Avec de vrais morceaux de Geek dedans !
There are 63 posts filed in Geek Inside (this is page 1 of 7).
I’ve used image sharing software for the past 5 years: CloudApp, Cloudup, Droplr, I tried them all. Those apps are great to quickly share screenshots, annotated images, gifs, or even screencasts with users. Sometimes, an image is worth a thousand words. :)
When I switched to Linux for my February challenge, I set out to find a cross-platform alternative to all those services. Here is what I came up with.
Yesterday I mentioned how muscle memory was the hardest thing to beat when switching OSes. Here is another quick tip that you’ll love if you’re switching from Mac to Ubuntu and if like me, you’re a Cmd+Tab Alt+tab addict.
It’s the little things. So far, switching from Mac to Ubuntu has been relatively painless; most of the apps I use every day are cross-platform. There is, however, one thing that’s been bugging me a lot: Ctrl.
One of the things that bothered me when I switched to Ubuntu was the mouse: while the Mouse settings panel offered options to change the cursor speed, I couldn’t change the scroll wheel settings: I wanted it to be faster, and I wanted it to use Mac OS’ natural scrolling direction.
After a bit of googling, this specific answer helped me get this fixed.
First, you get a list of the different devices linked to your machine, then you check the settings for one of the devices (number 10 in my case), and use set-prop to customize a specific setting.
Changing from 1 to -1 got me the natural scrolling back. Victory!
xinput list xinput list-props 10 xinput set-prop 10 'Evdev Scrolling Distance' -1 5 5
Now if only I could do something to get all my additional buttons back, that’d be great! :)
Unison is a great little tool to synchronize files between your local machine and a remote server. It’s free, open-source, and cross-platform. I use it every day to develop Jetpack. However, until very recently I couldn’t use it to work with files on this very site. I’m hosted with Webfaction, a great hosting provider for developers who want flexibility without having to deal with server administration. A lot of packages are already installed and configured on my server for me. Unison is not available by default, so I had to install it myself. Luckily, Webfaction lets you do that!
I’m very careful with the things I install on my computer, and the extensions I used in Google Chrome, my browser of choice.
Unfortunately, it seems that an extension I installed a long time ago, “Live HTTP Headers“, is now used to insert a random JavaScript file on all the sites you visit. That file will randomly generate an ad pop-up on any site, using the asgds_modal ID. That’s pretty bad. ?
If you use that extension, you’ll want to deactivate it right now!
It took me a little while to figure out where that pop-up was coming from, as the extension name hadn’t changed. The only tip was that the JavaScript file would sometimes return a 404, thus generating an error in my browser console. That led me to look at the Extension page in the Chrome store, only to realize the extension had already been removed from the store. That’s great, but it’d be great if they also removed the app from all browsers using it!
I’m now back to using the Network tab of the Developer tools for that kind of work, unless some of you know of a good extension I could use?
I like CloudFlare. They offer tools to protect your site, and a lot of their services are even free. For the most part, it’s a service you set once, and forget about.
That doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun with it from time to time, though!
While tweaking my CloudFlare settings this morning, I decided to add a little Page Rule to redirect some of my site’s most dedicated bots to a very special YouTube page…
I upgraded to macOS Sierra this weekend. The upgrade was mostly painless; I only had to switch from Karabiner to Karabiner Elements to customize my keyboard.
But when trying to update my remote development environment this morning, I ran into the first issue: ssh-agent didn’t seem to work anymore. My keys were not added to my keychain when accessing my remote sandbox with ssh -A mysandbox.
After a bit of googling, I found my answer. To fix the issue, and make sure I could use my keys even when connected to a remote sandbox, I added the following to my .ssh/config file:
Host *
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/name_of_my_private_key_file
AddKeysToAgent yes
Now on to the next problem!
Google Play Music is my music player of choice: it’s available everywhere, fully compatible with my Android device, and allows for easy download and upload of tracks. Its lucky mixes are also always on point. I use the free version for now, but I plan on switching to the Paid version once YouTube Red is available in Hungary (one can dream, right?). I believe the paid version gives you access to a library that’s way bigger than Spotify.
Google Play Music can be used via the web, or via a Chrome Extension. You could even use this Electron app if you wanted to. You can also use those tools to upload music from your local computer. However, that upload feature won’t work if you also happen to use Avast Mac Security. When you try to upload, you’ll receive the following error:
Can’t establish a secure connection
It seems that its Web and File System Shields block all uploads. To solve the issue, open Avast Mac Security, go to Preferences, and disable both shields. Don’t forget to turn them back on once you’re done with the upload!
