Author: Dave Farquhar

Making gradual improvements, starting with whatever bugs you the most

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , ,

A long project can be paralyzing at times, making it hard to figure out where to start. A trick that I learned in model railroading is to just work on whatever small percentage of the project that bothers you the most. Then, when that’s done, cycle back, create another subproject that fixes whatever bugs you the most now, and keep making incremental improvements like that until you get where you want.

I’ve used the same trick on home improvement projects, and I applied it to this web site over the course of the last few weeks, doing a series of incremental improvements. It led places I didn’t expect it.
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The benefits of doing IT at home, too

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , ,

Earlier this week, The Register touted the benefits of having a home lab.

That lab doesn’t necessarily have to be elaborate. But there is definitely something to be said for having some equipment that you can learn and experiment on, and that can break without the world ending. Read more

Update Flash now

Dave Farquhar security ,

Adobe updated Flash today, to fix a couple of 0-day vulnerabilities. Here’s how to force a manual update on Windows and Mac OS X. I put on my sysadmin hat and looked over the update scripts on the page; they’re a little complex but don’t do anything nefarious.

Grab the appropriate update script for the type of computer you’re running, close your browser, run it, and stay safe. And remember, you’re doing me and the rest of the world a favor; if your computer is up to date, then it isn’t attacking my network, and if mine’s up to date and secure, mine isn’t attacking yours.

Advice on dealing with ransomware

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , ,

PC Mag has some advice about ransomware. The most important bit of advice is to have a secondary machine that you can use to go get help.
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DROP DATABASE wordpress;

Dave Farquhar Apache, Linux, This weblog , , , ,

This week, I doubled back down in earnest to get my webserver running on the hardware I bought a year ago.

After  getting Apache, PHP and MySQL installed on the box and playing together nice, I installed WordPress and got it running. Then I tried backing up and restoring files from my existing server, and the server didn’t like that one bit.

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New Raspberry Pi this week

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , ,

The Raspberry Pi Model A (the cheaper, stripped-down version) was just released for $25.

How is this news? Well, I thought the Model A was already available.

It has half the memory of a Model B, and no Ethernet, and only a single USB port.

If you’d like to be able to mess around with microcontrollers but prefer a self-contained environment, a Model A has potential, and the price isn’t all that high. I’d still probably develop on the $35 Model B so I can connect to it remotely, then swap the SD card into the Model A and put the Model A into use. But in a pinch, just plug the Model B in to a USB keyboard and the nearest LCD TV.

OCZ is in trouble

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,
OCZ is in trouble

You know it’s bad when a story about a company ends with the words, “OCZ’s survival is still possible.”

Survival is supposed to be a given.
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Beware of unexpected links in e-mail messages

Dave Farquhar security , ,

Hackers are stealing Yahoo accounts by sending messages containing malicious web page links.

The message looks like a link to a web page on MSNBC. But if an unsuspecting user clicks on it, it redirects to another page that steals the e-mail account, allowing the hacker to use the account to send spam, or grab the account’s contact list.

The gory details are here.
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HP Elitebook won’t turn on? Fix it in a minute flat

Dave Farquhar Hardware
HP Elitebook won’t turn on? Fix it in a minute flat

If your HP Elitebook or other HP laptop won’t turn on, I have an easy fix. We used them at a previous job and I taught this trick to all of my coworkers who had difficulty getting their laptops to power up in the morning. It’s easy, and takes less time than calling the helpdesk, and less time than going direct to desktop support too.

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The Debt Tsunami is a gimmick, but it probably doesn’t matter

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , ,

I saw some people passionately advocating both for and against a new method of paying off debt: The “Debt Tsumani,” which focuses on paying off debt in the order of its emotional impact on you.

As someone who paid off more than $150,000 worth of debt over the course of about four years in the last decade, maybe what I have to say about that matters to you. Read more