Techie

Windows 11 is ideal for multifunctional use - Office, Games, WSL, HW Options Kazoo - but the built-in defaults slow me down and get sooo annoying. These tweaks make it fast, clean, and predictable: Windhawk mods for the stuff Microsoft won’t expose: Taskbar Clock Customization (rich clock/date formats example: %date%, %time% ?%upload_speed% and %weather% ?%cpu% ?%ram% ?%download_speed% Better File Sizes in Explorer (human-readable sizes), and Taskbar Icon Spacing/Size (tight or roomy as you like). Windhawk Everything + Everything Toolbar for instant file search from the taskbar/start area. Windows Search sleeps; Everything sprints. Voidtools Start11 to restore a sane Start Menu—and wire it to Everything so Start menu searches are local, fast, and ad-free. Stardock AutoHotkey to supercharge virtual desktops: ALT+1..9 jumps to a desktop; SHIFT+ALT+1..9 moves the focused window there. It’s a perfect “almost-tiling” workflow without the rigidity of a tiling WM. My keymaps live here: https://github.com/ske5074/windows-desktop-switcher . AutoHotkey (Be sure to use the 1.x version of AutoHotKey) - Update! Another project that’s close to the same - almost! https://github.com/dankrusi/WindowsVirtualDesktopHelper Twinkle Tray for one-click monitor brightness (and quick volume), right from the tray—especially handy with multi-monitor setups. Twinkle Tray Kate a super lightweight editor that is GIT aware but not intrusive or annoying or requiring 8GB of ram to run! Kagi A pay for search engine that has NO ADS. You pay a small fee for use, and that’s how they survive. No Ads, no search shaping for sponsors, none of that BS Filelight Provides a way to see where your storage consumption is on your drives. My new go after using windirstat for years. Net result: a quiet, fast Windows 11 desktop that works the way I do—no Edge promos, no Start menu fluff, and muscle-memory moves between clean, purpose-built desktops. ...

Recently, I gave my homelab a fresh upgrade by adding Lenovo ThinkCentre M910Q Tiny systems and a few P320s equipped with Nvidia Quadro P600 video cards. These systems are compact yet powerful, documented to support up to 32GB of RAM each—but with a bit of tweaking, they can handle an impressive 64GB! They might not be the most powerful setups out there, but with their small form factor and affordability, they make fantastic little Proxmox machines, offering big potential in a small footprint. Used PC4-21300 2666MHz CL19 32GB SODIMMs for memory, with Intel Core I7 CPUs

Here’s a list of steps to get octoprint to run within a container on Windows. I happen to have a windows system running next to my ender so instead of infinitely waiting for a raspberry pi I decided to run octoprint in a container within windows - if possible. Using Debian was a challenge, but I prefer it over Ubuntu, so I took the extra time to figure it out. Enjoy! ...

I haven’t had to move docker volumes around in a few years, but I finally had the need today. As usual, I searched for the process, knowing that most examples are… well… not very good. Well, as I almost resorted to pulling a manual job using ubuntu, I found a great write-up by Jarek Lipski on Medium. Here’s how you backup using alpine and tar. Also, make sure you “docker stop” the containers that use the volume, so you get a consistent backup. ...

From https://eplt.medium.com/5-minutes-to-install-imagemagick-with-heic-support-on-ubuntu-18-04-digitalocean-fe2d09dcef1 sudo sed -Ei 's/^# deb-src /deb-src /' /etc/apt/sources.list sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf libtool git-core sudo apt-get build-dep imagemagick libmagickcore-dev libde265 libheif cd /usr/src/ sudo git clone https://github.com/strukturag/libde265.git sudo git clone https://github.com/strukturag/libheif.git cd libde265/ sudo ./autogen.sh sudo ./configure sudo make sudo make install cd /usr/src/libheif/ sudo ./autogen.sh sudo ./configure sudo make sudo make install cd /usr/src/ sudo wget https://www.imagemagick.org/download/ImageMagick.tar.gz sudo tar xf ImageMagick.tar.gz cd ImageMagick-7* sudo ./configure --with-heic=yes sudo make sudo make install sudo ldconfig sudo apt install php-imagick cd /usr/src/ wget http://pecl.php.net/get/imagick-3.4.4.tgz tar -xvzf imagick-3.4.4.tgz cd imagick-3.4.4/ apt install php7.2-dev phpize ./configure make make install sudo phpenmod imagick A restart of apache2 should finish the job. Check with the phpinfo() call… ...

I couldn’t agree more about how to take control of your digital consumption from, “The Center for Humane Technology”. Here’s the link and a snippet from the web site: https://www.humanetech.com/take-control

I thought I understood the general concepts and algorithms that companies like google, Facebook, twitter, etc. use but I was astounded about how much it impacts us as a society. The documentary, “The Social Dilemma”, on Netflix, is filled with conversations with many of the original architects of these systems and how monetization though ad targeting is driving behavior modification of billions of people worldwide. The Social Dilemma also goes on to explain how our younger populations are being affected and correlates the dramatic increase in many conditions like anxiety are due the nature of keeping someone always engaged in a platform for monetary gain. ...

Good Morning! After not being active on Facebook for almost a year now I made the move to completely delete my account. While it was surprisingly tough initially it was a great decision. I realized all the ads and shaped content was not worth the family and friend connection I was actually seeking. My account on Instagram will probably be deleted soon as well. I’m getting ads and such on that platform as well. It’s not surprising since Instagram is also owned by Facebook. ...

Local System - Let’s call it alpha Remote System we don’t want to have to enter passwords for, Let’s call it foxtrot Prep: Harden your existing ssh keys since RSA 1024 sucks. This will create a new 4096 version - ed22519 is actually preferred so you can skip the rsa creation if preferred. me@alpha$ mv ~/.ssh/id_rsa ~/.ssh/id_rsa_legacy me@alpha$ mv ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub ~/.ssh/id_rsa_legacy.pub Step 1: Generate new keys: me@alpha$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -o -a 100 #RSA version me@alpha$ ssh-keygen -o -a 100 -t ed25519 #Preferred ed25519 version Step 2: Copy the Ed25519 keys to the remote system called foxtrot: ...

Since I had a old windows laptop as a plex and file server for years I thought it would be good to try something new. After researching options I ddecided to try FreeNAS. Since it has ZFS and I’m an old Sun guy - why not. Well…. After a few weeks I decided to abandon FreeNAS and roll my own using a ThinkCentre M93p Tiny. I’ll try to post some notes on how the build goes.