Programming,
How To,
Web Development
Mar 28, 2017
Want the benefits of private, distributed version control but don’t want to pay GitHub’s subscription fee? Or simply don’t trust GitHub with checked in passwords, tokens and secrets?
You can fashion yourself a quick and dirty solution using Git and Dropbox.
What you need
Step 1. Clone an Empty Repository
- Decide on a folder name for your new repo
- Clone it via
git clone dropbox://[reponame]
- This will create a new, empty directory in your local with all the necessary .git gubbins
Step 2. Write Some Code!
- Get busy, write some code! Save it to your new local repo.
- Or if you’re feeling lazy, just copy-paste the code from somewhere else.
Step 3. Add, Commit and Push
- Stage the source code via
git add
- Commit to your local repository via
git commit
- Push to the Remote via
git push
Step 4. Share and Collaborate
- Want to collaborate with someone? Just use Dropbox’s built in Share feature.
- Anyone you add can clone, add, commit and push too. Easy as!
Twitter,
Productivity
Jan 8, 2017
Perhaps, like me, you spend far too much time reading news, blogs, journals. And you don’t like it.
Content doesn’t just arrive once a day anymore — it rains down continually. It’s easy to fill every spare moment with this shallow pursuit. Refreshing web pages and checking for updates. Moments that could be much better spent.
Going cold turkey might work for some, but I don’t want to disengage from news completely. I enjoy keeping up with current affairs. I just want to reduce my dependency. Minimize my reading time. Get the most bang for my buck.
It turned out the answer had been staring me in the face all along. Hiding in plain sight. Twitter.
No, I don’t mean Twitter the endless time sink, the bottomless scrolling list of doom. I mean Twitter the bountiful source of curated, low-noise news. This is what I mean:
Combining these into a Twitter List gives me my own personalized news feed. My cost of staying informed has shrunk to 5–10 minutes, twice per day — freeing up the rest of my time for deeper pursuits. I’m much happier with the new balance.
I hope this inspires you to reclaim your time too!
Raspberry Pi,
How To,
IoT
Jan 2, 2017
Don’t have an extra keyboard or HDMI cable? Here’s how to do a headless Raspbian install on your Pi.
Step 1. Download Raspbian image
Head on over here to grab a copy of the Raspbian image. The “Lite” version will do.
Step 2. Write image to SD card
Write the image to SD card. You can find detailed instructions here.
Step 3. Add “ssh” file to the SD card root
Enable SSH by placing a file named “ssh” (without any extension) onto the boot partition of the SD card.
Step 4. Boot your Pi
Pop your prepared SD card, power and a network cable into the Pi.
Step 5. Find your Pi’s IP address
To configure your Pi, you need the IP address. You can find this in your Router’s DHCP lease allocation table:
Step 6. SSH into your Pi
Use your favourite SSH client (I prefer PuTTY) to access the Pi. The default credentials are:
username: pi
password: raspberry
That’s it! You can now configure your Pi via sudo raspi-config
