Blog
Add SugarSS To Gatsby
It took me a while to figure out how to integrate SugarSS into the Gatsby build pipeline. I couldn’t find an example of anyone else doing it online. So, I decided to quickly write this up. Install dependencies First, install the appropriate node modules. Add to the Gatsby configuration Next, add the…
Virtualbox and VMware Workstation bridged networking on Windows
I use VMware Workstation for most of my virtual machines on my Windows development machine. However, I also like to use vagrant to manage development projects. While I could pay HashiCorp $80 to get vagrant to work with VMware Workstation, I don’t see the value. Vagrant works perfectly out of the…
Fun Password Generator
Here is a simple random password generator. It is intended to be used with a password manager, since no attempt has been made to make the passwords memorable by humans. Where The project is hosted at https://github.com/mnewt/fpw. It’s also on PyPI at https://pypi.org/project/fpw/ so it’s installable…
Citrix Marchitecture
I love Citrix and they make some great stuff. But let’s be honest. It’s no secret that some of their products are duct taped together and that their products’ names change at least as often as they are released. But right now I’m being forced to get my CCEE certification to meet a client’s…
nest Automatically Configures Network Settings
In my job as a consultant, I frequently connect my computer to different clients’ networks. What’s more, each client has their own network parameters, be they proxies, static IP settings, peculiar DNS settings, or the like. If that wasn’t enough, I need to stay connected to my office networks. Now…
Reporting Active Directory Logons in PowerShell
Reporting on AD Logons has always been much more difficult than it should be. Before Windows 2003, there was no central log of logons at all. The attribute on each user object would seem to do the trick; however, it only records the last logon time on the queried domain controller—it is not…
Solution: RDP: The Local Security Authority cannot be contacted
The Problem I have run into this error a few times in the past. Each time I do, I solve it and forget about it, so that it stymies me for a few minutes the next time I run into it. Hopefully after writing this post I’ll remember next time. The Error The Reason There are myriad reasons why this could…
proxy-toggle.sh
Reason for Being I need to change my proxy settings regularly depending on which network I’m connected to. I initially tried Proxy Switchy but found that it took up too much CPU time. There is no excuse for that in such a simple utility, so I decided to trash it and do things the old fashioned way…
Ruby is slow, but itʼs the same speed as comparable languages
Ruby has a fairly well deserved reputation as a slow language. I tend to think that for its most relevant use cases (running high level programs like text editors and web sites, etc) it doesn’t much matter. You could always write your application in C or Java, but who wants to do that if they can…
Customizing Mac OS X Shell
I’ve been customizing my Mac OS X shell a bit today. The cyan above is for the current directory and the purple shows the current git branch, which is why it appears when I change directory to a git repository. ##FIRST: oh-my-zsh I used oh-my-zsh to start, but I didn’t like any of the included…
Add Code Syntax Highlighting to any page in “Two” Lines
Background A while back I wrote a brief post in which I shared some simple code to automatically highlight the syntax of code blocks on a blog, Code Syntax Highlighting in Tumblr. I want to revisit that post for two reasons: I want to more fully explain how all this works I have created a small…
Unrolling Citrix Single Sign-On Plugin
The Problem The Citrix Single Sign-On Plugin (aka Citrix Password Manager) is a decent way to manage user passwords across a typical, fairly homogeneous Windows Enterprise Environment. It is not given as much love by Citrix as I would like, and it has its quirks. But all password management systems…
Windows Installer Batch Script Revisited
Recap In a previous post, “Windows Versioning and UAC Elevation in a Batch Script”, I shared a script I wrote (with the help of some other blogs) in order to install Citrix Single Sign-On (aka Password Manager). It is modular, however, and there are a numer of pieces that could be repurposed for a…
Web Apps need more powerful security standard
I’ve been developing a web app that needs access to all sites that a user visits. Somewhat similar to lastpass, it scans pages as the user browses and fills in information in forms when appropriate. Currently, the only decent way to make such a thing is to put it in a web browser plugin. But what…
Code Syntax Highlighting in Tumblr
Edited 08/10/2012: See updated post: Add Code Syntax Highlighting to any page in “Two” Lines It aggravates me that no blogging platform makes it easy to enable code highlighting. Oh well, at least tumblr makes it easy to edit HTML manually to include code highlighting. I put together the code…
Windows Versioning and UAC Elevation in a Batch Script
Edited 07/18/2012: See updated post, Windows Installer Batch Script Revisited Recently, I needed to write a script that would install multiple independent components onto Windows XP and Windows 7 machines. The Windows 7 machines would be both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. The install routine…