I recently helped a friend with a laptop that had a forgotten password and had been locked out. I learned a new way of bypassing the basic Windows login with little effort.
One caveat to this “hack” is it only works for local user accounts. That is to say, accounts that are not linked or set up by Microsoft when you installed Windows. However, if a Microsoft account is locked out, they provide an option to reset the password via email.
I followed this fairly straightforward tutorial by WindowsClub. It uses a Windows install disk to access the command prompt (the built Windows recovery tools lock the terminal behind a login screen), switch the command prompt directory to the installed Windows sys32, and rename cmd.exe to the accessibility button exe, called utilman.exe. This tricks Windows into thinking the command prompt is an accessibility application that a logged-out user can use.
Then, you can enter Net user <username> <password>2 the username is the account you want to change, and the password is the new password being set.
After changing the password, I was able to log in. I removed the command prompt from the log-in screen by renaming the accessibility menu to its original name.
In my never-ending efforts to simplify/automate the process for my Church’s A/V behind its Live streams and slideshows. I have struggled with uploading to the various video hosting platforms for its sermons.
SermonAudio’s primary purpose is to host Sermons. However, as of 2019, they have added the streaming features we use to stream and re-distribute live streams to other platforms, like YouTube and Facebook. They also support trimming from the live stream and creating a new sermon upload with timestamps.
One of the only downsides to this service is the processing time on SermonAudio’s side and the upload itself from the laptop.
One way around this, I found recently, is FTP. FTP or File Transfer Protocol is an older standard of uploading files from one client computer to a host server. SermonAudio supports this method as a way of uploading, primarily due to its value in mass uploading sermons.
For example, if you are a newly added church to sermon audio and want to upload your whole archive. You can do so by uploading to your private server hosted on SermonAudio’s side. SermonAudio then (if it deems enough information has been provided with the file’s metadata) will create a new sermon “entry,” which will automatically fill in with the data you’ve provided, like Preacher, Date, and bible references for each sermon.
SermonAudio gets the corresponding sermon info by reviewing the file’s title and ID3 tags1. ID3 tags are also an “aging” technology primarily developed for the age of the iPods with mp3s and tagging information such as artists and albums to music that the iPod would read and display.
After doing a ton of searching for programs that both could upload to an FTP server and a program that could tag MP4s with the correct ID3 tags needed for SermonAudio.
I ended up choosing WinSCP and Kid3, both being excellent as they both support scripting and have reasonably extensive documentation. WinSCP acts as the file uploader, and Kid3 as the ID3 tagging. They are the perfect candidates for my use case.
Next, I wrote a batch script to create an interface combining tagging and uploading into a (hopefully) straightforward interface.
Having zero experience in the Windows CMD. I used a classic ChatGPT Claude and Stackoverflow pairing to figure out how the syntax works and to execute scripts through WinSCP and Kid3 using the CLI.
After writing a barebones script, it grabbed the latest file and used a basic selection menu using the num keys in a folder to fill in the rest of the relevant info like the Sermon title and Preacher selection.
Then, I fed my scrappy script through Claude to fix my syntax problems and variable declaring issues. And ended up with a surprisingly functional interactive uploader. We only need a sermon title and Preacher for it to upload, and a couple of hours later, SermonAudio will have the sermon entirely created.
Demo of my script
A few features I’d like to add down the road before sharing are a configuration pre-setup to fill in a church’s specific private FTP server and possibly switching to another method of script, either a simple React app or another interface that can better handle the scripting I want to do. With that, I want to add integration into SermonAudio’s API that will call the list of preachers and add it to the list.
Also, the script works to grab the newest modified file in a set folder. I’d rather have it compare the current date of the script, prompt the user for confirmation, and change the file to ensure that the wrong recordings are not accidentally uploaded.
With my move away from my older budget desktop build to my more recent Macbook Pro. I installed a fresh copy of Linux to keep it alive and spun up some local servers for the house; a couple of the servers I spun up are Home Assistant, and combined with some smart outlets, I could set up automation to control the outdoor lights.
Another server I host on my “new” Linux desktop is Plex, which hosts a local private “Netflix” you upload to create a personal library of movies, shows, and audiobooks. This was especially useful when I had dozens of DVDs that I could rip and upload to the MP4. Which I was able to automate using a cool tool called ARM (Automatic Ripping Machine)
Gamingon Linux
However, one utilization that I wanted to attempt was gaming. Notoriously, Linux does not support gaming, but with the Steam Deck being released a couple of years ago (essentially a Linux Nintendo Switch). Steam has forced many developers to port over to or allow virtualization on Linux.
One way on top of the games that natively support Linux is Proton. Proton is a “translation” layer that works with many games to patch the gap between Windows games and Linux. While not perfect, it is surprisingly well-compatible with most games. There’s a site called ProtonDB that checks specific games with community feedback and its ranking of how well they play on Linux, using Proton’s “translation.”
With Proton, I could play almost every game I own on Steam flawlessly, even though the game’s developers may not have explicitly outlined Linux support.
Splitscreengaming
A big part of setting up this computer is its location. I placed it next to the living room TV console in hopes of somehow replacing the aging Xbox 360. But to fully replace the Xbox’s function, I need split-screen support with more than one player at once.
Already getting further than I thought I would, with most of my game library working flawlessly, is a lot, especially for Linux, which I’m not the most familiar with when it comes to “fixing” problems. But after some googling, I found a couple of options for the games I had.
Game 1 – Stardew Valley
One game that works out of the box is Stardew Valley, combined with a controller from 8BitDo and one from the Xbox 360 using an adapter. I could host a game and have both controllers work separately efficiently with the screen split side by side.
Game 2 – Halo
Halo Reach was by far the biggest game for our Xbox 360, making it a great game to try to replace the Xbox with. I got the Master Chief Collection, which includes all Halo Games released besides the latest (free) Halo Infinite.
One problem, however, with the Halo series on PC is the lack of multiplayer. Or instead, local multiplayer or split screen. I looked at several options and tried some Linux apps that enabled split screen, which was, in the end, not fruitful. I found an open-source mod on GitHub that installs fairly simply by dropping files next to the Halo game’s executable. This plugin enables an added menu to which you can open and add up to 8 players. Surprisingly, it performs smoothly out of the box, with each controller assigned to its respective players.
I’m working through getting Minecraft running split-screen, which will be slightly tricky as there isn’t (to my knowledge) a way to get around having to run multiple instances of Minecraft. In contrast to the other games, it didn’t have to run the whole game for each person playing; instead, it was able to integrate additional tools to emulate another player to get around that.
Another way of making Minecraft more open for multiple other players at once is running a docker container that hosts a standard Minecraft server with the addition of “Geyser,” which, before I get into how that works, I need to explain a bit of the difference between Java Edition Minecraft and Bedrock.
Bedrock vs Java
Essentially, Minecraft has two flavors with completely different backends. The way Mojang (Minecraft’s owner) originally had it split is that all consoles and mobile devices run Bedrock edition, while Java Edition was first developed for Windows or Mac. It has changed since Minecraft’s early development but has continued mainly with that model, except for Bedrock on PC.
With the significant backend difference, there’s always been a barrier between Java and Bedrock players. There’s no easy way to connect to a Java server from Bedrock Minecraft and vice versa.
Bedrock + Java?
That’s where Geyser comes in, which, to my knowledge of how it functions, translates every “request” from the bedrock player to the Java Server in real time to allow connection between both players.
With an easy setup Docker image and Portainer, I was able to get the Java server running, to connect to it all I have to do is connect to the local IP 192.168.1.104:25565, and on the phone or console, I connect to the same IP but with the Bedrock Server port 192.168.1.104:19132.
I was not able to fully get this to work on bedrock, but there’s some troubleshooting I still need to figure out that may fix my problems. Overall a cool server plugin that I didn’t think would be possible, and shows how far the Minecraft community has come over the years. You can find the docker image here.
With taking on more projects that involve more than just myself, I’ve been working on writing documentation to share the knowledge around a project and store information with relevant tips to the project I’m working on.
While searching for a somewhat easy-to-configure, preferably free solution to documentation hosting, I came across Read the Docs. Read the Docs is a helpful 1free hosting service that works with Github’s version control to create expansive documentation for projects.
To get started, you create a copy of their template on GitHub. Then, I used VSCode to clone the repo I just created from the template. Then, on the Read-the-Docs site, you add the repo to start the site building and set it! Read the Docs’ pages, which are written entirely in reStructuredText and similar to Markdown’s formatting. Coming from no experience, I found it relatively easy to learn, referencing the examples and documentation.
A cool feature is using the branching in Github to create versions of documentation and being able to use Githubs strong suit of version control to make sure if I make mistakes or edits I don’t like, I can quickly narrow down where its source is with the notes I added to each version change in Github.
The free tier is only available for community projects and is Ad-supported. Read more↩︎
