Resurrecting a Samsung Galaxy Tab E SM‑T560

During vacations, I spent a day bringing an old Samsung Galaxy Tab E (SM‑T560 / gtel3g) back to life. It started as a quick tweak and turned into a proper little surgery: replace the stock recovery, flash a custom LineageOS ROM to test, chase down a couple of quirks, and finally install an alternative Android, ViperOS, build focused on stability. This is what I did and the gotchas I hit.

Upgrading asp.net 6 to 10

I recently upgraded one of my projects from .NET 6 to .NET 10, and while the process was smoother than expected, there were several important steps and breaking changes worth documenting. This post summarizes what I did.

Repairing a TVIX Remote Control aka Fixing Unresponsive Buttons

I stumbled upon my old TVIX HD M-7000A media player, and discovered that the OK button on the remote control was unresponsive, preventing menu selections and general usability. If you encounter similar issues with your TVIX remote, such as buttons failing to respond (e.g., the red LED does not illuminate upon pressing), the following steps may help restore functionality.

Using an indoor air conditioner with a broken outdoor unit

During the Daniel extreme flood event in Thessaly, I was fortunate not to lose anyone, but sustained material losses, including two cars and my air conditioners’ outdoor units, which were submerged for two days and destroyed. The internal units were safe, and I wondered if they could function independently for fun. It turns out that any internal air conditioner unit can operate as a fan without the need of an external unit.

How to fix Snip & Sketch not working on Windows 10 (Snipping Tool shortcut issues)

I often need to take a screenshot and annotate it a bit before I paste it into a chat, Jira ticket or document. On my Windows system, I love the simplicity of the Microsoft Snip & Sketch app (also known as Snipping Tool), which is always just a shortcut (Win+Shift+S) away. 

Unfortunately, on my work laptop (still running Windows 10), I've recently run into an issue where the shortcut stops working.  When I press the shortcut or even open the app and select to take new snip, no screenshot is taken, and the toolbar doesn’t appear. Instead, I see the cursor spinner for a few seconds, but nothing else happens.

After some troubleshooting, I found a solution, so I thought I'd write it down for future reference and to help anyone else facing the same issue!

Parse Excel XML using power query in excel

I wanted to load an Excel XML file (a.k.a. Microsoft Office Excel 2002 and Excel 2003 XML Format — SpreadsheetML) in another Excel file using Power Query M formula language. It turns out that it's trickier than I expected so I decided to blog my solution.

LogonCommand doesn't execute in windows sandbox

I was trying to use Windows Sandbox to run UniFi server and I wanted to install VC140 as a logon command which seemed to not work 🤔 I was mounting the Desktop folder where I had both the executable and the startup.cmd file. Opening the sandbox and running the script worked. This means that the LogonCommand should also work, right? 

Well, no, because the scripts needs to use full paths as mentioned in this youtube video.