iPhone Passcode Theft: How To Prevent
Recently an emerging threat seems to be growing: when out at a bar, pub, or other public space, you enter your iPhone passcode to unlock your phone and unknowingly someone has seen you enter your passcode from over your shoulder or from a couple tables/seats away. Without warning, your iPhone is quickly snatched out of […]
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Setup Fail2ban With NGinx And Cloudflare
Background So I have setup a combination of things as part of a multi-faceted defense for this site. It has been a learning exercise for me for sure. Here’s an example where knowledge is power, power to stay on the air. Most of the time, we get scanned by bots, many of which are the […]
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Simple Log Shipper To AWS S3
Background I had a need to ship uncompressed application logs to an S3 bucket. Logs were originally CSV files created by a specific application, and not standard .log type files that were converted to JSON. You could use this shipping method for just about any file with minor modification. This guide assumes you already have […]
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Nginx – Prevent Outside Access To URLs Containing
Background Recently, this site was under attack with attackers also trying to brute force the admin/login URLs. As you probably know, I run this site on WordPress and it now sits behind both Cloudflare and an Nginx reverse proxy. I generally only update and write on the site from home, so I wanted to ensure […]
Read MoreA Screen Macro Recorder For Linux – ATBSWP
Background Ok so I had a situation where I needed to perform a repetitive task (like deleting a bunch of bogus library object referrals on a system with some corruption. I was not able to use a bulk tool, but rather had to use the GUI to perform the task over 1130 objects! Who the […]
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Installing Home Assistant on Linux KVM
Background I never wrote this up, and I think it’s time I did. For the past couple years, we’ve been using Home Assistant (HA) as our home automation platform and it has been AWESOME. The Home Assistant team has put together one of the best home automation platforms out there. Home Assistant is also open […]
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Setup An Nginx Reverse Proxy – Ubuntu 20.04
Background Since moving to an area served by gigabit fiber, I decided I didn’t want to pay for web hosting anymore, now that I had excellent connectivity. In addition to this website you are reading right now, I also host other web properties as well. I only have a single static public IP address but […]
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Copy SSH key to multiple hosts
I had a situation where I had 40 hosts to copy an ssh key to. A single one-liner command does the trick and makes this a trivial task. First, create a text file with a list of all the hosts you wish to copy the key to. One line per entry. Call it keydeploy.txt. Then […]
Read MoreSecret Santa Generator
The Scenario Every year our family does a secret Santa exchange. For years we’ve put paper names into a pot and manually drawn names, which required us all to be physically present, often done near my Mom’s birthday in December (which doesn’t give much time to shop). In the age of computers, why are we […]
Read MoreHow To Build A Linux Terminal Server
Background A “terminal server” or centralized shared desktop server has obvious benefits. Here are just a few: Central application management Securely access home automation or BMS systems remotely Use cheap thin clients or even older machines that are now too slow Cross platform – this works with Windows, Mac, and Linux machines Remotely accessible from […]
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