I am very pleased to report that I have successfully gotten Borderlands 3 running on my gaming PC. Not only this works, I have figure out how to emulate the same game using Suyu Emulator (an older version). You may ask, what so cool about this? Well, both versions are running smoothly. Initially, I didn't think this is possible. When I first started with Borderlands 3, on the emulator, I was able to run the game, but it was flickering. After some twitching of the running parameters, I was able to run it smoothly with occasion flickers. I didn't bother with this because I was deeply involved with playing No Man's Sky on PC. When I switched back to this game, I decided I want to complete it with the best graphics I can configure.

I decided to run a bunch of configuration on my Suyu Emulator. I was finally able to come up with a set configuration that works. I have to turn the screen resolution refresh rate to 60 Hz instead of 144 Hz. I turn off VSync, Window Adapter Filter to Bilinear, Anti-Aliasing to None, Accuracy Level (Adv. Graphics tab) to High, and uncheck "Use Fast GPU Time (Hack)" and "Use Vulcan pipeline cache". It ran very smoothly with such configuration. What I thought before is this is impossible because my Nvidia card 3056 RTX is too old. It turned out that with the right configuration, I am able to run this . I should have better confidence in my gaming laptop.

I bought the game during the Thanksgiving holiday for $3. That was a great deal. On the same track of thoughts, I believe the PC version should work as well as the emulated version. When I first tried it. It was running very slowly with occasional flickering. It gave me the impression that my laptop hardware is too low for the game to run. What I didn't know is that, the game was running with my preinstalled WINE emulator and it is simply not optimized to run the game. What I should do is configure the game to run with Steam's Proton Compatibility tools (using Proton Experimental or Proton Hot Fix). Once I did that, I was able to run the game with the highest setting, and on variable frame rate 22-60 FPS. The PC version is a bit rougher than the emulation. But I am very happy that both are running well on my current gaming laptop.

Since the fall 2025, my BMW X1's heater stopped working. I thought it might be some components that detect the temperature difference and supposedly start the heater were failing. Turned out it wasn't some components that failed. It was the cap for the engine coolant system. Apparently, I didn't tighten that cap. When the car runs, the coolant boils and evaporates. Eventually, the coolant level got so low that the car would show warning sign that the engine was overheating.

The warning came on the morning of Saturday 01/24/2026. When I got home, I filled the coolant tank, and again, I didn't tighten the cap. In the afternoon, after the driving the car again lost a lot of coolant. Finally, I filled the tank again. And this time, I tightened the cap. Then I drove the car again. This time, the heater started working in 10 minutes. I didn't see another engine overheating warning. Yes, I wished someone has told me about this -- I got to tighten the cap to the coolant tank.

My Xbox One X has been very noisy for a while. The noise comes mostly from the fan that is dispersing the heat from running intensive games. It starts as soon as the gaming starts to run. And I thought this issue was fixed last time I applied new thermal paste to the CPU/GPU, around nine months ago. At that time and a while after, my Xbox One X was running pretty quiet. Then it became noisy for reasons unknown.

The noise is a big distraction during game play. It muffles the audio from the game, and decreases the satisfaction of playing the game. I have decided to wipe clean and re-apply the thermal paste. This was done on 11/15 at night. I used the new screw driver (it is a long story) to open it. During the process, I have carefully laid out the screws so that I knew which step the screws should be applied back. Everything went smoothly except the removal of the cross lock thingy for the heat sink. It took some time to get it off. During that time, I was very afraid that I would scratch the board and damage it. After applying the paste, I reassembled the whole thing for a quick test. No Man's Sky ran about 5 minutes and ended with a machine overheating error. It was getting late (11:40 PM). So I went to bed.

The next day, I woke up and wondered, of all the components I had to plug in for the console to work, did I ever plug in the power connector of the fan to the board's power supply? I spent the day raking the leaves. Around 5PM, I decided to find out whether I have plugged in or not. When I unplugged the console from its power cord, I can feel the unusual warmth emanating from the console. Something was definitely wrong with what I have done from previous night. I spent 20 minutes disassemble the console to a point where I could check the components that are connected to the board. Surely enough, the power connector of the fan was unplugged. I plugged in and quickly re-assembled the console back. Then I did a test, "Assassin's Creed: Origin", the console is running all right. The console is quiet, and it ran for two hours with no sign of overheating. The game did crash in the middle of the play. I think it was caused by some bug. I went right in and it ran another 40 minutes or so before I shut it down. During that time, the console was running pretty quiet. I felt the back of the console, the fan was running and pushing the heat out. I will wait and see how long this fix would last. I will buy some better thermal paste to apply if the noise do come back.

On Monday, 11/17/2025, I started up my gaming laptop, and the internal speakers roars back to life. It was not working for the past six months or so. I don't know what happened. One day, they just stopped working. I have opened the back of the laptop trying to find any signs of hardware malfunction. I was pushing the laptop hard with long hours of game play. I thought the heat might have burnt something. Nothing was there. No burn marks and no loose wire of that sort. I have tried everything with Linux terminal and UI control tweaks. Nothing I do that I can get the speaker back to life. The Bluetooth earbuds works, USB connected headphone works. the 3.5 mm jacked in headphone also works. It is only the internal speakers that are problematic. It was a mystery with no visible error output. In the morning of this Monday, they appears to be working, and I haven't done anything significant. I guess some recent firmware update might have fixed the issue. I hope they will stay working for a long time.

After at least two months of wait and see, I don't see any new water stains on the ceiling of the attic room. So I decided to repaint the ceiling and the walls. I bought the paint and the tools. The paint was based on the ones used on the work done after the new roof is done. I painted the spot three or four coats and the color matches the existing ceiling color perfectly. The first two coats I used a brush. It was leaving some weird shadows. And the last two coats I did in the same day using a roller. The roller worked much better than a brush, it is more efficient too. Anyways, it is done.

The wall took some more work. First I paint the sides once. Of course, the stains would still be visible. So I wait until the walls are 85% dry and I paint them again. The second coat would cover about 95% of the water stain. I would paint one more time after the wall is about 85% dry. The last coat is just on the areas where the stains are still visible. The third coat completes the work. Now, the walls and the ceiling looks brand new. It was freaking awesome.

So sorry long time no update. I have not abandoned this site yet. During this long absence, I have used my past post solved a few problems with my computer re-installations. I got rid of the Kubuntu and old Linux Mint in my old computer, replaced both with with Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition. Linux Mint has been a really reliable operating system. It was fast, stable, and not so much on resource consumption. It was easier for customization as well. So far, I like it very much. The OS will be my go-to choice for future computer setups.

The roof does not leak any more. I wanted to put out this, only to hold back so that I can be sure the issue is really fixed. The resolution is to use the rubberized roof paint to paint all three sides of the chimney so that the water does not permeate into the house from these sides. And I had to wait for these many months with several heavy rains to be sure the solution is working.

Our family went to Finger Lake again this summer. The vacation was good. The house we rent didn't have proper air conditioning, so it was quite hot. I did enjoy the camping. I took the opportunity to learn how to build bonfires. I found that the lighter fluid worked really good for starting the fire. But the fire woods were still to thick to sustain the flame. I need an ax to slice the fire woods into thin pieces so that they can burn more cleanly. I will buy one for the next year. I decided from now on, our family will at least go for camping for once or twice a year during the year's summer time.

Aside from these "exciting" activities, I have been playing a lot of No Man's Sky. I bought copies for all platforms I have PC, PS4, PS5, and Xbox One. On PS5, I have getting very close to the Galactic core. I will be pushing it to the end of the game. That is, I will either go to the last Monolith to reset the galaxy simulation or go to the galactic core. I want to crash the ship into a new galaxy, and see what would happen. I am very close now.

While playing with the game. I am constantly thinking of a new IT project I can work on. I think I have something. I will put out another announcement once I am decided.

Not much of an update. I’ve been playing No Man's Sky every day for several hours. I haven’t done any software development in my spare time—just relaxing for the summer.

No Man's Sky is the perfect game for me. It’s incredibly relaxing and offers a wide range of activities: exploring, gathering resources, building bases, fighting pirates in space, or even becoming a pirate yourself. These activities give me a simulated experience of becoming rich, getting the best ship configuration I can, and doing whatever I want in a vast universe. Now I understand why some people love playing Minecraft - they probably get the same kind of “high” I get from playing No Man's Sky.

The downside is that I’ve played the game so much that sometimes the CPU/GPU gets very hot. It actually burned out the onboard speaker. I can still hear audio through Bluetooth earbuds and a USB microphone, but the PC speaker no longer works. Also, the Nvidia app that switches between Intel and Nvidia video output keeps giving me a black screen. I had to uninstall all Nvidia drivers and apps from version 550 and install only version 535 of the video driver. That fix finally gave me peace of mind—a big win for me.

There is not a lot update in the recent weeks, I know I was supposed to work on personal projects. Instead, for the past three weeks, I decided to play video games at night. By chance, I got a PC version of No Man's Sky. I installed the game and it runs fantastically on my gaming PC. It has 60 FPS at the highest setting. I can run it in Windowed mode (1600x900). The game also had some ridiculous fun as well. I discovered that I can discover crashed ship, claim as my own and add to my ship collection. I can also claim freighter, and add enhancements. It has a good space flight simulation and fight space pirates. Overall, it is a great game that has a lot of things for players to do. This is why it is addicting. It will be a long time before I can reach the galactic core.

I bought a new TV. It is a 43 inch UHD from Vizio. I paid about $195 for it on Amazon. I tried to buy it from Best Buy. Yet, it kept cancelling my order immediately after I submitted it. So I went to Amazon and bought the same one, which is cheaper but took a while to arrive. Anyways, I got it yesterday, and I set it up. It turned out to be a fantastic TV. Once I connected PS4 to it, tune the TV for the gaming mode, the graphics looked amazing. The audio is very nice as well. I used to have a Polaroid 32 inch HD TV. I got it on the Thanksgiving day in 2011 for $89. The new TV is a nice upgrade from existing setup. The reason I got the new one because I spent a lot of time gaming. A nice TV will make the gaming experience more memorable.

There has not been much excitement in my life for the past three weeks. This is why I am reluctant to post any memos here. I didn't want to overload my site with low-quality memos. My updates are indeed sparse at the moment. I will find a way to improve that. It is springtime now. I have spent a considerable amount of time cleaning up my backyard. I removed most of the dandelions from the lower side of the yard, from the front lawn as well. The effort put a lot of pain on my back. I think it is good for my health. The dandelions are kept popping up. I do the yearly clean-up so that the population on my lawn can be kept to a minimum. It is back-breaking work. Soon, I will be mowing the lawn as well. The seasonal allergy hits me pretty hard. I get itchy eyes and stuffy noses all the time. The good thing is that I have over-the-counter medicine for it. Enough of spring, let's move on to the next topic.

I found some new information on the new social platform Mastodon and BlueSky. Each uses a different data sharing protocol. The one Mastodon uses is called ActivityPub. It is a relatively small protocol. I am currently reading it on W3C. This is very interesting. I give me a lot of ideas on how I can make my new Twitter replacement more connected. I will have more updates on this.

I am still playing a lot of games, Borderlands 3 and Days Gone. At night, after I finished house cleaning chores, I wondered if I should work on my project or have fun. This week, my choice is to have fun. So, around 9:45 PM, I would start playing games, then go to bed around 11:30 PM. My project, of course, will get delayed. I have made good progress last week. And I like it because I don't feel I am rushing to get it complete. It gives me time to think and time to correct mistakes. Seeing the project having great shape just makes me feel very happy.

The attic roof still leaks. The last heavy rain was Monday, 4/1/2025. I noticed there is just one spot. Before that, I went up the roof twice and did some more patching. After Monday, I rechecked the roof and found that there is still a large crack on the right side under the flashing on the chimney. I think the water is going in at that spot. I have patched that spot as well. First, I slapped a lot of roof cement on the gap. Then I applied a new layer of asphalt paint on it. Because I didn't stir the paint in the bucket in the past few uses, half of the paint became thick sediment. I am afraid I have to throw the bucket out. I haven't yet, because the sediment looked just like the roof cement. Hence, it still has value. I am sure I need to get up there and do more patches this year. I will have more updates on that.

It is great that we have emulation of Sw*tch games on PC. One of the games I have enjoyed so far is Borderlands 3. I had it for all the platforms, Xbox One, PS 4, and Sw*tch emulation. While I played it on Sw*tch emulation, I found it hard to work with using Ryujinx because the texture flickers frequently. Fortunately, it worked a lot better on Suyu emulator. I was able to run it with little to none flickers. The situation changed after I applied the latest update 1.0.3 to the game. When runs on Suyu, it started flicker on Suyu emulator as well. I did a bunch of research and was able to resolve the flickering issue on Suyu.

Here are what I have done. After open Borderlands 3 on Suyu emulator, at the lower left corner of the emulation window, there are a few clickable option, each click on the options will change the option. The ones that I found to work the best are:

• The first option sets to "VULCAN".
• The second one set to "HIGH".
• The third one set to "DOCKED".
• The fourth one set to "BILINEAR". I can set it to higher like FSR. But it would be unstable.
• The fifth one set to "SMAA". This always default to "NO AA", always change it to SMAA for better quality.
• The Last one is sound volume, set to "100%" as default.

One more thing I did is capping the frame rate to 30 frames per second. I wasn't able to do this with the Suyu application. It can only be done after game is loaded, I can go to the options -> Graphics -> Set the frame rate from unlimited to 30 fps max.

Once all set, I was able to run the game like I play on Xbox One or PS4. Although the graphics is not cool as these box consoles, it is fantastically enjoyable on a low end gaming PC!

I was playing Borderlands on RPCS3, and it kept crash at the point my character enters the Sledge's Safe house. After my character enters the place, and I quit and restart the game, it will crash at loading.

I have tried reloading many times and kept crashing. Even when I switched to a different character. It seemed to be unsolvable. RPCS3 is a well made application for emulation. And Borderlands worked without any change to the configuration. It seems the problem only happens at the beginning of the location. At first, I though the save file was corrupted, but after switching to a different character and still seeing the issue, I suspected this is a software bug in the game.

I resolved the issue yesterday. After some more research, it seems the game loads and crashes because of the PPU and SPU shader caches. What I did is that I removed all the caches, re-run the game with the save on one version of RPCS3. If it fails, I would repeat the same two steps with another version of RPCS3. On the second try, I was able to load the game successfully (Thumb Up). From there I have to clear the dungeon (including the boss), and walked back out from the entrance. Then I can travel to a different save location, save the game. As long as I am not in Sledge's Safe house, I can save and reload the game no problem. The play through took 90 minutes. And it is worth the time since it bypassed the bug.

Additional report: Achilles Untold works on latest Ryujinx appimage. And Borderlands 3 worked really well on Yuzu/Suyu emulator. Because of this revelation, I got all the Switch's Borderlands series. Linux Fun PC project is going great!

I played too much video game and did not do enough technical work during my spare time. It was at the end of January, and close to the Lunar New Year's Day, so I just let it go and played Borderlands 2 for most of the end of January. I thought I could get this game done shortly, but all the quests took a long time, and along the way, I had to shoot a lot of enemies to get to the point. After I completed the main quests, I realized there was a ton of DLC content that I could continue with the game. So I need to spend another 50 to 60 hours to complete most of the DLC content. I do this for a selfish reason, I want to finish the Hyperion Circle of Slaughter. I need to get my character to a high level so that I can destroy the robots easily and complete the mission. I know. I am a bit addicted.

On the positive side, the Xbox One X overheating issue is fixed. I played the games with it between January 25th to February 10th, no issue! On the weekend of February 8th and 9th, PSN is down for 24 hours. It didn't bother me at all. That weekend, I didn't play the PS5 VR2, and was on Xbox One X. So I didn't notice that PSN was down. I guess there is an advantage to having two separate systems.

Eagles won the Superbowl with a landslide victory on Sunday, Feb 9th. I cared because I settled in Philly.

On Saturday Jan 10, 2025, I tested my Xbox One X again, I copied Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 3 over to the console. At night, I played Borderlands 2 for mover two hours. I have not seen the overheating issue. It was pretty cool to see this game up and running again on better hardware. I cannot say the same about GameStop's used hardware sale. The console is only used a few times for the whole year and I got this overheating issue.

I don't want to say the problem is over. I need to do more testing. I get to this stage all thanks to the online resources (ifixit, some good YouTube videos), I was able to dig down and find the root cause. If you ask me if I want to buy another used Xbox One X at GameStop, I would say yes because now I know how to tear it down and swap the parts to fix almost any issue with Xbox One X.

Yesterday, it was my third time disassembling the Xbox One X. I did this after I received the OwlTree thermal pads. After I waited for several days on the expensive heating pad I bought from Amazon, I bought some cheaper OwlTree thermal pads. The package contains four pads of 0.5 mm, 1 mm, 1.5 mm, and 2 mm. The package came in yesterday around 10 AM. The delivery is so quick. So I decided to open the Xbox One X and redo the thermal pads on the CPU/GPU and on the memory chips right after lunch. I figured if I could get it done in the afternoon, then I could test it at night.

I disassembled the console around 2:20 PM. Since I have done this two times before, this time I have done it much more quickly. Dissasembling took about 25 minutes. Then applying the new thermal pad to the memory chips took about 25 minutes as well, I added a little more thermal paste to the CPU/GPU. After that, I started reassembling the pieces together. It took slightly longer to complete, probably 30 to 35 minutes. Once assembled, I ran the game Wo Long for about 10 minutes. It was doing OK.

At night, I installed Borderlands the Prequel and played it for about 90 to 100 minutes. There is no problem. I felt the back of the console, near the HDMI cable and the power supply cable, and the heat dissipated normally. The console, however, is rather quiet. I guess after the fixing, the thermal paste does a good job of transferring the heat to the heat dissipation plate, and the fan works at a low intensity to get rid of the heat. It was pretty efficient. For that 90 to 100 minutes, I didn't notice any overheating-related issues at all.

During the second time, I disassembled the Xbox One X, I noticed that The X-shape lock piece that locks the heat sink piece to the board was loose, one of the legs that secure the four corners of the heat sink was not properly secured. I fixed that, also I applied the new thermal paste. Those have made a big difference. This third time, I should have improved a little bit more. I need to run more tests to ensure it was fixed. Please expect more updates on this matter. At this point of time, I think I have scored a small win with my Xbox One X. Yay!

p.s.
The reason I want to fix this Xbox One X instead of tossing it for recycling or buying a new one is that I bought this used console less than a year ago. I was going to play Wo Long with it. And I suck at the Soul-like games, so I stopped playing them. Borderlands 2 was the second game I put it on this console. I can't believe it was broken so quickly. I guess GameStop is a bad shop to buy used game consoles. Repairing myself helped me gain a new skill. I realized re-apply the thermal pads, clean up the old thermal paste from the CPU/GPU, reapply the new paste which was not so hard, and re-assemble the console is not hard. I need to be very careful, but it is not impossible.

One night in Dec 2024, I was playing Borderlands 2 on Xbox One X, and out of the blue, it turned itself off. After a few more tries, it kept turning itself off. Further testing showed the issue is CPU/GPU overheating.

There are two choices about this, buy a new one for $240. There are plenty of stocks out there. Or, fix it. Using the Xbox service, which will cost $500. Because of the cost, I came up with the third option, I will fix it myself.

After disassembling the Xbox One X twice, and then assembling it back, it looks pretty easy. On the second time, I could clean out the thermal paste on the CPU/GPU, and apply a new one on it. Once that was done, I was able to play games for 10 minutes without overheating. I guess the problem is that the old thermal paste/thermal pads used previously are ineffective now. If I can clean it out, and reapply the new ones, hopefully, it will fix the problem. Stay tuned, more progress will follow.

I bought a new computer. You might be surprised because I bought one about two months ago. And you would like to know why. The reason is simple, ever since I discovered Ryujinx, I found myself wanting a more powerful computer that can run this smoothly, that is, a computer that has an Nvidia video card with a decent amount of video memory. That led me to buy an MSI gaming computer GF 63 thin.

This computer is new but its design and configuration are at least three years old. This means the computer is half the cost of a top-tier gaming computer. It has an Nvidia RTX 3060 with 6 GB of dedicated video memory. With this laptop, I can run Diablo III with Ryujinx at 60 frames per second and a few other games with Ryujinx at 30 frames per second.

I also discovered another emulator called RPCS3 that can run PS3 video games well. I was able to try Mass Effect 2 and 3, All the PS3 versions of Borderlands games, Resistance Fall of Men, Just Cause 2, and a few others. These games can run at 30 frames per second and have almost no stutter. There were a few games that I can't run smoothly. For example, No Man's Sky stutters a lot on Ryujinx. It is caused by the fact that it dynamically generates the terrain and other game content. Fallout 3 had some issues with RPCS3. I was not surprised by this, Fallout 3 was full of bugs, and it generates the game content dynamically. I guess any game that dynamically generates content would not run well in emulators. The ones that run well enough stuttered occasionally. The emulator has to pre-compile the shaders during gameplay. Overall, I was thrilled with what I saw. It was better than I had imagined.

I have made good progress with my notes application. It is an electron.js based application. It is designed to take notes. The notes also have keywords and categories (just like the posts on this blog site). I have completed the following:

• Listing all the notes.
• Adding new notes.
• Editing existing notes

In my original design, I imagined the app would have management pages for the keywords and categories. I have also completed the management page for categories (add/edit/delete). I am pleased with how the management page has turned out. I also need to create another management functionality for the keywords. After that, I will add search functionality, and note listing associated with specific categories and keywords. Then we are done. I hope I can wrap this up by the year's end. When completed, it will become my default notes-taking application for my Linux desktop.