Articles about howto

1. Nginx webserver setup

   After having written my website by hand for years, I've switched to the pelican website generator. To test this generated site I needed a webserver.

   Over the years I've used apache, lighttpd and thttpd. But none of those really worked like I wanted to. So I thought I ...

2. Planning

   Some things I've learned over the years about planning:

   • If you are new at something, your time estimates will be way too low. Don't be surprised if you need at least twice as much time. So initially, don't plan more than half your day.
   • Even when you ...

3. Keyword expansion for git

   One of the things I liked about the old rcs revision control system was that it supported keyword expansion in files. By default, git only supports using an $Id$ tag that will be expanded to the SHA-1 hash of the blob. This doesn't really tell you anything.

   Luckily, keyword ...

4. Mapping a property boundary

   From a walden effect article on mapping property boundaries I learneed that at least in the US, properties are described as walks from point to point. The walks are given in compass degree headings and distances.

   You can work out how to plot this on a piece of graph paper ...

5. Fun with encryption and randomness

   One way to look at how good encryption is to check how much the encrypted data lacks patterns (looks like random noise). An interesting way to check for patterns in a file is to convert it to a picture and look at it. I got the idea for this from ...

6. GHS labels in LaTeX

   Introduction

   From the Wikipedia page on the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals:

   Before the GHS was created and implemented by the United Nations, there were many different regulations on hazard classification in use in different countries. Whilst those systems may have been similar in content and ...

7. Backups

   Introduction

   People usually have to learn the hard way that backups are important. For people not familiar with computers it takes time to appreciate the nature of digital data. Digital data is easy and cheap to create and copy, but equally easy to destroy and lose! It is very easy ...

8. Converting PostScript and PDF images to SVG format

   As a long-time UNIX user I'm used to programs generating PostScript output, and I'm fluent enough in that language to produce graphics in it myself. Unfortunately PostScript is hard to display e.g. on the Web. Luckily another vector format, svg has arisen that is supported by modern ...

9. Managing configuration files

   Configuration files for UNIX-like systems and the programs that run on them are usually plain text files. They tend to come in two flavors;

   System files

   These files live in /etc or /var or /usr/local/etc and control the running of the system and additional software, for all users ...

10. Using encryption

    Introduction

    When I started writing this page, it was about how to use encryption on FreeBSD. During the writing process I realized that a lot of what is written here is applicable on other systems like Linux and OS X as well, so I changed the title. :-) Those pieces that ...