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.

There is not much going on, I eat, I sleep, I get up, I work, I take care of things in the house. Life is boring. I do all kinds of activities to make my life exciting because boredom is hard to endure.

Let's talk about fishing. I do this like scientific research, I compare the use of different sizes of hooks and different kinds of baits. The latest results show that bluegills and chubs love the black soldier flies' larvae. These larvae grow to almost an inch. They are mostly protein and some shells. Fishes love them to the point that they would bite no matter what. I went to the Willows Park a few times. Every time, I hooked plenty of large bluegills. Where did I get the soldier flies' larvae? I have a compost bin in my backyard. With all the veggie waste being composted, the larvae just grow naturally. Now I proved they are great fishing bait, I am thrilled I got this compost bin.

I have been experimenting with the Switch emulator Ryujinx, and I am pleased with the outcome. I was able to run Diablo III on my HP computer (workhorse) and get 46 to 53 frames per second. Diablo II is doing about 18 frames per second. It is a bit stuttering but it is playable. Dragon Quest XI runs about 27 frames per second and the audio is lagging. Again it is playable. I can't play No Man's Sky. I can't play Ark Survival. These were 3D rendering intensive. And I was able to get Hades running about 24 frames per second. It was great.

There is not much update since the last one. I went to Upstate New York for a three-day vacation at the end of August. We went to Ithaca, Upstate New York. It was a fun vacation. We saw lots of waterfalls. I took my fishing stuff with me. The rental place had two ponds, and the big one had all kinds of fish in it, So after the day, I went fishing twice, and caught a lot of bluegills. That was fun. Some other fun things we did were jumping a plank in the Robert Treman State Park, seeing all the waterfalls in Ithaca, taking a boat trip, and kayaking on the lake.

I played the new PS5 game Wukong after the vacation. But I was not able to get through the White Clad Noble. I think it is the end of that game for me unless I can find someone to get me past that point. The other thing I can try is leveling up to a point I can eventually beat my way through. Either way, I am taking a break from that. I am still playing Cyberpunk 2077. It is nearing the end of the game for me. I will probably finish Cyberpunk 2077 at the end of September. I should pick something new to play.

Gaming is not top of the priorities. I am getting back to working on the Desktop application for note-taking. I have made a lot of progress in the past few days, I just need some more time to get the saving keywords to work. Once that is done, I will need to complete the update of the note. Once both are done, I can write a tutorial and send it to CodeProject. I am looking forward to that.

I couldn't stand the noise of the CPU fan running constantly in the HP computer I bought three years ago. I couldn't believe it has been three years. The problem is that the fan is always running. I believe the temperature sensor or something is broken on that HP PC. I have already replaced the fan, but the constant running is still annoying me sometimes.

So I decided to buy a new PC. Three years ago I bought a Dell Latitude 7470 along with the HP PC. It costed $600. And now, it is only $155. Dell Latitude 7470 is an office PC. It is well built, and ran without any noise. Since it is cheap now, and it has great quality, I decided to buy another one. After reading the review of the seller, I ordered one.

When I got it, I upgraded immediately. I swapped out the hard drive to 512 GB. And I increase the memory from 8GB to 16 GB. I got rid of the Windows 10 Pro and installed KUbuntu 22.04. The installation is very bumpy, I first installed it, and it worked for a while. Then I decided to upgrade to KUbuntu 24.04. It had some problem with start up. So I re-installed 22.04. And then it failed to start up. I tried booting in safe mode a few times. Finally, I figured out the problem is not able to mount the partition for the swapfile. The solution is to turn off the use of swapfile, and comment out the lines that mount the partition of the swapfile in /etc/fstab. That solved the issue. Now my desktop boots rather quickly. I think this PC is going to be great for me.

I know I have not provided any update for quite a while. I was busy working on tutorial articles. Anyways, I digressed. Last weekend, my family and I went to Marsh Creek Lake. This is a state park that does not require entrance fee. Next to the lake, there are boat rental and other facilities. We rent a motor boat first, and we went around the lake, doing deep water fishing. The first two fish we caught were blue gills. Then the next two were small yellow perches.

After lunch, we rent a kayak that could fit two adults and one small kid. We went around the lake one more time searching for turtles. There were big and small, sun bathing on the small floating pier. They went under water when our kayak approached. And I try a couple more times with fishing and caught three more yellow perches. Before this trip, I have never caught yellow perch. This is the first time.

To fish, I used jig head hook (the smallest one I can get from Walmart), put a piece of night crawler on the hook, then sink it deep down the lake. When the fish bit the bait, I just pull the line and hopefully a fish would be caught. We avoided places where weed was overgrowing, yet the area was about 50 to 80 feet away from the shore. Yellow perches were abundant in this lake, and night crawlers were something they were interested in. No bobbber is used because the water was too deep. We just let the hook sink to the bottom. It worked really well. It seemed to me that getting to the deep part of a lake and fish is not a bad idea at all.