Paul's Blog

The articles below are on various topics, though the majority are focused on some aspect of systems administration.

IT Operations on TV Shows

A recent thread on a technical mailing list I frequent was started by someone observing (perhaps complaining) that many television show plots rely on ridiculous IT operations.

I agree, but I don’t really care. I even approve.

November 25, 2014Read more…

Great Utilities: pbcopy

This is the first of what I hope will become a series of posts that highlight useful command-line computing utilities.

November 20, 2014Read more…

ALL CAPS at NWS
THE NWS USES ALL CAPS IN ITS BULLETINS.

November 11, 2014Read more…

Running ssh-add on a Remote Host
SSH keys may end up loaded where you don’t expect them.

November 06, 2014Read more…

Evolution of Flushing MacOS DNS Cache

I recently updated both my work and home Macs to OS X 10.10, aka Yosemite. As with most OS upgrades, little changes have accompanied the marquee upgrades. In particular, Yosemite has yet another way to flush the local DNS cache.

November 03, 2022Read more…

IPv6 Autoconfiguration
Thoughts on setting up AAAA records for servers using IPv6.

October 22, 2014Read more…

Installing Haskell Platform 2014.2.0.0 on CentOS 6
This was much more difficult than it should have been.

October 07, 2014Read more…

Warding Off IP-based Web Scans

Like any other web server on the Internet, mine is frequently the target of IPv4-based scanning attacks.

October 02, 2014Read more…

Launch oVirt 3.3 VNC consoles in OS X

I recently ran into obstacles getting oVirt 3.3 VNC console sessions to launch in Mac OS X.

September 26, 2014Read more…

Steven Soderbergh on Raiders of the Lost Ark

Steven Soderbergh has done a really cool experiment.

September 24, 2014Read more…

Using SOCKS5 Over SSH for Web Browsing
How to use SSH as a pseudo-VPN for Firefox web browsing.

August 24, 2020Read more…

Re-reading Mistress of the Art of Death
What I love about Ariana Franklin’s historical mystery.

September 23, 2014Read more…

Xcode License Requires Admin Privileges
Security theater invades Xcode 6.0.1.

September 19, 2014Read more…

iOS 8 Update: The Long Road

I kicked off the iOS 8 update on my iPhone 4S at 11:40 this morning.

September 17, 2014Read more…

Stripping an Atom RSS Feed
Sanitize internal RSS feeds for external use iwth XSLT.

September 10, 2014Read more…