Sunday, November 28, 2021

Controller Button Layout

The Playstation controller, especially the Dual Shock controller from the PS4, is my preferred controller.  It has a typical 4 action buttons layout which uses symbols to identify each button.  

  △ 

  □

  ×

I've developed muscle memory for I expect each button typically do which makes switching between Playstation and Nintendo games a bit of a pain since they have the confirm/decline button switched from each other.  Fortunately, each offers to let you remap the behavior for it.  While this work for system settings, each game might have a different behavior assigned to each button so I normally try to map them all into a consistent behavior.  My typical button configuration is as follows:

△ - heavy hit/special attack/switch characters

O - normal hit

X - jump/OK/confirm

▢ - cancel/decline/action

R1 - dash/evade

Controllers from Nintendo, Microsoft Xbox and Google Stadia use alphanumerical values (A, B, X, Y) for their buttons.  While XBox and Stadia have the same button names, Nintendo has a different layout which means that I never remember which is the A & B and which is the X & Y.

Stadia/Xbox:

  Y

X   B

  A

Nintendo:

  X

Y   A

  B

Monday, November 22, 2021

Cleaning and Removing Mold with Borax

 This is a reminder post for myself on the mixture solution for using Borax to clean and remove mold.

  • 1 cup of borax
  • 1 gallon of hot water
Mix the borax with the water and spray on affected area, scrub, wipe and dry area.  Do another light spray on the area and let it dry on its own.

Sunday, November 21, 2021

Thoughts on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

 


Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings got a lot of positive buzz so I watched it when it came out on Disney+.   As expected of a super hero movie in the MCU, it delivers its share of action and comedy.  It is notable that a movie centered around a hero of Asian decent with a story line that stays within an Asian sphere that it had a predominantly Asian cast.  The film aimed to respect the Chinese culture and avoided the use of outdated stereotypes.  Multiple articles have pointed out the cultural significance of this movie.

Shang-Chi will be most identifiable to Asian-Americans (or those of asian descent who grew up in western cultures) because the film is still looking at Asian culture through a Western perspective.  For example, although respectful in its view of the philosphy and people of a hidden village that is meant to represent traditional Chinese culture (even though technically the people are aliens), there are many manerisms that are clearly western (hugging as a greeting), but it is still reflective within the Asian-American experience so it's not something to criticize. 

While I enjoyed the movie for what it is, a superhero film, I also felt the movie was too rushed and wasn't able to imbue Shang-Chi with the inner qualities of a hero before the movie ended.  Instead, Shang-Chi is the superhero of the movie because he got super powers, used those powers and won a fight against the big baddie.

As a person, Shang-Chi never overcame blaming his father nor displayed the empathy and support that those around him showed him.  While angry at his father for making him train in the martial arts, the movie made it very clear that his father was not cruel and did raised him through fear as Thanos did with his own "children".  The movie also made made it clear that his father did made a concerted effort to atone for his past and that while that was recognized by Shang-Chi's mother, Shang-Chi does not attempt to consider it even though he is grown up and has had distance to reflect.  I'm not saying that the father is absolved of his wrong doings and he did fall back to his old ways, but this is a movie aboug Shang-Chi and not about his father.

Instead, Shang-Chi goes from saying how having to kill made him run away from his father to saying that he must kill his father in the same scene.  I found this lack of taking personal accountability and blaming others especially surprising as this difference is what was shown to separate  Captain America and the Patriot as shown in Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Ultimately, this made me a little unsure about the character of Shang-Chi.  As a movie, I like the actors, the filmography, the respect it showed the Asian culture as well as the action and comedy that the MCU brings.  I do look forward to seeing more and hope that they will take more time in the next movie to develop the real "hero" aspects of Shang-Chi.

Upgrading to Fedora 35

Used Fedora DNF upgrade method to go from Fedora 34 to 35.  Didn't noticed any issues with the upgrade.   I decided to do the upgrade even though I just upgraded a couple of weeks ago to Fedora 34, but since I had some free time this week I decided to upgrade now when I have time to deal with any issues.  

Tuesday, November 2, 2021

Upgrading to Fedora 34

Although Fedora 35 just came out, I decided to first upgrade to Fedora 34 and give Fedora 35 a little bit of time to bake.  I've had good success using the regular Fedora DNF upgrade method, but this is the first time I've upgraded Fedora on my current machine because it was a new system so it only ever had Fedora 33 installed.

Didn't run into any immediate issues that I can tell.

Monday, November 1, 2021

Unable to access the internet when using PiHole?

PiHole added rate-limiting for DNS queries to a very low 1000 queries per minute and enabled it by default even when updating an existing installation.  To change the rate limit (or turn it off), edit /etc/pihole/pihole-FTL.conf and add/edit the line: 

RATE_LIMIT=0/0

The format is [# of queries]/[seconds] so to set a limit of 1000 queries per hour would be 1000/3600.