- kubernetes 8
- postmortem 5
- productivity 4
- aws 4
- wordpress 3
- centos 3
- monitoring 3
- featured 3
- socialmedia 3
- openstack 3
- security 3
- bookmarks-of-note 3
- bandersnatch 2
- jabber 2
- apache 2
- perl 2
- cisco 2
- cacti 2
- icinga 2
- nagios 2
- junos 2
- ssh 2
- dadops 2
- reading 2
- failure 2
- docker 2
- openvpn 2
- devops 2
- htaccess 1
- phplist 1
- openwrt 1
- imagemagick 1
- prank 1
- squid 1
- snmp 1
- debian 1
- ssl 1
- vsftpd 1
- veeam 1
- osx 1
- linux 1
- mdadm 1
- raid 1
- vrrp 1
- reflection 1
- review 1
- vmware 1
- foscam 1
- advice 1
- vocation 1
- ebook 1
- packt 1
- special 1
- asterisk 1
- github 1
- script 1
- attention 1
- balance 1
- pebble 1
- smartwatch 1
- apple 1
- macbook 1
- markdown 1
- thunderbird 1
- windows 1
- usenet 1
- bacula 1
- opensource 1
- happiness 1
- linked 1
- management 1
- im, 1
- culture 1
- bias 1
- disasterrecovery 1
- cloud, 1
- testing 1
- scaling 1
- work-life 1
- news 1
- cloud 1
- interruption 1
- openstack, 1
- centos7, 1
- rdo 1
- password 1
- fail 1
- parenting 1
- remotework 1
- privacy, 1
- twitter 1
- socialmedia, 1
- smartphone 1
- security, 1
- travel 1
- google 1
- appstore 1
- debugging 1
- mindfulness 1
- ifttt 1
- rss 1
- dell 1
- idrac 1
- java 1
- workaround 1
- pfsense 1
- post-mortem 1
- remote 1
- geeklife 1
- bash 1
- git 1
- gke 1
- mqtt 1
- edgerouter 1
- chaos 1
- resiliency 1
- jekyll 1
- gitlab 1
- helm 1
- travis-ci 1
- continous-integration 1
kubernetes
Continuous Integration for helm charts
I’ve recently been working on a comprehensive helm chart for docker-mailserver.
Avoid deploying GitLab Runner application into Kubernetes (use helm instead)
Unless you’re careful, you could end up running an untrusted docker image in privileged mode on your cluster.
Kubernetes design for self-hosting on public cloud
You’re a self-hoster, but you’re over managing your own hardware? You want to learn Kubernetes? This cookbook is for you!
A simple, free, load balancer for your Kubernetes Cluster
Work around expensive cloud provider load balancer options with a simple, haproxy/webhook-based solution
Why I chose Kubernetes over Docker Swarm
In Funky Penguin’s Geek Cookbook - Kubernetes Start, I introduced Kubernetes concepts with an explanation of why I chose Kubernetes for running cloud workloads:
Kubernetes ConfigMap keys have to match subpaths
Your configmap is showing up, not as file named for your subpath, but as a directory? Here’s why…
Beware the hidden newlines in Kubernetes secrets
When creating secrets for Kubernetes, always use echo -n to create the files you intend to import as secrets using kubectl create secret
Workaround blocked attempt to grant extra privileges on GKE due to RBAC
While attempting to deploy an awesome set-it-and-forget-it volume snapshot solution for my GKE cryptocurrency mining pool empire, I stumbled across the following error when trying to create the necessary RBAC ClusterRoleBinding:
postmortem
Manual processes fail to scale.
Puny humans are puny.
Spacecraft and IT systems fail for the same reasons
Surprisingly common factors affect the failure of both
Separate production and dev
VMs are cheap. Outages are expensive.
Electricity is hard. Test failure rigorously
In the Summary of the AWS Service Event in the Sydney Region, I read:
The importance of pre-proven communication channels during an emergency
Is anybody out there?
productivity
Addons to improve Thunderbird (and make it less annoying)
My organization standardizes on Mozilla Thunderbird as our mail client of choice (partly because Mail.app is so deficient on OSX). It’s a bit crusty since Mozilla halted further development in 2012, but better the devil you know, right…?
Do less to be more productive
In “Your organization sucks at innovating”, Shane Parrish discusses innovation (or lack thereof) within an organisation:
The illusion of speed
An excerpt from the excellent Farnam Street Blog (below). I’m trying to be more intentional about how I spend my time, and be more “present in the moment”. I especially liked the following, re the difference that it makes to slow down, not considering all hours to be equal:
Sending tasks to Things.app via email
I stumbled across this useful hint on the Things forums which adds a feature to my workflow which I felt important enough to record here.
aws
Summary of AWS Application Integration services circa Feb 2019
In preparation for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional, I read up on all the AWS Application Integration services, summarised each in my own words..
Summary of AWS Analytics services circa Feb 2019
In preparation for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional, I read up on all the AWS Analytics services, summarised each in my own words..
Building a ‘free’ AWS site-to-site VPN using OpenVPN and EdgeRouter X
Create a free/cheap basic site-to-site VPN between your AWS VPC and your on-premises network using OpenVPN
Implicit 2TB limit breaks Instapaper for 31 hours →
What you don’t know can hurt you
wordpress
Making postie work with cron jobs, fails with wp-config.php outside of web root
I use the excellent Postie plugin to post to this blog via email. I’ve been battling for days to get it to automatically check the mailbox for new message though, and while I still haven’t got it working using WP-Cron (WordPress’ “pseudo-cron”), I’ve finally managed to get it working via a direct cron job.
Allowed memory size of xxx bytes exhausted with WordPress on Debian
My Debian Squeeze host started having trouble performing WordPress 3.5 core or plugin updates – in the error logs, I’d see messages like:
WP-PHPList
The WP-PHPlist plugin integrates PHPList into your Wordpress blog, giving you all the mailing list power of PHPList, within the beautiful styling, theme, and widgets of your Wordpress theme.
centos
Importing existing RAID devices into new Linux installation
Recently I had to rebuild a CentOS5 VM host as CentOS6. My VMs were stored on a RAID1 pair (seperate from the OS disks). To avoid any possibility of impacting the VM data during the re-installation, I removed the VM data disks from the host during the reinstall.
Workaround for the Cacti segmentation fault on CentOS5
Seems a little dumb, and I’m not sure how other distributions deal with it, but if you install Cacti from RPM on CentOS, and then browse to your /cacti/ directory via HTTP, you’ll find that it dies with a segmentation fault. You know this is you if every other website on your host works, but everytime you go to your /cacti/ URL, your browser reports that the site is totally unavailable (as if apache weren’t even running).
April Fools Pranks with a Squid Proxy Server
Use Squid to turn the internet upside-down, change Google to Klingon
monitoring
Lazy monitoring breaks stuff
Lack of planning in establishing monitoring can increase unreliability
IT Monitoring lessons learned from FCC report into 911 outage
IEEE Spectrum highlighted an FCC report into a 911 outage in April 2014, which resulted in over 11 million Americans.. or about three and half percent of the population of the United States, being at risk of not being able to reach emergency help through 911.
Fixed Cacti not displaying interfaces for HP 1810G switch
While implementing a new network for a customer, we took an existing HP 1810G 48-port switch under management. As per normal, we setup monitoring (Icinga) and graphing (Cacti), but while the switch responded to Cacti sysname polls (leading us to believe it was happy), it didn’t return any interface details, so we weren’t able to graph anything.
featured
Addons to improve Thunderbird (and make it less annoying)
My organization standardizes on Mozilla Thunderbird as our mail client of choice (partly because Mail.app is so deficient on OSX). It’s a bit crusty since Mozilla halted further development in 2012, but better the devil you know, right…?
IT Monitoring lessons learned from FCC report into 911 outage
IEEE Spectrum highlighted an FCC report into a 911 outage in April 2014, which resulted in over 11 million Americans.. or about three and half percent of the population of the United States, being at risk of not being able to reach emergency help through 911.
Bought a pebble watch, saved my brain
In “Buy a watch, save your brain”, I wrote about how I hoped to buy a wrist watch (at the time, it was the rumoured “iWatch”), and reduce the amount of distraction I caused myself each time I checked the time on my iPhone.
openstack
OpenStack LBAASv2 failed connection debugging
I deployed Load-Balancer-As-A-Service (LBAAS) in my lab OpenStack deployment early on, and it worked (setup in Horizon) as advertised (load-balancing inbound HTTP connections to multiple docker swarm nodes), until I broke the stack by fiddling with MTU settings.
Recovering from ‘_nova_to_osvif_vif_binding_failed’
Or how to catastrophically break (and recover) your nova compute node with a failed live-migration
Openstack neutron could not load … InterfaceDriver warnings are.. mostly harmless
Unless they’re a CRITICAL error, ignore the damn red herrings
security
Should you do microcode updates?
A colleague and I were discussing my recent rant re a RedHat-issued kernel update breaking VMs on all my AMD systems. Notwithstanding the fact that my RedHat bug report about the issue is set to “private” and Bugzilla (1990 called wants its UI back, to hang out with Miranda IM) won’t let me change it, he asked me “we’ve applied the latest microcode, right?”
Revealed: Facebook exposed identities of moderators to suspected terrorists →
This should have better thought through
Is My Password Secure? NIST Advises Against Periodically Changing Passwords →
Enforcing password aging encourages poor security practices
bookmarks-of-note
Bookmarks of note / August 16, 2018
- Automatically install build dependencies prior to building an RPM package → A handy tip re quickly installing all the dependencies for a .SPEC file
Bookmarks of note / July 23, 2018
- How do I figure out my Google OpenID URL? → Useful if you have an old app (hello, crofflr) which still has your account tied to your Google account via OpenID
Bookmarks of note / May 13, 2018
bandersnatch
Generate logs from your jabberd2 server using Bandersnatch
This tutorial attempts to guide the reader through the process of installing Bandersnatch for use with an existing Jabberd2 server.
Bandersnatch - The Jabber Logger
Bandersnatch is tool to log Jabber instant messaging traffic, and to generate meaningful usage statistics. Bandersnatch is designed for a corporate intranet environment. It is designed for administrators who wish to monitor the use / abuse of their Jabber servers.
jabber
Generate logs from your jabberd2 server using Bandersnatch
This tutorial attempts to guide the reader through the process of installing Bandersnatch for use with an existing Jabberd2 server.
Bandersnatch - The Jabber Logger
Bandersnatch is tool to log Jabber instant messaging traffic, and to generate meaningful usage statistics. Bandersnatch is designed for a corporate intranet environment. It is designed for administrators who wish to monitor the use / abuse of their Jabber servers.
apache
Proxy one virtual host to another virtual host in Apache
We’ve had several reasons to use Apache’s ProxyPass features in the past, and a basic configuration (to redirect one website to another) is easy to find online.
Protect your website with htaccess
While allowing individual IP addresses unrestricted access
perl
Automatically reboot multiple Cisco 79xx phones
We’re upgrading our Asterisk PABX at the office soon, as as part of the preparation, I needed a way to automatically reboot about 20 Cisco 79xx IP phones.
April Fools Pranks with a Squid Proxy Server
Use Squid to turn the internet upside-down, change Google to Klingon
cisco
Automatically reboot multiple Cisco 79xx phones
We’re upgrading our Asterisk PABX at the office soon, as as part of the preparation, I needed a way to automatically reboot about 20 Cisco 79xx IP phones.
Clearing static nat on Cisco router
I was asked to change a incoming NAT translation on a Cisco router for a customer today - however since this NAT was used to deliver all their internal email, it was never not in use, and I got the standard message below when trying to clear it:
cacti
Fixed Cacti not displaying interfaces for HP 1810G switch
While implementing a new network for a customer, we took an existing HP 1810G 48-port switch under management. As per normal, we setup monitoring (Icinga) and graphing (Cacti), but while the switch responded to Cacti sysname polls (leading us to believe it was happy), it didn’t return any interface details, so we weren’t able to graph anything.
Workaround for the Cacti segmentation fault on CentOS5
Seems a little dumb, and I’m not sure how other distributions deal with it, but if you install Cacti from RPM on CentOS, and then browse to your /cacti/ directory via HTTP, you’ll find that it dies with a segmentation fault. You know this is you if every other website on your host works, but everytime you go to your /cacti/ URL, your browser reports that the site is totally unavailable (as if apache weren’t even running).
icinga
Monitoring OSX with Icinga / Nagios using NRPE
I have a fairly comprehensive Icinga monitoring platform monitoring my various linux hosts, but one area which has been lacking until now is the monitoring of the OSX Mavericks Mac Mini that I use for a home media center. Considering this is used by my family to watch TV/Movies, play music, and manage iPhoto, it’s arguably one of the most important hosts to monitor carefully. Of course, I could monitor its state (up or down) by pinging it from Icinga, but I wanted to know more than that. I’ve had issues in the past with running out of disk space on the host, and I’m all to familiar with the risks of 4-year-old hardware using spindled disks. This solution enables me to monitor the following on OSX with Icinga:
Monitoring Veeam Backup and Replication 7 with Icinga / Nagios
We’ve recently deployed a Veeam Backup and Replication 7 platform, and needed to monitor the ongoing success of the backup / replication jobs. I identified a plugin which does most of what’s required, but seems to have 2 current shortcomings: 1. In-progress jobs trigger false warnings 2. Date calculation doesn’t always work, and produces false warnings
nagios
Monitoring OSX with Icinga / Nagios using NRPE
I have a fairly comprehensive Icinga monitoring platform monitoring my various linux hosts, but one area which has been lacking until now is the monitoring of the OSX Mavericks Mac Mini that I use for a home media center. Considering this is used by my family to watch TV/Movies, play music, and manage iPhoto, it’s arguably one of the most important hosts to monitor carefully. Of course, I could monitor its state (up or down) by pinging it from Icinga, but I wanted to know more than that. I’ve had issues in the past with running out of disk space on the host, and I’m all to familiar with the risks of 4-year-old hardware using spindled disks. This solution enables me to monitor the following on OSX with Icinga:
Monitoring Veeam Backup and Replication 7 with Icinga / Nagios
We’ve recently deployed a Veeam Backup and Replication 7 platform, and needed to monitor the ongoing success of the backup / replication jobs. I identified a plugin which does most of what’s required, but seems to have 2 current shortcomings: 1. In-progress jobs trigger false warnings 2. Date calculation doesn’t always work, and produces false warnings
junos
Restart VRRP on JUNOS to fix master/master issues
I spent about 30 min this evening chasing a non-existing VRRP issue between 2 JUNOS SRX devices after a hardware drop-in replacement. One was configured as master, one as backup. Both were in the master status (normally indicating a lack of L2 connectivity), but each could ping the other on their interface address. The solution, ultimately, was to run restart vrrp gracefully on each router, which restored the expected master / backup behavior.
Copying SSH host private keys between JUNOS devices to when replacing hardware
A certain customer of mine is (rightly or wrongly) pedantic about security warnings. Recently, we did a hardware replacement of a JUNOS device (an SRX240 firewall). While the config was a drop-in replacement, users who tried to SSH to the host post-migration would normally see an SSH “host key has changed” warning. In this environment, we wanted to eliminate this friction (and stop training our users to ignore security warnings), so we copied the following from the old device:
ssh
Upping your 2FA SSH game
Think you setup SSH securely enough? Think again (I did!)
Copying SSH host private keys between JUNOS devices to when replacing hardware
A certain customer of mine is (rightly or wrongly) pedantic about security warnings. Recently, we did a hardware replacement of a JUNOS device (an SRX240 firewall). While the config was a drop-in replacement, users who tried to SSH to the host post-migration would normally see an SSH “host key has changed” warning. In this environment, we wanted to eliminate this friction (and stop training our users to ignore security warnings), so we copied the following from the old device:
dadops
Using a Foscam Pro and FI8909W as an iOS baby monitor
What we imply to our kids by the way we live
I enjoyed Minimalism with Kids, finding several point re minimalism and life in general which I intend to apply.
reading
Humans Who Are Not Concentrating Are Not General Intelligences →
How machine-learning generated text can fool humans reading on “autopilot” (vs deep reading and comprehension)
On the joys of Actually Reading
Against the author’s wishes, I’m sharing the article titled “Actually Reading”, a comment on the fact that we (I’m guilty of this) often appreciate an article for it social “sharability” rather than the value it adds to us.
failure
Implicit 2TB limit breaks Instapaper for 31 hours →
What you don’t know can hurt you
Spacecraft and IT systems fail for the same reasons
Surprisingly common factors affect the failure of both
docker
GPU transcoding with Emby / Plex using docker-nvidia
How to use nvidia-docker to transcode with Emby / Plex using your GPU
LVM-backed devicemapper for Docker on CentOS 7.3
Changing from overlay to devicemapper
openvpn
Building a ‘free’ AWS site-to-site VPN using OpenVPN and EdgeRouter X
Create a free/cheap basic site-to-site VPN between your AWS VPC and your on-premises network using OpenVPN
NAT on pfsense with multilple OpenVPN instances
devops
The Phoenix Project - A DevOps Allegory
Meet technical debt →
A helpful introduction to technical debt
htaccess
Protect your website with htaccess
While allowing individual IP addresses unrestricted access
phplist
WP-PHPList
The WP-PHPlist plugin integrates PHPList into your Wordpress blog, giving you all the mailing list power of PHPList, within the beautiful styling, theme, and widgets of your Wordpress theme.
openwrt
Convert a .BIN file to .TRX for OpenWRT / DD-WRT
I recently had reason to convert the latest DD-WRT firmware .bin file to .trx format, so that I could manually flash my WRT54GL. Not wanting to risk it, I first converted the .bin image with the following command:
imagemagick
April Fools Pranks with a Squid Proxy Server
Use Squid to turn the internet upside-down, change Google to Klingon
prank
April Fools Pranks with a Squid Proxy Server
Use Squid to turn the internet upside-down, change Google to Klingon
squid
April Fools Pranks with a Squid Proxy Server
Use Squid to turn the internet upside-down, change Google to Klingon
snmp
Fixed Cacti not displaying interfaces for HP 1810G switch
While implementing a new network for a customer, we took an existing HP 1810G 48-port switch under management. As per normal, we setup monitoring (Icinga) and graphing (Cacti), but while the switch responded to Cacti sysname polls (leading us to believe it was happy), it didn’t return any interface details, so we weren’t able to graph anything.
debian
Allowed memory size of xxx bytes exhausted with WordPress on Debian
My Debian Squeeze host started having trouble performing WordPress 3.5 core or plugin updates – in the error logs, I’d see messages like:
ssl
Solving vsftpd’s unsupported record version unknown 48.48 error
I use FTPS with vsftpd to update my WordPress plugins. This means that the wordpress files don’t need to be writeable by the webserver user, which adds another layer of protection and separation. I make FTPS available to localhost only, and force SSL encryption end-to-end.
vsftpd
Solving vsftpd’s unsupported record version unknown 48.48 error
I use FTPS with vsftpd to update my WordPress plugins. This means that the wordpress files don’t need to be writeable by the webserver user, which adds another layer of protection and separation. I make FTPS available to localhost only, and force SSL encryption end-to-end.
veeam
Monitoring Veeam Backup and Replication 7 with Icinga / Nagios
We’ve recently deployed a Veeam Backup and Replication 7 platform, and needed to monitor the ongoing success of the backup / replication jobs. I identified a plugin which does most of what’s required, but seems to have 2 current shortcomings: 1. In-progress jobs trigger false warnings 2. Date calculation doesn’t always work, and produces false warnings
osx
Monitoring OSX with Icinga / Nagios using NRPE
I have a fairly comprehensive Icinga monitoring platform monitoring my various linux hosts, but one area which has been lacking until now is the monitoring of the OSX Mavericks Mac Mini that I use for a home media center. Considering this is used by my family to watch TV/Movies, play music, and manage iPhoto, it’s arguably one of the most important hosts to monitor carefully. Of course, I could monitor its state (up or down) by pinging it from Icinga, but I wanted to know more than that. I’ve had issues in the past with running out of disk space on the host, and I’m all to familiar with the risks of 4-year-old hardware using spindled disks. This solution enables me to monitor the following on OSX with Icinga:
linux
Importing existing RAID devices into new Linux installation
Recently I had to rebuild a CentOS5 VM host as CentOS6. My VMs were stored on a RAID1 pair (seperate from the OS disks). To avoid any possibility of impacting the VM data during the re-installation, I removed the VM data disks from the host during the reinstall.
mdadm
Importing existing RAID devices into new Linux installation
Recently I had to rebuild a CentOS5 VM host as CentOS6. My VMs were stored on a RAID1 pair (seperate from the OS disks). To avoid any possibility of impacting the VM data during the re-installation, I removed the VM data disks from the host during the reinstall.
raid
Importing existing RAID devices into new Linux installation
Recently I had to rebuild a CentOS5 VM host as CentOS6. My VMs were stored on a RAID1 pair (seperate from the OS disks). To avoid any possibility of impacting the VM data during the re-installation, I removed the VM data disks from the host during the reinstall.
vrrp
Restart VRRP on JUNOS to fix master/master issues
I spent about 30 min this evening chasing a non-existing VRRP issue between 2 JUNOS SRX devices after a hardware drop-in replacement. One was configured as master, one as backup. Both were in the master status (normally indicating a lack of L2 connectivity), but each could ping the other on their interface address. The solution, ultimately, was to run restart vrrp gracefully on each router, which restored the expected master / backup behavior.
reflection
Confirmation Bias
I read Shane Parrish’s mental model on confirmation bias this evening, and found it resonated with me. I’ve notice that once I’ve struggled with a decision and come to a conclusion, then I find myself coming up with more and more reasons why my decision was the right one.
review
Review of Packt Publishing’s ESXi Cookbook
Because I previously authored a book on PHPList, I was asked by the folks at Packt Publishing to review their latest book, VMWare ESXi Cookbook. Review follows.
vmware
Review of Packt Publishing’s ESXi Cookbook
Because I previously authored a book on PHPList, I was asked by the folks at Packt Publishing to review their latest book, VMWare ESXi Cookbook. Review follows.
foscam
Back to Top ↑advice
Stumbling into what you love
You can’t be prepared enough for life before living it
vocation
Stumbling into what you love
You can’t be prepared enough for life before living it
ebook
Grab any of Packts geekbooks for $10 until July 5th
The folks at Packt Publishing asked me to mention that they’re having 10 years $10 special, to celebrate their 10-year anniversary. Their entire range of books (geared towards niche geek topics) are available for $10 each. This is a good opportunity to brush up on some rusty areas, or establish a new skillset.
packt
Grab any of Packts geekbooks for $10 until July 5th
The folks at Packt Publishing asked me to mention that they’re having 10 years $10 special, to celebrate their 10-year anniversary. Their entire range of books (geared towards niche geek topics) are available for $10 each. This is a good opportunity to brush up on some rusty areas, or establish a new skillset.
special
Grab any of Packts geekbooks for $10 until July 5th
The folks at Packt Publishing asked me to mention that they’re having 10 years $10 special, to celebrate their 10-year anniversary. Their entire range of books (geared towards niche geek topics) are available for $10 each. This is a good opportunity to brush up on some rusty areas, or establish a new skillset.
asterisk
Automatically reboot multiple Cisco 79xx phones
We’re upgrading our Asterisk PABX at the office soon, as as part of the preparation, I needed a way to automatically reboot about 20 Cisco 79xx IP phones.
github
Automatically reboot multiple Cisco 79xx phones
We’re upgrading our Asterisk PABX at the office soon, as as part of the preparation, I needed a way to automatically reboot about 20 Cisco 79xx IP phones.
script
Automatically reboot multiple Cisco 79xx phones
We’re upgrading our Asterisk PABX at the office soon, as as part of the preparation, I needed a way to automatically reboot about 20 Cisco 79xx IP phones.
attention
Watching video is harder than reading
This video complains that we’re getting ever worse at focusing our attention
balance
In defense of traditional work-life balance
I enjoyed Rian van der Merwe’s first column on A List Apart, in which he defends a traditional view of work-life balance. The following echoes my own policy - I try to be 100% at work during work hours, but afterwards, I’m 0% at work (crises and extraordinary circumstances excluded)
pebble
Bought a pebble watch, saved my brain
In “Buy a watch, save your brain”, I wrote about how I hoped to buy a wrist watch (at the time, it was the rumoured “iWatch”), and reduce the amount of distraction I caused myself each time I checked the time on my iPhone.
smartwatch
Bought a pebble watch, saved my brain
In “Buy a watch, save your brain”, I wrote about how I hoped to buy a wrist watch (at the time, it was the rumoured “iWatch”), and reduce the amount of distraction I caused myself each time I checked the time on my iPhone.
apple
MacBook Air recommendation for cost-conscious newlyweds
A friend who recently got married asked for advice (below) on purchasing a MacBook Air, and I thought it might be useful to record my response here:
macbook
MacBook Air recommendation for cost-conscious newlyweds
A friend who recently got married asked for advice (below) on purchasing a MacBook Air, and I thought it might be useful to record my response here:
markdown
Addons to improve Thunderbird (and make it less annoying)
My organization standardizes on Mozilla Thunderbird as our mail client of choice (partly because Mail.app is so deficient on OSX). It’s a bit crusty since Mozilla halted further development in 2012, but better the devil you know, right…?
thunderbird
Addons to improve Thunderbird (and make it less annoying)
My organization standardizes on Mozilla Thunderbird as our mail client of choice (partly because Mail.app is so deficient on OSX). It’s a bit crusty since Mozilla halted further development in 2012, but better the devil you know, right…?
windows
Activating Windows Server Evaluation
No, you can’t just “activate” an Evaluation version
usenet
Dockerized HTPC Suite (sabnzbd, couchpotato, nzbdrone, plex)
A “One Ring” to control a dockerized suite of HTPC apps, each in their own isolated container
bacula
Deduplication with bacula using base jobs
Deduplicating common files across your bacula backups, using base jobs
opensource
Humanitarian aid should be open sourced
Free as in speech
happiness
Buy experiences, not gadgets
Your loot won’t make you happy, long-term
linked
Separate production and dev
VMs are cheap. Outages are expensive.
management
Speak to the face
How human connection improves company culture
im,
How instant messaging makes my life miserable
The pros and cons of always-on instant messaging
culture
How instant messaging makes my life miserable
The pros and cons of always-on instant messaging
bias
Spacecraft and IT systems fail for the same reasons
Surprisingly common factors affect the failure of both
disasterrecovery
Disaster Recovery success story for Westpac NZ
There’s something satisfying about actually surviving the disaster you prepared for
cloud,
Don’t let your judgement be clouded
Lessons learned from overreliance on cloud infrastructure
testing
Don’t let your judgement be clouded
Lessons learned from overreliance on cloud infrastructure
scaling
Manual processes fail to scale.
Puny humans are puny.
work-life
Putting in extra work is lazy and makes you less effective
Think you’re extra-committed by working late to catch up? It’s actually self-sabotage
news
You don’t learn from watching the news
Are you really better informed?
cloud
AWS in Plain English
What Amazon should have called all those services
interruption
Why you suffer from “attention residue”
Do you find it hard to switch to a new task, leaving the previous task incomplete? There’s a term for that, and it’s got to do with how your brain works.
openstack,
Back to Top ↑centos7,
Back to Top ↑rdo
Back to Top ↑password
Let them paste passwords →
Why preventing pasting passwords is dumb
fail
Let’s Encrypt is down →
Stupidly simple solutions snowball stressfully
parenting
Being a Dev Dad →
Dev work and dad work doesn’t work
remotework
IBM tells thousands of remote employees to come back to office or find new jobs →
New wine (remote work) doesn’t work well in old wineskins (IBM)
privacy,
How to Opt Out of Twitter’s New Privacy Settings →
Et tu, Twitter?
How to Opt Out of Twitter’s New Privacy Settings →
Et tu, Twitter?
smartphone
12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You →
A Christian perspective on the effects (good and bad) our tech is having on us
security,
1Password adds travel mode for protection from border seizures →
Sadly, a very sensible precaution
travel
1Password adds travel mode for protection from border seizures →
Sadly, a very sensible precaution
A Year of Google Maps & Apple Maps →
A great analysis of incremental changes to the Google Maps UI, and exposition of the strategy behind it
appstore
How to Make $80,000 Per Month on the Apple App Store →
An analysis of scam apps on the Apple App Store
debugging
PC rebooted every time user flushed the toilet →
A funny illustration that familiarity with a broad set of disciplines improves overall results
mindfulness
The Busier You Are, the More You Need Quiet Time →
It’s about taking a temporary break from one of life’s most basic responsibilities: Having to think of what to say.
ifttt
Archive blog to DayOne using RSS
Create DayOne journal entry for every new item on RSS feed
rss
Miniflux, lightweight self-hosted rss reader
Tiny Tiny RSS vs Miniflux
dell
Accessing older iDRAC virtual consoles on MacOS
I recently inherited some 2012-era Dell servers for development purposes. I wanted to use remote console to reinstall the OS, but ran into two problems:
idrac
Accessing older iDRAC virtual consoles on MacOS
I recently inherited some 2012-era Dell servers for development purposes. I wanted to use remote console to reinstall the OS, but ran into two problems:
java
Accessing older iDRAC virtual consoles on MacOS
I recently inherited some 2012-era Dell servers for development purposes. I wanted to use remote console to reinstall the OS, but ran into two problems:
workaround
Accessing older iDRAC virtual consoles on MacOS
I recently inherited some 2012-era Dell servers for development purposes. I wanted to use remote console to reinstall the OS, but ran into two problems:
pfsense
Back to Top ↑post-mortem
Post-mortem review : DayOne sync outage and private data exposure
Lessons from a series of predictable, avoidable failures
remote
A 2-Year Stanford Study Shows the Astonishing Productivity Boost of Working From Home →
A gratifying result on a study re the benefits of remote work. Mirrors my own experience. I deal with the “isolation problem” by doing video calls with colleagues where possible (vs phone calls).
geeklife
Back to Top ↑bash
In appreciation of bare (naked) double-D(ashes)
Today I was trying to grep through a directory structure full of PHP code, looking for a function which, inexplicably, returned -6.
git
How I removed a file from my git repo history
While making my most recent commit to my blog, I discovered (after the fact) that I’d accidentally committed a screenshot from a customer project, into my /images/ subdirectory.
gke
Workaround blocked attempt to grant extra privileges on GKE due to RBAC
While attempting to deploy an awesome set-it-and-forget-it volume snapshot solution for my GKE cryptocurrency mining pool empire, I stumbled across the following error when trying to create the necessary RBAC ClusterRoleBinding:
mqtt
Using a MQTT broker with LetsEncrypt SSL and HomeAssistant or DAFANG CFW
After setting up my MQTT Broker in Kubernetes on GKE, I needed to connect my Home Assistant to it, as well as my Xiaomi DaFang/XiaoFang custom-firmware-enabled IP cameras.
edgerouter
Building a ‘free’ AWS site-to-site VPN using OpenVPN and EdgeRouter X
Create a free/cheap basic site-to-site VPN between your AWS VPC and your on-premises network using OpenVPN
chaos
Introducing Gremlin Free →
Chaos-as-a-service
resiliency
Introducing Gremlin Free →
Chaos-as-a-service
jekyll
Blogging from iOS to Jekyll using Ulysses →
How to post to a Jekyll blog using iOS, Shortcuts, and Ulysses
gitlab
Avoid deploying GitLab Runner application into Kubernetes (use helm instead)
Unless you’re careful, you could end up running an untrusted docker image in privileged mode on your cluster.
helm
Continuous Integration for helm charts
I’ve recently been working on a comprehensive helm chart for docker-mailserver.
travis-ci
Continuous Integration for helm charts
I’ve recently been working on a comprehensive helm chart for docker-mailserver.
continous-integration
Continuous Integration for helm charts
I’ve recently been working on a comprehensive helm chart for docker-mailserver.
socialmedia
We care less about trends than we used to →
Study shows that global attention span to global trends has … globally decreased
The impotence of social media
Your tweet… is a fart in a crowded room
Why I won’t post about my kids on social media
Kids don’t appreciate your tweets