Rebase Considered Harmful
Rebasing is an anti-pattern. It is dishonest. It deliberately omits historical information. It causes problems for collaboration. And it has no offsetting benefits.
Source: Rebase Considered Harmful.
Branching out from Bash: Fishing expedition
Given that Apple has already switched the default shell in Catalina from Bash to Zsh, I’ve been thinking I really need to expand from Bash.
Source: Branching out from Bash: Fishing expedition, an article by Brett Terpstra.
Grove snail or brown-lipped snail
What you probably didn’t know about sudo
Everybody knows
sudo, right? This tool is installed by default on most Linux systems and is available for most BSD and commercial Unix variants. Still, after talking to hundreds ofsudousers, the most common answer I received was thatsudois a tool to complicate life.
Source: What you probably didn’t know about sudo, an article by Peter Czanik.
How to locate and close an open port in Linux
So you're a network administrator and you have a number of Linux machines in your data center. You've found some odd traffic bouncing about your network and your curiosity is piqued. Is it possible that traffic is making use of an open port on a machine? If so, where's the port and how do you close it?
On those Linux machines, the task is actually pretty simple. I want to show you how to locate an open port and close it. I'll be demonstrating on Ubuntu Server 18.04, although the process will be similar on many distributions—the only difference being how you close the port.
Source: How to locate and close an open port in Linux, an article by Jack Wallen.
See also Use nmap to find machines and open ports and What's listening on port 8080.
Awk one-liners and scripts to help you sort text files
Being both a command and a programming language makes awk a powerful tool for tasks that might otherwise be left to
sort,cut,uniq, and other common utilities.
Source: Awk one-liners and scripts to help you sort text files, an article by Seth Kenlon.
The complicated truth about a cat’s purr
We think we know what a cat’s purr means.
It is arguably the most recognisable sign of animal contentment: a pleasurable rasp that erupts whenever a cat is tickled or petted, the soundtrack to countless sessions sprawled on an owner’s lap.
But that’s not quite the full story. There is a lot more going on with the cat’s purr than you might reasonably expect.
Source: The complicated truth about a cat’s purr, an article by Stephen Dowling.
7 Practical Tips for Cheating at Design
It’s easy to throw your hands up and say, “I’ll never be able to make this look good, I’m not an artist!” but it turns out there are a ton of tricks you can use to level up your work that don’t require a background in graphic design.
Here are seven simple ideas you can use to improve your designs today.
Source: 7 Practical Tips for Cheating at Design, an article by Adam Wathan & Steve Schoger.
Why do we think cats are unfriendly?
Cats are the only asocial animal we have successfully domesticated. We’re disappointed that we don’t bond with them as easily as dogs. But are we just missing the signs?
Source: Why do we think cats are unfriendly?, an article by Stephen Dowling.
Dragons of Autumn Twilight: disappointing
Just after midnight I finished Dragons of Autumn Twilight.
I was disappointed by the book. I have read other books written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, and this is the first one I didn't like much. The book is split in two parts; Book 1 and Book 2. I liked the latter more, but still not good.
The Night Fire
Harry Bosch and LAPD Detective Renée Ballard come together again on the murder case that obsessed Bosch's mentor, the man who trained him.
In the evening I started in The Night Fire, a Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch novel by Michael Connelly.
Deploying Docker Securely
In this post, I will outline steps you can take to securely deploy a docker environment. This assumes you are using Docker daemon on hardware running Linux that you administer. Our main goal is to prevent container escapes and multiple container breaches in the event that a single container is compromised.
Source: Deploying Docker Securely, an article by Charlie Belmer.
Get started with Docker and Kubernetes
Learn how YOU can get started with Docker and Kubernetes a curated list by Chris Noring.
Pixies — Long Rider
In the evening I watched the official music video for 'Long Rider' by Pixies taken from their new album ‘Beneath the Eyrie’. I like this song a lot.
Using top on macOS
In the afternoon I noticed that my Mac mini 2014 running macOS Mojave was running slow. Even typing was sluggish. So I typed the following in an open terminal:
top -u
to find the culprit, which turned out to be Thunderbird, using 67% CPU.
Note that top -u is an alias for
top -o cpu -O time
meaning it sorts first on the CPU column, and on the time column next.
Let's Encrypt
In the evening I installed a new operating system image on the virtual private server (VPS) that hosts Plurrrr. It was originally running on an old CentOS installation but this time I decided to use Ubuntu.
The main reason for the update was to switch to HTTPS for Plurrrr, which turned out easier than I expected thanks to Certbot.