I’m still mostly using Windows on my main PC. I’ve got a few jobs to finish before I switch, but the main one is scanning old photos from the 80s and 90s. I’ve tried lots of different scanning software on Linux, but I can’t find anything that works as well as the Epson software that was bundled with the scanner.

It’s got a few one click fixes for bad exposures that work really well too, so things like that orangey reddish cast that some photos have is fixed almost automatically. It can all be done easily in other software, but the time saved by doing it in the scanner software is massive.

“The sky above the port was blue, with a grey rectangular box with writing saying ‘No signal found.’”

Surely a chicken egg is an egg laid by a chicken though, not an egg containing a chicken, otherwise unfertilised eggs wouldn’t be chicken eggs.

If the mutation occurs in the creature inside the egg, then it makes sense to me that that’s where the new species begins. The chicken came first 🤔

I’m going to stop saying chicken and egg now, it’s getting ridiculous… 😁

No problem, hope you all enjoy your gaming 🙂

I’ve found codes for the family pass on legit key selling sites for around the same price as an individual key, so it’s worth checking before you buy 👍

I’ve just checked the boxes, and Minecraft, Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, and Mario Kart Deluxe 8 all support one player on the Switch Lite, up to four through the TV, and up to four on the non lite Switch 👍

This is excellent advice 🙂

The only part I might disagree with is this:

Get Switch Lites for anyone who REALLY needs to be playing something else independently when the TV/“main” Switch is in use

Obviously only if the budget allows, but if your kids are at the age where they’ll take their Switch when they visit friends or family, then the version with detachable controllers is probably better.

The Switch has a built in kick stand, and some games, like Mario Kart, let you disconnect the controllers and have one each for a two player game. It’s handy for keeping the kids quiet for a bit, and you don’t need to carry loads of stuff.

If the kids regularly go somewhere, like your parents perhaps, you can buy an extra dock to plug into the TV there, and the non lite Switch can use it in exactly the same way as the one at home. There’s nothing special about the dock, it essentially just connects the Switch to the TV.

It’s a great little console with some fun, if sometimes expensive games. I play mine probably as much as my kid plays theirs 🙂

Yeah, this is how I understand it too. From the end user’s point of view, there’s just one wifi network throughout the building or property. It doesn’t matter if there’s a cable running between the access points, that’s all invisible to the user.

Nope. It does it with random videos every now and then, and with no obvious pattern. It’s not lasting for a set amount of time either, so it’s not like something’s running in the background and slowing it down for a while.

In the past I’ve shut down everything I can think of on the server to stop something from taking priority, but it still happens. On those occasions it’s happened for half an hour or more, but other times it might last for a few minutes, or just affect one episode.

Flatmates is used in the UK for someone who you share a flat with but have separate rooms, and roommates is used where you share a room, but not a bed, or are not in a romantic relationship with. It’s generally for places like student accommodation.

I just checked the episode through Plex, and it’s direct playing. I didn’t get any stuttering while I was skipping around though. I think it’s Plex itself, either the server or the player.

My physical server is a bit old now, it’s a Haswell i5, so if this was an ultra HD bluray rip I could understand it, but it’s been playing HD and 4k videos without issues for years now.

I use Radarr to process my videos, and I’m sure I’ve got a plugin or script somewhere to download subtitles. I’d forgotten all about it since I’ve been using Plex, so I’ll have to try to remember what it is.

I’ve checked the file. It’s a bog standard h264 mkv and the video bitrate is only 10Mbps. There’s nothing that the fire stick shouldn’t be able to handle on its own. I’ll try playing it on the fire stick again and see if it’s trying to do something weird, but I can’t see it being that.

Nothing unusual about it, and it plays perfectly on my PC. I’ve tried randomly skipping backwards and forwards, but still no issues. It’s a bog standard h264 mkv file too, so nothing that would need to be transcoded

I hadn’t heard of that. I’ll check it out, thanks :)

Oh, definitely! I had major issues with the networking in my old house, and just couldn’t narrow it down. I eventually figured out that it was a network switch, but when I tested them, all three had intermittent faults. I could plug my laptop into a port on one and have it lose connection, but plugging something else in would work. Plugging my laptop into a different switch with the same cable would work, but a few hours later would fail. That was a nightmare to track down.

I’ll give that a try, thanks :)

That’s a good point. I’ll check the file and see if there’s anything unusual compared to the others 🙂

You might be slightly overestimating my coding abilities 😁

I thought it could be something like that, but the fire stick wasn’t used for at least 15 hours before, and after the first crash I rebooted and restarted the Plex server software. I would have thought that would clear any memory or cache issues.