List of menu key bindings from a PC game demonstrating various bound buttons with an ungodly long menu entry for each option

Looks like has a broken Input.ini parser resulting in my mappings to be gone on restart. The problem is that some special characters, like a comma, break the INI format used by their controls implementation [/Script/Engine.InputSettings].

Have an example what the game writes to AppData/Local/ProjectWingman/Saved/Config/WindowsNoEditor/Input.ini


AxisMappings=(AxisName="Pitch Axis",Scale=-1.000000,Key=Joystick_ThrustMaster,IncF-16FlightControlSystem_2_Axis1)

The name for the key is something homebrew the game produces based on the controller type (Joystick_ or Gamepad_) and the HID device descriptor name. This example mapped fine ingame but breaks on reload of the game resulting in only ThrustMaster for each mapped control – and that joystick can not be found, of course.

The “fix” is to manually edit the file and add quotation marks for the key:

AxisMappings=(AxisName="Pitch Axis",Scale=-1.000000,Key="Joystick_ThrustMaster,IncF-16FlightControlSystem_2_Axis1")

Now the game finds the proper joystick and all controls are mapped to something like ThrustMaster,IncF-16FlightControlSystem_2_Axis1 again, as expected.

Needless to say that the file should probably be write protected after that – or at least saved again under a different name, because any change to the controls will overwrite this fix again. This problem does probably also happen with other special characters, like the © sign that some vendors are known to use.

Bringing Linux Administration to Everyone: Free Online Course Starting Soon by Jochen LillichJochen Lillich (monospacementor.com)

I had planned to start the cohort-based course “Basic Linux System Administration” later this week. When this cohort unfortunately didn’t fill up, I realized this was the perfect opportunity to do something I’ve wanted to try for a while: offer my Linux System Administration course completely free as a livestreaming experience. Starting this month, I’ll…

♻️ https://monospacementor.com/2025/09/free-linux-sysadmin-course/

Even with Fedora 👌

I Can Spot AI Writing Instantly — Here’s How You Can Too by Evan Edinger (YouTube)
How can you tell if something is written by AI?

Re: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ch4a6ffPZY

I really lost it when YT provided me with an AI summary of this video ticking all the boxes 🤣 Anyway, what others mentioned before: As a non native speaker I feel cooked. I’m already constantly pivoting between English, American and Aussie (that’s my 3 points as we were taught in school btw). Mostly _phrases_ picked up here and there especially from movies but lately also from AI because – (ndash :D) let’s face it: We see it everywhere so it slowly gets adopted to the own lingo assuming this is how people talk nowadays. Kinda similar to the jargon of the youth that always sports their own lingo as well. Anyway, IMHO the more important thing is not really being able to detect AI but being able to understand if there is a human behind a comment, trying to bring a point along, or simply a gorram bot tasked with influencing/advertising.

Enforcing a touchscreen mapping in GNOME (who-t.blogspot.com)
Touchscreens are quite prevalent by now but one of the not-so-hidden secrets is that they're actually two devices: the monitor and the ac...

Hell yes, https://who-t.blogspot.com/2024/03/enforcing-touchscreen-mapping-in-gnome.html just solved my problem to limit a to a single display in . While it is detected just fine it’s input was all over the place of my 4 displays when that should only work for a single display. Apparently has something in it’s settings where this can be easily configured. Gnome does not [yet?] have such an option in settings.

There is however a way to enforce the touchscreen mapping in Gnome too!

The real manufacturer for the controller of my new display here is still a mystery to me. Snippet from my $HOME/.config/monitors.xml is as follows:

<monitorspec>
<connector>HDMI-2</connector>
<vendor>RTK</vendor>
<product>0x2555</product>
<serial>0x20230705</serial>
</monitorspec>

The touchscreen comes back as an ILITEK-TP though and according to lsusb is it connected as ID 222a:0001 ILI Technology Corp. Multi-Touch Screen.

Armed with that knowledge I can limit it’s input with gsettings:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchscreen:/org/gnome/desktop/peripherals/touchscreens/222a:0001/ output "['RTK', '0x2555', '0x20230705']"

Works like a charm!

Modular Flight Simulator Panels and Button Boxes - DigitalJoshua - Joshua Marius by joshuamariusjoshuamarius (digitaljoshua.com)
This video shows you how to build modular Button Boxes or Flight Simulator Panels, without the need of 3D Printers or extra hardware.

🔖 https://www.digitaljoshua.com/modular-flight-simulator-panels-and-button-boxes/

Not often I’m mind blown by what some people come up with to scratch their itch. Swapping panels easily thanks to cable management kits is a great and cheap idea.

Quick demo time: I got a touch display 17.3″ that will replace my rather old one in my VF-1 inspired cockpit panel.

Pick your poison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX4LsyqYPCA / https://makertube.net/w/nCopvNbkvkwR9XcG5QPQ3i

Mostly because of the bad viewing angle. I’m not a huge fan of touch but sometimes it is really useful and if I already spend money why not go the extra mile 🤓

fso-scripts/SpeedrunTimer/data/tables/speedrun-timer-sct.tbm at master · FSO-Scripters/fso-scripts by FSO-Scripters (GitHub)
The primary collection of Lua scripts, custom SEXPs, and custom AI for FSO - FSO-Scripters/fso-scripts

🔖 https://github.com/FSO-Scripters/fso-scripts/blob/master/SpeedrunTimer/data/tables/speedrun-timer-sct.tbm

Going to investigate – apparently FSO can use fifo pipes too and this example may help me get ship telemetry going for my .

I gave in and changed my event forwarding method in node-red for the Elite Dangerous Journal. This file is updated on various in-game events but in a way that makes it difficult to get new events only since last update. Another problem is that it’s not really a valid JSON file because it has one JSON per line but it’s not a valid JSON array. This is why it has to be parsed line by line and mashed together by event type (name) again to get the latest data for each event type per dump. Each event has it’s own timestamp by set by the game. The latest timestamp is now saved on the special flow const so node-red keeps the value in the “global” memory of the current flow:

msg.payload.event = "Journal";

let newJournalTimestamp = flow.lastJournalTimestamp;

Object.keys(msg.payload).forEach((key) => {
  if (msg.payload[key].timestamp) {
    const keyTimestamp = new Date(msg.payload[key].timestamp).getTime();

    if (!flow.lastJournalTimestamp || flow.lastJournalTimestamp < keyTimestamp) {
      // this entry is new - keep it. MULTIPLE events may have the
      //  same timestamp so wait with reassigning so we don't skip
      //  em or get the latest a 2nd time if nothing else changes.

      // update the next latest timestamp if this is newer
      if(!newJournalTimestamp || newJournalTimestamp < keyTimestamp) {
        newJournalTimestamp = keyTimestamp;
      }
    } else {
      // lastJournalTimestamp is newer, skip this
      msg.payload[key] = null;
    }
  }
});

// make sure this is a valid date for the next time
flow.lastJournalTimestamp = newJournalTimestamp || new Date().getTime();

// remove all nulled events from the payload
msg.payload = Object.fromEntries(
  Object.entries(msg.payload).filter(([_, p]) => p !== null)
);

msg.payload.timestamp = new Date(flow.lastJournalTimestamp);

return { payload: msg.payload };

So I do now keep track of the last read timestamp and reject every event that is older than the last read keeping the Journal dump smaller. This way I don’t have to try to keep track of the “latest” event to drag data from. Refuelling e.g. can happen from whopping 4 (or more) different events and it’s painful to compare all and check which one is the latest to keep track of the real current fuel levels for each tank.

Downside is I won’t get a full set of data for the current session any more if I have to reload my HUD app. This could be mitigated by using MQTT though where I could simply persist each event topic. That is already implemented and I can choose between SocketIO or MQTT in my app anyway.