m a r k p i t m a n

Setting Up Linux on a MacBook Pro

| Mark Pitman

*Updated Sep 15, 2015 I have been using OS X for about a year and a half now. When I bought my MacBook, I was switching from Windows because I wasn’t really happy with Windows 8 and I have always used some sort of Linux or BSD off and on in the past. I figured if I really missed it, I could always switch back to Windows or at least dual boot. [Read More]

Updated Linux Setup Script

| Mark Pitman

I’ve updated my Linux setup script. It now installs Go 1.5 and adds vim-jade. I’ve been using Jade for a while instead of writing plain HTML. I find it much easier to read.

How to Get Media Keys Working for Google Music in Chrome

| Mark Pitman

Having problems getting your media keys working with Google Music in Chrome? The first thing to check is in Settings » Extensions and then scroll to the bottom of the page, then click on Keyboard Shortcuts. If the media keys are already enabled, but not working, there is one other thing to check. If you are running Windows, uninstalling the Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Center software should get it working. It may not be an option for you if you need some feature that it supports for your mouse or keyboard, but it worked for me and I don’t really need it. [Read More]

Setting Up a New Linux Environment

| Mark Pitman

I find myself setting up Linux VMs quite often and I always dread getting my environment set up how I want it. Yesterday, I installed Linux on my Macbook and decided it was time to automate as much as possible. I had some notes that I was using to make sure I didn’t miss anything when I did it manually, so I used that to build a script. I saved it on Github so others could benefit from it as well. [Read More]

Trying out Hugo

| Mark Pitman

I’ve been doing some Go programming lately and I ran across the Hugo project while searching for something. It’s kind of like Jekyl but written in Go. I looked around a little more and I found a Go program to convert Ghost content to Hugo content. I ended up submitting a pull request because it was writing out some junk in the front matter of the posts. I think maybe it was written against a previous version of Ghost. [Read More]

Firewall Rules with UFW

| Mark Pitman

UFW is Uncomplicated Firewall. It is an easy way to setup iptables firewall rules on your Linux system. If it is not already installed, it can be installed on Debian-based systems (like Ubuntu) like this: sudo apt-get install ufw Check the status of current firewall rules. sudo ufw status Here’s the output on one of my systems: Status: active To Action From -- ------ ---- 22 ALLOW Anywhere 80 ALLOW Anywhere 10000/tcp ALLOW Anywhere 443/tcp ALLOW Anywhere 22 (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6) 80 (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6) 10000/tcp (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6) 443/tcp (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6) If you haven’t set it up before, you won’t see all those rules. [Read More]

Setting up a Raspberry Pi for Node.js Development

| Mark Pitman

I bought a Raspberry Pi Model B+ back in December. I didn’t have a monitor to plug it into so it just kind of sat idle for a while. I recently picked up a new monitor so I’ve been tinkering with the Raspberry Pi and I wanted to capture all of my setup and configuration. Don’t bother with “Noobs” I just went ahead and installed Raspbian rather than boot with Noobs and ultimately end up installing Raspbian anyway. [Read More]

Installing Webmin on Ubuntu

| Mark Pitman

Install Webmin with apt-get by adding the Webmin repository to your sources:

echo "deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib" | sudo tee --append /etc/apt/sources.list

wget -q http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Then install Webmin

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install webmin

If firewall is enabled, allow traffic on port 10000

ufw allow 10000/tcp

Fixing Clock Problems When Dual Booting Linux and Windows

| Mark Pitman

I recently noticed I had to reset the time on my PC whenever I rebooted from Linux into Windows. It seemed like it started after I had to reset my Windows 8 install (seems like I have to do that a lot!) I like that Linux wants the hardware clock to be UTC, but I wish there was a way to make Windows work with that…

It turns out, there is a registry setting that takes care of this: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation] "RealTimeIsUniversal"=dword:00000001

Trying out Ghost

| Mark Pitman

I’ve become interested in Node.js and Markdown lately, so when I heard about Ghost I was really excited. I’ve been using Wordpress for quite a while now and I wanted something simpler. I cloned the Ghost repo from GitHub, followed the directions and had it up and running in a matter of minutes. I run this site on a little Digital Ocean Droplet with 512 MB of RAM. It’s cheap, and for the low amount of traffic my site gets, it’s fine. [Read More]