How To Use Rsync to Sync Local and Remote Directories Feb. 11, 2021, 10:26 p.m.

Rsync, which stands for “remote sync”, is a remote and local file synchronization tool. It uses an algorithm that minimizes the amount of data copied by only moving the portions of files that have changed.

Windows Installer reconfigured all applications - Avoid querying Win32_product Jan. 12, 2021, 9:50 a.m.

Win32_product class is not query optimized. Queries such as select * from Win32_Product where (name like 'Sniffer%') require WMI to use the MSI provider to enumerate all of the installed products and then parse the full list sequentially to handle the where clause. This process also initiates a consistency check of packages installed, verifying and repairing the install. With an account with only user privileges, as the user account may not have access to quite a few locations, may cause delay in application launch and an event 11708 stating an installation failure.

Win32reg_AddRemovePrograms is a much lighter and effective way to do this, which avoids the calls to do a resiliency check, especially in a locked down environment. So when using Win32reg_AddRemovePrograms we won't be calling on msiprov.dll and won't be initiating a resiliency check.

Reserved Words in DynamoDB Dec. 10, 2020, 9:14 a.m.

The following keywords are reserved for use by DynamoDB. Do not use any of these words as attribute names in expressions. This list is not case-sensitive.

Domain Controller Selection Nov. 27, 2020, 3:49 p.m.

The process of a Windows client selecting an Active Directory domain controller isn't too complex but is often not fully understood.  Let's look at the way a member server chooses a DC and how this affects applications.

Deploying a Ubiquiti UniFi Home Network including Multiple WiFi Access Points July 30, 2020, 11:36 p.m.

Your network design is the greatest factor for poor wireless roaming. To get the best results, you will need to tune your wireless home network. This includes accounting for neighboring networks, interference, the density of your APs, the number of your wireless clients and their idiosyncrasies in terms of wireless standards support. Don’t expect to deploy a multi-AP network in your home, leave everything at the default settings, and have it work flawlessly. The location, power settings, and additional configuration parameters of your AP’s are critical.

Free Typing Speed Test July 20, 2020, 7:58 a.m.

Free WPM typing test.

Getting Started with macOS Programming in Swift June 23, 2020, 1:57 p.m.

In this post we are going to see the basics of a macOS app through the creation of a simple, but at the same time useful for many developers app: A font viewer that will let us choose font families and it will be displaying the PostScript names of the available fonts.

ZSH Aliases June 23, 2020, 1:55 p.m.

Hacker News thread with handy shell aliases & tips.

GTD Gmail: Inbox Zero and Optimized Email Workflow June 23, 2020, 1:52 p.m.

We are going to use a productivity hack called Touch-It-Once. This means that once you open a conversation you decide right away what to do with it. Don’t postpone and come back to it. You touch it once and move on to the next thing.

How to disable the weather column to resolve instance slowness? June 23, 2020, 1:49 p.m.

When an instance grows to be very large, and its folder structure has many levels, the generation of this weather column can cost a lot of system resources slowing down other processes. If an instance is impacted by the performance of the Weather Column, a solution is to remove the folder health metrics of all existing folders. The only caveat of such a change is that the weather column will always report Folders as Healthy.

(A few) Ops Lessons We All Learn The Hard Way Jan. 28, 2020, 8:47 a.m.

Nope, not another Falsehoods post, but not entirely unlike one. Only here we have a few lessons in operations that we all (eventually) (have to) learn; often the hard way. Why things are the way they are, or what the lessons mean is left to the reader to interpret, agree, or disagree with. It's more fun that way. Enjoy!

Bash $* and $@ Jan. 13, 2020, 2:18 p.m.

In Bash, there are two closely related “special parameters” for accessing how the current script was invoked: $* and $@. For both variables, the behavior is affected by whether or not the variable is enclosed in double quotes. The following table summarizes all cases:

Form    Meaning
$*    $1 $2 $3...
$@    $1 $2 $3...
"$*"  "$1 $2 $3..."
"$@"  "$1" "$2" "$3"...

Creating a Composite DSC Configuration with Parameters Jan. 6, 2020, 12:37 p.m.

When a Composite Configuration is created as an ordinary module, it seems like it behaves like an ordinary Cmdlet. This means, to pass parameters to the composite configuration I had to do:

Node localhost 
{ 
    BaseConfig Common -MyParameter "My Parameter Value" {} 
}

Bash-my-AWS Jan. 3, 2020, 7:36 p.m.

Bash-my-AWS is a simple but extremely powerful set of CLI commands for managing resources on Amazon Web Services.

Ablaut reduplication: Why 'tock tick' doesn't sound right? Dec. 28, 2019, 9:13 p.m.

As the word signifies, ‘reduplication’ in linguistics is when you repeat a word, sometimes with a modified vowel (e.g., ding dang dong) or sometimes with an altered consonant (e.g., nitty-gritty). As such, if there are two words, then the first word contains I, and the next word contains either A or O (e.g., ‘mish mash’, ‘hip hop’, ‘chit chat’ etc.).

However, if there are three words in question, then the first word contains I, the next contains A and the last word contains O (e.g., bish bash bosh). It doesn’t have anything definite about it, but it somehow just sounds right.

English order of Adjectives Dec. 28, 2019, 9:12 p.m.

Adjectives, writes the author, professional stickler Mark Forsyth, “absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac.”

Lingon Dec. 28, 2019, 9:10 p.m.

Lingon lets you run things automatically by modifying configuration files for the system function called launchd. This means that you can also edit or remove jobs created by other apps. And the system handles running the jobs in the background so you don’t need to have Lingon open after you have saved your job.

Supermicro IPMI Utilities Dec. 23, 2019, 8:16 p.m.

Supermicro IPMI / BMC tools.

Running GUI’s with Docker on Mac OS X Dec. 23, 2019, 8:15 p.m.

We are very familiar with running CLI processes in Docker containers with no Graphical UI at all. But did you know that you can just as well run applications with a graphical user interfaces, like Chrome, Firefox, Tor Browser, Gimp, etc… with Docker… on OS X!

Everything PKI Oct. 14, 2019, 5:10 p.m.

PKI is really powerful, and really interesting. The math is complicated, and the standards are stupidly baroque, but the core concepts are actually quite simple. Certificates are the best way to identify code and devices, and identity is super useful for security, monitoring, metrics, and a million other things. Using certificates is not that hard. No harder than learning a new language or database. It’s just slightly annoying and poorly documented. This is the missing manual.