Author Archives: john

The IT Detective Agency: the case of the Is it the firewall? or routing? or switch? or layer 2?

Posted on November 21, 2019 by john | 6 views

Intro This is yet another tale of things in the IT world often do not turn out the way it seems at first blush. Or possibly a tale of just when you think you’ve seen it all after decades in … Continue reading →

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The IT Detective Agency: WebEx and the case of the mysterious reset

Posted on November 20, 2019 by john | 3 views

Intro A company known to me was a contented user of WebEx until they noticed a strange behaviour: their calls were losing quality or even dropped exactly after one hour. No one, most especially the vendor of WebEx, had the … Continue reading →

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What I’m Working on Now: building my own 3D printer

Posted on November 6, 2019 by john | 9 views

Intro Because someone else on the team had a good experience with it, and so i can exchange notes and get some tips form them, I went ahead and ordered the Anet A8 3D printer + an extra roll of … Continue reading →

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The IT Detective Agency: the case of Failed to convert character

Posted on November 2, 2019 by john | 7 views

Intro A user of a web form noticed any password that includes an accented character is rejected. He came to use as the operator of the web application firewall for a fix. More details The web server was behind an … Continue reading →

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How to POST with curl

Posted on October 7, 2019 by john | 14 views

Intro For the hard-core curl fans I find these examples useful. Example 1 Posting in-line form data, e.g., to an api: $ curl ‐d 'hi there' https://drjohns.com/api/example Well, that might work, but I normally add more switches. Example 2 $ … Continue reading →

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No Internet, secure WiFi status message in Windows 10

Posted on September 16, 2019 by john | 22 views

Intro Finding out how Windows decides if there is an Internet connection or not can be a challenge often posed by trying to do an Internet search comprised or words that are common and therefore used in many other contexts. … Continue reading →

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Raspberry Pi Recovery Mode or interrupting the boot process

Posted on August 26, 2019 by john | 41 views

Intro If you installed Raspbian from the NOOBS distribution as I do, then you may occasionally “blow up” your installation as I just have! You have an out, sort of, short of re-imaging the disk, though about with the same … Continue reading →

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apache as reverse proxy under SLES

Posted on August 13, 2019 by john | 43 views

Intro Just got my SLES 12 SP4 server. That’s a type of commercial Linux I needed to set up a secure reverse proxy in a hurry. There’s a lot of suggestions out there. I share what worked for me. The … Continue reading →

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Solution to NPR puzzle using Raspberry Pi

Posted on August 11, 2019 by john | 21 views

Intro Take a common five-letter word. If you add an “e” to the end you’ll get a common six-letter word. or add an ‘e” after the second letter to get a different six-letter word, or an “e” after the fourth … Continue reading →

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Raspberry Pi photo frame using your pictures on your Google Drive

Posted on August 6, 2019 by john | 80 views

Intro All my spouse’s digital photo frames are either broken or nearly broken – probably she got them from garage sales. Regardless, they spend 99% of the the time black. Now, since I had bought that Raspberry Pi PiDisplay awhile … Continue reading →

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