u/morgawr_

If anyone cares/remembers, I made a post the other day complaining about my main problems with the steam machine here: https://www.reddit.com/r/steammachine/comments/1v9wrc8/two_of_the_features_i_was_looking_forward_to_the/

Mostly CEC being bad and not working and the sleep/resume workflow being spotty as hell.

Well Valve pushed a new firmware update in beta just the other day and I decided to give it a go. I had already given up on CEC and replaced my HDMI cable with a DP one to cut off all CEC commands.

Well, now I put back the old HDMI cable and gave it a spin. I am happy to say that now the steam machine goes to sleep and stays sleeping when I tell it to. It also turns the TV on/off on command. It also goes to sleep when the T V turns off, and all that jazz. I also have a PS5 Pro, a Switch 2, and an audio set up plugged into the TV all with their own CEC and I've had 0 interferences so far. Everything seems to work as intended.

There is only one bug I've had, which is when I am downloading some games in the background the steam machine doesn't go to sleep until the downloads are done (this is expected/wanted), however if I then turn off the TV afterwards and I have the "put the console to sleep when TV turns off" CEC option enabled, the TV forces the steam machine to sleep anyway and the downloads are interrupted.

I work around it by disabling the feature so the TV cannot put my steam machine to sleep, not a big deal (I never use/want this feature anyway, I usually put the steam machine to sleep first anyway).

If you're like me and have been having CEC issues like this, I recommend you give the new beta channel update a try (or wait until it's rolled out to stable). Now I can say the steam machine is pretty much perfect for me!

I was ranting about it last week here and while CEC is definitely related as one possible cause of it, it doesn't seem to be the only cause. I have disabled controller connect/disconnect notifications as well (as some recommended I do in a previous thread) and I have been using a DP to HDMI adapter which strips all CEC signals from the port (this has been confirmed via the Steam Machine explicitly telling me CEC is unavailable).

Despite all this, while it happens less often, I'd say 1 out of 5 times when I put the SM to sleep it instantly boots back up until I put it to sleep again and then it stays down. I don't know what is causing it but it is incredibly frustrating.

Before you call me a hater, let me be clear that I love this device and I really hope Valve can fix this eventually but... this post is like halfway through between a rant and just asking for help in case anyone has a solution.

I'm specifically talking about resuming from sleep and CEC working nicely with my TV.

First of all, I'd say about 80% of the time when I resume from sleep my device's performance plummets. Games that normally run at 60FPS smooth end up running at 10-15FPS and are unplayable until I reboot. I've seen people complain about this too so I know it's not just me. I love my steam deck and I love being able to suspend and resume anytime I want, but with the steam machine right now this is simply not possible. What's the point of forcing me to reboot when I might have suspended a game that I wasn't able to save as I was playing it? I've yet to find a fix to this problem that doesn't involve rebooting the device or shut down the game at least.

As for the other issue... I know maybe it's just my TV but CEC is simply working like ass right now. Every time I set my steam machine to sleep, it starts back up again. Every. Single. Time. I can turn off CEC on the steam machine settings in SteamOS (there's various knobs and toggles, even if I put all of them to "off") and it still does it. The only solution is to disable CEC on my TV which disables it for all my devices including my audio speakers and PS5. This means every time I turn on my TV I have to get another remote to turn on my speakers. This is non-negotiable for me unfortunately. I'm really running out of options and I don't know why I can't simply have the steam machine go to sleep and STAY sleeping.

At this point I'm just turning it off every time to avoid both of these issues, but this kinda defeats the point of having it as an easy to jump-in/jump-out livingroom device.

Is it just me?

EDIT:

So for the sleep issue, looks like even if I disable CEC completely on the steam machine it still ends up waking itself up from sleep from my TV and I am not willing to disable CEC on my TV since I use it for other appliances (like speakers, PS5, etc). However I tried using a DP-to-HDMI adapter which strips the CEC so now I have TV -> HDMI -> DP adapter -> Steam Machine and while I lose access to the ability for the steam machine to turn the TV on/off and handle things like remote control or audio, at least now I can put my steam machine to sleep without it waking itself up. It's a good stopgap until valve patches the CEC problems or I end up writing a bunch of scripts to write my own CEC service layer (as others have done)

In my country (Japan) we cannot buy steam hardware from valve directly and have to go through komodo station. I'm pretty sure I was able to register my steam deck when I bought it and got some points but I forgot how it works or if it is even possible for the steam machine. Does anyone know if the option is available?

When I was a kid in my country we had some "gaming channel" for some reason and most of the time they just cycled through various trailers or clips or gameplay videos of random videogames that were selling at the time. I say this because it might just be a random clip and not necessarily a "trailer".

Anyway I remember there was this game probably early/mid-00s, the graphics were cel-shaded-ish low-poly 3D, maybe similar to skies of arcadia or some early 3D tales of games or something. Maybe even one of the early cold steel games, I'm not sure.

The game was in Japanese, so it might be Japan-exclusive (not sure why they'd show a game with Japanese text outside of Japan otherwise).

I remember the movie showed some characters on some train, it might have been a steam engine. I remember it was brown and they were blitzing through the fields on a railway. I think it was night and there was a bright moon in the sky. There was a female character, blonde with long hair. The landscape felt very "flat" with the graphics of early 00s games so... not many models, maybe trees or mountains as flat textures in the distance with parallax, the ground was very greenish/dark green with solid textures. The train was solid dark-ish brown, a passenger train with some wagons and people sitting.

That's really all I remember, I know it's very vague but if anyone has any random guesses please throw them my way. I'd like to figure out what game it was.

So long story short, I've been playing guitar for over 25 years, although mostly as a hobby. I had a few bands in the past, recorded a few albums, and overall I'm fairly familiar and independent with the instrument. I'm far from what I'd say is "good" and my playing is still quite rough as I'm mostly a self learner without a lot of technique. I basically just played song, composed stuff, and recorded whatever I wanted growing up, feeling happy to be "mediocre" at it.

I've stopped playing for a few years as I got into other hobbies and became a father. But now I've decided to get back into the game and start playing again. One of my other hobbies taught me the value of regular daily practice and now I want to apply the same level of discipline to guitar playing to level up my style.

What I'm looking for: A series of exercises that I can do for like 10-20 minutes every day (doesn't have to be the same exercise every day) to level up my fingering, picking, arpeggio, chords, and especially sweep picking.

Does anyone have a routine to recommend? Something like a gym plan. It doesn't have to be deep or anything but like "do 10 sets of X, then 20 sets of Y, then do another 10 sets of X" etc with (or without) a metronome.

My main interests are metal, and especially I've gotten into playing 8-string guitars now so if you also have exercises or advice specific to 8-string guitars that'd be awesome.