Updated 03-Aug-2025 Dropbox is a cloud storage and sync service, with additional editors/apps, such as Paper and Showcase. For various reasons, those additional Dropbox apps are not useful for our use cases. However, storage and sync are excellent in and of themselves, and generally superior to Google Drive which is the only real alternative. What ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Dropbox Paper is a product I really want to like. For one thing, the promise of better editor is something long unfulfilled. And taking some design cues (or perhaps merely unrelated similarities), Medium did do something nice for the blogging environment. By extending it as essentially a wysiwyg Markdown+ editor, drag and drop-friendly, ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 We can call this Tsuite, inspired by Toot Sweet (a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang candy invention), and is meant to provide some functionality offered through third party collaborative documents. The main point is to have a self-hosted, free-and-open-source alternative, albeit with more bare bones functionality. Ultimately the goal is to be functional enough ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 AWS DHCP options are set on a per-VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) basis. By default, things like the search scope and DNS servers used by a given AWS Instance are set by DHCP which also provides the private IP address (but not any Elastic IP Addresses). Indeed, the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud is a ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 The current system of analytics tracking is so very broken, let us count the ways: Most solutions require third party trackers These are easily blocked by third-party ad blockers/privacy tools They are mostly javascript (and javascript can be disabled) They are a privacy nightmare, even when implemented properly They slow a site down ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 By rogue I mean those processes which are not beneficial (at least for my configuration). To start with there are those processes which actual communicate over the network. View Processes on OSX with nettop nettop Nettop is a built in process communication display utility, useful, especially with seeing what network interfaces are being ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 What is Montessori? I am a great fan of Maria Montessori and her ideas about education. That said, she is long-dead and the Montessori we have is not her ideas (though we do have her books) but rather a set of institutions, schools, and teachers. We must look closer to see clearly. Because ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 A big part of speed is managing the browser cache. This usually means setting compression (gzip/deflate) and expirations of cached content. Compression takes place at the web server (generally after minification). Minification usually also combines files together, so that that there are fewer requests. Compression provides enormous advantages (much more than minification), however, ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 MySQL is good for large multi-user databases. However, when dealing with few changes to the database, and many reads, it is far from a great solution (in fact, is a terrible solution). SQLite is far superior in that situation, and for serial/sequential edits. MySQL 5.6 vs. 5.7 For those with minimal database needs, ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Two words time-based automation: cron and crontabs (and other apps such as anacron) are needed for so many things on a server. Here is how to use cron and crontabs on Amazon Linux AMI. Install crontabs This will in addition install several dependencies, including cron. yum -y install crontabs chkconfig crond on service ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 There are several sites which sell unlimited access to a large number of WooCommerce and other themes and plugins. These sites are taking advantage of the GPL which allows for free distribution, though it is unclear if they are violating use agreements (or trademarks). In any case, each of these sites has a ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 This is a collection of stuff that can help out when things go wrong. Extract Fingerprint and Public Key from a Private Key Extract Public Key from Private Key: ssh-keygen -y Generate a Fingerprint of a Private Key to verify in the AWS EC2 Console: openssl pkcs8 -in path_to_private_key -inform PEM -outform DER ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Tokyo still top choice for Asia HQ Datacenter Even with multiple options coming online in Singapore, Tokyo is still the best option for a single, Asia-based datacenter. Even when serving locations such as Thailand and Vietnam, Tokyo is a strong competitor to Singapore. Linode is my unmanaged VPS of choice. They have a ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 This assumes a current configuration of: - Amazon Linux (6.x RHEL series) - Apache 2.4 - PHP 5.6 + Opcache - Oracle MySQL 5.7 Installation up to this point is encompassed by: - OpenVPN on Amazon Linux EC2, basic configuration and securing an EC2 instance - Amazon Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, installing ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Technology has advanced to the point where 95% of the work in 360 images and video is now done by consumer-grade hardware. For a 360 walkthrough or tour of an event or architectural location, all that is needed is a tripod, monopod, or head-mounted camera, and remote shutter or automatic capturing (every 8 ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 PATH can be a pain, but there are some basics: Syntax $PATH before or after (before) Is EXPORT needed, or not (not) Where is PATH set All apps+shells /etc/environment All shells ~/.profile or /etc/profile for all users (or a separate file under /etc/profile.d/ if using pacman) Bash shell ~/.bashrc (or ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bash_login) ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Note: Amazon Linux AMI is essentially CentOS 6.x. Everything below works on CentOS as well. Preparation for Amazon LAMP The OpenVPN on Amazon Linux AMI is a good place to start in preping the L for the AMP part of the lamp stack. Lots of good stuff there. A followup is WordPress Multisite ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 OpenVPN is great, and the OpenVPN command line client and the Viscosity GUI are also nice. However, all configurations need to be checked to ensure there is no information leakage. Secondly, the basic OpenVPN connection needs another layer of encryption and/or obfuscation, in order to interoperate with Internet firewalls and services that use ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Amazon Lightsail is a VPS services offered by Amazon that competes with the likes of Rackspace, DigitalOcean, Linode, etc. Note: As of mid 2018 AWS effectively halved its prices on Lightsail. This means there is a $3.50 USD/mo. option and the $40 option listed below (4gb ram/2 cpu/60gb ssd/4tb xfer) is actually only ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 What I learned in migrating from CentOS on Linode to Amazon AMI Linux on EC2. Note: Amazon Lightsail is probably a better comparison, but it is not available in the region we need it in, so EC2 is required for now. Update: Lightsail is now available in more regions. VPS Hosting and Operating ... Read more