I started hosting photos on my home server to de-Google. It was an interesting experience overall, which included setting up a DNS server and fiddling with Wake on Wireless LAN. I'll explain the process below, and finally touch upon the fix for an annoying problem I encountered where the server would go to sleep for seemingly no reason. I already had [PIVPN](https://www.pivpn.io/) installed on my Raspberry Pi. From there, I set up a DNS server so I could point photos.local to an IP address within the network. I had a choice between `dnsmasq` and `Bind9` for the server, and I chose `Bind9` because it seemed like the more "correct" choice. Digital Ocean [explains](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-configure-bind-as-a-private-network-dns-server-on-ubuntu-18-04) the setup well.

A few days ago my Firefox browser started having serious graphical glitches when viewing certain hardware accelerated web applications such as YouTube. Naturally, the first thing I tried to do was disable hardware acceleration, and that fixed the problem. But no one likes to disable HWA, right? So I dug deeper. Most results on Google suggest to go to `about:support` to figure something out, or disable WebGL in `about:config`. I tried upgrading my graphics drivers and rolling back, using [Display Driver Uninstaller](https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html) too. I even tried re-seating my GPU twice.

Something I've noticed about navigation apps these days: they're hard to follow unless you're already relatively familiar with the area. I'm not sure if this is unique to Taipei or to any reasonably large city. Whenever I'm approaching a road like the one below, Google Maps never tells me clearly enough where I need to be. 

I've always had computer monitors, but I never owned a TV before in my life. Recently, I became the owner of a 43" 4K TV. Since I don't usually watch cable television, I connected it to my computer as an extended display, primarily using it for gaming. I couldn't get the TV's native 4K resolution to render in 60Hz though. After looking through the display adapter's settings, I concluded that my HDMI cable didn't have enough bandwidth to support 4K60. In effect, I was probably using a [HDMI 1.4](https://www.hdmi.org/spec/hdmi1_4b) cable. I later found there is [no way to determine](https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/is-there-anyway-to-detect-what-version-of-hdmi-cable-my-cable-is.3167678/post-19601026) what kind of cable is being used, since there's nothing in the spec that requires a version number to be printed. So I continued using the TV at 1080p 60Hz since I figured that was easier on my GPU anyway. After a while though, I decided to dig deeper since running 1080p on a 4K TV...feels kind of weird. I found a nice [tool](https://glenwing.github.io/adapters/?output=HDMI&input=DP) that helped me find out that I'd probably need an active DisplayPort to HDMI adapter to get 4K60 support. After purchasing one and connecting it from my computer, I found that the refresh rate was still stuck at 30Hz. I looked through the TV settings to see if there was any option to change the HDMI version from 1.4 to 2.0. There was nothing. I checked if the HDMI port supported 4K60. All ports supported 4K60. I saw an option for [EDID](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Display_Identification_Data) buried deep in the TV settings. There were two options: 1.4 and 2.0. I didn't know what EDID was, but the numbers seemed to make sense. So I changed it to 2.0, and suddenly 60Hz was unlocked.

I'm no keyboard expert, but I've used my fair share of keyboards throughout the years. I've always loved using compact wireless keyboards because they reduce desk clutter substantially. But then in 2017, I received my first mechanical keyboard as a gift. This was my first time using a full-size wired keyboard in a long time. I had a hard time adjusting not just to seeing wires on my desk again, but also the amount of space the full-size keyboard took. However, the MX Brown switches felt so good that it was almost worth it.