how-to

Ever since I heard about the new 'Beta' Windows Subsystem for Linux, which basically installs an Ubuntu LTS release inside of Windows 10 (currently 14.04), I've been meaning to give it a spin, and see if it can be a worthy replacement for Cygwin, Git shell, Cmder, etc. And what I was most interested in was whether I could finally point people to a more stable and friendly way of using Ansible on a Windows workstation.

In the past, there was the option of running Ansible inside Cygwin (and this is still the best way to try getting Ansible working in an older Windows environment), but this always felt kludgy to me, and I hated having to recommend either that or forcing Windows users to do a full Linux VM installation just to run Ansible commands. I finally updated my PC laptop to the latest Windows 10 Anniversary Update, and installed the Windows Subsystem for Linux, and lo and behold, Ansible works!

I've been using Certbot to generate and renew Let's Encrypt certificates for most of my smaller sites and services, and recently I needed to move a site from one server to another. It was easy enough to build the new server, then generate the certificate on the new server and use it in Apache or Nginx's configuration.

However, on the old server I no longer wanted to have the old certificate get renewed every week/month/etc. during the certbot-auto cron runs, so I looked to see if there was a way to simply have Certbot delete a certificate. It turns out there's not, but there is an issue—adding -delete option to remove the cert files—to add this functionality.

At this year's php[tek] conference, I decided to record my own sessions (one on a cluster of Raspberry Pis, and another on tips for successfully working from home). Over the years, I've tried a bunch of different methods of recording my own presentations, and I've settled on a pretty good method to get very clear audio and visuals, so I figured I'd document my method here in case you want to do the same.

The banana is for scale.

When I originally built the Raspberry Pi Dramble 6-node Pi cluster in 2014 (for testing Ansible with bare metal hardware on the cheap), I compiled all the code, notes, etc. into a GitHub repository. In 2015, I decided to take it a step further, and I started hosting www.pidramble.com on the cluster, in my basement office!

Over on Lifeisaprayer.com, I posted a detailed tutorial/guide on how to replace the hard drive inside a 24" Intel iMac with an aluminum enclosure (the process is similar on other aluminum iMacs). It's a rather intricate process, so in addition to a few illustrations, I posted a video of the process on YouTube (it's embedded over on Lifeisaprayer.com as well!).

Intel iMac Teardown and Hard Drive Replacement - DIY/Guide

Have fun repairing your iMac! (Please be sure to leave comments on the Lifeisaprayer.com post, and not here).

A blast from the past! The following article is from one of my first websites, ca. 1999, and was updated a couple times throughout it's history. I am re-posting it here because my old website will be deprecated quite soon.

A few notes before we begin: Since the writing of this article, Time Machine came into being (along with Mac OS X 10.5), and has brought about a revolution in the way I maintain backups: my schema now is to have a local daily Time Machine backup to my external hard drive (I recommend a simple 1-2 TB External USB hard drive), then do a once-a-month DVD backup (stored offsite) of my most important files. For most home/small business users, this should be adequate.

Another revolution in data backup is the idea of backing up 'to the cloud' - with the prevalence of broadband Internet access, and the plethora of options for online storage, many companies offer solutions to online backup that were only dreamt of back in the late nineties. Some solutions I recommend: MobileMe (what I use, but not for everyone), Mozy, BackJack, and JungleDisk. (No, those aren't referral links—would I try pulling that on you?).

Backup Strategies for OS X

A question often asked on the Apple Discussion boards and by my fellow Mac users is: "How/when should I backup my Mac, and what is the best/quickest and most reliable way to do it." This is a complicated question, as there are many different ways one can go about backing up OSX.

There are three basic ways that I would like to cover in this article:

1. Using Disk Utility to quickly and easily make a complete, bootable backup to an external drive;
2. Using Carbon Copy Cloner to either (a) do the same thing as Disk Utility, or (b) to clone a certain folder or group of folders (another program that does a great job is SuperDuper!);
3. Drag-and-drop copy files and folders for a quick backup of important files.

Having a screenshot of something you see on your Mac can sometimes be priceless, especially if something happens that you want to show someone else, or if you want to email someone a picture of how to do something on their Macs. Fortunately, Mac OS X has a ton of options for taking pictures of the screen, or even individual elements of the screen. We'll get into the basics, and we'll also show you some advanced techniques that many 'power-users' may not know of (yet).