Index | datalars

You've made a powerful Ally this day, my friend

In 2024, I bought an ASUS ROG Ally Z1, a handheld gaming PC. Since then, I've done a lot of customisations to it, both on the software and hardware sides, and I thought it'd be a good idea to document them here; maybe I'll help someone overcome some of the problems I faced, with time saved on looking for solutions, and also provide some ideas for what you can do with this thing. As of 2026, I still use the device often, and it's plugging along nicely.

Synchronizing FreeTube settings across computers

FreeTube is fantastic, and since it started including support for SponsorBlock, it has become my main way of consuming YouTube content. The only downside being the fact that there is no built-in way to synchronize your setup across computers. By the power of open source, let's fix it!

Aa!! It's a zorting zombie!

I came across an interesting Bash issue today, as I was trying to restore a zstd-compressed CloneZilla Partclone image to a raw file in order to extract some data from it. For some reason, none of the solutions on the internet worked, and searching for the error message turned up no useful results. This was the command line I had constructed:

$ zstdcat nvme0n1p3.ntfs-ptcl-img.zst.* | sudo partclone.ntfs -C -r -W -s - -O image.img

Notice the glob at the end of the only argument to zstdcat. This only gave me:

Partclone v0.3.17 http://partclone.org
Starting to restore image (-) to device (image.img)
This is not partclone image.
Partclone fail, please check /var/log/partclone.log !

Fixing macOS' defective sleep mode with a Hammer (...Spoon)

This is kind of a followup post to Using a Mac Mini as a bedroom PC for Kodi, Moonlight and YouTube.

It's been nearly a year since I set up a Mac Mini as my one-stop-shop for all multimedia related tasks in the bedroom. It's generally worked well, and both streaming media, games, general web browsing and PC usage has been smooth. You're rolling around in bed, playing video games, watching YouTube, or maybe the freshest episode of Smiling Friends. But then you fall asleep, and the fun abruptly stops.

Bash script: Reminder to swap mics with automatic pausing of all media players

The problem

I recently purchased a double pack of wireless microphones (specifically, these ones) to replace my ageing and faltering wired one. I am very happy with the audio quality, their ease of use and their range, but for my specific use case, the battery life (around 3 hours) leaves a little to be desired. I mainly use these while hanging out with a friend over the internet while sharing my screen, and we'll watch movies and TV shows together. That can last a couple of hours or even most of the day, and at some point the battery for the microphone will run out.

The first time this happened, it took me a little while to understand what was going on, as there was no beep or any indication from the microphone to signal its demise. Apparently the LED on the device will blink when it's low on battery, but that's impossible to see when it's clipped to my shirt right underneath my chin.