Chronicles in Language, Technology, and Law
Anyone who has gotten into the weeds regarding terminal emulators knows about ANSI escape sequences. These are useful for, say, printing out bold text from your program on the terminal. However, escape sequences are not only for controlling output. Escape sequences via STDIN and STDOUT form a communications channel between your program and the terminal it's running in. You can use this to get the…
As most any web dev person knows, Google Domains is shutting down . This is unfortunate, because they've really done a good job balancing ease-of-use with advanced options. I've looked at a lot of different options, including NameCheap and SquareSpace, but found them lacking. Eventually, I settled on Amazon's own registrar services for my Lightsail websites. There's just one problem: best security…
I previously wrote about backdating Git commits, i.e., making a Git commit have a different date and time from the current date and time. This is useful for migrating quick-and-dirty or old codebases filled with project_v1 , project_v2 , etc. folders into a structured Git repo with logs. Recently, I was frustrated with this enough that I hacked together a bash / zsh function for my user profile.…
Model: GPT-4 I am designing a neo-angle corner shower stall that must fit within a 3ft x 3ft area. Because it's in the corner, two of the walls will be the full 36 inches. How wide should the remaining walls and the door be, if they are of equal size? In a neo-angle corner shower stall, the three remaining walls (including the door) typically form an equilateral triangle. To fit within a 3ft x 3ft…
Apple's Time Machine is a decent backup system for home users who don't want to get in over their heads. It's also decent for more advanced users who want a versioned history of backups ( ChronoSync or Mac Backup Guru are other options, with the former having great reviews). Unfortunately, Time Machine does a lot of "magic" -- there are things does things behind the scenes that are necessary to…
Sadly, the folks over at Homebrew have decided not to maintain the emacs-nox package, which gave us a nice Terminal-only emacs editor. I spent some time playing with configurations today and got it to build just the way I want it. First, use Homebrew to install dependencies only, and then to fetch the source only. Then we're going to copy the source archive to our home folder, extract it, and…
Recently I wanted to go back on PrEP but couldn't get an appointment through my primary care or in-network. The experience was a little janky, but knowing what I learned, here's the best way to go about it: Get an at-home HIV rapid test, such as OraQuick [ Walmart ][ CVS ][ Target ]. Go to GoodRx and find a coupon code for generic Truvada a pharmacy near you. Typically, Walmart and grocery stores…
Walmart surveillance videos come in a weird codec made by a company called Verint. (A codec is a small piece of software that tells other software how to make sense of audio or video data.) This codec has had various trademark names attached to it, including the "Nextiva" codec, but it can safely be called SN40, which is really just a slight variation on H.263. I previously posted about how to use…
A while back I couldn't figure out why URLs wouldn't work with curl or youtube-dl in zsh, and I found this discussion on Stack Overflow. Better than the accepted answer, though, is the suggestion to place the following in your ~/.zshrc file: autoload -Uz bracketed-paste-magic zle -N bracketed-paste bracketed-paste-magic autoload -Uz url-quote-magic zle -N self-insert url-quote-magic
My VSCode/VSCodium settings: { "security.workspace.trust.untrustedFiles": "open", "diffEditor.ignoreTrimWhitespace": false, "workbench.enableExperiments": false, "update.showReleaseNotes": false, "telemetry.enableTelemetry": false, "telemetry.enableCrashReporter": false, "git.enabled": false, "editor.renderIndentGuides": false, "editor.renderLineHighlight": "none", "editor.snippetSuggestions":…
Being a Bad-Ass Mother-Fucker™ is awesome, even for nerd shit like your approach to your web server. Here's a simple BSD / Apache / MySQL / FastCGI-PHP launch script for an AWS Lightsail FreeBSD instance. Want your own BAMF webserver? Buy a domain name through Google Domains , GoDaddy , or whoever Go sign up for Lightsail Sign up for a new FreeBSD instance (smallest is fine) Use this as your…
I wanted to share my office setup. Shopping list: Container Store Parsons Desk SecretLab OMEGA Gaming Chair in SoftWeave Black 2020 MacBook Pro Intel i7 2.3GHz 32GB RAM 2TB SSD (Custom Build) MOSISO MacBook Pro Case Brother HL-L2340DW Monochrome Laser Printer Aurora AU1200XD Compact Desktop Shredder IRIS USA PJC-300 Portable Project Case (for storing extra printer paper) Amazon Basics Surge…
On recent versions of macOS, especially Catalina, the Camera and Microphone settings cannot be manually managed. Applications need to request permission instead. However, many applications still direct you to the Settings panel to manually add permissions, rather than requesting them through the Application Programming Interface ("API"). This means that, in many cases, it is effectively impossible…
Yonatan Zunger, a former senior engineer at Google, has a great article on Medium that helps visualize how to manage concurrent modificiations in a way that resolves conflicts.
I recently uploaded an old project to GitHub and had trouble setting the date to the actual date I wrote it (which I wanted to do for sentimental reasons). Effectively you are recording a commit that happened in the past. I'm recording the process here for prosperity that this is the best way to back-date a particular commit: GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="2003-12-16 18:42:00 -0500"…
Just thought I'd share my Makefile. This is a sort of build script that is run automatically when you run make in the directory where it's located (usually along with your source code). It operates on the idea of "targets" -- you can make a release build, make a debug build, make a backup, make your directory clean, etc. The below Makefile makes generous use of variables so you only have to set…
Reboot into Recovery mode. Disable SIP, Gatekeeper, and AMFI: # csrutil disable # spctl --master-disable # nvram boot-args="amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1" If you also want an external connected monitor to be your ONLY display (e.g., clamshell mode), you can replace the last command with this: # nvram boot-args="iog=0x0 amfi_get_out_of_my_way=1" Then reboot!
Introduction Since I last wrote about this , macOS has introduced its own built-in CAC card support. Additionally, many Mac laptops now come with USB-C ports, which changes the best choice for a portable CAC reader. Our roadmap: Choosing a CAC Reader Configuring Your CAC Reader Installing DoD Root Certificates Configuring Your Browser(s) Useful Websites Choosing a CAC Reader For USB Type A ports…
Thoughts on the death of AOL Instant Messenger: In 5 minutes, part of the Internet is going to die. Most people born in the late 1970s and 1980s grew up as computer technology grew up, playing green-on-black monochrome educational games in elementary school and learning about the Internet in high school or early college. AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) was a big part of that. And soon it will be gone…
If you ever have a need to export your MySQL data into a portable format for use in a program, import into another database, or use in a spreadsheet, you can tell MySQL to save your information as comma-separated values (what's called "CSV format"): SELECT field1, field2, field3 INTO OUTFILE '/Users/home/default/database.csv' FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"' ESCAPED BY ‘\\’…
If you have previously installed wxWidgets on your system for the purpose of programming cross-platform graphical applications, you probably want to learn how to compile programs. Here are the contents of two source files for a minimal example of wxWidgets. First, the header file, hi.h : class hiApp : public wxApp { public: hiApp(void) {}; bool OnInit(void); }; class hiFrame : public wxFrame {…
Some Marine Corps brigs use a third-party contractor for phone service, and if you get the call records they come in a file format that's a bunch of numbers, followed by a period, followed by some more numbers, followed by the extension gsm. If you try to play them in Windows Media Player on a government computer, they won't work. They can be opened in Audacity, a free audio editor which can also…
UPDATE : Please see Common Access Cards on Mac (Updated) (1) Install root certificates to your Keychain so that Safari trusts DOD sites. Follow these instructions . (2) Buy a CAC reader. I like the SCM SCR3500 . (3) Update any drivers if necessary. For the SCM SCR3500 to work on Yosemite or later, you'll need to download the manufacturer's new drivers and install them. If you are running Mavericks…
UPDATE 14 JANUARY 2022 : The MPlayer project appears to be in a bit of disarray. In any case, the underlying software MPlayer relies on, ffmpeg , has gotten much easier to use directly, so I recommend doing that. It should be easy to install ffmpeg with your Mac or Linux package manager (I recommend Homebrew for Mac). From a terminal window, issue brew install ffmpeg or apt install ffmpeg or…
I stole this from a friend's away message Recited by Professor Jon Hanson on last day of class at Harvard Law School - 12/15/06 The river is famous to the fish. The loud voice is famous to silence, which knew it would inherit the earth before anybody said so. The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds watching him from the birdhouse. The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek. The idea…