Learning & Firefox

Out of all the places I write, this is the easiest blog. I keep it focused on technical information that I have derived / learned and it operates as kind of a set of notes for me to look back into the stuff that I do. As time has gone by, I have done less System Administration, choosing instead to focus on creating space in my life to breathe and exist that isn’t so related to work. I think that I kept wondering about all the time I spent becoming a “guru”, not in the public sense of the word, more like a uber nerd in an area and then passing on all the knowledge in minutes that I had spent hours learning. I am sure there is a balance in all things and there is here as well.

Then I had complaints about writing in other locations, that I merely was representing what others already had and it rankled me as what I had stated was that I was presenting my curated take on the world. And of course, I need practice in writing. Last year I wrote 23 times and this year just 20 so far. This is such a change from a few years ago when I wrote almost daily or so it seemed to me. But I find I journal every day now and I want to expand and practice developing a style of communication by writing.

I intend to edit and learn by doing it. Today is not that day. Today is a day to simply cruise through and put the words down on paper and see what happens with me.

The Block editor in WordPress has changed quite a great deal and I am not sure I am expert at all in it. And I don’t even know if this is the most effective way to write as it isn’t the tool I used so long ago.

dist://ed the Mozilla Blog posted an article on the Firefox Secret Tips that I have had open in my browser since it came out. I believe I kept hoping that I would learn them all. That isn’t me. I teach and preach that you should take a list and note what you already do and pick one thing you think you could integrate into daily practice for some reason: it intrigues you, speeds up your work, is fun, a diversion, and just do that one thing and then close the article. Don’t bookmark it with a promise to learn all the things. Do one! And then move on. The list will come back in some form from the Universe at large and you can pick another item. But lists come faster than days themselves and none are worth total mastery.

What then is this blog, in addition to the notes on a SysAdmin issue or a piece of software I have used, it is a Commonplace Journal. As such, both the advice and the article fit.

n.b. Don’t paste a link directly into wordpress :)

On the list

  1. I use it
  2. Back to this one in a minute
  3. Screenshots, well, I used it when it first came out but I haven’t added the screenshot button in and I do like to annotate mine, so I am still using Awesome
  4. I forget how to reopen a closed tab all the time and this list didn’t help
  5. Pocket. NO
  6. Yes
  7. I did find it just before this list and removed my old AddOn Color Picker as I like fewer AddOns.

I just used the List Block and clearly don’t have it working to my satisfaction. Can’t figure out how to do the Copy and Paste. No, I am not about to get distracted. I know it will come up again and today I learned it was there. Sometime soon I will read about it and master it.

The item on the list I picked was #2: Search for a needle in a tabstack. What I am finding super helpful is the idea of using an asterisk to search through my bookmarks. That has already integrated itself into my daily practice. Whether searching through the open tabs becomes useful I don’t know.

I learned one thing. It has made me slightly more productive and quicker and getting through my days. For now, that is enough. And writing, well, I am getting started at that as well.

On The Bench: Google AIY Voice & Raspberry Pi

Setup my recently arrived Google AIY/Voice Project and am busy going about customizing the interface.  Short a MicroSD card but Amazon will fix that soon enough.

https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/

Note:  Enjoying the Linux nature of Raspberry Pi as well as all the Python tools and use.  Clearly a Confluence Project.

Recreate the Hack from Sneakers

https://github.com/bartobri/no-more-secrets

From Lifehacker.com

If simply popping into the command line isn’t enough to make you feel like a ‘90s hacker, GitHub user bartobri created a silly decrypting text effect pulledfrom the movie Sneakers.

Once you install the tools, you can manually run any command you want through the decryption effect. You can also just type sneakers into the Terminal for an exact reproduction of the movie scene. Silly? Sure, but we could all use a cool decryption animation in Terminal every once in a while. You’ll find install guides for a variety of different operating systems over on GitHub.

From bartobri

No More Secrets

“No More Secrets” is the name I’ve lovingly given to the infamous “decrypting text” effect seen on screen in the 1992 hacker movie Sneakers. If you are unfamiliar with the effect, it can be seen at 0:35 in this youtube video.

This project provides tools to recreate this effect in your projects.

Open MailTo Links from Twitter in Gmail

Step 1: Open your Gmail account.

First, go to Gmail. After it loads, you’ll see this icon called the “Protocol Handler” in the browser address bar.  

Step 2: Click “Allow” in the window that pops up.

Now click the “Protocol Handler” and a window will pop up. When it does, clickAllow, then Done