Muting Google Chrome

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/add-a-mute-button-to-chrome-tabs/

Useful mainly for Hulu, since hitting the actual mute button during commercials on Hulu isn't the best idea; sometimes the show would resume with the volume off, no matter what you do with the mute button at that point.

Words I hate (2016-06-10)

Connote, not "connotate."

So it was the cable!

Not-so-fun story:

Some months ago I let my Loopy-modded 3DS fall onto the hardwood floor. I picked it up and I heard something rattling when I shook it. Then I tried the only micro USB cable I could find to test the capture card and I couldn't get a picture to display. Note that this was after my Katsukity Vita capture card didn't want to work on Windows 10 anymore, so I was pretty crushed.

Fast-forward to today and I'm charging everything I know that has a lithium battery. The Dual Shock 4 was last. So I grabbed that same micro USB cable and tried charging it with my laptop. No reaction. I tried charging the DS4 hooked up directly to the PS4 (and the PS4 was turned on, of course). No reaction. The battery indicator wasn't even moving like I saw in a YouTube video.

I went to the living room and found where all the phone chargers were, and I grabbed an unused micro USB cable. And that cable charged my Dual Shock 4! Then I tried it with the 3DS capture card and it worked too!

So I guess the moral of the story is, cables can and do go bad. The cable wasn't frayed or anything. I'd better buy some cables now.

Charging PS3 controllers on a laptop

It's the beginning of the month and I'm trying to be good about charging all my lithium-battery-powered devices (gaming handhelds, controllers, and now the Wii U GamePad) so as to prevent permanent capacity loss.

I don't want to turn on the PS3 just to charge the controllers, so I figured I'd charge them on my laptop. You can tell controllers are charging because the red lights are flashing, but now I'm noticing the lights go out after a few seconds. I didn't think they were charging anymore.

The solution is a simple tweak in Device Manager. David D writes,

Go to your Device Manager and then to your Human Interface Devices section before plugging in your PS3 controller. Then plug in your PS3 controller and you will see "HID-compliant game controller" and "HID-compliant wireless radio controls" be updated to your Human Interface Devices section. Right click and disable "HID-compliant game controller" then unplug and replug in your PS3 controller and it should charge fine.

Trying out DOSbox

I'm primarily a console gamer, but Psycho Pinball was one of a handful of PC games from my early childhood that I really, truly loved. I was also quite fond of Pong Kombat and Sango Fighter, but that's another post. Maybe.

So I got the CD for about $10 shipped on eBay, and then I found I needed DOSbox. Installing it was a bit tricky, so I'm going to list links and document exactly what I did so I can do it again on other computers later:

DOSBox manual
Installation and game start examples
Another installation tutorial with ISO examples
Settings tweaks


During the game installation, for sound, I did SoundBlaster 16 and then auto-select.


For tweaks (getting the proper aspect ratio on my 1080p display):

[sdl]
fullscreen=true
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=desktop
windowresolution=1280x960
output=ddraw
[render]
aspect=true

That output=ddraw part was a doozy; I couldn't figure out why the game would briefly lose sync after starting.

Since I'm not fond of using the CD to start the game (the DVD drive takes up both of my USB 2.0 ports), I'm going to try loading the game as an ISO... which means doing everything from scratch again...

---

EDIT: So this is exactly what I did. I wanted all my ISOs in C:\DOSBox so I manually created the directory in Windows. But of course DOSBox and/or the game will make their own directories during installation, and I didn't want any redundancies.


Installation: Starting DOSBox:

mount c "c:\dosbox"
c:
imgmount d "psycho.iso" -t iso
d:
install


Installation screen:

CD ROM drive letter: D
PSYCHO Directory: C


Now on my actual computer, the directories are nice and neat:

C:\DOSBox\PSYCHO

(PSYCHO was created by the installation; DOSBox would've created a DOSBox folder, but since I chose C as the PSYCHO directory, there was no need.)


Starting the game in DOSBox (put this under [autoexec] in DOSBox 0.74 Options.bat):
mount c "c:\dosbox"
c:
imgmount d "psycho.iso" -t iso
cd psycho
psycho

Subscribed to Weekly Shonen Jump today

http://shonenjump.viz.com/

I wanted to start Boruto right from the beginning, and the price and perks of the 12-month subscription didn't seem too bad. Viz claims these Weekly Shonen Jump issues are simultaneous with Japan, so I know I won't be behind... though that still doesn't explain the 14-month wait between the original Japanese manga volumes and the translated English manga volumes.

Boruto is a monthly series, so it looks like I won't really care about 1/4 of the issues -- at least until the collected manga volumes of the series I do care about (namely Bleach) catch up to chapters in my very first WSJ issue.

I got the complete Japanese Naruto manga in print form last Christmas (gift to myself), so I figure I'll get Boruto monthly digitally in English, and then collect the Japanese Boruto manga volumes in print form as they're released.

Finally deactivated (and reactivated) PSN video content for PS3

So I checked out the PlayStation Store on PS3 to see the Golden Week deals, and then I saw Ip Man 3 was available.  I wasn't even going to bother considering renting it until I saw it was in the original Chinese language with English subtitles. And it was, so then I started looking into finally reactivating my PS3 for video content.

I haven't bought video content from the PS Store since 2011 when my first PS3 broke. I tried sending that PS3 out to get reballed and they couldn't do it. And I really, really didn't want to call to deactivate for video content. Back then you couldn't even remotely deactivate your consoles for video content, let alone game content. And you couldn't even redownload your purchased videos! Then Sony allowed us to deactivate all our consoles for game content once every six months through their Web site. Some time later, Sony allowed us to redownload our videos and stream them; I guess they realized that their video service really was the worst. With this new feature, I was able to download and view my purchased SD videos on Media Go from my laptop. But remote deactivation for video content was still impossible.

Some more searching and I found this link:

https://support.us.playstation.com/articles/en_US/KC_Article/Deactivate-Consoles-Via-PC-Website

This in particular caught my eye:

• If you only want to deactivate games or video on one system and not all of your systems, you must do that via the console you wish to deactivate. If you don't have access to that console, please fill out our Console Deactivation Web Form to request a deactivation. 

So I clicked the link, filled out the form (I still had that first PS3 to check for the serial, and I wrote down the serial number somewhere on Google Docs just in case I never got the PS3 back), and at long last I was able to deactivate that dead PS3 for video content. The email came within an hour or two, but it said all my consoles were deactivated again, for game and video content. Luckily for me it really has been just over six months (my brother got me my newest PS3 sometime in October as an early birthday present), so no problems with reactivating.

I might never download videos from the PS Store ever again (because Amazon seems to have more and better content, cheaper, and available on more devices), but it's good that something I've been concerned about for the last five years is finally resolved.