Strav's blog

Plans and video on how to make a VW Body Cart

How to make a VW Body Cart! Beetle Body Dolly

My old 2nd generation FireTV's have been starting to fail.  Amazon is more restrictive on the newer devices so I've been in the market for an alternative.  I picked up the Onn 4k Plus, Onn 4k Pro and the Onn media stick.  The stick is a little slow for my taste but both the Plus and Pro are solid players.  The remote is great as well.  Replacing the launcher with Projectivity gets rid of all ads and is a great way to set it up.  Here are a number of links about the devices:

Onn 4K Plus Just Got Better – Unlock Storage & Speed Tricks!
Firestick Can’t Do THIS! Onn 4K Pro Home Screen Hack (No Ads!)
Unleash Onn 4K Plus or Onn 4K Pro Android TV Box - Secret Tips & Tricks Revealed!

Editors
AI Coding on steroids! Auto Claude (Free & Opensource)
Cursor Tutorial for Beginners (AI Code Editor)
Master Cursor in 50 Minutes with Cursor's Head of AI Education (2025) | Lee Robinson
Using Cursor + Claude to Make Full-Stack SaaS Apps
Using Claude’s chat search and memory to build on previous context
Claude Usage

CLI
To install CLI AI:

• Open terminal
• For Gemini, run 'npm install -g @google/gemini-cli' and use gemini to run
• For Claude Code, run 'npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code' and use claude to run

Miscellaneous
You've Been Using AI the Hard Way (Use This Instead)

How To Build Mobile Garage Storage
Wheels for Your Garage Shelving: A Game-Changer!
4" Caster Wheels
Smooth Roller Shelving Moving System with Ken Day of the Weekend Handyman
Smooth Roller - Boltless shelving mobility solutions

I have a HP Spectre and due to the BIOS on the system, it is tricky to get it to dual boot properly.  Here is what ultimately worked for me:

On my HP laptop I did as follows, step by step:

1 - Boot into Mint with F9

2 - Check where Windows boot loader is located

sudo efibootmgr -v

In my case /boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi

3 - Backup .efi file:

sudo cp /boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi /boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft/bootmgfw.efi

4 - Replace original .efi file by the ubuntu one (the trick):

sudo cp /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi /boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi

5 - Add windows 10 menu entry on grub. In my case, I wanted this to come first to match my other boot machines.  Create /etc/grub.d/27_ssz_custom with the following lines:

#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###
menuentry 'Windows Boot Manager SSZ(on /dev/nvme0n1p1)' --class windows --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-efi-DAF7-1754' {
savedefault
insmod part_gpt
insmod fat
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root DAF7-1754
chainloader /EFI/Microsoft/bootmgfw.efi
}
set timeout_style=menu
if [ "${timeout}" = 0 ]; then
set timeout=10
fi
### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###

6 - Save 27_ssz_custom and:

sudo update-grub

7 - On bios Disable Secure Boot (I'm not sure if it is needed)

8 - If everything went right, it will boot on mint by default and windows 10 will be another option on grub.

Here are some links about it:

Dual Booting an HP Spectre with Arch Linux
Dual Booted PC skips Boot Menu, directly boots Linux Mint [duplicate]
Problems with installing grub on Linux/Windows dual boot NVMe
How to install or reinstall Grub
Fix Grub | Windows and Linux Dual Boot | Unable to Boot Linux | UEFI GPT
HP BIOS not properly recognizing Linux partition for boot order
Fixing UEFI boot order on HP Stream 14
How do I get my HP laptop to boot into grub from my new efi file?