlled …

Upgrading to NextCloud 24.08: convert-filecache-bigint?

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 04:51:00 -0900

Just another quick update for NextCloud, from patch level 24.04 to 24.08. Most of the time, we get the standard error about updating indicies, but this time I got a new one to me: convert-filecache-bigint. Apparently, some of the database columns were missing the conversion to a big …

Still hacking a power cord?

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 16:54:00 -0900

In my last post I talked about my attempts at "hacking" into an IPLC-M4-CORD smart cord. Be sure to check out that post to see how I found my way into a telnet based connection on port 80 and what other fun hidden menu options that I found. I had …

Hacking a power cord?

alaskalinuxuser — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 17:25:00 -0900

Okay, I'm not really much of a 'hacker' in the sense that most people think of. I don't break into things, crack passwords, etc. However, I do like to tinker. Recently, my co-workers and I decided to purchase and try out these handy new "smart" power cords: the IPLC M4 …

Component Level Board Repair

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 07:48:00 -0900

I had a fun day at work today. Often my work revolves around cleaning and paperwork, with the usual computer issues that need reset or rebooted to be resolved. Occasionally there will be a more complex computer issue with the virtual machine host, or raid arrays if I'm lucky. Today …

FreeData

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 06:00:00 -0900

FreeData is "a free, open-source, multi-platform application for sending files and messages, using the codec2 HF modems." [1]

Of course, I'm an amateur radio operator, also know as a ham. And, if you read this blog at all, you know I'm pretty into Linux and open-source software. So, it should …

Arduino TNC - Part 2: Software

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 06:00:00 -0800

Hopefully you read the last article I posted about building an Arduino TNC to perform packet email (Winlink) with my Android cellphone and Baofeng handheld radio. If not, I recommend that you check it out so that this post will make more sense.

After completing the hardware section of the …

Arduino TNC - Part 1: Hardware

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 06:00:00 -0800

Recently, I decided that I would put some of these great components that I have lying around to work. I've been doing a lot of Winlink lately, and messing around with my dilapidated Baofeng UV5R. So, I decided to intertwine the two projects. I decided to build an Arduino TNC …

Did Hans Niemann Cheat?

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 06:30:00 -0800

"No mistakes found for black."

A slightly different post today, and certainly not my usual style. Opinion pieces are not usually my thing, but today I played a chess game that made me stop and think about the current chess scene allegations.

Above is a game of chess that I …

3D Printing a new Baofeng UV5R battery holder

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 06:00:00 -0800

In previous posts, I "fixed" my UV5R which had a bad battery by soldering on a connection by soldering on a power connector for a standard 9 volt battery. In those photos, you could see that I just taped the battery to the back of the case and used the …

Winlink on Android and a signalink USB device

alaskalinuxuser — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 21:45:00 -0800

Recently I was looking for alternatives to allow me to send Winlink messages over the 2m band via packet. One of the problems that I can't seem to solve on Linux is making AX.25 and Direwolf work properly. I've read through (and followed) a dozen tutorials, but no matter …

Baofeng UV-5R Battery Fix

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 21:39:00 -0800

This Baofeng UV-5R was the first radio I ever purchased after getting my license. Actually, it was just plain the first ham related radio I ever purchased. But, it didn't last long, within a year the unit quit working. I realized that it just needed a new rechargeable battery, but …

OwonOszi on Linux

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 06:00:00 -0800

Last post I wrote about trying to use my Owon handheld oscilloscope (HDS242) with Linux. I had tried several options, and among them was one called OwonOszi. At the time, I didn't build it because it was written in pascal. I've never worked with pascal before, and was mistaken to …

Owon HDS242 Handheld Oscilloscope and Linux

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 06:00:00 -0800

Recently, I acquired a new Owon HDS242 handheld oscilloscope. Overall, I'm really impressed with it and it is amazing to see technology continue to progress. This handheld unit is about the size of the average multi-meter, but can do more than my old desktop o-scope that was the size of …

Ardop issues with Linux 5.x kernels

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 26 May 2022 06:00:00 -0800

One of my favorite methods of communication via HF radio is winlink. Despite the name, it is not Windows operating system centric. It is just a method of using an e-mail based system that works over radio waves. For that to work however, you need protocols. There are several to …

Adding an x11vnc service

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 12 May 2022 06:00:00 -0800

I usually am working on my servers through ssh. Occasionally, though, I find that I need to use the GUI. In those cases, I always tunnel my VNC connection over ssh, but then I need to ssh into the machine and manually start the x11vnc server. This can become a …

OPcache interned strings buffer is nearly full

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 18:00:00 -0800

Recently I updated my instance of Next Cloud to version 23.0.3, in the process of doing so, I received this warning:

The OPcache interned strings buffer is nearly full. To assure that repeating strings can be effectively cached, it is recommended to apply opcache.interned_strings_buffer to your PHP …

Ubuntu sound problems on a Vulcan Excursion tablet....

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 06:00:00 -0800

Recently I was gifted a used tablet from a friend. It is a Vulcan Excursion 10.1" tablet that came stock with Windows 8.1 and was upgraded to Windows 10. Of course, I love free tablets, but I'm not a Windows fan, so I wiped it and put Ubuntu …

Upgrading to Nextcloud 22.2.5

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 06:00:00 -0900

Typically, updating minor versions of Nextcloud is a straightforward and smooth process. Today's update wasn't much different, but did require some admin intervention on my part. After the update, there was a note abouit missing indices, again. This seems to be fairly regular in NC updates, but doesn't happen every …

Repairing or changing an IMEI number on your MediaTek cell phone...

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 06:00:00 -0900

WARNING: Depending on the country you live in, this process, or even possession of these software tools may be illegal! Please check your local laws before using these tools or performing this action.

So we are back at the age old question: is it illegal to change your IMEI number …

I can only send MMS, but not SMS messages from my phone....

alaskalinuxuser — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 06:00:00 -0900

Recently I ran into an odd problem: I could send MMS text messages from my phone, but not SMS text messages. Typically, when you have a problem, you can send SMS and not MMS, but this was the opposite. It took me several days to figure it out, so I …