This post was largely inspired by this No Boilerplate video (GitHub link) and this gist on GitHub.

Intro

I use a mix of operating systems, Windows 11 on my desktop (with WSL), Kubuntu on my laptop, Ubuntu on my work PC, Windows on another different work machine, various Linux distros on servers. Consistency makes life easier, but that is challenging when using so many different systems, especially when additional configuration is required. After watching the No Boilerplate video mentioned above, I started looking at Rust command line tools, found a gist with even more tools listed, and began experimenting.

This post was largely inspired by this No Boilerplate video (GitHub link) and this gist on GitHub.

Intro

I use a mix of operating systems, Windows 11 on my desktop (with WSL), Kubuntu on my laptop, Ubuntu on my work PC, Windows on another different work machine, various Linux distros on servers. Consistency makes life easier, but that is challenging when using so many different systems, especially when additional configuration is required. After watching the No Boilerplate video mentioned above, I started looking at Rust command line tools, found a gist with even more tools listed, and began experimenting.

One of my favourite jokes in software development is

There are only 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things and off by one errors.

A long time ago I came up with a bunch of alphabetical project names based on things from the Halo games/books. A bit like how Google used to name Android version after different deserts. I did this so I could easily “start” a new project without having to worry about what it should be called (also code names just sound cooler). This kind of decision paralysis is bad enough on solo projects, but even worse when there are more people involved. The other day a friend asked me for help on a project he’s be thinking about for ages at this point. I set up a repo so we can start sharing code and design notes, but what to call it. He didn’t have any suggestions, my brain started trying to come up with something that “sounds good”, whatever that means. Chat GPT gave some very poor suggestions. I realised what was happening before I wasted any more time. Name decision paralysis. Consulting the list of names past Mike named, I just grabbed the next one available. Now we’ll have to come up with a new reason to procrastinate project Onyx.

One of my favourite jokes in software development is

There are only 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things and off by one errors.

A long time ago I came up with a bunch of alphabetical project names based on things from the Halo games/books. A bit like how Google used to name Android version after different deserts. I did this so I could easily “start” a new project without having to worry about what it should be called (also code names just sound cooler). This kind of decision paralysis is bad enough on solo projects, but even worse when there are more people involved. The other day a friend asked me for help on a project he’s be thinking about for ages at this point. I set up a repo so we can start sharing code and design notes, but what to call it. He didn’t have any suggestions, my brain started trying to come up with something that “sounds good”, whatever that means. Chat GPT gave some very poor suggestions. I realised what was happening before I wasted any more time. Name decision paralysis. Consulting the list of names past Mike named, I just grabbed the next one available. Now we’ll have to come up with a new reason to procrastinate project Onyx.

I am starting a new job in a few weeks, having been made redundant in a round of “big tech layoffs.” My old job, while occasionally requiring trips to the office, was mostly conducted from my home office, a space tailored to my liking. In my new role, I anticipate spending more time in the company office, necessitating the adaptation of a generic space to meet my needs as much as possible. One way I achieve this is by bringing my own keyboard and mouse.

Today I finally go around to putting up the Christmas tree in my office (the main tree went up in November after a bribe of mince pies). I was gifted some rude tree decorations a few Christmases ago, and got myself a nice black Christmas tree to go with my grinchy feelings, topped with a black Santa hat.

Last year I found a MAX72 LCD matrix display and set about turning it into a tree decoration to display some festive messages. As ever, Arduino libraries make it really simple. For a Uno/Nano use the following pins:

My WordPress site broke in a way that seemed impossible to recover from. My server updated to PHP 8.0 which caused problems retrieving site info from the SQL database. Updraft (a backup plugin) couldn’t even run to restore the site. Doing a full backup on a new install caused the same issues, and I couldn’t find a way to roll back to PHP 7.4.

My WordPress site broke in a way that seemed impossible to recover from. My server updated to PHP 8.0 which caused problems retrieving site info from the SQL database. Updraft (a backup plugin) couldn’t even run to restore the site. Doing a full backup on a new install caused the same issues, and I couldn’t find a way to roll back to PHP 7.4.

Ever since the Raspberry Pi was released in 2012, I’ve been fascinated with single board computers. As I have dived deeper into the Linux rabbit hole and the open source support for Raspberry Pi’s has grown they have transformed from interesting learning tools to highly functional every day devices.

Lets take a look at what my collection is currently being used for.

Ever since the Raspberry Pi was released in 2012, I’ve been fascinated with single board computers. As I have dived deeper into the Linux rabbit hole and the open source support for Raspberry Pi’s has grown they have transformed from interesting learning tools to highly functional every day devices.

Lets take a look at what my collection is currently being used for.

Back in May 2012, a younger and more naive Mike left the world of console gaming for the glorious lands of the PC Master Race. Excited by the pace of advancement, as soon as my new PC was finished I was already planning the next iteration.

2016 was due to bring Intel’s 10nm Skymont CPU’s, and by then I’d have left university and be able to afford a shiny new PC that would leave my old one in its dust. Then…

Nothing…

Back in May 2012, a younger and more naive Mike left the world of console gaming for the glorious lands of the PC Master Race. Excited by the pace of advancement, as soon as my new PC was finished I was already planning the next iteration.

2016 was due to bring Intel’s 10nm Skymont CPU’s, and by then I’d have left university and be able to afford a shiny new PC that would leave my old one in its dust. Then…

Nothing…

Back in May 2012, a younger and more naive Mike left the world of console gaming for the glorious lands of the PC Master Race. Excited by the pace of advancement, as soon as my new PC was finished I was already planning the next iteration.

2016 was due to bring Intel’s 10nm Skymont CPU’s, and by then I’d have left university and be able to afford a shiny new PC that would leave my old one in its dust. Then…

Nothing…

I finally managed to upgrade my PC, 5 years late (more on that later). Getting hold of parts has not been easy, but why has there been such a shortage of semiconductors?

I finally managed to upgrade my PC, 5 years late (more on that later). Getting hold of parts has not been easy, but why has there been such a shortage of semiconductors?

I finally managed to upgrade my PC, 5 years late (more on that later). Getting hold of parts has not been easy, but why has there been such a shortage of semiconductors?

I saw an idea for a nerdy gift on Reddit for your significant other. A word-cloud of conversations you have had. That seemed like a quick and easy idea for a anniversary card…

Now that I’m done, I can explain what a massive pain this turned out to be.

Since Covid hit last year, Zoom has become a verb for video chats. Some of their questionable security practices and their ties to China have made some people wary of using it.

Fortunately, if you didn’t want to install something you can always join from a browser, if you’re willing to give up the very useful Gallery view.

Since Windows 10 19H1, there has been a Windows Sandbox feature which creates a Windows virtual machine that only persists for that session.

Being incredibly lazy, I am always on the lookout for ways to automate my life. Something I heard about a long time ago, but never got around to looking at was AutoHotKey. Now it is an essential tool I used everyday for text macros.

I like to sing the praises of Troy Hunt and his efforts to improve the world’s password security.  I also take digital security very seriously, but I can understand why most people don’t. Even the most keen people can suffer from apathy from time to time.

Example below:

Since Covid hit last year, Zoom has become a verb for video chats. Some of their questionable security practices and their ties to China have made some people wary of using it.

Fortunately, if you didn’t want to install something you can always join from a browser, if you’re willing to give up the very useful Gallery view.

Since Windows 10 19H1, there has been a Windows Sandbox feature which creates a Windows virtual machine that only persists for that session.

I am moving house soon, which means setting a sweet new home network. Exciting times! Unfortunately the move was pushed back by a week, which is fine, except… hey what happened to the internet? Oooops.

What to do? A jankey interim solution obviously.

The single most useful thing you can do to help fight the Coronavirus is to follow advice on self-isolating, social distancing and washing your hands.

But there is also a more practical thing you can do, running distributed computing programs.

The single most useful thing you can do to help fight the Coronavirus is to follow advice on self-isolating, social distancing and washing your hands.

But there is also a more practical thing you can do, running distributed computing programs.

I found a website k6.io which allows you to load test websites and API’s using AWS. With a free account you can test from one location with 50 virtual units for up to 12 mins. Spinning up a load test of get requests, Cloudflare served up all the traffic no problem, leaving my minimal VPS web-server alone. Then I tried again with post requests and BAM… 100% CPU load, response time over 6 seconds.

What was happening? Shouldn’t Cloudflare stop things like this?

According to my page revision history, 9 months ago I started writing a guide on using Cloudflare as a free CND for websites. I’m sure I’ll finish that eventually, but for now here is why I think it is so great. Free load balancing!

CloudFlare had a great April Fools Day joke, they were creating two new public DNS servers. Except it wasn’t a joke, they have really created them, with highly memorable addresses:

• 1.1.1.1
• 1.0.0.1
• 2606:4700:4700::1111
• 2606:4700:4700::1001

Ok, so IPV6 addresses aren’t as memorable…

I found a website k6.io which allows you to load test websites and API’s using AWS. With a free account you can test from one location with 50 virtual units for up to 12 mins. Spinning up a load test of get requests, Cloudflare served up all the traffic no problem, leaving my minimal VPS web-server alone. Then I tried again with post requests and BAM… 100% CPU load, response time over 6 seconds.

What was happening? Shouldn’t Cloudflare stop things like this?

According to my page revision history, 9 months ago I started writing a guide on using Cloudflare as a free CND for websites. I’m sure I’ll finish that eventually, but for now here is why I think it is so great. Free load balancing!

Introduction

I recently move my website form an OVH hosted solution, to an OVH VPS (virtual private server). Doing things yourself is often much cheaper, but can be more complex. Web solutions like Square Space offer fast, reliable hosting which scales to sudden demand. However for £10 a month it is nearly three times more expensive than my VPS and it is possible to get the same level of performance and scaling, thanks to Cloudflare.

I like to sing the praises of Troy Hunt and his efforts to improve the world’s password security.  I also take digital security very seriously, but I can understand why most people don’t. Even the most keen people can suffer from apathy from time to time.

Example below:

Troy Hunt continues to be amazing for cyber security with the Have I Been Pwned project. All the Version 3 passwords have been released as NTLM hashes, the password hash used by Windows. This should be really useful for any sysadmins managing a Windows Enterprise deployment wanting to make sure that users aren’t using bad passwords. Hopefully as this is adopted it will also reduce the number of poor password rules that many companies still enforce.

Troy Hunt has updated the haveibeenpwned list of pwned passwords, which now contains a staggering 517 million compromise passwords (as SHA1 hashes).

e-mail accounts are a pretty serious single point of failure, more so than I think most people ever consider. Recovery accounts and 2 factor authentication help (if you have them setup), but there is a new option that a lot of people won’t know about, email address aliases.

CloudFlare had a great April Fools Day joke, they were creating two new public DNS servers. Except it wasn’t a joke, they have really created them, with highly memorable addresses:

• 1.1.1.1
• 1.0.0.1
• 2606:4700:4700::1111
• 2606:4700:4700::1001

Ok, so IPV6 addresses aren’t as memorable…

Troy Hunt has updated the haveibeenpwned list of pwned passwords, which now contains a staggering 501 million compromise passwords (as SHA1 hashes). It now also includes a count of how many time that password has been found, so you can see just how poor your password choices are!

TL;DR - Yes, yes it is. But Japan is better!

I wrote a post in February called Linux Server Pulling Sextuple Duty, describing all the things I use a Linux server for. I said that I would write a guide on how to set it up, since I was always breaking things and needed a guide myself. I have now broken my server so many times that I am pretty good at getting a new one going again. So here is part one of my setup guides.

There are many services out there which you can buy with your hard earned money, which under the hood are nothing more than a Linux server. Mostly you are paying people to write all those pesky Linux commands for you because Linux = hard. However, if you happen to have a Linux server for one reason or another, there’s no reason not to make it do all the things you need. My original reason for renting a dedicated server was for *ahem* torrents… Perfectly above board, helping open source projects distribute files etc. Since then, I have expanded what it does to 5/6 different things. I plan on writing guides on the setup of each of these function, largely for my own benefit when I next break my server (this happens quite often, often enough you really shouldn’t be listing to my advice for anything remotely important).

GitHub is a great place for anyone doing software development. If there is anything you are trying to do that anyone else might have thought about doing at some point in the past, it probably exists on GitHub.

GitHub is a great place for anyone doing software development. If there is anything you are trying to do that anyone else might have thought about doing at some point in the past, it probably exists on GitHub.

I am a bit of a sucker for buying nice shiny things when it comes to tech. I have been wanting a triple monitor setup for a while, along with higher refresh rates and G-Sync (my graphics card is a GTX 1060). Since it was Amazon prime day and they had no good monitor deals, I bought an AOC G2460PG from Aria.co.uk.

The G2460PG

The monitor is a 24-inch monitor with a 1920x1080 350Cd 144Hz TN panel. For a TN panel, it is pretty good in terms of colour reproduction, certainly the best monitor I own. I did notice a slight waving effect on some dark websites with compressed background images. Turning down the refresh rate to 120Hz seemed to fix this. I don’t really care about aesthetics, but it does look nice with the brushed aluminium effect around the bezel, which is pleasingly small. The only issue I had setting it up was the European kettle lead included which I was able to replace with a UK one I had lying around.

I am a bit of a sucker for buying nice shiny things when it comes to tech. I have been wanting a triple monitor setup for a while, along with higher refresh rates and G-Sync (my graphics card is a GTX 1060). Since it was Amazon prime day and they had no good monitor deals, I bought an AOC G2460PG from Aria.co.uk.

The G2460PG

The monitor is a 24-inch monitor with a 1920x1080 350Cd 144Hz TN panel. For a TN panel, it is pretty good in terms of colour reproduction, certainly the best monitor I own. I did notice a slight waving effect on some dark websites with compressed background images. Turning down the refresh rate to 120Hz seemed to fix this. I don’t really care about aesthetics, but it does look nice with the brushed aluminium effect around the bezel, which is pleasingly small. The only issue I had setting it up was the European kettle lead included which I was able to replace with a UK one I had lying around.

Have you been pwned? Troy Hunt, a security researcher at Microsoft has set up a great project called “haveibeenpwned” so you can find out. You can use the website to search for an e-mail address and see if they have been included in past data breaches. You can also sign up to be notified of future breaches too. If your e-mail has been found, it will tells you what data has been leaked, such as poorly hashed passwords. My results (for my generic sign-up email) are below. The Adobe and LastFM password leaks are a serious concern since MD5 is no longer considered a secure hashing algorithm. Oops.

In this series: Software You Need, I look at software… that you need. Does what it says on the tin.

In this series: Software You Need, I look at software… that you need. Does what it says on the tin.

Shortly after re-making my website I got a little obsessed with Google’s Page Insights and optimising how quickly my website loaded. Since I am using a cheap host one of the negative points was that the server response times were a bit slow.