Disabling the Startup Voice Prompt on an Arylic H50
How to permanently disable the Arylic H50 startup configuration announcement over its TCP API, without provisioning Wi-Fi.
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A Keyboard Shortcut to Clean Up Phone Numbers, IBANs, etc. Before Pasting
A small Hammerspoon module that removes unwanted formatting from common values while preserving email addresses and UUIDs.
Troubleshooting Time Machine Backup Issues on a Locked Mac
Time Machine backups on macOS can fail when the Mac is locked. In this post, I walk through how I diagnosed the issue using the log command and resolved it by rewriting the affected files.
How I Almost Switched From Spotify to Apple Music
In this post, I outline how I became excited about ditching Spotify for Apple Music, but then found more and more things that were broken or felt unfinished—or just didn’t work the way I expected them to work.
Copying The Current Safari Tab as a Clickable Link
In this post, I outline how to quickly copy the URL and title of the active Safari tab as a clickable link, a convenient feature for referencing web pages in emails, to-do lists, documentation, and messaging platforms like Slack.
My Journey from EdgeRouter to MikroTik
I switched from an EdgeRouter 4 to a MikroTik CCR2004-16G-2S+ for my home network. I learned that MikroTik also has its quirks, but overall, I’m pleased with the transition. In this post, I will share a few insights I found particularly interesting.
Fixing Date and Time for Photos and Videos Saved from WhatsApp
When saving media from WhatsApp, it lacks an Exif timestamp which will make your media appear out of order in your photo library. This post explains how ExifTool can be used to create the Exif DateTimeOriginal field from the filename.
Opening Screenshots From a Vintage Macintosh in Modern macOS
Apple’s System 6 stored its screenshots in MacPaint format. Learn how to open them in recent versions of macOS.
Restoring WireGuard Tunnel Configurations From a macOS Backup
On macOS, WireGuard stores its tunnel configurations in the login keychain. This post explains how to extract them from a backup.
How to Fix Broken Search in Apple Mail After Upgrading to Big Sur
Upgrading to macOS Big Sur broke search in Apple Mail for me. In this post, I explain different solutions that might fix this.
Using FFmpeg to Create HEVC Videos That Work on Apple Devices
The HEVC (H.265) video codec will produce smaller file sizes at the same level of video quality. FFmpeg can create those files, however, a certain tag is needed for the files to be recognized by Apple software.
Prevent Unencrypted Ansible Vaults from Being Pushed to Git
Ansible Vault is a nice tool that allows you to store sensitive data (such as passwords and application secrets) securely along with your Ansible Playbooks, so you have all your configuration in a single place. Obviously, you don’t want to store unencrypted secrets in your repository, so that’s why Ansible Vault encrypts them with AES-256 encryption by default. However, a big drawback is that it…
Tracking Your Kraken Balances in MoneyMoney
I wrote a MoneyMoney extension in Lua to track crypto currency balances from a Kraken account.
Removing Personal Information from MP3s bought on Amazon
When you buy MP3s on Amazon, it is likely that they contain a “unique purchase identifier” which can be used to link the MP3 file to your Amazon account. Storage Format and Location # This special block of metadata is stored in private frames (PRIV). This makes it harder to be detected and removed, as most MP3 tag editors simply ignore these frames.
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Using Google’s Invisible reCAPTCHA to Protect ve_guestbook from Spam
The first question that comes to your mind might be: “Who uses guestbooks nowadays anyway?”. Well, personally I don’t, but I maintain two sites that were created in the mid 2000s that have a guestbook installed—and people are still using it. It’s ve_guestbook for TYPO3. In the past years, guestbook spam has become a real issue for me—even though I had been using the captcha TYPO3 extension…
The Windows 95 Boot Screen As an Endlessly Looping GIF
Just in case you forgot how this looks.
Monitoring an APC Back-UPS With openHAB 2
openHAB doesn’t have a binding for APC UPS devices. Luckily, there are other ways to integrate them into your openHAB setup. In the following, I’m describing how the exec binding can be used to regularly poll the UPS status using the apcaccess command-line utility. The result will look somehow like this: I’m using a APC Back-UPS BX 700VA here—a relatively cheap model with Schuko outlets and a USB…
Quaak (1992)
“Quaak” is a simple Frogger clone for Windows from the year 1992. I got it from my father on a 3.5″ floppy disk when I was 6 or 7. I played it on my father’s workstation (at his job) and also at home on his 486 laptop running Windows 3.1. The game has pretty cheap graphics. Still it was a lot of fun to play, especially at that age.
Rollin (1995)
“Rollin” by SAV Creations (published by Ticsoft) was one of the DOS games I played the most as a kid. I got it from my grandparents, and I played it with my brothers on their old PC, which had also been a gift from them. I think it was a 386. This was around 1996, when I was 9 or 10 years old. It had a Turbo key that switched between 16 MHz and 40 MHz. If I pressed that key while playing, the game…
T-Online über DFÜ-Netzwerk
Die T-Online-Software läuft instabil und ist ressourcenfressend. In früheren Versionen gab es sogar Bugs, die den Benutzer zwangen, eine Internetverbindung herzustellen. Daher ist von dieser Software dringend abzuraten. Die Einwahl ins Internet über T-Online kann auch ohne die Software von T-Online erfolgen, nämlich über das DFÜ-Netzwerk von Windows.
Autorennen in Microsoft Excel 2000
Sogar ein Autorennen haben die Programmierer von Microsoft Excel 2000 im Programm versteckt.
Games From My Childhood
The year indicates when the game was released, not necessarily when I played it. 1989 CD-MAN A Pac-Man clone for DOS. 1990 QBasic Gorillas A QBasic sample turn-based artillery game included with MS-DOS 5.0 (GORILLAS.BAS). Download 1990 QBasic Nibbles A QBasic sample Snake-like game included with MS-DOS 5.0 (NIBBLES.BAS). Download 1990 WinTris A Tetris clone for Windows 3.x. Download 1991 Chomp A…
Die eigene Homepage im WWW
Jetzt kann jeder problemlos seine eigene Homepage einrichten: Überall im Internet wird kostenloser Speicherplatz für eine Webseite angeboten. Kunden von T-Online z.B. haben automatisch die Möglichkeit in wenigen Minuten ihre Webseite auf den Server zu laden.
Netter Assistent in Office 97
Der Office-Assistent in Office 97 ist Ihnen gerne behilflich. Er schaut Sie freundlich an und wird Ihnen bei allen Problemen mit Word, PowerPoint, Excel usw. helfen.
Computerchaos im Jahr 2000
Im Jahr 2000 wird es in sämtlichen Rechnern zu Problemen kommen: Keiner weiß genau, ob es eher harmlos sein wird oder so dass gar nichts mehr funktioniert.