The Author – Bart Busschots
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Oct
25
TTT Part 23 of n – Networking Intro
Filed Under System Administration, Computers & Tech on October 25, 2014 | 11 Comments
This instalment is the first in what will probably be quite a long mini-series on computer networking. Before we can look at the terminal commands that allow us to interact with the network, we need to gain an understanding of how computer networking works. This is a complex topic, ad there’s a lot to take in. The individual pieces don’t make sense without keeping the big-picture in mind, and yet the big picture doesn’t gel together until you start to understand the detail. Bearing that in mind, this instalment starts the series with a big-picture overview. We’ll flesh this overview out over the instalments that follow, adding in the detail that will hopefully make the whole thing click for you. Ultimately, it’s actually a very elegant design, but that elegance may not be immediately obvious!
Oct
10
TTT Part 22 of n – Tips & Tricks
Filed Under System Administration, Computers & Tech on October 10, 2014 | 2 Comments
This instalment is a little breather between the fairly heavy instalments on searching, and the upcoming set of instalments on networking. We’ll start with a look at some tips and tricks for getting the most out of BASH, and then transition to some tips and tricks for getting the most out of the OS X Terminal app.
Sep
26
TTT Part 21 of n – More Searching
Filed Under System Administration, Computers & Tech on September 26, 2014 | 1 Comment
This is the third and final instalment on searching. In the first instalment we learned how to search for text within files and streams using egrep. In the second we learned to search for files based on all sorts of criteria with the find command. In this final instalment we’ll start by looking at one last feature of find, its a ability to execute commands on the files it finds. Then we’ll end by looking at an OS X-only alternative to find that makes use of the Spotlight search index to really speed up searches.
Sep
7
TTT Part 20 of n – File Searches
Filed Under System Administration, Computers & Tech on September 7, 2014 | 2 Comments
In the previous previous instalment we looked at using egrep to search for a particular piece of text in a stream or file. egrep is often a great tool for finding a file you are looking for, but only if the file is a plain text file, and only if you are searching for that file based on its content. What if you want to search for files based on other criteria, like the last time the file was edited, or the name of the file, or the size of the file, or the type of the file etc.? For that you need a different command, for that you need find.
Aug
30
Play a Sound in Automator
Filed Under System Administration, Software Development, Computers & Tech on August 30, 2014 | 3 Comments
In a recent Chit Chat Across the Pond segment on episode 484 of the Nosillacast Mac Podcast myself and Allison walked through the process of creating an automator action for generating secure memorable passwords with the XKPasswd 2 perl module (we basically walked through the steps in this blog post). During that discussion Allison mentioned it would nice if Automator could play a sound when it was finished so you could know when automator was done generating the password without installing a third-party notification app like Growl.
At the time I didn’t know of a way to do that, but now I do, and it’s really quite straightforward thanks to the OS X terminal command afplay which will play an audio file without opening any sort of GUI.
Aug
16
Creating an XKPasswd 2 OS X Service with Automator
Filed Under System Administration, Computers & Tech on August 16, 2014 | 4 Comments
It’s going to take me a few months to re-write the www.xkpasswd.net site so it uses the new XKPasswd 2 perl module. In the mean-time, thanks to the magic of Automator an OSX Services, Mac users can integrate XKPasswd 2 right into their OS with out very much effort at all.
This blog post is intended as a follow-on post to my earlier XKPasswd 2 beginners guide. This post assumes you have followed the installation instructions in the beginner’s guide to install the XKPasswd 2 module, that you followed along with that post and created a script that generates passwords in a format of your choice, and that you have tested that script to be sure it works. In this post I’ll be using the final example script from the beginner’s guide as my pre-written script.
Aug
16
XKPasswd 2 – An Absolute Beginner’s Guide
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Software Development on | 2 Comments
I’ve just released version two of the XKPasswd perl module, the module that powers the www.xkpasswd.net website. At the moment, only the module has been updated, not the website. It’s going to take me a few months to make all the changes I want to on that site. In the mean time you, can use the module directly. The prerequisites are that you have a computer with Perl and GIT installed, and a plain text editor (no difficult on Linux or Mac).
Jul
25
Photographing at Dusk – My Approach
Filed Under Photography on July 25, 2014 | Leave a Comment
As with everything in photography, there are an infinity of right ways of capturing that wonderful light you get just before and just after sunset. This is a description of the workflow I’ve settled on after much experimentation. It works for me, and it gives me shots with a look and feel that I like – largely realistic, but with a touch of artistic license to try capture the feel as well as the physicality of the light.
I put a lot of effort into processing my dusk shots, but, my aim is to end with a final product that doesn’t look like it’s been heavily processed. There are two reasons so much processing is needed on these kinds of shots:
- High Dynamic Range – Our eyes have a much greater dynamic range than our screens or a JPEG image can represent, and at dusk, the dynamic range is well beyond what a JPEG can represent, so what our eyes seen, and what you get straight out of a digital camera look very very different indeed.
- Mixed White Balance – Dusk scenes almost always involve mixed white balances across the scene. If you balance for the sky, the ground is usually wrong, if you balance for the ground, the sky will usually be wrong.
Shooting at dusk is all about dealing with these two problems.
Jul
19
TTT Part 19 of n – Text Searches
Filed Under Computers & Tech, System Administration on July 19, 2014 | 1 Comment
In the previous two instalments (17 & 18) of this series we learned how to represent patters with regular expressions, or, to be more specific, with POSIX Extended Regular Expression (or EREs). We used the egrep command to test our regular expressions, but we didn’t discus the command itself in detail. Now that we understand regular expressions, it’s time to take a closer look at both egrep, and it’s older brother grep, both commands for filtering and searching text.
May
10
TTT Part 18 of n – More REs
Filed Under System Administration, Computers & Tech on May 10, 2014 | 4 Comments
In the previous instalment we introduced the concept of Regular Expressions, and started to learn the POSIX ERE regular expression language, noting that POSIX ERE is a sub-set of the very commonly used Per Compatible Regular Expression (PCRE) language.
In this instalment we’ll learn more POSIX ERE syntax, and have a look at some examples of REs in GUI apps.