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Tech tips

Started by Twed, April 18, 2019, 05:28:25 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Twed

What little nuggets do you know that other people might not be aware of, but should be?

I was just making a length of cat5e cable and realised that everybody who might ever need an Ethernet cable should know how to do this. A tenner on crimpers and a 30 on a roll of cable and you've got all the Ethernet coords you'll ever need, practically forever, and you get to choose what length they'll be. Winner.

Pseudopath

Typing tree /f into a Command Prompt or PowerShell window makes you look like an l33t h4x0r.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Twed on April 18, 2019, 05:28:25 AM
I was just making a length of cat5e cable
Is that like goatse cable? If it is, I don't want to see your crimper.

Sebastian Cobb

Quite a lot of people that have been using *nix for years are surprised to find that 'cd -' will take you to your previous directory. Same applies for 'git checkout -'.

Although I knew on bash '!!' would replay the last command, I didn't know for quite a while it was clever enough to do 'sudo !!'.


Zetetic

zsh will tab-complete '!!', which is nice.

Sebastian Cobb

Isn't that three button pushes for when pushing the up arrow would've sufficed?

Zetetic

Useful in the sort of situation you touched upon: Write out 'sudo !!', and want to check what you're about run as root or to fiddle with it a bit. Eminently doable in other ways, but pleasant to have to the option in a fairly intuitive fashion.

To be honest, I don't tend to find that keypresses are my scarcest resource.

You can charge a Switch Pro Controller with a Samsung S9 phone charger.

madhair60

Instead of shutting down your computer using the start menu just flick it off at the plug its quicker


Dex Sawash

A regular 6 point metric socket will work on an E torx bolt head

Twed

To conveniently stop a Windows machine from sleeping (so you can follow a recipe etc.):

Win+X>Mobility Center>Turn Presentation Mode On

Every other way is painfully slow.

olliebean

Quote from: Twed on April 19, 2019, 04:42:23 AM
To conveniently stop a Windows machine from sleeping (so you can follow a recipe etc.):

Win+X>Mobility Center>Turn Presentation Mode On

Every other way is painfully slow.

That option isn't available on non-mobile computers. There are loads of tiny freeware programs that you can download that will prevent Windows from sleeping, though, so having one of them handy would probably be the quickest way.

Twed

Yeah. I actually landed at this solution because the first few of those programs I found were closed source and I don't really trust them (not that open source = malware free, but still).

I don't have a use-case for this with desktop machines (actually all of my non-portable devices are headless servers anyway) so this is a good compromise.

Dex Sawash

Made this tech tip for our moron parts manager this week


the

In all my years of using Photoshop, something I stumbled across only in the last few years (and wished I knew earlier), is:

While drawing a marquee (square/elliptical), you can hold space to reposition it while you're still drawing it.

I thought it was just me being dim that I'd missed that one (and despite knowing the other Shift/Ctrl/Alt modifiers), but I later spoke to an experienced illustrator who had no idea about it either.

(Without it you end up doing multiple tries to line up the origin before dragging it out.)

Sebastian Cobb

#16
Quote from: Twed on April 19, 2019, 05:25:41 PM
Yeah. I actually landed at this solution because the first few of those programs I found were closed source and I don't really trust them (not that open source = malware free, but still).

I don't have a use-case for this with desktop machines (actually all of my non-portable devices are headless servers anyway) so this is a good compromise.

Tools we shouldn't have to install in 2019 in descending importance:
Clipboard history
Things to make windows/panes 'snap' to a portion of the screen effectively (i know windows does this reasonably well now, but still)
Sleep prevention tools
Vim

Bazooka

Hide a baby monitor in your bosses house, and sit outside crying as you hear them mock you to their family.

Twed

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on April 20, 2019, 02:58:48 PM
Tools we shouldn't have to install in 2019 in descending importance:
Clipboard history
Things to make windows/panes 'snap' to a portion of the screen effectively (i know windows does this reasonably well now, but still)
Sleep prevention tools
Vim
I hope you're saying that Vim is so good it should be installed by default

the

Quote from: Bazooka on April 20, 2019, 07:53:47 PMHide a baby monitor in your bosses house, and sit outside crying as you hear them mock you to their family.

I thought for a moment you were suggesting impersonating their crying baby through the monitor, causing them to keep going upstairs to check on it.

Bazooka

Quote from: the on April 20, 2019, 10:28:47 PM
I thought for a moment you were suggesting impersonating their crying baby through the monitor, causing them to keep going upstairs to check on it.

That's stage two of the plan.

Cloud

Linus's voice is annoying
Ctrl-; puts the current date in an Excel cell
You can double-click the control box in the top-left of a window (in Windows) to close it, this was the normal way in Windows 3.1 and older and still works now
A lot of system stuff in Windows 10 can be launched by right-clicking the start menu or pressing win-x

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on April 18, 2019, 03:05:24 PM
Quite a lot of people that have been using *nix for years are surprised to find that 'cd -' will take you to your previous directory. Same applies for 'git checkout -'.

Although I knew on bash '!!' would replay the last command, I didn't know for quite a while it was clever enough to do 'sudo !!'.

Ta, never knew either of those!

Twed

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on April 18, 2019, 03:05:24 PM
Quite a lot of people that have been using *nix for years are surprised to find that 'cd -' will take you to your previous directory. Same applies for 'git checkout -'.

Although I knew on bash '!!' would replay the last command, I didn't know for quite a while it was clever enough to do 'sudo !!'.
A good security-related one: putting an empty space before a command will stop it ending up in bash_history. Good for those times where you need to supply a password in the command line.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Twed on April 21, 2019, 06:49:03 PM
A good security-related one: putting an empty space before a command will stop it ending up in bash_history. Good for those times where you need to supply a password in the command line.

I didn't know that.

I quite like using really basic regex hackery when using grep and ps e.g.
ps -ef | grep [o]penvpn

It feels sneaky.

And yes I absolutely meant vim should be installed. And tmux.

Sebastian Cobb

I had a bit of a kerfuffle at the weekend mucking around with Docker and trying to get it to use a location that was an NFS mount on the host. Assuming it was either a problem with my docker setup, or the permissions on the host. Turns out it was actually a permissions issue on the NFS - IE root (the default user in the docker container - not sure I like this) was forbidden from writing to it.

Al Tha Funkee Homosapien

Use your obsolete DVD-ROM in your desktop PC to store your favourite obsolete CD music album. You can then chuck away the useless CD case and utilise the new storage space in your shelf or CD rack to store one slice of bread or an old birthday card from your dead auntie.

Ronalado

if you typing some letters and you type the wrong letter can make is delete with some arrows to left and then botton: DELET

Woody Allen is short for 'Wooden Allen'.

Al Tha Funkee Homosapien

Technically it's 'Wooden Hexagonal'. Wooden Allen is a brand name.

Have a YouTube channel with millions of followers who now view all computers and phones through the lens of someone who runs benchmarks and processes video for a living.