Here’s a list of software tools I either started using this year or tools I think everyone should be using. Bitwarden The best password manager. Free if you like, or only $10 per year if you want to have a little bit more features or just want to support the project. My advice: pay the $10, Bitwarden is the best bargain for a great password manager and you support development… Read More »Ten 2022 Tool Tips
I recently switched my LAMP virtual server to a different VPS provider. The LAMP server that is serving you this site. So the migration worked! Here are the steps, for future reference. Mostly for myself, but maybe you — someone who came here from Google — can use this too. This should work on any small to medium sized VPS. Let’s go! Lower your DNS records TTL value When you… Read More »Migrating a LAMP VPS
In classic yak shaving fashion; this weekend I created a static responsive image gallery generator. It’s one PHP file that — when run from the command line — generates a clean, fast and responsive (aka mobile friendly) video and image gallery with navigation from a directory of images and videos. The output is one single index.html file. The generator itself is a single PHP file (~300 LOC). And running it… Read More »Corbin: static responsive image and video gallery generator
For my Dutch speaking readers: on my other blog piks.nl janvandenberg.blog I started blogging daily. Six days a week you will find a short thought or observation that explicitly aims to be above current events. I aim for timeless truths; observations and thoughts that are true regardless of time and place. Blogging daily is a deliberate attempt to not start my day with doomscrolling or consuming other people’s content, but… Read More »Bloglife @ janvandenberg.blog
I have a file where I keep notes & ideas. And I try to have as less friction as possible to add ideas to this file. To achieve this I made it so that when I am at my terminal I edited just two files to achieve this. .bashrc An alias in .bashrc to type just one letter and start the file in Vim in insert mode: .vimrc I added… Read More »Auto insert date when starting Vim
When I installed my new monitor — the Dell S2721QS — and attached it to my Dell laptop, something felt… off. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, the resolution was fine (3840 x 2160), screen was fine — brightness, contrast etc. — but the overall experience was more sluggish. Especially when moving my mouse. Ah of course, this new resolution calls for different mouse speed settings! But after… Read More »Connecting a Dell 4K monitor to HDMI
Download and install ImageMagick. Go to Windows Explorer and type sendto in the address bar. This will open the following path: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo The files here will be available as actions from the Windows “Send to” right-click context menu. Create a new (text) file in this directory and add the following line: magick.exe %1 %2 -resize “x%%[fx:max(u.h,v.h)]” +append -set filename: “COMBINED-%%k” “%%[filename:].jpg” This is essentially what will be executed when you… Read More »Merge two images in Windows from right-click context menu
My book tracking app alerted me that I read 52 books over the last twelve months. So, *franticly crunching numbers* yes, indeed, that averages to one book per week! I follow a couple of blogs of people that read way more than I do. Like these guys, respectively read 116, 105, 74 and 58 books in 2019. I don’t know how they managed to do so, but 52 is definitely… Read More »How I read 52 books in a year
I was impressed by the Netflix miniseries Unorthodox. Specifically with the talented actors, the believable authentic world-building and the spot-on casting (so good). With regards to all of these aspects this is a very good show. Huge parts of the show are in Yiddish which is a unique experience (especially when you speak a little bit of German). It felt genuine and intimate. I like that the story works with… Read More »Unorthodox – Netflix miniseries
Jitsi offers a great user experience because it doesn’t require an account, you just go to a Chrome URL and you’re pretty much good to go. You get a full blown video chat environment: complete with gridview, screensharing and chat options. No add ons or third party installations needed. I greatly prefer this instead of Zoom, Google Hangouts or Microsoft Teams or what have you. Jitsi is also a great… Read More »Jitsi finetuning and customization
Run the following two commands in bash to get a listing of all duplicate files (from a directory or location). This can help you clean out duplicate files that sometimes accumulate over time. The first command uses find to print all files (and specific attributes) from a specific location to a file, prefixing the size of the file in the name. This way all files with the same filename and… Read More »Use find (1) as a quick and dirty duplicate file finder
This is a collection of COVID-19 related information links. Stats Worldwide map, with counts https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/685d0ace521648f8a5beeeee1b9125cd Worldwide stats with specific recovery stats https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Worldwide charts and figures split out per country https://covid19info.live/ Different dashboards updated hourly http://covid19dashboards.com/ Direct link to the Dutch RIVM URL with national stats https://www.rivm.nl/nieuws/actuele-informatie-over-coronavirus Background A collaborative guide to COVID-19 care https://covid-at-home.info/ Corona Science Journal (very thorough but broad information): https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/corona-science/ How to explain to children why… Read More »Corona Links