Technology on Shelby DeNike

🖥️ A computer I built years ago

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 15:37:19 -0400

A computer I built for a friend decades ago ended up back in my hands to work on…

📱 iPhone 16 Pro Max Upgrade

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 20:42:36 +0000

I decided to cave and pre-order the iPhone 16 Pro Max, mainly due to the trade-in value I was given for my iPhone 14 Pro Max. I was able to cross paths with the UPS truck before they got to my house and get the delivery sooner than expected, which was a plus, I guess it pays to track your shipments when driving home from work.

The overall upgrade from my current iPhone 14 Pro Max on Visible to this one was more or less flawless. I performed a backup, and went through the restore to the new phone, which asked to upgrade to the beta. After that, it was as simple as firing up the Visible app and activating this phone with the eSim. That process took about 5 minutes to complete and maybe around 10 minutes for SMS to fully start working to the new phone.

🐧 update-initramfs is stuck

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 10:53:03 +0000

I was running into an issue on my Ubuntu 22.04 server where the kernel was stuck on 5.15; I never really thought much about it as a long while back ( Many upgrades ago), I remember freezing kernel updates due to some video card issues that I was having with docker.

sudo apt remove initramfs-tools
sudo apt install initramfs-tools

After running those commands, I completed the update to the server with the shiny new 6.5 kernel.

🧹 Format USB drive from macOS command line

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 11:39:23 +0000

If you ever need to format a USB thumb drive on macOS from the command line, this will get you going. The first command will show you the drives so you can figure out which one is the USB. You will want to swap out DRIVENAME for what you want to name the USB drive.

diskutil list
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 DRIVENAME /dev/disk2

💻 Mounting Samba share on Ubuntu

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 15:41:12 +0000

I’m mainly noting this here for myself, but perhaps someone else will find this information handy.

Install package cifs-utils

sudo apt-get install cifs-utils

Create a folder to mount the share into

sudo mkdir /media/Share

Create a file with user credentials in your home directory.

touch ~/.smbcredentials

Edit the smbcredentials file

username=smb_username
password=smb_password

Edit /etc/fstab

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add the following line ( edit where necessary)

//NASIP/shares/ /mnt/nas cifs iocharset=utf8,credentials=/home/USER/.smbcredentials,vers=3.0,iocharset=utf8,rw,sec=ntlmssp,file_mode=0644,dir_mode=0755,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0

You can now mount the samba share with the command below

🗄️ Uncompressing multiple nested folders

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 14:01:15 +0000

I tend to download many files, most of which are all placed into their own folder within my downloads directory. Instead of going into each folder to uncompress the contents, I wanted to run a single command to achieve this in a timely manner.

Using the simple find command below, you can uncompress multiple folders sequentially, one after another.

find downloads/ -name '*.rar' -execdir unrar e {} \;

Of course, you will need to change the directory, and if you want to use this on zip, tar, etc, you will need to adjust the unrar e aspect to fit the proper command for the file type.

💻 Mullvad error on ohmyzsh update

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 20:19:00 +0000

When I was running updates on my system, I kept getting this error about Mullvad

compinit:527: no such file or directory: /usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions/_mullvad

It looked as though when Mullvad was removed, it never fully removed itself from my system. Thankfully, the fix was as easy as grabbing the Mullvad macOS uninstall script from GitHub and running it, which properly removed all of the symlinks and leftover files.

You can grab the script and run it from the CLI by doing the following.

📓 Switching to Joplin for notes

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 16:01:28 +0000

I switched over to Bear.app some time ago after a lengthy search for a note-taking app. At the time, Bear.app made sense since I was only using macOS and iOS daily, and it worked well for that.

After moving to a new job that required me to sit behind a Windows computer, I needed to find a replacement, and after trying out different applications and services, I ended up on Notion.

🔒 Switching to Proton VPN

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 15:43:10 +0000

With recent changes that Mullvad had made to service, mainly removing their port forwarding, it was time to look for a replacement. I landed on the VPN service from Proton, which I had used their Free tier on multiple occasions in the past.

I had been a fan of Proton for a long time ( Though I never could commit fully to using them, I still liked what they were doing.) so when it came to start looking they were on the top of my list.

⌚ Apple Watch Ultra

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 20:38:28 +0000

While I would like to say I have been a " longtime" Apple Watch user, it has only been a few years… well, since the Series 3, which was my first dive into the world of Apple Watches.

I was never much for watches, and the last thing I wanted was another accessory I had to put on in the morning, charge, care for, etc. Still, I figured back then why not, as the analytics alone were interesting to me, enough so that eating the cost of the watch seemed worth it to me.

💡 A cheaper Phillips Hue LED strip

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 14:53:41 +0000

While I am a huge fan of the Phillips hue lighting system, it is expensive there is no doubt about that. Whenever I visit Home Depot or any other big box store I try to look around the clearance sections as you would be surprised at how often Phillips Hue lights are sitting there selling for a fraction of the cost.

After moving to our house I started to set up my office space and knew that I wanted to add in some wall accent lighting using a Phillips Hue LED strip, sadly at about $180 for the 5m (16ft section) it was going to add up in order to add lighting to the selected wall as it was just about 16ft in length, and that was not including the main piece with the part that actually connects to the hub.

💾 Adding more storage to my NAS

Tue, 26 May 2020 13:45:00 +0000

When I purchased my Synology NAS I filled it with eight 4TB drives, and did dual redundancy leaving me with 22TB of space that I never thought I would fill…

Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max

Wed, 20 May 2020 20:40:16 +0000

As I mentioned in a previous post my Apple iPhone 8 Plus had a painful death. So just as any other loyal Apple fanboy would do, I went out and bought an upgrade, and went all-in with the iPhone 11 Pro Max ( 256GB model) in space gray.

Switching to Android…

Mon, 18 May 2020 17:51:07 +0000

A while back I picked up a Google Pixel 3 to test out, that test lasted all but a day then I put it back in my desk drawer and pitched it to all my friends and family to see if they wanted to buy it off me… clearly that never happened as it was up until this weekend sitting in my desk drawer.

📶 Ubiquiti Home Network Upgrade

Fri, 06 Jul 2018 16:00:40 +0000

{{ double-space-with-newline }}For a while now I have been thinking about upgrading my network, and since moving I have been having more and more issues with my 2TB Apple Time Capsule where I am forced to reboot it often. Besides rebooting it I have also been experiencing a poor or often times slow signal now that I live in a much larger than when I lived in Denver.

📷 Wyze IP Camera

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 20:38:08 +0000

It’s been a while since I had an IP camera setup, but recently came across the Wyze IP Camera which is only $20 …. The price was kind of a deterrent at first until I looked at all of the features packed into this small/affordable IP camera. Wyze had just released version 2 of their camera so I picked up a pre-order, it took a few weeks longer to arrive than expected due to some issues with the production due to dust on the new CMOS sensor, but the wait was ok by me as it was more of an impulse buy rather than something I really “needed” to get by on a daily basis. My first thought, once it arrived, was that it had an Apple feel to the packaging. It was very minimal, clean, and simple. The setup was also very easy and done with all via my iPhone 8 plus. You simply power it on, wait a few seconds then hold the setup button which gives you an audible prompt to continue the setup which is

Raid Solution

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:22:33 +0000

I am in search of a raid solution. I have been pretty interested in the Drobo but due to the cost of what you get I am not sure its the best method, though the idea is cool. I am thinking instead of maybe getting a few 1tb+ drives and a cheap RAID card and tossing it all into my Linux box as it would provide a lot more than just a storage device, not to mention the cost would be much less.

According to AOL

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 15:55:54 +0000

“Linux is only a browser to let you view the internet”, and with their security center that runs on Windows it will keep me safe when using Linux… First class support right there, I tell ya.

🖥️ A couple of things.

Fri, 27 May 2005 05:55:02 +0000

I thought after all these random Life posts, I would post some tech junk. I just got dual displays working on my box @ work… Granted, the second display is next to worthless as its runs on a shitty 8meg S3 Trio card; it lets me do 1024x768 15bit. Anything higher than that will either

Not display anything
Locks up the computer to the point where I have to unplug the box.

All in all, it sucks and is slow as shit, but hell, it’s nice having my IM’s all on one monitor. Now, to get my FM/TV Tuner working, I might be able to make use of the second display.

🖥️ Building a system for a friend.

Tue, 31 Aug 2004 02:12:36 +0000

A friend of mine is looking to get a new machine. He was going to get an all-in-one Sony Vaio, but for $1600, I could build him a way better machine…

Here is what I came up with so far, none of which I have checked for the best prices online yet.

ATI All-In-Wonder® 9800 Pro 128MB AGP Video Card (link) - $250-400
Not sure of which case I like the Antec, he likes the Lanboy.
Antec PlusView 1080AMG PC Tower Case (link) - $159
Super Lanboy Aluminum Super Mini Tower Case ( link) - $89
Athlon XP 3200 (400mhz FSB) - $111
Asus A7V600 Motherboard ( link) - $55
1GB PC3200 DDR - ( link) - $113 or maybe 2 gig for about $348
Western Digital 160GB Caviar® 7200 Hard Drive - (link) - $99

I drank and drank and drank, and I finally fell asleep.

Thu, 04 Dec 2003 23:37:26 +0000

and I awoke to this I got the loan.. and ordered the laptop, should be here by Dec 15th Latest.

I smoke too many cigarettes, and I don't think I've been sober for 3 years.

Wed, 29 Oct 2003 09:34:06 +0000

Sorry about the lack of updates… been busy. I did post some pictures from the weekend in the gallery, but nothing too exciting. I am working on a new site design to make it look well… I am a little more custom instead of this damn MovableType default setup. In other news, I gained access to Digitalpimpz.com anyways defaced it a little bit, and now the webmaster Steve is pretty pissed and hates me and the world… God I wish I could go back to the days when I cared that much about something… such as my site ;)

Brief Update

Wed, 18 Jun 2003 00:05:15 +0000

Well, not much new in life, same boring shit day after day. I haven’t had much time to work on the site… not that anyone comes here anyways. I did get the Petosky Images uploaded to the gallery.

Work was pretty fun yesterday and a little bit fun today, we found that a co-worker here has made a site where we can add text to the LED marquee… the joy of a job in a cubicle… 😛 ok, well, I don’t feel like typing, so here is a picture.