How to turn on laptop without opening lid

At home I’m using my laptop in a kind of a stationary setup. It has all the peripheral devices, like a 4K display, a keyboard, a mouse etc., constantly attached to it.

This is pretty neat and looks as follows:

Such a setup is also convenient since it allows you to grab and carry your laptop after disconnecting a couple of cables.

The power-on problem

And this is all great except for one small, but annoying issue. My Dell XPS 13, like many other laptop models, has its power button hidden beneath the lid.

It’s good because it prevents the device from an accidental powering on, yet on the downside, in order to turn it on, you’ll need to:

1. Slide the laptop out of the monitor stand;
2. Open the lid;
3. Push the power button;
4. Close the lid;
5. Slide the laptop back in.

And you have to follow this routine every time you want to turn the computer on.

Possible solutions

I’ve explored the options and searched quite a few forums where people with a similar problem asked for an advice, with no luck.

There is, for instance, the Wake-on-LAN function, but in order to use it you’ll need another device capable of sending a magic packet. Too cumbersome.

The laptop’s BIOS also offers wake-by-USB support, but that would require having the USB ports constantly powered, which would deplete the battery pretty quickly once you disconnect it from the AC. Nah.

The solution

I’ve eventually managed to find an almost perfect, but also a slightly quirky, solution. Which I’m going to share with you.

The laptop’s BIOS has the Wake on AC switch. Once activated, the laptop will power on every time you connect the power adapter to AC or, alternatively, its DC cable to the laptop:

Bingo! But pulling the AC plug from mains or, rather, the DC plug from the laptop isn’t that great an option. It may lead to a loose connection over time.

When at home, my laptop is powered by a back-up power adapter I’ve bought at AliExpress. It’s pretty cheap so I decided to experiment with it.

With the help of a soldering iron and a wire cutter I’ve inserted a flip switch from an old IKEA lamp into the adapter’s DC cable:

That’s about it! Now all you need to turn your laptop on is flip the switch twice. Works as a charm! ■

It’s Friday! This ninth edition of Musicellaneous presents romantic djent played by the American band Sea in the Sky.

Music

The first two albums of the band, their self-titled EP (2013) and Serenity (2014), were instrumental, featuring dense guitars and heavy djent riffs.

As for the latter two releases, Visions (2015) and Everything All at Once (2017), I’d say they diverge a bit from the regular repertoire of this series.

They’ve added vocals (like in solo works by Yvette Young) whereas the sound has become somewhat softer and more romantic than in the earlier works of the band: it’s half djent, half prog metal.

Unlike most other dject projects, Sea in the Sky’s vocals are clean, with no growling, and in my humble opinion they nicely complement the music.

Because of the vocals, the music reminds me of Disperse. However, Sea in the Sky’s songs are characterised by more structured rhythmic and melodic lines.

Line-up

The band was formed in 2012 in Redwood City, San Francisco, California.

• Johan Guerra — bass
• Rodney Dudum — guitar
• Cameron Stucky — guitar
• Daniel Larsen — drums
• Sam Kohl — vocals

Discography

One of the tricky things in Dutch is the mapping of a noun to one of the two grammatical genders:

• Common, which is masculine and feminine combined. Such nouns are called de-woorden because they are prepended by the de definite article.
• Neuter, nouns of which are het-woorden as you put the het article before them.

For an English speaker this doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why are het document (document) and het paard (horse) neuter whereas de wolk (cloud) and de zon (sun) common?

There’s a number of general rules that facilitate this task, but they only apply in some specific cases. For example, all nouns wearing the diminutive -tje suffix are neuter. For the rest you’ll have to memorise that for each word.

The het-noun cheat sheet

To simplify the learning a little, I’ve made a list of most common het-nouns. You can print it out on an A3 sheet and hang it, say, in the WC.

You can download the document in PDF using the button below.

It’s Friday again! This tenth edition of Musicellaneous features another unique project by a talented individual. I’m talking about the instrumental progressive metal band Andromida, which is in fact just one person: the American Ramon Gutierrez.

The band is unique because Ramon is “legally blind”, which was discovered when he was as little as three years old.

According to the band’s official page, the musician started learning violin at the age of three and guitar when he was eleven. He was supervised by a teacher when learning violin, but guitar he has completely learned himself—and, naturally, by ear.

Which is hard to believe if you watch his videos:

Music

Nearly all tracks by Andromida are instrumental save for a couple of songs featuring guest vocalists (Crawling, Take What You Want).

The tracks’ names are all related to space, which, along with the music itself, closely reminds me of Sithu Aye and Widek. The sound is dense and heavy, featuring typical djent rhythms. It’s a remarkably quality work, so my kudos to Ramon, both as a musician and as a producer.

Discography

Andromida is also strikingly prolific. It has released as many as five albums and a dozen singles in the last three years.

This day marks the end of the 47-year-long history of the Great Britain as a part of the European Union.

Even though it doesn’t directly affect me, I find it a bit sad. I second Boris Akunin’s opinion it’s a regress and a victory of retrogressive thinking.

Anyway, that’s now a reality, and I’m planning to drink some great European wine to it—my favourite Rioja.

A new version of Sound Switcher Indicator — 2.3.0 — has just been released.

This version finally adds a frequently-requested feature: the ability of mapping global keyboard shortcuts to input and output ports.

Preferences dialog

The Preferences dialog has got a new button under Port settings, which can be used to assign or reassign a key combination for this port.

When you click it, a key selection dialog will be presented, which you can also close with Backspace to remove a shortcut or with Escape to cancel.

Here’s what it looks like:

In the case the chosen key combo is already mapped to another port, it will be cleared there and remapped to the current one.

Ubuntu support

My PPA provides packages for Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic, 19.04 Disco, and 19.10 Eoan. Bug reports are welcome at the usual address.

Installation

To install or update the application, please follow the steps described in the Installation section. ■

It’s Friday again, which means—another gulp of exotic music in the eleventh edition of Musicellaneous!

This time I’m going to sidestep the tradition of reviewing instrumental djent stuff. Our guests today are the cinematic progressive metal band (in their own words) Ostura from Lebanon.

Ostura is Arabic for legend. The band has been formed back in 2009 and, as far as I reckon, had quite a bumpy ride, changing the line-up several times.

Music

Ostura has released two full-length albums to date.

Ashes of the Reborn

If you ask me, their debut Ashes of the Reborn (2012) wasn’t something extraordinary. I’d describe it as good old progressive power metal. What’s important though, is that it’s demonstrated the creative potential of the musicians…

The Room

… which was put to best use in their most recent release, the monumental (alright, cinematic) progressive saga The Room (2018).

I must admit the vicissitudes the band has gone through seem to have fully paid off. It’s an amazingly quality performance which I can hardly find another example of.

A few big names took part in this recording, like the drummer Thomas Lang (Peter Gabriel, Robbie Williams, Sugababes), singer Michael Mills (Ayreon), guitarists Marco Sfogli (James LaBrie, Jordan Rudess) and Ozgur Abbak, and even our Dutch prog legend Arjen Lucassen. Plus, to make this glorious picture complete, the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra!

The result proved to be mind-blowing. Every instrument, the vocals, the orchestra are placed exactly where they ought to be. You get immediately carried away by the sound and the arrangement, all the way to the end of the album.

That was my own first impression of “The Room”, and feel free to experience that yourself:

I do hope Ostura has settled now in terms of the line-up and look forward to any upcoming releases.

Line-up

• Elia Monsef — vocals
• Danny Bou-Maroun — keyboards, orchestration
• Youmna Jreissati — vocals
• Alain Ibrahim — guitar
• Alex Abi Chaker — drums

Discography