Using Italics with Vim in your Terminal

Posted on July 17, 2017 by

I wanted all code, system configuration file comments or in-line replies in neomutt email italicised to stand out easier.  Many terminal emulators (xterm, xfce4-terminal, iterm2) don’t support [3m and [23m designators for italics but you can use a custom terminfo to do the trick.  Here’s how to get it working. Continue reading →

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Using Offlineimap with the Gmail IMAP API

Posted on July 17, 2017 by

In a previous guide I documented my mutt + offlineimap + notmuch setup.  If you’re using Gmail with IMAP enabled you can still utilize the superpower of this trio but you’ll need to do some things differently.  I’ll show you how to use offlineimap with the Google Gmail OAuth2 API and configure it. Continue reading →

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Distributed Remote Backups with Git and Etckeeper

Posted on July 15, 2017 by

Git is a powerful tool for lots of tasks, it makes a wonderful VCS that can drive easy utility and automation.  Recently I used git and remote repositories to deploy code & data fanned out to multiple locations.  Here are some examples along with using Etckeeper, a related wrapper tool for revision control around git (or other VCS) with some extra features. Continue reading →

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Shell One-liners and Quick and Dirty Loops

Posted on March 23, 2017 by

Sometimes you just need to get stuff done quickly and there’s nary a replacement than a quick shell one-liner.  Recently I’ve needed to feed some large, multi-variable commands into an external program for processing.  Here’s some simple shell one-liners and loops that have helped me along the way. Continue reading →

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Let’s Encrypt Everything – Setting up the Free, Automated CA

Posted on February 21, 2017 by

le-logo-lockonlyLet’s Encrypt is a free, public SSL certificate authority (CA) you can use to generate and automate SSL certificate renewal.  I co-manage Trystack.org, a free OpenStack sandbox for the general public and our Horizon SSL certificate came up for expiration so we moved to Let’s Encrypt.  Using EFF’s certbot it’s trivial to automate everything.  You can do the same for your own blog or website.

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Combat Unsolicited Sales with a Unique Office Voice Mail Recording

Posted on December 21, 2016 by

lumbergh_office_spaceOffice voice mail has become a graveyard for unwanted sales solicitations for things I don’t need.  People who need to reach me have many available methods.  I’ve decided to take some creative liberties with my voice mail recording and you should too, listen to it below for an example to spur your own unique recording! Continue reading →

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Back to the Future: Converting a Server VM to Bare Metal

Posted on December 7, 2016 by

back2futureIt might seem like stepping back in time, but sometimes you start something with a VM and the desire for resources and usage skyrockets and you need to transplant it onto a bare metal server.  This was my situation with Plex Media Server.  I’ll walk you through using Clonezilla to get the job done. Continue reading →

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