Macos

Screensavers, you say? They’re more art than function these days. But, why not inject something either beautiful or useful into this mundane task of screen locking. Yes, it would be best if you still were locking your screen unless you want your four-year-old Slack messaging your co-workers. I have used a hot corner to the lower left to start my screen saver, locking the screen after a few seconds (if I accidentally trigger it). My screensaver will kick in after a healthy 10 minutes (I do work on multiple machines throughout the day). But, it’s a security practice you should never get out of the habit of doing. Lock your screen when you walk away. ...

On June 1, 2016, Microsoft released an update to it’s Remote Desktop client for Mac OS X via the Mac App Store. The update to version 8.0.32 broke some functionality for people. The most commonly reported error I have seen is “Connection reset to peer” before authentication. Sadly, unless you have a Time Machine backup to grab the old version from you are likely going to have to find an alternative. If you do happen to have an older version that isn’t broken let me know and I will gladly host it for all to get here. ...

I happen to be someone that finds themselves setting up new systems for myself often. I have to remind myself there are tools that I need installed before the scenario in which I need to use them (on an airplane, during a crisis, etc.). I use a Mac so this list of software and setup is going to be very Mac OS X centric. From the web: Google Chrome Evernote - My brain lives here Google Drive - I keep some .files (dot files) here iTerm - My Terminal of choice Shuttle - Super awesome ssh config menu creator Little Snitch - I don’t trust any one or any code Shimo - Need to use more than one VPN? Shimo is for you GPG Tools MySQL Workbench - When you login to a MySQL server and say, “WTF?!?” you might want a GUI as a safety Witch - CMD + TAB will never be the same Spectacle - Position your windows where you want them Skitch - Screeenshot tool that saves to Evernote Dropbox CleanMyMac - I use this to uninstall software and clear caches (among other things) DaisyDisk - Find wasted disk Wireshark Postman Mercurial VirtualBox Vagrant SourceTree - I am using this less and less these days but still want it around Firefox Chrome Canary Firefox Developer Edition Safari Technology Preview Telegram VLC ...

Like a lot of systems folks I use sed, a lot. It is probably an unhealthy amount of sed use but so be it. I operate on a lot of Linux servers but my desktop environment of choice is Mac OS X which means BSD tools (not the Linux-y GNU tools). The differences are relatively subtle between BSD sed and GNU sed. However, most of my work is done through iTerm (a literal black box). I frequently find myself diving down rabbit holes and I really do not want to have to remember the differences between BSD and GNU sed. I want the same sed everywhere so I compile GNU sed on Mac OS X: ...

A few weeks ago a co-worker and I were discussing some things we really enjoyed about our work environment. It reminded me of a few key questions I ask (or things that I look for) during an interview that typically indicate whether or not a job is going to be a good fit or not. What do you use for e-mail? It is a simple question but the answer tells you a lot about a company. It should be a two part answer for technical positions. On the desktop side, the answer should be a SaaS or Cloud based solution (Google, Office 365, etc.). On the server or infrastructure side, the response should be “a vendor” or “a third party”. ...