Author: steve

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Things I like V 0.1 People

Cats are also important!

So although this blog is mainly about technical things I thought it might be nice to share things that I find interesting, exciting, frivolous, or just plain amazing.

So without further ado and no particular rhyme or reason I present you with this list!

Things I like V 0.1 People!

Oliver sacks: Such an amazing thinker, His books are well worth reading.
http://www.oliversacks.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgOTaXhbqPQ

C G Jung: Another great thinker who’s ideas influence me on a near daily basis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O67a8_XXqK4&t=181s

Prof Alice Roberts: Prof Alice Roberts is I think the heir apparent to David Attenborough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-rmQjz8F0s

William Gibson: Yep it’s a geek thing, but his recent books are also amazing – one of the few people who’s books I read more than once.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj5xABJlOUU

Emily Graslie: What’s not to like about a young science communicator and YouTube educator, who among other things is not afraid to gut a wolf ! 
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+brain+scoop

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The argument for System Administration 0.1

Ganesha is widely revered as the remover of obstacles

 

So from what I can work out your humble Sys Admin is a bit like a dentist! You know it’s good for you but no one likes pain, let alone paying for that pain.

But lets just hold it there for a minute can we? Lets just stop and think about this.

John Podesta recently had his email account hacked. Of that we have evidence, have a look at this.

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/

There is some discussion that his account password was, or may have been “password”, or something simple and easy to hack. What ever his password was, it probably was not that difficult to hack see this information.

But guess what? If a System administrator had been looking after that email server properly this shouldn’t have happened.

So we now have a major question over the outcome of the political leadership of arguably the most powerful country on earth. Just so you know sysadmin appreciation day this year falls on  Friday, 28 July.

Think about that! Especially if you have a good Sys admin who is looking after you and your network, and your email, and stays up late re booting the server doing stuff you never have to worry about, often stuff you don’t even care about until – whoops! Where did the election go?

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Some of my favourite things!

 

This is a list of my favourite open source tools that I often use. I’ll up date this on occasion as I add discover and explore new things.

Documentation and ticketing

DokuWiki

This is a great little product and it’s very quick and easy to implement.
From the web site (all true!)… “DokuWiki is a simple to use and highly versatile Open Source wiki software that doesn’t require a database. It is loved by users for its clean and readable syntax. The ease of maintenance, backup and integration makes it an administrator’s favourite.”
https://www.dokuwiki.org

Ostiket

Great product if you need to quickly set up a job tracking system. Runs under LAMP and is robust and easy to use. Also comes with support and hosting options if you need them.
http://osticket.com/

 

Mediawiki

Useful for bigger and more free style projects and also runs the wikipedia site. The grand daddy of Wiki’s!
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki

 

Network related

Wireshark

Wireshark is one of the great open source projects that is an insanely great tool. Know exactly what is running on your network and dig down to forensic levels.
https://www.wireshark.org/

pfsense

I’ve written about pfsense before it’s a fantastic firewall routing system that can also be used to set up VPN’s and lots, lots more. Another project that you can purchase pro help for if you need it, or if management want to know that the thing is supported. It can run on just about anything and you an also get dedicated hardware if you want it. But you can put together a router from old parts and it will run just fine.
https://pfsense.org/

 

 

 

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Not a bad start!


So, I got a nice email from the google AI? May be not… Anyway it was an invite to submit the site to https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/ and so I did. I’m happy with some of the initial results, one of which was the Mobile friendly test. Have a look at this!

So I’m very happy indeed, and a big thank you to the good people who developed the PARABOLA theme http://www.cryoutcreations.eu/

I still have some serious work to do on the site, and I’ll keep you all informed as things improve. But a nice start even if I do say so my self. Stay tuned.

 

Steve