Mix RGB colors

I'm announcing my RGB Color Mixer app here if you want to give it a try, basically it does what the title says, mix RGB colors, I hope you find it useful, there's also a bonus brush size calculator you might find useful if you want to know the size of the brushstrokes before resizing your images.

For comprehensive instructions check the documentation in the bottom of the website.

Here you go it's completely free and also ad-free (click on the link):

RGB Color Mixer

Setting Photoshop for Pixel Art

To setup Photoshop for pixel art first you need to preserve sharp pixels without dithering when using Smart Objects and doing transformations. This also allows you to use the Puppet Warp tool with sharp pixels.

1) For resizing Smart Objects and Puppet Warp:

Go to Edit / Preferences / General / Image Interpolation and set it to Nearest Neighbor (preserve hard edges) / click OK. 

2) For the Transform tool (press CTRL + T) make sure the Interpolation mode is set to Nearest Neighbor.

Next you need a pixel brush and eraser:

Using a square brush/eraser helps keeping them square while resizing them, otherwise they will get rounded as you make them bigger.

3) Choose the Pencil tool and open the Brush Preset picker. 

Click on the Settings icon  and on the bottom click on Legacy Brushes / click OK

Still in the Brush Preset picker find and expand Legacy Brushes. 

Find and expand Square Brushes and choose the "Hard Square 1 pixel" brush. 

Make sure the opacity is 100%

4) Select the Eraser tool and make sure the mode is set to Pencil, just like in step 3 select the Square Brushes, choose "Hard Square 1 pixel" and set the opacity to 100%

And there you go, Photoshop should be ready for Pixel Art.

I'll post down here the default values if you want to revert all the changes.

A) Go to Edit / Preferences / General / Image Interpolation and set it to Bicubic Automatic / click OK.

B) For the Transform tool (press CTRL + T) make sure the Interpolation mode is set to Bicubic Automatic.

C) For the Pencil brush you can simply select a brush like the hard round one

D) For the Eraser set the mode to Brush and select the hard round one

And that should bring Photoshop back to its default behavior.

Qualcomm Atheros AR3012 Driver bluetooth issue for Windows 10 laptop

 If you're having issues with this adapter'a driver this may work for you.

1. You have to uninstall the Windows drivers by right clicking the Windows button and selecting "Device Manager", once there click the left > arrow to expand the menu.

2. Right click "Qualcomm Atheros AR3012 Bluetooth(R) Adapter", click "Uninstall device" and make sure you enable the checkbox for "Delete the driver software for this device.".

Click the "Uninstall" button. Once the device is uninstalled you may reboot the PC.

3. Then download the driver from here: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/home.aspx

4. Search for this:

Qualcomm Atheros Communications - Bluetooth Controller - Qualcomm Atheros AR3012 Bluetooth 4.0 + HS

Find the Version 10.0.1.11 640KB

Download the file, the name should be 20920672_15ae0e026fb48dda2b6229e4db0770e80d5a17b9.cab

5. Extract the file contents into a folder, you can use WINRAR for that.

6. Go back to the device manager from Step 1

Right click the bluetooth adapter option and select "Update Driver", Click "Browse my computer for drivers" and click the Browse button, find the folder with the drivers you just extracted and click the OK button, the driver should be installed now, try using bluetooth or reboot and try using it now.

Hope it helps.

UPDATE: Even after doing all this I found that it is a power issue where the device gets stuck on D2 state, one workaround for this is to put the computer in sleep mode and wake it up again.

You can also try to disable the power management option in Device Manager, make sure "Allow this computer to turn off this device to save power" is not checked, you can find it either in the adapter properties or Human Interface Devices (Bluetooth HID device).

Windows 10 2004 bluetooth device not working after sleep mode

 Issue
After updating 10 windows 10 2004 bluetooth devices may stop working after putting the computer in sleep mode

The workaround is to disable and enable the bluetooth adapter from device manager.

Right click the Start button and select "Device Manager", expand the bluetooth section and right click the bluetooth adapter, click on "Disable Device", right click again on the bluetooth adapter and click on "Enable Device".

Update: After dealing with it for a long time I haven't found a real solution, I have tried multiple drivers with mixed results, something I noticed is an apparent conflict with IRQs but Windows does not allow to set those manually but might give you a clue about what is causing it. Another possibility is the sleep states because sometimes it get's fixed after waking up the computer.

Outlook 2019 won't close, computer can't shutdown

This is a common bug in Outlook 2019 (Windows Program) after a fresh install. The most annoying part of it is that your computer won't shutdown after clicking the Shutdown button (nothing will happen).

Symptoms:

1) You close Outlook but it will stay open in the Taskbar (righ-clicking and clicking "Close" doesn't do anything), the only way to close Outlook is by forcing it in the Task Manager (with CTRL+SHIFT+ESC).

2) Computer won't shutdown.

Solution:

Open Outlook, go to "File", "Office Account" and in the pane on the right - click "Update Options", finally click "Update Now".

That's it, follow the instructions and the update will fix the issue.

Blender 2.8 Helical Gear

Windows won't find my network device

Recently I've been having this issue with Windows when I search for my devices name in my network Windows doesn't find them, this seems to be a very common issue in Windows 10 and especially if you are trying to access a device that runs some versions of Linux.

The symptoms are, when you search for a network device by name like this \\MYDEVICE and Windows doesn't find it or it takes a long time scanning for it.

For the experts out there all we are doing is to add the device's name and IP Address to the lmhosts file.

The lmhosts file works similar to the hosts file but instead of DNS mappings it works by mapping your network device names.

Hopefully this will solve your issues:

1) Press the WIN key and type "Notepad".

2) Right click the Notepad's icon and select "Run as administrator", select "Yes" in the security dialog.

3) In Notepad click "File" form the menu bar and then click "Open".

4) Navigate to this path "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc".

5) In the bottom right dropdown menu select "All Files (*.*)".

6) Open the file "lmhosts.sam".

7) In the bottom of the file add the IP Address and name of your device like this example:

192.168.1.50    MYDEVICENAME

You must find your device IP Address first and use that one instead of 192.168.1.50 of course. The device name should be separated at least by one space, one tab in my case.

Your Windows computer should be able to find your device immediately now, no need to reboot but in case it doesn't work you can try rebooting your computer.