27
Nov

Amazon Echo Dot - ESP8266 Relay control

I recently received an Amazon Echo Dot.

White Amazon Echo Dot

After linking all the regular things like Spotify and Google calendar, I then moved on to finding how I could link a Raspberry Pi or some of the ESP8266’s that I have lying around.

I came across the following GitHub page (https://github.com/kakopappa/arduino-esp8266-alexa-multiple-wemo-switch)  which allows the setting up of an ESP8266 as a WeMos device, this allows you then setup your ESP to use the GPIO to control a relay such as an Optoco...

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Nov 27, 2016
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11420
20
Aug

Authorization Headers in Plesk Linux

As Plesk runs nginx on top of Apache, authorization headers may not be passed through by default. 

If this is causing you issues, add the following line to your nginx configuration:

FcgidPassHeader AUTHORIZATION

Just add the line to your fcgi config file i.e. /etc/httpd/conf.d/fcgid.conf on CentOS and restart httpd.

 

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Aug 20, 2016
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10641
21
Oct

Website downtime

It's back up!

Apologies for the website being down recently. cPanel had updated and changed some configs affected symbolic links and my folder permissions. All back and working again now.

I've recently started looking into docker, and docker images which has been err.. interesting.

 

I'll be updating the site code at somepoint soon, so things may change slightly!

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Oct 21, 2015
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7505
30
Mar

Missing fonts in Adobe Photoshop on Ubuntu

I've been working more on Ubuntu lately due to the better native shell integration. With the large amounts of git and deployment work that I get involved in, better shell integration just wins hands down. Simple things like being able to copy / paste without having to use a mouse and right click in terminal windows saves a lot of time.

I recently started a new project and had some PSD's to work with. While they open fine on LibreOffice for viewing, sometimes I need to grab elements ou...

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Mar 30, 2015
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8608
12
Mar

Laptop Hard Drives and Power Savings

I've recently been replacing various dead hard drives in computers around the house, and then it came to my laptop hard drive.

This is a 500gb WD average 2.5 laptop HDD. The drive is getting onld now, the laptop is nearing 4 years old, so it was getting errors as expected.

It wasn't until I looked at the S.M.A.R.T errors with a tool (e.g. StableBit Drive Scanner)

laptop power saving kills hard drives

Now I never used the major/harsh power savings that windows has, it was always the normal / power hungry settings I used....

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Mar 12, 2015
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8069
24
Jan

Windows 10 Tech Preview Update to Build 9926

Recently Windows 10 updated to build 9926, which initially felt like the whole PC was being installed again.

It went through the whole 'We're getting things ready' and installing your apps and such as if its a fresh install / refresh. Anyway, I noticed some changes to the UI and thought i'd post up some screenshots.

Windows 10 Start Menu Build 9926

The new larger start menu

Windows 10 Start Screen Build 9926

The new start screen with sidebar

Windows 10 Start Screen Search Build 9926

The start search

Windows 10 Settings Build 9926

The new settings screen

Windows 10 Personalise screen Build 9926

The personalise screen

Windows 10 Display options Build 9926

Display Options

Windows 10 Storage Sense Build 9926

Storage Sense (I haven...

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Jan 24, 2015
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8193
15
Nov

AMD R9 BSOD / Black Screen

I recently purchased an AMD R9 290 and like many people I suffered the black screens and BSOD's after install.

AMD R9 290

 

After much digging and reading the tons of other people that experienced the same issue, I then completely removed the driver with the Guru3D Display Driver Uninstaller. I allowed it to restart my PC, I was then presented with a Windows logon screen, already further than various attempts before.

The next step was installing the latest Beta driver from AMD&nb...

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Nov 15, 2014
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7930
16
Oct

Zeroshell is Awesome

Zeroshell is awesome.

You can read more about Zeroshell here at http://www.zeroshell.org/.

I live in the UK and unfortunately am connected directly to a telephone exchange, this means no cabinet, and therefore no fibre broadband in the near future.

I've been using Zeroshell for some time now, but recently discovered that it could be used to create a VPN from my home with multiple internet connections to give me an increased bandwidth with failover setup

I have 2 20MB ADSL lines which for some is p...

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Oct 16, 2014
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7525
21
Jul

Windows 8.1 DNS Issue

Since upgrading to Windows 8.1, i've been having major DNS issues. On my PC, at work and on my Surface Pro.

Many other people also have the issue and have tried various things such as the following:

netsh winsock reset

or constantly having to

ipconfig /flushdns

Both of which only gave a temporary solution and would soon give me DNS errors again. I tried manual IP configurations, disabling IPV6 and trying fixed DNS such as Google or OpenDNS.

I then tried disabling the firewa...

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Jul 21, 2014
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7264