Asus ProArt PA248Q and Dell XPS13 video waking

This is a very, very specific situation... but posting in case it helps someone else. You never know. I won't be DenverCoder9.

When I got the Dell I was struggling a bit to find the right cable to hook up the monitor. That USBC stuff was all new to me. So I got a DisplayPort cable and set the ASUS to use that.

I pretty much never shut off a laptop at night but just leave and let it go to sleep mode on its own. But I began to notice the monitor turning its backlight on and off, frequently but not always regularly. And it was bright enough that when I had insomnia (rather frequent starting around 2018) it would really annoy me. 

There must have been some signal coming from the XPS13's USB port that was enough to wake up the ProArt, but obviously since no actual video data were sent, the monitor would go back to sleep. What I was seeing was the ProArt's power light going from orange to white (active), the backlight would go on, then after a moment a little window would come up with "No Signal" and everything would shut off. All the USBC ports caused that behavior. 

I could unplug the monitor from the USB port but that didn't seem like an elegant solution. I bought a USB on/off that was actually meant to turn off the USB port on a Raspberry Pi, and that did not work at all. I bought a switchbox that was supposed to allow two computers to share a monitor, figuring that I could just switch the monitor to take its input from a nonexistent computer. That did not work at all either. 

Then while dicking around with the monitor, I accidentally set its input to the VGA port. And got totally stuck because there was no VGA signal, the monitor wouldn't display the menu. I had to RTFM to get it back to taking input from the DisplayPort port. And that's where I found the solution to my problem.

Just above the power button is the input selector. Its icon is an oblong with an arrow pointing into it. Clicking it cycles through all the input ports. All I have to do is tell it to take input from something that's not DisplayPort, and since there's absolutely nothing coming in there, it never wakes. It seems to be easier on the XPS13 as well, since unplugging the external monitor would cause the laptop screen to wake up and display. Now it just stays black. 

It's nice to solve stuff without having to spend money....

Creating a post on Nordinho

Nordinho is kind of an old school forum so things are not super easy to do sometimes. 

You'll need:

• a screenshot of the game saved on your computer
• the URL of the game (copied from your browser)

This should really be done from a desktop computer. It's possible to do it from mobile, but it's definitely harder because of the screen size.

Up near the top of the games list, click the NEW THREAD button.

You'll get the next screen. Write some stuff in the title block (usually the name of the game and the author), and a description of the game. 

You can simply paste the URL of the game directly after the game description. But if you want to make it look tidier, such as a single word "Play" as a button, you can use the link button indicated in the image below. Type the word "Play" (or whatever text you want to use as the button), highlight it, then click the link button.

A window will pop up, which is prefilled with "http://". Since we're in the 21st century and we do things securely now (or at least hopefully), erase that and paste the game URL.

Clicking OK will close that popup. You will see some messy looking text with square brackets and quotes have been added around your URL. Don't delete this stuff, the Nordinho website needs it to create that nice looking link. 

Now you need to add your screenshot. Scroll down until you see "Addtional Options". Click MANAGE ATTACHMENTS.

Another window will pop up. Click the CHOOSE FILE button which will open your file manager and select your screenshot from your computer. Then click UPLOAD. It may take a few seconds but your file name should show up in the area above where it says "Attachment key". Click CLOSE THIS WINDOW or the red X box in the top right. 

Just a note: there are file size limits to what you can upload. If your screenshot is too large you will see an error message show up below the words "Manage Attachments." If that happens you need to find a way to make your screenshot file size smaller before you can use it.

That's everything you need to enter! Scroll down and click the SUBMIT NEW THREAD button and you should see it in the forum right away.