Category: Topslakr

Posts by Topslakr

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When the Photo Bug Bites

I remember the first time I saw a moment that I knew I had to photograph. I wonder if other photographers are the same.

I was in Maine, spending a weekend with a friend at his lake side cabin. I woke up on a cool late autumn morning and the whole lake was covered in rising mist. The water was much warmer than the cool dry air and up came the moisture.

My only camera was a 3 megapixel ‘Kodak Easy Share’ I had gotten for Christmas a few years before. This was turn of the century, inexpensive, pocket camera technology at its most average.… Click here to read more!

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Automated Backups of OpnSense

I use rsnapshot, on Centos 7, to manage the vast majority of my backups across a myriad of linux servers both within my network and across the globe. I’ve never blogged about the entirety of that process, but I wanted to post a quick note about how I use rsnapshot to also backup the configuration of my router.

Until recently, I had been using this process to backup my pfSense routers. With my switch to OPNsense though, I was pleased to see the process is the same.

Basically, we just need to make a copy of a single folder on the machine, ‘/conf’, which is located right off of the root on both pfSense an OpnSense.… Click here to read more!

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Cleaning up old Logs on Centos 7

As often happens with computers of all types, log files build up over time. Generally speaking, the operating system will rotate these logs, which means it breaks them up into chunks, but it isn’t usually set to remove the old chunks. Over time, those log files can start to add up.

I am giving some thought to changing the provider of the VPS that hosts this web page, since performance is not consistent and the VPS is not very reliable, and I was curious to know how much disk space I needed for the system to run well. After doing some light clean up on the system I did a check to see where on the disk I was using the most space.… Click here to read more!

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Interesting Failure Modes – SD Card Arching

I’ve been using Raspberry Pi computers for several years. A few months ago the Raspberry Pi B I had hooked up to my TV and running OpenElec, stopped working. The Pi was locked up and then wouldn’t reboot when I pulled the power cord.

It’s an original B model, with just two USB ports, so I didn’t think much of it. I prepped and put in place a replacement Pi, also running OpenElec, and threw the Pi into a drawer for further inspection..later. I got 4 years faithful service from a $35 computer so I wasn’t complaining.

Some weeks later, I had an idea that I wanted to use a Raspberry Pi for so I grabbed the questionable unit and got to work.… Click here to read more!

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How To: A Clean install of Windows 7 in 2016

Maybe I’m alone here, but I still have occasion to install Windows 7 from time to time. For a while, that was no big deal; Install the OS, update, update, update and you’re good to go. Lately though, the process has become far more cumbersome. Not only does the process take ages to complete, but when you’re done its always nagging you to update to Windows 10. What follows is my process for getting this done without too much hassle.

Firstly, I’ve not created anything new here. I’ve simply found a series of tools and bit of information online that helped me along the way so I’m compiling it here for my future benefit.… Click here to read more!

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Install Centos 6 on a Non-PAE Machine

I have a Thecus N5200 that was modified to have a VGA port. Though the machine will run a variety of current Linux distributions, I wanted it to run Centos 6. Unfortunately, the N5200 doesn’t support PAE, which Centos 6 requires.

The first major problem is that a Non-PAE machine won’t even boot the Centos installer CD/DVD. You have to find some way around that. There are several ways to get around that but they are all quite complex and time-consuming. Plus, as time goes on they work less and less. The old software needed is harder and harder to find.… Click here to read more!

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Thecus N5200 as a Server

Back in 2007, I bought a Thecus N5200 to use as bulk storage on my network. I’ve spent many years using and fighting with the unit but it wasn’t until my storage needs out grew the 5 SATA disks it could hold that I considering sending it off to be recycled.

It’s a pretty basic unit. From Thecus it arrived with 5 hot swap SATA disk trays and a simple web-based management interface. The interface wasn’t great at telling you exactly what the state of your disks were so I lost my data with this unit more than once. Over time though Thecus added a method to install add ons and little by little people started to write add ons for the unit and actually increased its feature set.… Click here to read more!

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Portable Pi – Raspberry Pi with a Motorola Lapdock 100

Having read countless accounts online from people who have taken various lapdocks and paired them with a Raspberry Pi, I thought I would give it a try myself.

I went to Ebay and purchased a Motorola Lapdock 100. It’s a small unit with a cable that comes out that back. This cable has a header with a Micro-USB and Micro-HDMI connector on it. General wisdom seems to be buying series of adapters and cables and then sort of whittling them down until they fit. I dutifully bought the necessary bits but when the Lapdock arrived it seemed much easier to just take apart that cable header instead.… Click here to read more!

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Installing X-Plane 10 on Fedora 20

I’m a bit of an aviation buff and have been known to spend a fair few hours playing flight sims. My favorite sim these days is X-Plane, and thankfully it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. My current host for X-Plane is Fedora 20 and since there is a bit of extra effort to make it run properly, I thought I’d outline my process here.

First and foremost – This post assumes you have installed the appropriate graphics drivers and are not running whatever drivers were just included ‘in the box’, as it were. My system has an NVidia GeForce GT 640 and I use the akmod-nvidia drvivers from RPM Fusion, which works great.… Click here to read more!

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Camera Equipment Change… Again.

It seems like every year or so I rethink my photography equipment and make some changes. I’ve gone through many variations of my day-to-day photography kit but I seem to keep reducing the amount of automation present in the system.

My plan for this coming year is to spend as much time with a manual focus, mechanical camera system as I can. I am keeping my Nikon F80s, Nikon F5 and Nikon D7000 but I’ve sold off my spare Nikon N80s, and Nikon FE bodies. When the situation requires digital or highly automated film shooting I will have those bodies available, but my day-to-day system will be based on the Nikon FM.… Click here to read more!