11 July 2026

Soundcore Sport X20 review

My LG tones (HBS-730) had several different issues:

  • I had to glue one of the earbuds back together
  • It would randomly power cycle itself while I was listening to music
  • Battery indicator only had High, Medium, and Charge Soon and most of the time it was on medium so it was hard to tell when it needed charged
  • Earbuds would work themselves out while doing yard work
I found a good replacement in the Soundcore Sport X20 (by Anker) for $55.99 (plus tax)


Review

I overall like the earbuds and the negatives are largely nitpicks, but they could be deal breakers for others

Pros

  • Comfortable fit
  • Ear hooks keep them in place while mowing
  • Noise Cancelling/Isolation works well
    • Next door neighbor's electric mower could not be heard
    • Cut the noise of my electric mower in about half
    • Didn't really silence electric string trimmer
  • Battery life seems good so far with 2 hours of yard work leaving the earbuds with 80% remaining
  • Battery life indicator is in 10% increments (but is software only)
  • Case LED turns red when it needs charged
  • IP68 water/sweat resistance

Cons

  • Earbuds lost Bluetooth connection once while mowing
  • No way to turn off the earbuds without placing in case
  • Only one button per earbud
    • Default controls work well enough for me
    • Single press to play/pause
    • While music is off long press to toggle pass-through/noise cancelling
  • Lack of AptX Support (likely causes higher latency)

Other Thoughts

  • Had to add a -100ms Bluetooth delay for audio in VLC for audio/video to sync


Appendix

Sources


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05 July 2026

Local Audio Streaming

My significant other wanted a local streaming option where they could control the songs. So I started adding our music to Jellyfin.


Rip a CD

Install abcde and its requirements:

  • sudo apt-get install abcde eyed3 lame flac id3v2


Modify abcde with the latest patch:


The options I use with abcde:

  • -o
    • output types
    • flac (lossless audio)
    • mp3 (small portable version)
  • -p
    • leading 0s on track numbers
  • -G
    • get album art
  • -B
    • embed album art
  • -V
    • verbose
  • -N
    • don't prompt
  • -d
    • CD/DVD/Bluray device to use


Create a ripcd.sh script to automate the rip:

  • cd Music
  • echo -e '#!/usr/bin/sh\n\nabcde -o flac,mp3 -p -G -B -V -N -d "$@"\n' >> ripcd.sh


Run the rip:

  • cd Music
  • sh ripcd.sh /dev/sr0


If you only want to rip a specific track:

  • cd Music
  • sh ripcd.sh /dev/sr0 1


Add Album to Jellyfin

Add a Library of Music type

Jellyfin was doubling up tracks as it listed both the flac and mp3. To solve this, I created a .ignore file that contained *.mp3 and placed it in each album folder that had this issue


Appendix

Sources


Patch:

From 5437ee1345d6c0fddee0edc65b32af43fe493922 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Gerard Lanois <gerard@lanois.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2023 22:56:29 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] #1 Omit genre ID 255 (no genre).
---
 abcde | 5 ++++-
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/abcde b/abcde
index b53593a..2f06a43 100755
--- a/abcde
+++ b/abcde
@@ -912,10 +912,13 @@ do_tag ()
  ${COMMENTOUTPUT:+--comment "$COMMENTOUTPUT"} \
  );;
  esac
+ if [ "${GENREID}" != 255 ]; then
+     addopts+=( -G "$GENREID" )
+ fi
  run_command "tagtrack-$OUTPUT-$1" nice $ENCNICE $TAGGER $TAGGEROPTS \
  -A "$DALBUM" \
  -a "$TRACKARTIST" -t "$TRACKNAME" \
- -G "$GENREID" -n "${TRACKNUM:-$1}" \
+ -n "${TRACKNUM:-$1}" \
  ${TRACKNUM:+-N "$TRACKS"} \
  "${addopts[@]}" \
  "${ABCDETEMPDIR}/track$1.$OUTPUT"

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03 April 2026

Minecraft for Chromebook Sign-in Issues

Minecraft for Chromebook would constantly give me the following error when trying to sign in with my Microsoft account and password:

Please retry with a different device or other authentication method


The Issue

Turns out that it doesn't support password + 2 factor authentication


The Fix

To login, I had to temporarily disable 2 factor:

I was then able to sign in to Minecraft. However, instead of prompting for a password, it texted me a code.

I then re-enabled 2 factor authentication where Microsoft tried to get me to use their authentication app.


Appendix

Sources



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01 April 2026

Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14" OLED Review

My 2020 HP Chromebook X360 14c was annoying me with the following behaviors:

  • the trackpad would like to get stuck in a clicked state
  • the fan would spin up at random times and be quite noisy
  • chrome would lag doing some simple tasks like opening an email in gmail
This meant I was in the market for a new laptop.


Use Case

I mainly use the laptop for browsing the web, light gaming (eg. Minecraft), and VNCing into my server. I will also occasionally stream games from my desktop.


Criteria

Current Laptop specs

  • HP Chromebook 14C-CA0053DX
  • i3-10110U 2 cores and 4 threads
  • 8 GiB of memory
  • 14" 16:9 aspect ratio screen

Requirements

  • USB-C on either side for easy charging
  • Backlit keyboard
  • 14" 16:10 aspect ratio screen
  • at least 16 GiB of RAM
Preferred
  • No fan noise
  • 2-in-1 (for versatility)
  • Touchscreen
  • Long battery life


Top Choices

I chose the first one as it felt like the best fit for my requirements.


First Impressions

Packaging was superb and felt premium

  • Came wrapped in brown shrink wrap
  • The outside box was a standard brown box with the laptop specs on the side
  • Inside contained the charger in a brown box and a second shrink wrapped box containing the laptop suspended in the middle by cardboard packing spacers
  • The inside box contained the laptop inside a cloth feeling bag
  • Opening the laptop there was a pamphlet and cloth screen protector inside

Looks

  • The seashell color is a tasteful mix of gold and silver
  • Minimal logos on the cover
    • A centered reflective "Lenovo" logo
    • A printed "chromebook plus" on the top left

In hand feel

  • Laptop is lighter (2.75 vs 3.64 pounds) and thinner (0.62 vs 0.7 inches) than my previous, likely due to not being a 2-in-1
  • It is slightly deeper (8.63 vs 8.11 inches) and slightly less wide (12.37 vs 12.6 inches) than my previous
  • Top is metal and feels very rigid
  • Bottom while plastic also feels rigid and the waves on the bottom help make the laptop feel like it has more grip when carrying closed
  • Keyboard has a little bit of deck flex, but I don't notice it during normal usage
  • Originally the hinge was too tight to open the laptop with one-hand, but it is slowly getting better


Setup and Initial thoughts

Setup was fairly smooth

  • I had to plug the laptop in before it would turn on
  • Connected to WiFi
  • Updated the laptop
  • Logged in to Google account
  • Answered the simple setup questions

General Usage

  • Resumes from sleep before the screen is all the way open
  • Fingerprint reader works fast
  • Keyboard feels great to type on
  • Screen is nice and bright for indoor usage and I don't see any screen door effect unless I put my face inches from the screen
    • Side Note: I hate that they call 1920x1200 a 2K screen
  • Battery life is appearing to be excellent as right now it is at 57% and predicting between 7-9 hours (with screen at about 40%)
  • Minecraft plays well, but I can't get a FPS number


Other

Testing

  • ChromeOS built-in CPU test
    • CPU throttles quickly, but remains at 2.3 GHz even at nearly 100 C
    • During the test the UI does become laggy
    • After the test is complete the CPU temp drops quickly
  • Geekbench 6
    • Geekbench 6.6.0 for Android AArch64
    • For some reason the fastest core was disabled on my first set of runs
      • Single-Core scores: 1023, 1027, 1109, 1155
      • Multi-Core scores: 6536, 6482, 6500, 6467
    • After rebooting, the cores were properly detected
      • Single-Core scores: 2541, 2540, 2527
      • Multi-Cores scores: 7789, 7890, 7846
    • For reference, the Core i3-10110U
      • Single-Core scores: 1151, 1093, 1201
      • Multi-Core scores: 2011, 2049, 2071


Updates

  • 2026-04-15
    • PS4 Dualshock will not pair correctly
      • It just turns solid white and then will turn off after ~10s
      • Connecting via USB also does not work (Volume controls will pop-up, but not recognize inputs)
    • Occasionally, after resuming from sleep Linux will hang

Appendix

Sources



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16 January 2026

Home Assistant add Matter support and devices

As I run Home Assistant in a LXC using Portainer, I couldn't just install the python-matter-server through Add-Ons. Here are the steps that I used to get it installed.


Create python-matter-server in Portainer

  • Create a Volume
    • Portainer -> Volumes -> Add volume
    • matter_config
  • Create a Container
    • Image
      • ghcr.io/home-assistant-libs/python-matter-server:stable
    • Advanced container settings
      • Commands & logging
        • We want to override the listen address to allow only local connections from Home Assistant
        • Command: --storage-path /data --paa-root-cert-dir /data/credentials --listen-address=127.0.0.1
      • Volumes
        • /data -> matter_config
      • Network
        • Network -> host
      • Restart policy
        • Restart Policy -> Unless stopped
    • Click "Deploy the container"


Add Matter integration to Home Assistant

  • Settings -> Devices & services
    • Add integration
      • Matter
      • Since they are on the same host, use the default address


Adding Matter Devices

  • Install the Home Assistant App on your phone
  • Login
  • Make sure your phone is on the WiFi that you want the matter device on (eg. your IOT network)
  • Follow these steps in the App:
    • Hamburger menu
    • Devices & services
    • Matter
    • Add Device
    • No, It's new
    • Scan the QR code on the device
    • Follow the steps

Appendix

Sources




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04 January 2026

Portainer and Docker 29

Portainer was not able to access the local environment with the following error: "Failed loading environment The environment named local is unreachable". Then I found out that it was not compatible with Docker 29. Here are the steps that I used to downgrade Docker to a compatible version.


Downgrade Docker

  • Check the version installed
    • apt list --installed docker-ce
  • Check for available version
    • apt-cache policy docker-ce | head -n 30
  • Downgrade
    • DOCKER_VERSION="5:28.5.2-1~debian.12~bookworm"
    • apt-get install docker-ce-cli="$DOCKER_VERSION" docker-ce="$DOCKER_VERSION" docker-ce-rootless-extras="$DOCKER_VERSION"
  • Restart
    • shutdown -r now


Appendix

Sources


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02 January 2026

Proxmox SATA DVD drive passthrough

I had a DVD movie that was only readable by my SATA DVD drive. This meant that I needed to pass it through to my VM. However, it appears that it is not possible at this time without doing an iSCSI workaround. Since I only needed to do this for a single DVD, I didn't want to do something that complicated. What I decided to do was to use an LXC to create an ISO that I could use in the VM.


LXC DVD drive passthrough

  1. Create a new LXC (I used the debian version and upped memory to 2 GiB and storage to 8 GiB)
    • bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/debian.sh)"
  2. Passthrough the DVD drive
    1. Container -> Resources
    2. Add -> Device Passthrough
    3. Device Path: /dev/sr0 (or whatever number your DVD drive is)
    4. Click Add
  3. Install dvdbackup, libdvdcss2, and ddrescue
    1. apt-get install dvdbackup libdvdcss2 gddrescue
    2. dpkg-reconfigure libdvd-pkg
  4. Create the ISO
    1. dvdbackup -i /dev/sr0 -I  # unlock the DVD
    2. ddrescue -b2048 -d -r500 /dev/sr0 disc.iso disc.mapfile  # Create the ISO


Appendix

Sources



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