Blog

The thoughts, opinions, happenings, and just plain ramblings of a seemingly boring person.

Geekery

Console Home Streaming is Great Too

Categories Gaming, Geekery, Technology

PS4 Remote PlayI've blogged a bit on how great Steam Home Streaming is to be able to play PC games remotely in the living room. Today I experienced the reverse, and it's equally as convenient!

Although it's been available on XBox for a while, and for a few months on the PS4, I've previously never had the need to play a console somewhere else other than its usual spot in the living room. That is, until Anastacia needed the TV today and I was in the middle of a level of Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Setting up and getting … Read more →

PC Build History

Categories Geekery, Technology

As the three-year mark is starting to roll around on my current home PC, Executor, I am trying to resist the urge at looking at parts for a new computer. Having another +1 to take care of compared to before definitely helps ;).

To have a look back through history, like the mobile phone history page I put together at the start of this year, I have collated a page detailing the history of all the PC builds that I have done. This includes specs, any upgrades, and links to the relevant build blog post.

Without doubt, Executor has … Read more →

Steam Home Streaming Now Supports 5.1 Audio

Categories Gaming, Geekery, Technology

I'm not sure when it was enabled in the stable Steam client, but it looks like 5.1 sound is now enabled for Steam Home Streaming on Windows hosts and clients. I said last year that this was a big missing feature for the platform, so I'm glad they actually did it.

It wasn't a smooth process to get it working, though. Although everything looked like it was configured correctly, whenever I tried the streaming there was no sound. I eventually found this forum post which said that the old DirectX9 runtimes ("DirectX End-User Runtimes (June 2010)") are need on the … Read more →

Open-Sourcing My .bashrc File on GitHub

Categories Geekery, Technology, Work

gitprompt_Lucas_bullettrain_tags I've posted some pretty nerdy things on this blog over the years, but this would have to be one of the nerdiest things I've ever posted.

I use a Linux operating system on my work laptop (Fedora, to be precise). We're now fairly entrenched in a git workflow for the documentation we write: asciidoc(tor)-based source, and GitLab CE or GitHub as the hosted VCS.

For the non-uber-tech-savvy: because of the git workflow (amongst other things), I spend a lot of time running commands in a bash shell (or command prompt). One of the files that controls … Read more →

Similar Look, New Theme

Categories Geekery, Internet

After a slow start to the year, I've done a lot of posting in the past month. So I also thought it might be time to tweak the look of the site.

Although the look remains similar., I've just enabled a new theme. The older theme was a bit bloated and wasn't being maintained by its creator any more, but I think that I got good use out of it since I switched my blog to WordPress just over 4 years ago.

I wanted a more lightweight theme that was still easy to customise, and I think I found … Read more →

Now Secure! Enabling Let’s Encrypt HTTPS

Categories Geekery, Internet

LucasCosti.com SecuredWell, that was easy. It just took me about five minutes to get this website going with a free SSL/TLS certificate using Let's Encrypt as the certificate authority. LucasCosti.com now has a padlock! 😀

Side note:  here's a nice post explaining the confusing terminology of SSL vs. TLS, and I like Google's approach of sticking to HTTPS, where possible.

My host (Zuver, a VentraIP subsidiary) made the process of generating a Let's Encrypt certificate ridiculously easy. It was pretty much just logging into their admin portal and clicking a button for the domain.

The only things that … Read more →

Modding Rey’s Speeder

Categories Geekery, Lego

Rey's Lego SpeederA while back I got the Rey's Speeder Lego set, and although it's good to have the main character of The Force Awakens in Lego form, it always bugged me that the side of the speeder where the cargo net is in the movie, was just some stuff stuck on using 1x1 clips.

So I decided to do my first serious Lego mod! I noted down the parts I thought I'd need, and then went to BrickLink and ordered them. They arrived in the mail today, and I went to work modding.

I'm quite happy with the result. In … Read more →

Home UPS

Categories Geekery, Technology

CyberPowerUPSEver since we moved to this side of the train tracks, despite being only 500m away from our the unit we used to live in, the power reliability in this neighbourhood has been very dodgy. Although we live in a relatively affluent area in modern city in a first world country, I would not call the power in our area 'reliable'.

We seem to have a power outage roughly once every couple of months, and that's not including the ones caused by weather events. It's not like I expect the power to stay on during a major storm or heat … Read more →

The Season of Broken Things: New Monitor

Categories Geekery, Technology

LG 24MP77 monitorIt seems like recently has been the season of things breaking, malfunctioning, or generally needing replacement. It was my relatively new PS3 a few months ago, and now recently my not-so-old Dell monitor starting showing funny colours across the screen.

The monitor was a few months outside of the three-year warranty (which admittedly, is a half-decent warranty period), and Dell weren't too kind in offering me options for a replacement. I've got to say that I'm pretty disappointed in the quality of both the Dell product and the service. They seemingly couldn't track down my purchase in their own system … Read more →

New Mobile: Sony Xperia Z5

Categories Geekery, Technology

sony-xperia-z5Although I had hit the two-year mark on my Nexus 5 back in October, I wasn't in the mood to look for a new phone. Up until recently, the Nexus 5 had served me well.

However, things went downhill with the recent Android Marshmallow update. General buginess, especially regarding the battery life, was very disappointing. I'm not alone with these type of issues, and I've got to say that each Android update since KitKat has introduced more problems compared the usefulness of new features introduced, and it takes Google months to issue fixes.

Ironically, the last two releases (Lollipop and … Read more →