Techie on kenops

How I’m Winning with Windows 11 (without the nags)

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 21:51:42 +0000

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.

Updated Homelab using M910Qs and P320s

Wed, 31 May 2023 13:01:03 +0000

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

Octoprint container in Debian Windows WSL 2 and Docker Desktop

Sun, 11 Sep 2022 02:45:10 +0000

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!

Docker volume backup and restore the easy way.

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 21:06:02 +0000

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.

Add HEIC support to nextcloud

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 01:57:59 +0000

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…

Take control - from the Center for Humane Technology

Sun, 11 Oct 2020 20:37:31 +0000

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

The Social Dilemma

Sun, 11 Oct 2020 20:21:46 +0000

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.

So long, Facebook, and Thanks for all the Fish ...

Sun, 11 Oct 2020 19:49:02 +0000

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.

Password-less ssh in 2 Glorious Steps...

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 23:54:55 +0000

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:

HomeLab Build

Fri, 05 Jun 2020 05:36:50 +0000

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.

Raspberry Pi backup using fsarchiver and other tricks

Tue, 13 Jun 2017 06:56:17 +0000

So I ran into a few issues using the dd image backup I referenced prior Raspberry Pi 3 SDCard backup

The Image is very large even though the data was not. For example on a 32GB SD card I was getting a 12GB file. I only have 3GB of data! so that was a bummer.
When it comes time to recover, I have to expand the gz image file to a full 32GB to then image it onto another SD device. There’s tricks around this I’m sure but still.
Since dd was reading 100% of the SD card (/dev/mmcblk0) even with compression it took a LONG time to create the image. 20 minutes or so. Since I’m backing up a live system this was a real issue.

I did manage to figure out how to create a partial image if your partition sizes were smaller than the actual device - This seemed to work but it still was storing 6.6GB of data which was over double what I actually had:

Raspberry Pi 3 SDCard backup...

Mon, 27 Mar 2017 17:52:31 +0000

From https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=77492 dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 | gzip > /media/usb/mmcblk0.img.gz Checking if this works. More to come :)

Snipe heaven

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 01:07:56 +0000

Ah good times… Below is from 2010! Here’s some new details on snipes… https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=49073

I have 4 VM’s running MS-DOS and Netware. Game On! Instructions:

Use a vnc viewer like TightVNC (realVNC didn’t work for me, only gave me a blank screen).
Go to one of the following server wijgalt.homeip.net
Connect to one of the ports, 5901 thought 5904
If you already see activity on the screen, just exit and try another port.
Go to drive G:
Run nlsnipes
If there’s a game already going it will tell you. Just wait a bit and try again!

Enjoy!

Netgear Stora NAS

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:31:50 +0000

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Since I work helping companies manage their enterprise storage environment, I tend to be very anal with storing my data at home. It needs to be resilient, redundant, and fast. Why? I’m retarded. Most of the time, I spend more than enough money on something I have to manage and tweak constantly. No inexpensive NAS device has had all the features I wanted in an embedded device - until now.

Best way to tether your iPhone - PDAnet

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:18:06 +0000

Unlike most apps that will provide a proxy web service to your computer through your iPhone PDAnet will provide a complete network solution for tethering your computer. Basically, you can use your iPhone as a computer wifi device, without restriction. While proxy apps will work well for web applications, it doesn’t work for stuff like email, ftp, ssh, etc. PDAnet can handle all network traffic. I’m using my iPhone right now to access the internet from my Macbook Pro and it’s quite fast! Check PDAnet out! http://lifehacker.com/5086490/the-best-way-to-tether-your-iphone-to-your-laptop-for-free

Old fashion "Open Folder" Icon in the Dock

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:50:46 +0000

While the newer versions of OS X have been great and the dock has matured, I hated one thing. Sometimes I just want to put a directory on the dock without it doing it’s crazy effect stuff to it like Fan, Grid, List, etc. Many times all I want is a dock icon that will just open a directory in finder. Fortunately, I figured out how to do this!!! Create a link to the directory of your choice on the desktop. For instance, I created a link (By holding down the “option”, “apple/command” keys down) of my home directory on my desktop. Now, drag that link to the dock. Bingo! I have a dock icon that will just open a finder window of my home directory.

Time lapse photos using your TI calculator

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:53:44 +0000

This is a great project for just about anyone who ever went to class with a TI calculator. With a few lines of code on the calculator and a 2.5mm male to male plug you can create time lapse photos. Turn a TI Graphing Calculator into an Intervalometer and Create Time Lapse Videos - More DIY How To Projects

Su.pr to shorten urls

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:34:03 +0000

I just started using su.pr to shorten long urls and it has the ability to do some very cool stuff if you link it into your wordpress site. I prefer it over tunyurl and others. Check it out!

Great Data Storage Presentation

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:47:48 +0000

If you go to http://dsstos.blogspot.com/ there’s an excellent presentation on data storage concepts and recommendations. It’s HDS AMS focused, but the majority of the presentation relates to general data storage. Great stuff!

Cleanup the Open with... menu in OS X

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:39:04 +0000

For OS X Leopard this worked for me. Cut and paste this command into terminal:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.f*/Frameworks/LaunchS*/Support/lsregister \
 -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

My datacenter is all blowed up...

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:43:05 +0000

This is a marketing video from HP simulating a datacenter disaster causing a fail over to a backup datacenter. People often ask me what I do for a living and for most of the time the answer I usually give doesn’t help. If the conversation continues with printer driver questions in Vista I know I failed to describe what I do. So in short, I help companies with the design, build, and implementation of large storage arrays that are designed to minimize application downtime due to hardware failures. These same storage arrays also have extended capabilities and features that help customers create enire copies of their datacenters in case thier primary datacenter gets “blowed up”. In this video, I would be one of the goofy white coat guys. Enjoy!

Website tracking with Google Analytics

Tue, 26 May 2009 21:34:07 +0000

I recently started using Google Analytics to track my web site usage and so far it’s been great. By creating a account, and installing the wordpress plugin “Google Analyticator” I now get detail on how my site is being viewed. Great stuff - try it out!

mySql search and replace within a field.

Tue, 19 May 2009 15:22:16 +0000

When moving wordpress sites from one domain to another, it’s common to have hard coded urls in the database of the old web site. To update the majority of the posts, you can use the following sql statement to update the post urls. You may also need to run the statement on the guid foild as well.

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, ‘staging.server.com’, ‘www.productionserver.com’);

synctoy for Windows file syncs...

Wed, 13 May 2009 02:37:45 +0000

I found the following application from Microsoft to be quite useful for syncing files between hard drives and network drives. Check it out!

http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/synctoy.aspx

Goodbye Sun Microsystems...

Mon, 11 May 2009 05:03:33 +0000

So Oracle is in the final stages of buying Sun Microsystems Inc, a company I adored for years. It’s too bad to see Sun go, and with all other Oracle buyouts I’m sure not much will be left of the original idea of Sun. It’s sad to see, but after seeing Sun as the premier UNIX envorinment in the late 90’s go through it’s demise in early 2000’s the writing was on the wall. I remember distinctly being at a good friends house discussing a plan we had to get in the car, drive to Merlo Park CA, and tell the then CEO exactly how to get back on track:

Latest iPhone prototype...

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:58:42 +0000

This thing is incredible… http://www.iwood3b.com/

Cool Mac automater Actions

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 03:40:44 +0000

I just found cool automater actions at http://junecloud.com The action I’m especially please with is the “Create Clean Archive” action. This will create a archive zip file that does not have the usualy .DS_Store files and crap. Excellent stuff!

Fun Stuff...

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:26:07 +0000

OS Boot Sounds: http://titan08.free.fr/Boot%20Sounds/

Sun Cheatsheet

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:28:12 +0000

I published my Sun Cheatsheet document to the world recently. It’s a compilation of Sun commands and processes that I documented over the years. Enjoy! http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhjhzg6x_3c6d658

Bye MobileMe...

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:46:16 +0000

Buying a hosted domain: $100 Buying a pro membership on smugmug: $60 Installing Wordpress: $0 Able to manage my familiy’s websites with freedom and without major pain: Priceless! I recently started a journey on removing my dependancy on Apple’s MobileMe services. When .Mac ruled the land with web-based wonders, life was good. Then Apple decided to trash what worked with MobileMe, and everything went to hell. Load speeds, reliability, service limitations, email address changes, ical incompatibilities, groups disabled; all this appeared with the shiny new MobileMe. But I can sort of sync with my iPhone. Are you kidding? Did Apple really have to choose between having great user experience with .Mac and basic iPhone sync with MobileMe? Overall MobileMe is no longer worth the money and time I invested in it. So now I’m sporting a spiffy new web site using Wordpress which is very easy to use and I have completely stopped using Apple’s iWeb as a result. I have a regular IMAP email server with my web isp provider for email, and even Google Sync Mobile services for my iPhone calendar and contacts. I also use a paid picture site called smugmug for all of our photos. Why a paid site? I have complete control of the site and the themes, no Adware, backups, Share with family sections, and I was even able to point my own domain to the smugmug directly - http://pics.gridleak.com. They also handle raw picture formats which is a real plus. I learned the hard way that many of the “free” sites will tamper with your image resolutions when you upload them to save server disk space. If you’re interested in trying smugmug you can test it out with a free 14-day trail, and you can use the coupon code OHpYezYHRef9s for a discounted join rate. My Bro Stuart was the one that turned me on to the site. Yes… Stuart. The kid that didn’t have a computer until last year and started life right with a Macbook Pro. Werd! So I’m now ready to cut the cord on MobileMe. It’s sad really; Apple broke something that really worked. Even today it’s getting better again, but I’m tired of waiting. I’m also done with being at the mercy of a support FAQ web page when I have real problems. While Apple’s computer support is the best in the business, you can’t get a live person to talk to you about MobileMe issues. If you’re interested in making the plunge, or you want MobileMe like functionality, below is a list of technologies that take care of what MobileMe does for a Apple system:

Fixing the command "man" in OSX

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 05:36:18 +0000

The command ‘man’ in terminal has an annoying feature: it clears the screen on exit. So if you find a command line switch you want to try, when you exit man the detail all disappears. To correct this, change the following line in /private/etc/man.conf:

PAGER /usr/bin/less -is

PAGER /usr/bin/less -isX

Bold vs iPhone

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 06:02:34 +0000

After buying both the iPhone and iPhone 3g, I became frustrated with the typical iPhone problems - spotty 3g network access, no cut-n-paste, etc. As a result, I was excited about the Bold and got one right when it came out. Having used a crackberry in the past was I confident that it would be the device for me. I used the Bold for a number of days and learned an important lesson - Appreciate what you have. The Bold did not have all the answers, and after using the email and web interface on the Bold, I quickly realized that the iPhone was still the device to have. Now I have a new appreciation for the iPhone. It has issues, no doubt. But the core functionality has yet to be challenged by any competitor. After compiling a list of features and rating them, I posted the results at: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pLRnDwRBVmrELW9i6ug_-fw

Using system wide socks proxy with iphone tethering

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 05:47:07 +0000

Recently I discovered a program called proxifier, a OS X Leopard program that will send all network traffic through a defined socks proxy server. So instead of defining the proxy settings in each individual program, simply turn on proxifier and redirect all the network traffic. proxifier is the same thing as WideCap or FreeCap in the Windows side. tsocks for OS X may work as well. So why is this important? Well, I’m on the road a lot and with a iPhone 3g that’s jailbroken you can install a socks server called 3proxy through the cydia installer and with proxifier you can route all your network traffic on your Mac through your new socks server at 3g speeds. This means I can get email, surf the web, use skype, etc. all through the iPhone Here’s the steps for a mac. It’s not that hard… Create a ad-hoc network on the mac?by using the “Create Network…” option.?I called mine “sweet” Set a static IP for your mac on the ah-hoc?network you created. I like to use?10.10.10.5 You need to have your iPhone jailbroken?and have 3proxy installed. Search the web?for details on how to make this happen.?I like quickpwn. On your iphone, select the network you created on your mac, “sweet” for me, and set iPhone’s static IP address. 10.10.10.10 will do nicely. Now, run /usr/bin/socks on your iphone. I like to set mine up in Boss Prefs so I can turn it on and off easily. On the mac, run proxifier, and point it to the socks proxy IP address of 10.10.10.10 port 1080. Your done! This looks like a pain, but if you create a network location with the IP settings, and use Boss Prefs with the iPhone, this process can be done within 20 seconds. And with FW 2.1 on the iPhone 3G the speeds are very impressive, and I even found I can answer a call while I’m surfing through the socks proxy. Make sure to turn off the socks proxy when your not using it otherwise you’ll find that your iPhone battery will run dry quickly. I also did some research on using pppd and slirp to create a complete network tunnel to the 3g network on the iphone. It appears that FW 2.x has broken slirp and it may be related to a kernel update the may have nuetered ipfw. Bummer. The following command will start a pppd session and will provide a ppp0 network interface. The problem I found is I couldn’t get the iPhone to bridge the networks. pppd is already on both OS X and the iPhone, but you need ssh on the iphone to play.

Back to My Mac Dlink Settings

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:37:10 +0000

Here’s a few screen shots of my D-Link DIR-655 router and it’s settings to allow Back to My Mac (BTMM) to work on my home mini:

OSX Mirrored Raidset Recovery

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 05:57:08 +0000

Today I experienced a firewire drive failure on my mini. To determine which drive was bad was a bit difficult since the apple profiler does not show serial number information about the drives and the firewire id can change depending on which drive was ready first, etc. After the experience I now have the following steps to take to make this easier in the future. The follow was done after I replaced the bad drive – There also appears to be a Disk Utility issue with disk replacements do I went the terminal window instead. mini:~ sean$ sudo su - Password: mini:~ root# diskutil list /dev/disk0 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme 74.5 Gi disk0 1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk0s1 2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 74.2 Gi disk0s2 /dev/disk1 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: FDisk_partition_scheme 465.8 Gi disk1 1: DOS_FAT_32 SPAREY 465.6 Gi disk1s1 /dev/disk2 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme 279.5 Gi disk2 1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk2s1 2: Apple_HFS Timie 279.2 Gi disk2s2 /dev/disk3 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme 931.5 Gi disk3 1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk3s1 2: Apple_RAID 931.2 Gi disk3s2 3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 128.0 Mi disk3s3 /dev/disk4 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme 931.5 Gi disk4 1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk4s1 2: Apple_HFS Untitled 1 931.2 Gi disk4s2 /dev/disk5 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: Apple_HFS Hugie 931.2 Gi disk5 mini:~ root# diskutil checkraid RAID SETS

================================================================= Name: Hugie Disk Unique ID: EAA0BF40-5431-4DBF-B280-5D96983C4C18 Type: Mirror Status: Degraded Size: 999860862976 B Rebuild: automatic Device Node: disk5 Apple RAID Version: 2

Device Node UUID Status

0 disk3s2 BCE5791A-9FBC-471F-BCCB-AB0B9DB0A81E Online 0 -none- FC7931AC-A4F3-468F-AC75-F48C60EABFEF Missing/Damaged

mini:~ root# diskutil repairmirror /Volume/Hugie disk4 Could not find the RAID set device node mini:~ root# diskutil repairmirror /Volumes/Hugie disk4 Note: Syncing data between mirror partitions can take a very long time. Note: The mirror should now be repairing itself. You can check its status using ‘diskutil listRAID’. mini:~ root# diskutil checkraid RAID SETS

================================================================== Name: Hugie Disk Unique ID: EAA0BF40-5431-4DBF-B280-5D96983C4C18 Type: Mirror Status: Degraded Size: 999860862976 B Rebuild: automatic Device Node: disk5 Apple RAID Version: 2

Device Node UUID Status

0 disk3s2 BCE5791A-9FBC-471F-BCCB-AB0B9DB0A81E Online 1 disk4s2 21FA4F0B-7637-40CD-B396-A2C7D64589DA 0% (Rebuilding)

mini:~ root#