Category: General

Getting my Movies my way is the best way.

Paul

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Time to use my DVD collection

I’ve got a really big DVD collection that I want to be able to use when I want to use them.   I’ll tell you when we were at home for those two months, I should of done that then in 2020 but I didn’t think about it until now.   However that doesn’t mean it is to late to do it.  I have a plan for the my Steam Deck and this will allow me to do that.  Although gaming streaming and video streaming are two different beasts it still has some of the princples that you might not think of.   You will still need to stream through wifi or wired if you are trying to get the best quality.    My plan is to have my DVD’s available anywhere I go, so I even can play on my phone if I wanted to.   I’ve found this awesome streaming service that will do just that on the Steam Deck and any other device.   I’ve installed Plex.tv and created a server for myself.   I’ve got this old NAS (Network attached storage) that hasn’t been used very much.   I’ve been upgrading it lately for just this occasion.   I want to put all my DVD’s and Music on their to listen to or use as I wish.  You can buy a NAS for really small amount of money and add storage as you see fit.

What’s the Purpose

The Truth of the matter is, because I can and it can help with not paying for streamin services as much.  I can be more selective of which services I want to subscribe to and save money in the long run.   I can also buy cheap DVD’s and copy them onto my NAS with realtivity easy process.   The really hard part is the CopyProtection that the big names do to prevent you from do just this.   The problem is that we own these DVD’s and we have the right do what we want with them.  Also there a movies that I want to watch that aren’t either on the streaming service or would need to buy another subscription to another service.  There’s to many services and with the prices going up and I have this NAS hardly being used it should be used more.

Understanding the Basics

We’ll not going to talk about the ethics as much as you want but if you are curious how to do it, you can watch this video and learn something.   I’ll talk a little bit about the copy protection that can be hard to circumvent but can be if you really want to own your media.   The problem is that not all this works with but can be useful to understand.   The copy protection of DVD’s has been something that has plagued mankind since the dawn of the DVD.   They deserve their money for the making the movies and films.  Even TV shows should get what is owed to them but that doesn’t mean people haven’t pirated them around the world through other means.

Copy Protection Software

Here’s where it gets a little bit more interesting to some because if you are like me and have some movies in either DVD or Bluray.  You’re going to need these software to do what is necessary to get to the information you might need. I’ll say this much, use as your own risk or own use.  I will not be responsible for anything that might happen.

I’ll say this I’ve only used DVD Decrypter right now because it works with all that I needed but the others look promising and I will try them out later.  It’s up to you on which one you will want to use to decrypt those DRM heavy DVD’s or Blurays.   I think it all depends on which one will work for you and how you like to use them .  Each one has their own unique way of getting the files needed to copy the main movie file.   So it just depends on what you are looking to do.

Are you planning to do this?  What do you think it will be like when you watch movies on the Steam Deck? I plan to try it out on the steam deck and see how well Plex.tv does the only thing that is problem right now is that you need to buy the server software either monthly or lifetime to do it.  I am going to look into buying the Lifetime because I am really curious as to how well this will work outside of my house.   I also might buy a little Pi board and use that as my server because I can use less energy that way instead of using my tower to do the serving of the movies.  What’s your plans for yoru steam deck?  I’d love to hear your plans on what you want to do with yours.

How to stay positive with Quiet Quitters!

Paul
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We all know one or two quiet quitters

I don’t say this lightly, I am sure you know one or two people who don’t do as much work as the rest of the people. You probably even started to get annoyed with them because they aren’t doing as much as you. There’s even a small chance that you have started hinting to the higher ups about them. You know I think they probably already know and nothing you can say or do will make them do the work like they should. You just have to admit and do what you can for yourself. You can’t control what others do or how they do their jobs. The only thing you can really do is make it a positive experience for yourself.  So the real question is how do you not get dragged down by the people in the office and always have a positive mindset.   I am going to talk to about how I do it when I need a pick me from all the negativity in the office.

Think about your future

This one has helped me tramendously, even if I have to work at the same job for a while, I am always thinking about what will come next and that always keeps me from dwelling on those who don’t do their jobs.   It isn’t always easy and that can be very challenging at times because who you might have to deal with and not get angry with.  It however isn’t the only thing I do.

Find Reason to be Thankful

This is something I do all the time, because when I am finding reason to be thankful all the negativity goes away.  I find coming up with positive things to say to myself every morning to help me get up and go to work.  It also helps me keep myself from worry about those quiet quitters as much because you know when your happy they don’t seem to bother me.  I am doing my own little thing and they can stay where they are.  It’s not easy sometimes and it can be quiet difficult to deal with them or work with them but sometimes that is just the price of getting paid.

Don’t Dwell on their inactions

It can be quite hard not to think about what they aren’t doing and what you are doing.   They will be bored or not doing much work for the hours they are there.  You probably have even dwelled on just how fustrating that can be when they aren’t working nearly enough.  You have to stop watching them because it will not help you.  This is another easy to say but hard to do, because we all see them and think how they are keeping their jobs?   That is their problem not ours to worry about and we should just keep busy and let them be.

 Find People who appreciate you

This can seem so simple but very useful.  Even if your current job people don’t appreciate you, those aren’t the only people who can show you appreciation.  You can find people who appreciate you all over the world not just in your little part of the world.  Even that small amount of people who appreciate you will make going to job that much easier and more enjoyable because they are the true reasons why you go to work.  Not the people there or even your boss, people who want you to be happy will always show you their appreciation and respect.   The job is just a job and that is where you will have to be but that doesn’t mean you can be happy at your job.   Let everyone else be unhappy but you can be happy and enjoy yourself at work.

Even these small recommendations will help you to get a better perspective on what you want to accomplish at your job daily.  Keep you moving forward and maybe even make you a little bit more happier than the rest of your coworkers.  Who know’s they are probably watching just because they want to be as happy as you and are trying to find out how to do it.  Do you have tips that help you with keeping a positive mindset?  why not share them and help others find ways to keep themselves happy.

What types of SD cards are the best for your Steam Deck

Paul1 Reply

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As small as a fingernail: close-up of Micro SD card SanDisk Ultra 64 GB on white background

So you want a Good Gaming Experience

If you are like me, you only bought a small 64gb version of the Steam Deck. After all You can upgrade the internal storage up to 2tb if you really had the money for the hardware. I know I will be doing this in the future myself but until then. I still have a lot of steam games and other games I want to play on the Steam deck. This is another way to increase your storage and you can save a lot of money this way also, if you aren’t confortable about opening up your Steam Deck. No screws required to do this way also.  This is the easiest way to increase your storage space but you have to have the right cards to have the best gaming experience.   I’m going to talk about some of the things you will want to look for and also give you some examples of the cards you should buy.

Read and Write Speeds

This is the first place you should be looking for.  The SDXC (MicroSD card) has to be able to write  and read up to 100 mb/s.  The faster you get the better experience you will be.  You should look for cards that says V30 and has the U3 Symbol.   These will tell you that they are designed for up to that amount but I find that you will want to get something that is as fast as possible but also really cheap.  You can buy several of these and switch them out with the games you are wanting to play at the time.  You can buy several small 256gb MicroSD cards and switch them off when you need because of games being on them that you want to play.   Here’s a Few of my Amazon recommendations on which ones to buy that will get you the most out of gaming experience.

Final Thoughts

My final thoughts on this is that you can have anywhere from 64gb up to 1 tb of extra space and if you have a 1tb internal space.  I can’t see you needing more that a 2 tb amount either way.  This would probably the most you probably, unless you add in the Epic Games and other ways to mod your Steam Deck.  I’ll be talking about that in an upcoming post about how you can do that for almost any gaming network but maybe not Nintendo.   The Steam Deck is more powerful than the Switch right now.  You can play games from other providers and enjoy playing mobile.   This is something that has been a long time coming to allow gamers to take their games anywhere they want to and play them on any display they want to.   I don’t know how the Logitech G Gaming handset will be but at least the Steam Deck is far better than what people have thought it would be.  I can’t wait to see the Version 2 of the Steam Deck and see what they do in the future.

So you want to upgrade your SSD on the Steam Deck, huh?

Paul2 Replies
The Prices of Steam Deck

Upgrading is Possible

I’m not going to say it won’t be easy to do. It just depends on how much of knowledge you have to do this. I bought the 64gb Model because well it was the cheaper of the 3. I figured it would be cheaper to do it myself than to pay them to do it. I am looking now and think I did a great job with this because I didn’t have to spend the 600 dollars for the 512gb model. In fact there are more bigger kinds of the SSD that I can install that will go beyond the 512gb that they are selling. If you want to do this, I really suggest checking out the Steam Deck Teardown that the IFIXIT guys did. I simply love the idea of tearing it down and being able to MOD it, if I so choice.  I’m going to talk about the best choices you have to upgrade your storage in the Steam Deck.   These are just my recommendations on which ones will help you and save you money in the process.

Buy NVME 2230 30 mm SSDs

So we start to talk about the kind of SSD’s you will need to buy in order to upgrade your Steam Deck.   You will need to find SSDs that are one sided NVME.  They can not have chips on both sides of the card, there would be no room for it.   You’re going to look for the type you might want but here are some good options that I see on Amazon.

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SkHynix 256GB PCIe NVMe 2230 SSD for 31$

Here’s the first one that I recommend for anyone who might just want to upgrade to a little bit bigger size. This however will not give you as much room as you might want but it will give you enough room to start off with and then you can SD cards to do the rest.  As you can see this one will be a good deal for you right now.   You can quickly and easily upgrade your Steam Deck to a bigger storage.   It however isn’t the only one I would recommend.

Micron SSD 512GB M.2 2230 30mm NVMe PCIe 4.0 for 99$

Now here’s a great deal going from jusst paying 399$ pluss tax to 499$ Plus tax.  Saving you over 130$, if you just did it yourself.   So this one should fit Steam Deck and I don’t see any problems with it.  It is small enough and fast enough to use with the Steam Deck.  You won’t see it slowing you down as you are gaming on the Steam Deck.

SN530 m.2 2230 SSD 1TB NVMe PCIe For 184$

This seems to be the best deal around because you can get almost a 1 tb for the best amount of money.   The only problem with this one is you really only get 866gb of space and the rest is taken up by design of the chip.   I don’t know if you want that or not but at least this one is available to you to buy.  You might be able to find other 1tb that will get closer to the 1tb limit but not  many and they start to get more expensive.

2TB M.2 2230 NVMe PCIe SSD Gen 4.0 for 539$

Finally we get to this bad boy, it is a bit expensive for my tastes but at least this is a Samsungs SSD.  So it will be blazing fast but I don’t know if I would pay 500$ for a 2tb when you can easy get Micro SD’s for cheaper.  I guess those who can afford to pay it will most likely.  I am sure there will be other manufacturers who will come out with 2tb but for right now this one is the only one on Amazon and claims to be able to upgrade the Steam Deck.  I suspect your will only get like 1.7tb of space off this SSD but it will be massive.  If you have a lot of games, this would definately let you put them on the Steam Deck.

Installing the Steam OS

So you bought a bigger SSd and went to install it but you will need to install the Steam OS.  You can follower the instructions on how to create a Steam OS recovery USB drive.   I personally might go with my own and use CloneZilla and clone the hard drive and move it to the new one after you install the new SSD.   Then grab something like Gparted and expand the disk to the size you need that would be my recommendations so you don’t loose any of you games or have to reinstall the games that you have already installed.   You will need a USB stick that has the size you want to clone so if you have a 64gb then you will need one that is at least that big.  You can use a dock or something like that, See my previous post about Docks.  to use multiple USB sticks.  Hope this helps.  Did you find this informative, why not share it and let others know that it is possible to upgrade your Steam Deck.

How to move your Minecraft World from PC to SteamOS (Archlinux)

Paul1 Reply

Installing Minecraft

See Link here for more information

After you get done install Minecraft on your Steam deck you will then be able to log into your Minecraft Java Edition. I suggest setting updifferent version for the game if you have several different versions for example 1.16.2 and 18.1 and Maybe even 1.19.0+. I’ve found this to be the very easy to use and keep your from having to log into to your minecraft java edition. Once you have Micraft installed and ready to played. You really should go ahead create test world so you can verify that it is working properly. Once done you’ll want to process to the next step.

Zipping your saved worlds

This next step is important because you never know what could happen. You’ll want to hit “Win + R” and type in “%appdata%\.minecraft” while you are logged into your Windows device. This should bring your to C:\users\[loginID]\Appdata\.minecraft. Once there you will want to navigate to saves directory. You’ll find in most times it is there unless you have designated another location in the Minecraft Java launcher where to go. I’m going to assume you know where your save directory and we’ll talk about what you will need to do next.  I’d use something like 7zip or even Windows Zipping utility.  For the People who are absolutely beginners with this.   I recommend copying these to a USB and then copying them to the Steam Deck that way or you could use the microSD card if you have have a MicroSD card reader to move the zip files over.   Once you have zip the worlds you want to play on you Steam Deck.   You basically just want to zip the whole directory of the world name for example if you have a Test World on your Windows computer, it will probably be something like “Test World” folder.  Zip the whole directory up and copy it over.   Don’t change anything when it get’s zipped up.

If you have multiple worlds and have them set up with different version.   I’d suggest zipping them up and creating folders with the different version onto the USB or MicroSD card.  So when you create and import them into PolyMC you will know which versions you will need to create in Java PolyMC.

Importing world into PolyMC

Once you have them zip files copied over or at least installed on the MicroSD card and inserted into the the Steam Deck.    You are going to want to start PolyMC in Desktop mode if you are using this on the Steam Deck.   One you run it you’ll want to view the worlds:

View Worlds _ PolyMC

Then once you do that, The next screen you will want to click Add (saved world).

Add worlds as Zip files

Once you hit Add you will then want to go to the directory on the MicroSD card or USB drive or Where ever you moved the zip files. Once you find it and click OPEN. It should start to add it to the PolyMC World. If you created the right version you will not have to worry about it when you start the game. After Adding all the worlds you want to play with, you can then get out of Steam Deck Desktop mode and go back to the the Steam OS and play your game that you were playing on your PC. I haven’t tried moving these back to the PC or keeping them syncorized but at least you can play your favorite worlds on Steam Deck.

Like this little quick tutorial. Why not share it and tell people so more people can play Minecraft and or use your worlds you were using it on the PC. This will only work for the JAVA version of Minecraft. Bedrock will probably not work, I haven’t tried or thought about trying it for Steam Deck. Hope this helps. Have a Good Monday Morning.