In my previous post, I mentioned about running Firefox in Android, that allows adblock.

However, Firefox in iPhone (iOS) doesn’t allow install adblock extension. So, I tried an alternative solution, and found Brave browser. Brave has built-in adblock. It helps browsing experience more focus.

However, if using Brave, there is a weird behaviour when the default setting of the cookie is “Only block cross-site cookies”. This causes HTTP request header for the Referer changed. And this will break some websites if the website is doing HTTP Referrer check. To solve this issue, the only solution is to change the cookie setting to “Allow all cookies”.

I have been using Wunderlist for several years. It is my favourite apps as it is free, supports synchronization across devices, supports Android and Chrome extension.

Unluckily, it is going to shut down in May 2020, as it is superseded by Microsoft To Do.

Though Microsoft To Do supports Android and web, it doesn’t support Chrome extension.

There is a great difference of using webpage and a browser extension. The former is when visiting the page, the browser will download the HTML, CSS, and JS then run the web app; the latter is to download the HTML, CSS, and JS as an extension, and run the extension to use the RESTful (or JSON) API directly, without re-downloading the page as the former. This also means, the latter is faster than the former.

I have used GNOME Do for a long time. But recently, it sometimes slow and causes the whole OS (specifically Arch Linux) freeze for a while. Therefore, I tried several alternatives.

Launchy - Not sure why, the skins do not load.

Synapse - Not sure why, the preferences/configurations do not save properly.

Then lastly, I am trying Ulauncher. It uses more memory than GNOME Do. But so far it looks good to me.

In my previous post, I mentioned some games being played. Then I found that, Metroidvania is my favourite game genre, such as Hollow Knight.

Other than Hollow Knight, I played following recently.

Dead Cells

Dead Cells is super interesting, Metroidvania + roguelike.  The best thing I love is the game control. The actions are super smooth, and there is no evil stage design like Hollow Knight’s White Palace.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvGaSPTcTxc

Chasm

Not bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUqIIQJkoyA

Death’s Gambit

Metroidvania plus souls-like, similar genre like Hollow Knight. But the actions are slower than Hollow Knight, and there is no stage like White Palace.

The followings are the some interesting games (Linux wine compatible) that I have played this year:

Terraria

Sandbox game like Minecraft, but it is 2D. (Compatible to Wine 2.22.)

[youtube src=“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7uOhFTrrq0" /]

Torchlight 2

Similar to Diablo. Less lonely because of a pet.

[youtube src=“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH_sGQRSpzo” /]

Hollow Knight

Metroidvania and soulslike game. (Compatible to Wine 4.7 for joystick input.)

[youtube src=“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAO2urG23S4" /]

Stardew Valley

Farming simulation game.

[youtube src=“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot7uXNQskhs" /]

Recently, I tried to install Firefox in Android. I found that it is worth to be used. Chrome was my primary Android web browser. But some websites are full of advertisements, which affect my browsing experience. Especially the advertisement that overlays the whole page.

In order to resolve this, I tried to install uBlock Origin to Chrome. But it is not compatible to Android. That’s why, I tried Firefox.

The drawback of Firefox is, it is slower comparing to Chrome. Especially the case that when I try to open a URL from the other apps, Firefox will damn slow to open the URL. And there is a website with a lot of JS errors, it freezes the Firefox, but Chrome has no issue.

Recently I found this application, OBS Studio, for screencasting. It is the best screencasting software I found, and it is cross-platform.

In Linux, I tried several applications before, recordMyDesktop, SimpleScreenRecorder, and even ffmpeg command-line, and none of them is satisfying. The main issue is either audio recording not synchronised or audio difficult to configure.

OBS Studio is user friendly and easy to configure and the audio is synchronised with the video. Great!

I was using GnuCash for my personal financial accounting. But recently, it is removed from Arch Linux official repository, because it depends on libwebkitgtk-1.0 which is insecure.

As a result, I migrated the data to KMyMoney. I found that the features are far more better than GnuCash.

• Can import GnuCash save files. (But GnuCash doesn’t have “loan” type, cannot convert directly as expected.)
• Supports tagging
• Can write memo

Writing memo and tagging features are very useful for me to keep track my cash flow.

Recently updated my Huawei phone, and it shows a new feature for the eye protection. It will adjust the screen to yellowish, to protect our eyes.

I tried to look for some scientific support for this feature. Then I found this. And I finally know that, I am not actually a night owl person, but just because I am looking at the monitor frequently, that is why not feeling sleepy at the night.

I don’t use RhythmBox or Banshee, as they are too bloated for me. I was a Winamp user.

I tried Audacious, DeadBeef, and Clementine. The following is a brief comparison,

	Audacious	DeadBeef	Clementine
Shortcut key	Affect application only	Affect application only	Global hotkey
APE tag support	Didn’t test	Can load APE tag	Cannot load APE tag
AAC support	Correct file extension needed (I rename to .MP4)	Can play	Can play
Drag-and-drop songs among playlist	Copy	Move	Copy
Copy-paste songs among playlist (Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V)	Can	Cannot	Cannot

Clementine global hotkey gives me trouble to navigate the audio file within the application.