«08:08:31»

If you have a json config file and want to see what it looks like in yaml format, the utility site json2yaml makes trivial work of this. Nice! 🤖

Updates

• 20240606 - thanks to Thaylise from BairesDev for pointing out the updated link for this cool tool.

«10:12:44»

Happy π day; it’s been a while. We have been migrating to M365 for a while and are just getting our ops sorted out. A cool discovery today. If you want your Planner plans to be visible inside the Planner/ToDo app inside Teams, you must add the Plan to a tab in the team. Then it will show up.

This was frustrating because even though you create the plan in the Planner website, it does not show up in the app for Planner in Teams. I think of it this way:

• If a project is active, it’s in a Teams tab, and therefore shows up in the Teams app.
• If a project is complete, remove the Teams tab, and it will disappear from within the Teams app.

It’s a way to keep things tidy and save space.

«17:10:23»

Into color design or accessibility? Give « Accessible Palette » from @efedorenko of @wildbit a spin. So useful and slick! 😎

Read Eugene’s blog post about how he built it, and why you should stop using HSL. This tool will help you to create a set of colors with consistent lightness and contrast.

«16:40:49»

If you have a need to backup an IMAP mail account to maildir format, @xs4all coded a really useful utility called « imaptar » in golang. Super easy to install and use, thank you! 😎

«08:56:42»

Want your weather in the terminal? Of course you do. @igor_chubin created « wttr » so you geeks can fire up curl and do just that! 🤖

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> curl wttr.in

Wttr is written in python and has a lot of options to explore. Check out the repo.

«15:43:11»

Idan Kamara created a really useful site called « ExplainShell » that graphically shows what linux commands do. 😎 For example: https://www.explainshell.com/explain?cmd=tar%20xzvf%20archive.tar.gz

It kind of looks like what you’d draw on a whiteboard, if you were giving a lecture on a particular command. Sweet!

In a similar vein is https://cheat.sh/, from @igor_chubin.

«11:55:15»

Check out this impressive, useful site « https://domevents.dev/ » to help you learn about DOM events through exploration, from @alexandereardon. ☺️

«17:51:36»

Apple has stopped making so-called « delta » updates available as of macOS Big Sur, but you can still download individual full-size installers via MAS or a CLI command. It was nice to be able to download deltas, because of their small size. 🤨

If you have multiple Macs to upgrade, you can use Content Sharing in Sharing in System Preferences to share a macOS download with other Macs on the same LAN.

To download the full specific installer via CLI, here is a starting point:

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# List all
softwareupdate --list-full-installers 
# Get latest
softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer 
# Get specific
softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 11.3 

«20:44:16»

Wow, « dasel » from Tom Wright @tomwright1993, is a truly cool tool. It uses a standard DAta SELector syntax, so you can learn it once, then use it for converting and querying files of various oft-used types. 🆒

It lets you do something similar to jq or yq, but it supports JSON, YAML, TOML, XML or CSV. Say you have a simple json file which you need in yaml. Just do this:

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> dasel select -f website.json
{
  "ErrorDocument": {
    "Key": "404.html"
  },
  "IndexDocument": {
    "Suffix": "index.html"
  },
  "RoutingRules": [
    {
      "Condition": {
        "KeyPrefixEquals": "/"
      },
      "Redirect": {
        "ReplaceKeyWith": "index.html"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Easily convert to yaml like this:

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> dasel select -f website.json -p yaml
ErrorDocument:
  Key: 404.html
IndexDocument:
  Suffix: index.html
RoutingRules:
- Condition:
    KeyPrefixEquals: /
  Redirect:
    ReplaceKeyWith: index.html

And boom.

«16:06:26»

When you cannot dig dig for cli dns lookup, you might try « dog », written in Rust by Benjamin Sago @cairnrefinery (who also wrote the lovely exa) or « q », written in Go by Nate Sales. 😎

I especially like how you can output json from dog for consumption by another program for say, pushing to a database:

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{
> dog esolia.com A AAAA MX TXT --json | jq
"responses": [
  {
    "additionals": [],
    "answers": [
      {
        "address": "99.84.138.103",
        "class": "IN",
        "name": "esolia.com.",
        "ttl": 26,
        "type": "A"
      },
      {
        "address": "99.84.138.27",
        "class": "IN",
        "name": "esolia.com.",
        "ttl": 26,
        "type": "A"
      },
      {
        "address": "99.84.138.119",
        "class": "IN",
        "name": "esolia.com.",
        "ttl": 26,
        "type": "A"
      },
      {
        "address": "99.84.138.118",
        "class": "IN",
        "name": "esolia.com.",
        "ttl": 26,
        "type": "A"
      }
    ],
    "authorities": [],
    "queries": [
      {
        "class": "IN",
        "name": "esolia.com.",
        "type": 1
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "additionals": [],
    "answers": [],
    "authorities": [],
    "queries": [
      {
        "class": "IN",
        "name": "esolia.com.",
        "type": 28
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "additionals": [],
    "answers": [
      {
        "class": "IN",
        "exchange": "alt1.aspmx.l.google.com.",
        "name": "esolia.com.",
        "preference": 5,
        "ttl": 300,
        "type": "MX"
      },
      {
        "class": "IN",
        "exchange": "alt2.aspmx.l.google.com.",
        "name": "esolia.com.",
        "preference": 5,
        "ttl": 300,
        "type": "MX"
      },
      {
        "class": "IN",
        "exchange": "aspmx.l.google.com.",
        "name": "esolia.com.",
        "preference": 1,
        "ttl": 300,
        "type": "MX"
      },
      {
        "class": "IN",
        "exchange": "aspmx2.googlemail.com.",
        "name": "esolia.com.",
        "preference": 10,
        "ttl": 300,
        "type": "MX"
      },
      {
        "class": "IN",
        "exchange": "aspmx3.googlemail.com.",
        "name": "esolia.com.",
        "preference": 10,
        "ttl": 300,
        "type": "MX"
      }
    ],
    "authorities": [],
    "queries": [
      {
        "class": "IN",
        "name": "esolia.com.",
        "type": 15
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "additionals": [],
    "answers": [
      {
        "class": "IN",
        "message": "google-site-verification=K4Vo3d0t6V11dXkV2nWU-H0srafI_UVPtlCvKvN2npQ",
        "name": "esolia.com.",
        "ttl": 300,
        "type": "TXT"
      },
      {
        "class": "IN",
        "message": "keybase-site-verification=JldStq9k7lM6uosSy-za3ilkJo0mlnqSulhYIGMgbpQ",
        "name": "esolia.com.",
        "ttl": 300,
        "type": "TXT"
      }
    ],
    "authorities": [],
    "queries": [
      {
        "class": "IN",
        "name": "esolia.com.",
        "type": 16
      }
    ]
  }
]
}

«08:51:06»

If you need a super simple way to cryptographically sign a file, such as a software release, try « minisign », from @jedisct1. 🤖

«08:36:53»

Devs check out « @ProjectSigstore », a project that aims to ease adoption of cryptographic software signing and transparency, like what LetsEncrypt does for SSL certs. 😻

What goals does it have, problems does it aim to solve?

• reduce software supply chain risk
• make maintainer key management easier
• reduce sw supply chain attacks such as build system compromises, malicious hashes, compromised keys, replay or freeze attacks

It is not quite there yet, but is one to watch.

«08:38:16»

J. B. Crawford @jcrawfordor publishes an informative newsletter at « Computers are Bad ». Check it out. 👍

For example, this article about the OSI model is so spot on.

«15:19:59»

So @isostandards prevent their docs from being read by the unwashed masses, with a paywall. Ah!, you think: I will simply deploy another global standard such as IETF rfc3339. But alas! It ends up being based on the iso one anyway. 🤷‍♂️

One wonders, do those volunteers working on iso standards, get to read their own work once it’s published, without paying?

«09:09:24»

Ok, this is nifty. « Dolt is git for data » as their repo says. 😎 A SQL database with git features, Dolt lets you push, pull, clone, branch, merge, do all the git things as well as all the sql things.

There’s even DoltHub, where you can host public data such as this holidays dataset. It has tools like permissions, and a SQL query interface as well. Sweet!

«19:34:11»

Github issue comments have long had the ability to auto-upload images just by either drag-and-drop or paste from clipboard, but it has not been possible in regular README markdown files. Until now, that is! 🥳

No longer do you need to resort to hacks, such as dragging an image to some comment, getting its URL and pasting that in your README. Just drag or paste your image in, and voilà!

«19:23:30»

SVG Blobs have been a trend in web design, and if you need to make some, you can use « Blobs » from @lokesh_coder or « Blobmaker » from @zcreativelabs. But like other trends, it might eventually feel trite like beveled- or glass-style buttons. 📟

«15:48:37»

Devs and sysadmins, have you seen « Shields.io » ? It lets you generate those cool SVG badges to indicate system status and so on, and you can even pull json data. 😋

Twitter: @Shields_io

«11:25:32»

Web designers check out « Ipsum Image » which lets you generate placeholder images for your sites, with optional background colors and text. 😎 Generate, then download and use.

For example, the following generates a 1000 x 600 px image with white text showing the dimensions, on a yellow background.

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https://ipsumimage.appspot.com/1000x600,FFA900?f=ffffff

It should be obvious, but the service name «Ipsum» comes from the famous Lorem Ipsum dummy text:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud …

Updates

20210215

On Twitter, @worksofgenius pointed out Lorem Picsum, which I think is even slicker. Thanks!

«20:44:11»

So I migrated some production PHP apps to « @FortRabbit » and could not be happier. Great admin dashboard UI UX, dynamic help docs, support, performance. Satisfied all around. 😋

Regarding what I called the dynamic help docs, I am not sure how to describe it, but the commands you see in the help docs have the exact commands you need to run, not generic ones. It is really useful.

For example, FortRabbit have their own git service, from which deploys are made. So normally you need to add a remote to your local repo, if you have been pushing to Github to deploy. Say your app name is cool-app-jp on FortRabbit. Instead of seeing:

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git remote add fortrabbit appname@deployurl:reponame.git

… and having to try to assemble the correct string, you see exactly what you need to type:

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git remote add fortrabbit [email protected]:cool-app-jp.git

The DC you are in is even represented correctly by the us1. Just copy the line to your terminal and Boom. Love this.