TITAM - Technical issues that affected me

On a PC, putting an advancedsettings.xml file in your Kodi directory is easy.  Copy and paste via Windows Explorer, done. Same for an Android box or tablet.  Copy and paste using "My Files" or anything similar, done. On a Chromebook, not so much.  Chromebooks hide the OS files.  Copy & paste is not possible. However, it is possible to put an advancedsettings.xml file into Kodi on a Chromebook. NOTE : This guide assumes you know how to point Kodi to another device that holds your advancedsettings.xml file, such as a USB stick, external hard drive, internal storage, or whatever.  If you don't know how to do that, go away and find out. (Hey, you may as well.  You're probably going to need that same info to set up your video sources later.) Steps: 1.  Make your advancedsettings.xml file.  Here is a really simple file.  All it does is exclude certain directory names - like "Extras" - from being scanned into the Kodi library...

Things to know: -  XBMC is too old to recognize the ".nomedia" file.  You'll need to upgrade to a recent build of Kodi. -  To get a proper ".nomedia" file in Windows, you have to tell Windows to name the file ".nomedia.", with a trailing period. -   advancedsettings.xml should be in "%appdata%\Kodi\userdata\". -  You don't need all the fancy regex crap you see in the examples.  <regex> somethingsimple </regex> will do. -  If you're having problems with "excludefromscan", you should know there is a separate tag for TV shows called "excludetvshowsfromscan".   So if you're having problems with "excludefromscan" not excluding TV show directories, this is probably why.  That last one killed me for bloody hours.  I suppose it makes sense to have different settings for movies and TV, but why oh why isn't the first tag "excludemoviesfromscan"? Also, Kodi 17 Krypton d...

I expect a lot of people want to do what I want to do:  set up a VPN on my router.  This allows everything I do online to run through a VPN service first, and setting this up on a router automatically ensures that everything on my network (wired or wireless) is protected. Kewl though this is, there are lots of potential problems and pitfalls with setting up a VPN.  For example: -  Skype or VoIP devices not working properly -  Game consoles or online games not working properly -  Inability to remotely access web (http) and/or FTP servers within the protected network -  Inability to access remote web portals / management interfaces within the protected network These come down to two issues: -  Increased latency, which causes gaming, VoIP, Skype, streaming services etc. to fail -  Inability to "see" servers and remote interfaces living within the VPN from the outside world Finding answers to these issues is not easy.  Investig...