geekyHacks

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Netgear R7800 Nighthawk: 5GHz packet loss and random disconnects

Just a short update regarding my router. I pair it with my Asus AC88 PCIe card on my main desktop for an actual throughput of about 500Mbps up/down. The router is situated in my living room, and my desktop is placed around 7.5m away, with a 1/2 foot thick prefabricated wall in between to account for signal attenuation. I find the current setup works fine for me. I have a gigabit internet subscription at home, and 500 up/down is plenty fast for my daily use. I could do a direct plug-in via the router if ever there was any large file transfer required, but my Synology NAS (DS-214) with its ethernet connection deals with that use case for me. Anyhow, since my last post, I've noticed random disconnects on my 5GHz connection. My missus has also been complaining that her iPhone is dropping 2.4GHz connections from her spot in bed (easily the furthest spot from the router in the entire apartment) I did the usual troubleshooting - restoring network connections to default on my PC, ...

Windows 10 Insomnia

So for the last couple of weeks I've been racking my mind wondering what's causing the inability of my Windows 10 PC from going to sleep. For reference, my computer specifications are follows: 1. Intel 4790K @ 4GHz 2. 32GB DDR3 Kingston RAM 3. 2x SSD and 1x 1TB harddisk storage 4. GTX 1080 Founders Edition 5. Asus PCE-AC88 Wireless PCIe Adapter I've also installed several peripherals to my computer via USB, namely: 1. Samsung M2070W laser printer 2. Logitech G700s mouse 3. Logitech G610 keyboard 4. Thrustmaster FCS T16000.M Joystick and Throttle 5. Oculus Rift CV1 Troubleshooting: Before seeking advice from the oracle that is known by the name Google, I decided to use my years-won repertoire of computerese in an attempt to narrow down the culprit. First, I ran powercfg /requests (in admin mode, of course), to determine if there are any rouge programs keeping the computer awake. No joy on that front. I decided to dig deeper and consider that maybe s...

Hardware Hacks: The Dark Arts

Yesterday I went to a well known mobile phone reseller in town to sell them a new iPhone 6s that I got on contract. You see, I didn't need a new mobile phone as I am very happy with my Nexus 6P that I recently purchased off contract. Anyways, my wife, having heard that I was going to the reseller, asked if I could get her old 5s sold as well - she'd just recontracted and got herself a 6s too. I said sure, and brought her old phone along. Now, the process of selling iPhones are pretty hassle free if you ask me. All I had to do was furnish the shopkeeper with the original receipt as well as an ID, and the phone changed hands in a cash deal netting me a cool US$180ish profit. That'll go some ways in paying for my mobile plan (for around a year, and then some). When I whipped out my wife's iPhone 5s for sale though, the darnedest thing: the phone simply refused to power up. Well, we did leave it uncharged for a month, I reasoned, and so it should show a flicke...

the benefits of undervolting

well there's always gonna be people telling you how you can overclock your computer and getting it to perform better than what it's rated on the box. and they'd be right you know. most PC components today are made to much tighter specifications in terms of performance, with sufficient (and significant) margins for even better performance if you'd just know how to unlock it. that said, overclocking is not for everyone, and in most cases it would void your warranty. also, there's a fair bit of elbow grease involved, as well as a certain level of competence and comfort required to go about tweaking the BIOS. well, that's for those who want to push their machines to the limit. but what if you're a middle of the road kind of guy - just want the computer to perform to specs, and maybe get a little more useful life out of the components? there's something for you too! and its known as under-volting .

777 CBT hacks

so i was about to go through the computer based training package from boeing on my computer at home, when i came across an error asking me to locate the files on my computer. a simple "replace.." command editing the lessons.lst file via notepad made light work of that. basically, all that needed to be done was to change the lessons.lst file so that the CBT program knows which directory the files are stored. once fired up, i realised that the fonts look crappy as a geocities website. i figured it's gotta be a font problem since, you know.. crappy fonts right? so i muck around the directory and voila ! a folder called "fonts". i did the silly thing first - copying the entire "fonts" directory from my windows\fonts folder into my CBT folder, and when that didn't work, i figured the next best thing to do was to copy the contents of the "fonts" directory from CBT into the windows one. brilliant. my CBT now looks pretty as a pancake. with...

fullforce + alienblue = alienblue HD?

so i was tinkering around with my iPad as usual, and i figured there must be a better way to browse reddit [reddit.com] other than using Safari, which tends to reload previous pages if the system's measly 256mb of RAM runs out and the virtual memory hack [blogspot.com] isn't implemented. i know that the iPhone version of Alien Blue [alienblue.org] worked brilliantly as a reddit browser, so i figured i'll just use it, and up its resolution on my iPad using FullForce.