I did not invent Bitcoin

Despite LinkedIn’s recent claims, I am not the inventor of Bitcoin.  Continue reading

Replacing drives with mdadm

Simple, but very helpful.

SATA hotswap drive in mdadm RAID array.

I usually am just swapping out failed drives, which is pretty simple when you are running a spare. However, to increase the size of the array I need to swap out otherwise healthy, running drives. An easy but nerve-wracking procedure.

Twitter Embedded Timelines on self-hosted WordPress

Quick tip for hosting Twitter embedded timelines on a self-hosted WordPress. You will need a mere two links:

The Jetpack plugin brings an array of cool features to self-hosted that was previous only available via WordPress.com. It was non-obvious why I could not simply follow the instructions in the guide, and searching the plugins for “Twitter Timeline” does not bring up much useful information.

Enjoy your new embedded Twitter timeline!

Remote linux-based Time Machine using netatalk instead of smb

Update 2015-12-12: The info in this post is no longer correct; you can now simply follow the instructions on this ubuntuforums.com thread, particularly this post on Dae’s blog to get Time Machine up-and-running. 😄

If you previously followed my instructions, to back out of the home-built netatalk, you can try the following:

sudo apt-get remove netatalk
cd /usr/local/src/netatalk
make uninstall

Then follow the instructions posted above.


My large file server once was able to act as a Time Machine provider over-the-air, back before Apple disabled the ability to use Samba shares as Time Machine disks. However, following a few simple instructions from these helpful folks below, I was able to make OTA Time Machine backups happen again.

Thanks, Daniel and Pepijn!

VMware Fusion Networking Tips and Tricks

Overview

VMware Fusion’s networking configuration is a bit obscure and it is difficult to find information about it on the ‘net. I usually only need to achieve the following bits of config change, and they really only serve my need to tightly control all the things. I am posting this information here so that I never forget again.

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A Clean, Usable Facebook

Updated Dec 10, 2013 – Facebook completely re-vamped their design about six months ago and the new look and feel is actually manageable for me without the hacks listed below. I still know people using them, but I have not maintained these settings for the new Facebook.

Updated Aug 19, 2012 – Re-enabled header, removed groups photos specifically
Updated Aug 16, 2012 – removed “Pages and Ads” section
Updated Aug 8, 2012 – liberate tuteme ex inferis – added javascript

I am not a fan of Facebook’s user experience. Although I deactivated my account for a couple months and felt a state of blissful peace, I was eventually drawn back to it for social reasons. However navigating the super-busy UI felt like that scene from Event Horizon where the guy rips his own eyes out in the horror of his surroundings.

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Gamification Links to Get You Started

At the September 2011 GLP conference, I promised people some links on Gamification. These will hopefully get you headed in the right direction.

Jane McGonigal – Reality is Broken at Amazon – This is the book mentioned by Bob at the conference.

Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world – TED Talk on the concepts from her book. You can also check out Jane McGonigal’s blog which has many more videos.

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Blogging OSCon Day 2: Node Day

In which I learned to stop worrying and love the Node.js. During Node Day I was able to connect with real-world examples of people running Node in production, talking about why they chose Node, and how it was working out for them. As a by-product, I started to grok the things I had learned the previous day in the Node Tutorial. To sum up the talks of the day:

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Blogging OSCon 2011: Day 1 Tutorials

It is 2011 and I have decided to start a blog. That is a term coined by my friend Peter Merholz which means a “web log” or “online journal.” As you can see, Peter has been blogging perhaps since the beginning of time, or at least since the beginning of Swatch Internet Time. Whereas I have forsaken this flash-in-the-pan trend until now. I thought perhaps this would be a great way to ease into using Twitter, and also as a means to justify the cost to my company of dispatching me to Portland to attend OSCon. With that in mind, my first post shall concern the topic of OSCon 2011 and What Was Learned Therein.

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