yes, i’m alive.
i typed what’s below quite a time ago, why i didn’t publish, i don’t know, but now – yes…
i have more potential posts in mind, so things might pick up here again. it’d be nice to give this old place a new coat of paint, too.
Windows 10 has a thing. A thing where it displays some featured image on the Lock Screen. If you have a look at the ‘Personalization’ settings for the Lock Screen, the thing is called ‘Windows spotlight.’ Well sometimes it’s a rather nice picture and maybe you want it, yes? Well you can have it, and I’ll tell you how to get it.
Read More…It’s about time I continued this thing, no? I put Part One up back in May last year, after all… While the IIS+PHP hosting environment I talked about before has remained the same, over time I have continued work on the little page I bootstrapped back then. The page provides the exceedingly simple function of displaying the results of a SQL query.
One fateful day, when I’d just got light in my fibre,
An email came my way. Snigger and giggle I did,
When I read what that email did bid,
And the button for trash did I smash.
Then a little while later, another damn mail on the wire!
Taken aback, I thought “ah frack,”
And conceded to put pause to my downloader.
Applying a little gumption,
I decided to heck with this setback!
Downloader now on resumption,
There’ll be no pesky watchers of my SYN-ACK!
“This is my tunnel,” Shrek whispered…
Look ma, I done a poetry!
So I had an idea. I doubt it’s an original one, but I don’t recall reading or hearing or seeing it anywhere. So I’m putting it here.
There’s a lot of discussion around the idea of an unconditional (or universal, but I prefer unconditional) basic income, UBI, today. It seems many people are very well aware of our collective position as doe’s in the headlights of the fast-approaching eighteen-wheeler of ‘technological and structural unemployment.’ But it seems to me there’s a gap in the UBI videos I have watched, that being a common assumption that the state would be the one to provide a UBI, and I wonder why this should be?
I’ve been playing with the idea of running a standalone Samba server to replace an old NAS device that I’d like to repurpose. So I looked for some Samba best-practice ideas and one of them mentioned the periodic backing up and checking the small database files Samba uses for storing config and running info. I figured I’d automate the task with a script, and here we are.
Automaton.
Oh geez, that was laboured…
Anyway. Who knew building a mere web page to make a quick SQL query to a database would would be something I thought warranted me waffling about it?
So here’s the deal: over the last few weeks I worked on a small side project at work to build a web page that would display the results of a SQL query/lookup.
This was new for me, since I’m far more used to maintaining the servers that host these things, not building the things themselves. Still, building this has been, dare I say, a rather fun time. After all the troubleshooting (though that holds its own appeal in satisfaction).
Image, uh, kind of related…
You know what really grinds my gears? Opening game clients one by one when I want them all to open and update. So I engaged in a little every-day-scripting to stop the grinding. “Code” inside.
I added a scrolly-Twitter-thing because I thought it was neat-o. I’ve always liked unobtrusive scrolly bits (tickers); it’s probably got something to do with watching too many news channels and daytime infomercial television, so here we are. At least there’s some activity on the screen now. Kinda.
…
But wait there’s-
Read More…
I’m totally not compensating for failing to post in March.
Just thought I’d get that out of the way. Y’know, to ward off questions.
Many moons ago (like two damn years’; wowzor ‘n stuff), I pumped out text detailing how I keep up with the news-ey things that interest me. Well, the inexorable passage of time has seen that old post turn to a falsehood. Now I, in a narcissistic revisitation of old material, decided it was high time I let my valuable readers know that things just don’t work like that any more.
Apparently a clock. Of Persian origin.
Windows updates! “Aww geez, R4mzy, now why’d you go and irritate everyone with such opening words?” Fret not, proverbial commentator, for I am about to tell of a way to make those words a little less headache-inducing! The thing is called WSUS Offline Updates, and you’ll need to vault the Read More button for details.
Lookit the purty terminal.
Oh and, err, a little belated, but Happy New Year and/or whatever it is you do over the December period.
