dammIT

A rantbox by Michiel Scholten

#howto Articles


Andromeda, Substratum and a Chromebook

Andromeda is a way to theme an Android device with Substratum without needing root. You need adb though, so a desktop or laptop computer is needed to initiate the connection between the Andromeda app and Substratum. On regular machines this is not much of an issue, but Chromebooks are both …



ssh config.d to tidy up that archeology-worthy ~/.ssh/config

You might be in that same situation as I was until recently: you open up your ssh config file and start scrolling through the long list of nicely aliased private machines, that organically grown list of work - project A and the comment-section-divided work - project B, work - misc, work - are these …


How to smooth up your Firefox on Linux, including video

After having one of our Hangouts videocalls, I started looking into why the browser plugin takes so much CPU-time (and makes the laptop hot and breezy in the process). Is stumbled upon the article How to tell if you're using hardware acceleration and dove into my own about:support page …



update_repos: keep up-to-date with your projects

While I was standardising my dotfiles I wanted to have an easy and quick way to update my projects so repositories weren't out of date when I wanted to use them (for example when being offline on the train), and I didn't want to go through them by hand every …

Converting a bunch of tarballs to a Git repository

We've all been there. Well, I've been there at least; before discovering the virtues of a real version control system, I just created a snapshot of my projects by tarring and compressing the directory tree. That way I've a bunch of histories locked inside backup dir per project. When I …

Converting Mercurial to Git(hub)

I'm a fan of version control systems, as they allow me to thinker with my files (both source code and text files with notes and such) to my heart's delight without having to worry about thing getting lost. I can change and update programs, websites and such and can see …

Fixing samba on Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty)

I recently built a new at-home server, which basically is just a self-built NAS. Sharing via NFS worked immediately and other services were set up soon after. Then came Samba. Samba (or smb) is used for Windows shares, but in our home our Linux-based NAS speaks the protocol with things …

Making vim even more cool

vim, the final editor. Well, for some people at least. People like me, we like to type their files, code and more inside of dark-coloured windows, mainly terminals and do not really care if those files are local on their laptop, on the server at their feet or on some …
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Doing nice things with your SSH config file

If you are running a unix-like machine, like a Linux workstation, or BSD or Apple Mac, you might be acquainted with the ~/.ssh directory. SSH stores known hosts in their, as well as your public and private SSH keys and more important stuff. The contents of a ~/.ssh/config look …


Google Account as OpenID

If you want to log in using your Google account as OpenID (as Google is a provider), make sure you are logged in with that account and then use this url as ID on the site you're visiting: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id [source]

Experts Exchange

Stack Overflow is a lot nicer as a source for good technical advice, but Experts Exchange still has quite some answers too; might come in handy for a second opinion/solution on which you can base your own. expert-sexchange is much less annoying with this bit of CSS added to …

How to change the looks of Ubuntu 10.04's GDM

Ubuntu's GDM still does not have a settings window where you can change looks to your liking. However, there are some tricks to still be able to do just that. First, open a terminal and type the following command: sudo cp /usr/share/applications/gnome-appearance-properties.desktop /usr/share/gdm/autostart …