Prevent OpenVPN to start automatically on Mac

I had a bit of struggle to disable OpenVPN from launching automatically at boot on macOS. It doesn’t seem to have any option / checkbox in the softwareto disable launch at boot, so here what I did: 1) Unload OpenVPN daemon using launchctl: sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.openvpn.plist 2) Remove OpenVPN...

Gamify your tasks

This logo is property of Habitica I’ve been using many apps for managing my todos in the past, here a few ones: jrnl Trello Google Todo List A simple txt file / Google Doc That said, todo-lists can get pretty boring over time but I found Habitica at some point....

Quarantine in Japan - Day 7

And here we are! Possibly the final day at the hotel. 7 o’clock sharp, I spit in the tube and hang it in a cup at the front door, as requested. Final saliva test in prep It’s time to start packing the suitcases. At the same time, I’m imagining being...

Quarantine in Japan - Day 6

Hello everyone! Another great morning view Not much going on today, no tests, same kind of food. Good news is that I might be able to leave the hotel quarantine tomorrow if this last test is negative. After that a 6 days quarantine at home will pursue besides 4 negative...

Quarantine in Japan - Day 5

Hello world! Hotel view I couldn’t sleep until 5am this morning - damn jet lag. That said, I finished to watch Money Heist - Season 5. Around lunch time, I got another video call from the MySOS app and got a screenshot of it. This is what you can expect...

Quarantine in Japan - Day 4

Morning! Got some tubes for the saliva test this morning. After the result, we are still negative. I see the bright light at the end of the tunnel to get out on Jan 5. Catering hotel food is still atrocious. But in-laws kindly brought us some delicious food directly to...

Quarantine in Japan - Day 3

Happy New Year everyone! Welcome to the first 2022 day. Not a suprise, I’m still at the hotel with family. Today, I definitely feel the jet lag more. Looking at the schedule provided when we started the quarantine, seems like not much will happen today. However we can expect a...

Quarantine in Japan - Day 2

7:00 am - my eyes opened. Jet lag is not that bad for once. Checking my phone, still no call or notifications from the MySOS app. Breakfast was laying on a chair at the front door. Luckily, we brought some coffee and filters with a dripper in the suitcase. Breakfast...

Quarantine in Japan - Day 1

Just landed to KIX today, exhausted. What a crazy journey. After 2 months in France to spend the winter holiday season, I’m here now, in a roughly 20 meter square hotel room for 6 days with the whole family without the possibility to make a step beyond the door landing....

Common apps I'm using on Mac (2021)

Note: I also have a post explaining how I customized my keyboard with Karabiner for a smooth Linux -> Mac transition. Link: https://www.alfredapp.com/ Well known macOS app that allows quick search and easy hotkeys setup on your Mac. An handy app to customize the way you start your applications or...

Disable URL escaping (ZSH & iTerm)

When using ZSH with oh-my-zsh and iTerm, I noticed some URLs or strings I pasted in were escaped with a \ on special characters. I wasn’t sure if it was an iTerm or a feature tied to oh-my-zsh but adding: DISABLE_MAGIC_FUNCTIONS=true to my .zshrc and then source the file again...

Tools for Elastic product's quick testing

I very often need to test new Elastic products with different versions. Downloading the distributions everytime then configure manually every part could be cumbersome and quite repetitive. Of course, pulling docker images or use Terraform are viable options, but sometimes you might be looking for a quick setup. For this...

Why my Jekyll post isn't showing up in production?

So you have you Jekyll post properly appearing in your dev environment but not there when you deploy in production. Here is a few things that are most likely the reason why: Your local dev environment timezone may differ from the remote server. Make sure you have configured the timezone...

Windows suddenly goes out of sleep (and fix)

I noticed for a while that one of my Windows rigs had some insomnia issues – Windows waking up in the middle of the night. There is a few things that you need to check to find the culprit. Start by launching a “Command Prompt” ( ⊞ Win + R...

Fix Project Diablo 2 glide3x.dll issue

Starting from Season 3 - Domination, this fix won’t work anymore as dsound.dll will prevent you to play online (leading to a message: Wrong game version and disconnect you from the game). Recently I started to play Project Diablo 2 and started to get the following error while closing the...

WSL Windows apt broken (Ubuntu 18.04)

apt just got broken on my WSL installation. I didn’t dig through much, but it started once I upgraded to Ubuntu 18.04. Here the error I’m getting when trying to install new packages: apt: error while loading shared libraries: libapt-private.so.0.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory...

Yet another Mac bluetooth interference with Wi-Fi

Update March 22, 2020: I saw that the following command could help in some cases: sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.airport.bt.plist bluetoothCoexMgmt Hybrid (Explanation on Stackoverflow) I thought I was done with this from my previous post about it. However it didn’t last long and the problem re-appeared later. It was not...

Make a command line shortcut for Sublime Text on macOS

I know it’s handy to open Sublime Text using Alfred but sometimes I really want to open Sublime via my favorite terminal using a simple command line. Here is how to do it: find / -name "subl" 2> /dev/null It’s usually located in /Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl sudo ln -s /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl...

Fix emojis/icons not showing on Slack MacOS

Alright, I’ve been victim of a weird bug on Slack where certain emojis didn’t appear properly. I would say the issue mostly happen with custom emojis. I remember I’ve installed the Slack app via their official website. Not 100% but I saw this occuring from Slack 4.0.0 or such. I...

Distributed vs Decentralized blockchain

There is a big misconception between distributed and decentralized blockchains in the crypto landscape. Distributed blockchains are not necessarily decentralized by nature. Decentralization imply the blockchain to not be owned by the same entity. Decentralization which has for objective censorship resistance is the essence of why crypto-currencies have been started...

Fix Sony headset WH-1000XM2 bluetooth interference

I’ve bought the Sony headset WH-1000XM2 a while back ago now and I have been super happy with it. This was until recently before I started to use it with my Macbook Pro ( 2018, 13-inch, with Touch Bar). I notice some frequent WiFi disconnects and disturbance with the signal...

Capture the Flag, Google CTF 2019 upcoming, Satoshi's Treasure... 🚩

Far from being an expert in security but I’ve been more and more interested in CTFs challenges on my free time. It’s a good cut-off from my daylight work and also a good alternative to programming and I really enjoy this new hobby. Also, Google is launching new CTF quals...

How to disable Google Chrome dark mode on macOS

With the latest Google Chrome updates, if you use macOS dark theme, Google Chrome will switch in dark mode as well by default. Usually I love dark themes for everything, but I’m not a fan of of the dark theme for Chrome provided by Google — I dunno why, maybe...

Unbind CKEDITOR ALT+0 shortcut (Accessibility Instructions)

As explained in this previous article, I switched from a Linux workstation to a Macbook for work and re-done some parts of the keyboard mapping to match what I’ve been used to during the past decade on Windows/Linux. Please check out the article if you are looking into a PC...

PC Flavored Mac keyboard mapping

It’s already have been two months, but I switched from my PC workstation on Linux to a Macbook for work — What a big slap in my face. No seriously, ok I have an iPhone but I never used a Mac with iOS before (or really briefly for doing some...

WSL / Ubuntu / ZSH and Hyper Terminal

I’ve been using Windows Subsystem for Linux for quite a long now. What is Windows Subsystem for Linux? It’s basically to run a Linux environment in Windows OS Even if it wasn’t really stable at the beginning, a lot of improvements have been made. At work I have quite a...

Amazon Lightsail $3.50 VPS out

© Amazon Web Services Amazon Lightsail released this month their $3.50 VPS. https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/ Here are the specs: 512 MB Memory 1 Core Processor 20 GB SSD Disk 1 TB Transfer I think it’s a big smash against other Cloud providers (like Digital Ocean, Vultr, Linode or Packet). How much do...

Phpize error with phpbrew (Debian like)

Today I’m using Laravel to prototype an application. I have to manage a lot of PHP versions at the same time that’s why I’m using phpbrew which is an awesome piece of software btw. I compiled recently PHP 7.2.9 and forgot to add the GD library to it. With phpbrew...

Fonts I'm using for coding

Here is a modest list of the fonts I have been using along my 15 years of coding/programming. If you read those lines, I assume you are looking for a good font which is pleasant to code with, easy to read with distinct characters (ex: O / 0 or l...

Numeric Keypad not recognized in PuTTY

In case you logged into an SSH session and your numeric keypad is not working, follow these steps to fix the problem: 1) Go to Change Settings… -> Terminal -> Features 2) Check the option Disable application keypad mode 3) Apply Test your numeric keypad and it should work. Sometimes...

PLESK - FTP Secured TLS does connect but does not obtain directory listing

Chances are your Passive Ports are not set in your PLESK ProFTPD configuration. To fix that edit: vim /etc/proftpd.d/50-plesk.conf Add a PassivePorts range to allow simultaneous FPT connections. Your configuration should be like this: #ATTENTION! # #DO NOT MODIFY THIS FILE BECAUSE IT WAS GENERATED AUTOMATICALLY, #SO ALL YOUR CHANGES...

Limits of Jekyll categories and i18n

Before reading: This article deals with categories page generation by language using Jekyll and the problems I personally have to implement it. This article don’t list the limits of Jekyll in a general point of view. As you maybe noticed, I have been using Jekyll to build this website from...

Google Hangouts Chat first review (after one week)

The story started when Microsoft has acquired Skype in 2011. Technically speaking I’ve nothing against Skype, however Microsoft has made some « bad choices » — in my opinion. I was happy and satisfied with Skype until Microsoft decided to kill P2P support from it. Maybe they did that due to performance...

Sublime Text 3 & plugins I'm using

I discovered ST few years ago long before Atom, Brackets and Microsoft Visual Code. I was looking for a “more graphical” alternative to VIM and ST seemed to be the best match for me at this time. If you have used VIM quite a bit you should know about the...

Windows 10: Applications not indexed properly

Since I upgraded to Windows 10 I’m struggling to have my installed applications indexed in Start Menu. With applications installed via an installer it works fine but if I extract a program from an archive (like .zip or whatever) and place it manually to my Programs directory it’s not indexed....

phpMyAdmin "No input file specified." error (Nginx with FastCGI)

If you encounter a “No input file specified error” when you try to access your phpMyAdmin alias on your Nginx web server, please try to add this line to your vhost or default configuration: location ~ \.php$ { ... fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; } This fastcgi_param line was missing into my...

PuTTY - Unexpected SSH2 MSG UNIMPLEMENTED packet

If you are here it’s you are wondering why your are getting a Disconnected: Server protocol violation: unexpected SSH2_MSG_UNIMPLEMENTED packet error on PuTTY. The reason is you actually use a deprecated SSH key exchange algorithm. To fix this you can first update your PuTTY version to the latest one. If...

Happy New Year 2018

That’s it, 2018. Thank you all for your support last year.　 あけましておめでとうございます！ In a tech point of view my 2017 in few words would be: JS (mainly front-end frameworks) Crypto-currencies Blockchain AI systems Chatbots IoT Progressive Web Apps Serverless And not enough time… 1) Well, write more blog posts I...

Osaka Motor Show 2017

Hey everyone! I’ve been to Osaka Motor Show 2017 at INTEX Osaka. It’s the 10th edition and 300,000 visitors are expected to come. I personally discovered the event this year, it’s never too late! (I’m so bad to find events…) First thing, I didn’t find any price indicated on their...

Vietnam (2017)

I finally ended editing the footage I took during my trip in Vietnam 3 months after. Quite busy on these days on different projects I’ll share you later =) Also I’ll spare you all the difficulties I had in obtaining an international driving license in Japan. It was sincerely a...

Transfer music to a Sony Walkman (NW-E405) with Windows 10

I still use my old Sony Walkman (NW-E405) that I bring to the gym. I don’t want to explode my brand new stuff with some dumbells or whatever. So, here is the beast: I almost never used Sony’s software like Sonic Stage or Sony CONNECT, they were way to complicated...

Alpes d'Huez (2017)

Here we go for a new snowboarding season. Since I’m in Japan, I don’t often have the occasion to ride a board but it’s always a pleasure even after a long period of inactivity. Alpes d’Huez is located here: The video below is a compilation of those two days spent...

Tridiv - a web-based editor for creating 3D shapes in CSS.

Quick post to introduce you Tridiv which is a cool editor to create 3D shapes and models in CSS. You can find few examples on their website (iPhone 4, Nintendo NES, X-wing). Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work with Firefox… A dependency to WebKit I guess. Here is what I’ve...

Use a different user/group to run Apache (Ubuntu)

If you check your /etc/apache2/apache2.conf and look for User and Group: # These need to be set in /etc/apache2/envvars User ${APACHE_RUN_USER} Group ${APACHE_RUN_GROUP} Let’s replace User and Group variable in /etc/apache2/envvars. export APACHE_RUN_USER=user-you-want-to-use export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=user-you-want-to-use Restart Apache. sudo service apache2 restart And you are done!

SSH - Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes for directory/file

I got a message like “Server refused our key” when I tried to SSH my server using a PuTTY with a RSA key. After a log check in /var/log/auth.log (Ubuntu): sshd[2910]: Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes for file /home/user/.ssh/authorized_keys Ownership of .ssh folder and authorized_keys file should be: drwx------...

Welcome!

def welcome(name) puts "Hi #{name}, welcome to fcbrossard.net" end welcome('Visitor') #=> prints 'Hi Visitor, welcome to fcbrossard.net' to STDOUT. Welcome to my new website. Back to 2006 the popularity of Wordpress was not as it is now (you can check on Google Trends if you don’t trust me). I chose...

Thailand (2016)

Hi, everyone! I am back from Thailand where I spent over 2 weeks in 4 different locations: Just before going to Thailand I bought a GoPro HERO 4 Silver. Provided GoPro case is waterproof until 40m which is enough for me. Thailand is a tropical environment so you don’t need...

Decipher a base64 like message

Install ZSH Agnoster theme on Ubuntu 14.04