The one thing that you should absolutely be doing routinely is backing up your stuff. Yet you’ll notice in my previous post about using Ansible to automate my homelab, there is no mention of backing up the environment. If you’re wondering why that is, it’s because I am both lazy and forgetful. Having been bitten […]
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Generate thumbnails for PDFs
As I’ve noted a previous post, ImageMagick is an incredibly powerful tool for image manipulation. While it’s handy for image compression, it can also be used for so many more things, like processing uploaded files. Whether you want to crop all images to the same dimensions, or invert their orientation, Imagick can manage it. I’ve […]
I’ve been in the market for a new laptop since the battery died on my secondhand Samsung. Even the replacement (aftermarket) batteries I found for it would only give me 2 hours of usage for the first month and then drastically drop off to 45 minutes. Having to hunt for an outlet everywhere I took […]
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Bulk Image Compression via CLI
Occasionally, I like to share HD photos but they always end up tens of megabytes in size and large files can be a pain send to family and friends. To circumvent this, I make sure to do some image compression before ever sending the images. It’s also very helpful when posting images to a website […]
I recently ran into a minor inconvenience with a configuration on one of my Vagrant machines. You see, I’m implementing a queueing service on an application and I needed that service to be started whenever the machine starts up. Normally, this is quite simple and is done by creating a file named [email protected] in /etc/systemd/system […]
I love tinkering with my homelab but there is always a fear in the back of my mind, that one of my servers is running an outdated package that is being actively exploited. I don’t want to spend my free time cleaning up a mess that some nefarious party has made of my servers and […]
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Kernelcon – An Epic Gathering of Hackers
Over the past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending Kernelcon 2019 in Omaha, Nebraska and this conference has become my new yearly pilgrimage. If I never go to any other conferences ever again and only went to this one, I’d be perfectly happy with that. What made it so great? Organization This conference was […]
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I Gave a Talk
I recently had the opportunity to give a presentation in front of a live audience with real human beings at the WP Omaha meetup group. For my first technical talk, I thought things went pretty well. There were some minor hiccups with my connection to the live stream cutting out (and poor audio quality), but […]
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DDNS with Cloudflare API
Cloudflare is fantastic but they aren’t a common option for setting up DDNS on your average home router like other services are. Fortunately, it’s super simple to get around this minor inconvenience with the help of their thoroughly documented API. If you’re interested in hosting a website on your own network, are using Cloudflare’s DNS […]
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WordCamp Omaha 2018 Great Success
This year, I had the pleasure of giving back to the WordPress community by helping organize WordCamp Omaha 2018. Not only did I lend a hand with the website, I also planned and managed volunteer activities. I learned a lot about putting an event like this together and had a great time doing it with […]