Ubuntu / Mint : "error: symbol 'grub_efi_find_last_device_path' not found"

A few months back my working Ubuntu / Windows setup suddenly stopped working.  Ubuntu boots fine but trying to open Windows gave an error like this :

"error: symbol 'grub_efi_find_last_device_path' not found"

The cause here is a bug in grub2.  To fix force a downgrade to the previous version of grub2.

Some info here :

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+question/280812

World of Warcraft won't open - rundll32 high cpu usage

Very recently WoW stopped opening for me. I click the icon, my CPU usage goes to 100% but the game never loads. When I check task manager it says rundll32 is what's causing the high cpu usage. Recently I installed "360 Total Security" with has a Game Booster mode. I tried to exit the AV but still had the same problem. After I uninstalled 360 Total Security and rebooted World of Warcraft opens fine again.

Win 10 EQ settings ignored

This has been happening for some time, and is supremely annoying.  For a while it seemed the Windows 10 equalizer wasn't working.  My speakers are very bass heavy and I live in an apt complex, so I want to drop the bass out by like 95%.

I found that manual adjustments to the EQ sometimes do not register.

This can be worked around by making your own custom EQ setting, saving it, then switching to it.

But sometimes this doesn't work too - however the stock EQ presets will still work.

To recap - sometimes Windows 10 ignores your custom EQ settings.  Pick a pre-set that's close to what you want and use that.

Javascript : Chrome console doesn't show difference between UTF-8 and UTF-16

Last night I spent about an hour trying to figure this bug out.  The problem was this :

- javascript downloads text file from server, file is full of urls

- js then compares document.URL (currently address the browser is at) to the text file (via storing the entries in a variable object then using indexOf).

so basically

if (current.URL exist in file) then {Do Stuff} else {return error}

Well I kept getting back errors and it made no sense.  So I got real basic and tried

if (current.URL == urlVariable) { return true }

Yet even this failed.  I forget why but I went into Firefox and in its console it is very clear the URL coming from the text file is very different than the URL string.  But in chrome they look the same.

Because the Chrome console doesn't properly indicate the text encoding is different I spent about an hour or so trying to "solve" why A does not equal A.  I thought I was taking crazy pills.

In short : Chrome console doesn't properly indicate when text encoding has changed.  And changes in character encoding can cause your "if equals" logic to fail in a confusing way.  If you're in FF console the issue will be obvious right away.

Array in Chrome

Array in Firefox

Dropbox : some files and folders not syncing

This one drove me slightly mad for a few hours.  For me the fix was simple, open the Dropbox preferences, go to Account then click Selective Sync.  Check the boxes of the folders not showing up.  I have no idea how this happened as I highly doubt I set these items to not sync in the first place.

Chrome : slow "resolving host" and err_name_not resolved

Noting this problem happening a lot more recently, even on my very fast internet + using Google DNS.  Tested the same slow/problem pages in Firefox and all is well.

This seems to have fixed it for me.

Copy/paste this into a new tab

chrome://net-internals/#dns

click "Clear Host Cache"

restart Chrome

At first it may throw another err_name_not resolved but after that it should be ok.

Linux Mint + Toshiba laptop : can't adjust brightness with Fn keys / keyboard

This is not an uncommon problem.  For me if I try to use the Fn + brightness up/down keys a popup appears showing the battery status.  After some Googling I found several results, which worked for many people but did nothing for me.  My fallback trick of adjusting the brightness before the OS boots didn't work either.  Fortunately I found this command in buried in the comments somewhere and it works fine.

SUDO'd

echo 160 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness > /dev/null

That's pretty dim.  For slightly brighter pick a higher number

echo 260 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness > /dev/null

While you're at it might as well install GTK Redshit to save your eyes some at night.

ROOT

dim 

echo 160 | tee /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness > /dev/null

brighter

echo 260 | tee /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness > /dev/null

This also seems to work on Debian and CentOS.

Solved : Keyboard media keys (next, pause) stop working with Spotify

For the past week or so I've had this really annoying problem.  Randomly the media keys on my Toshiba laptop would stop working, so I could only switch songs if I stopped what I was doing, went back to spotify, then moved the mouse and clicked the next button like some kind of cave man.

I Google'd it several times and the fixes would work, but not for very long before they problem started again.  I tried drivers and all kinds of stuff.  Made sure my Chrome didn't have a Google Music extension (common cause of this bug).

I solved this problem by closing iTunes.  After that my media keys work perfectly again.  While iTunes was open it was trying to retake control of the media keys like some kind of nazi every few seconds.  Which is why the fixes worked, but not for long.

So if your media keys don't work in spotify close whatever over music player shit you have open, yo.

Samsung SGH-T399 KitKat ROM

Floating around the XDA forum is a Kitkat rom / guide.  I was able to get the phone up and running but kept getting the error "no sim" or something like that.  After I installed the modem from this post it worked fine.

directions and downloads for update sgh-t399 to kitkat

http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/development/rom-lightwave-v1-t2825253/post56059019#post56059019

zip for modem

http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/help/qa-lightwave-v3-t2904537/page3

in short, follow all the steps at the first url - then before rebooting install the zip from inside twrp (etc).

Netflix screen tearing Win7 solution

Recently I started getting a lot of screen tearing in Netflix, especially when full screen.  This only started happening recently and Google wasn't much help. 

The fix for me was to go to

System properties > performance settings > adjust for best performance

Something about Windows Aero being enabled let's Windows process video better.