Jack @jacksgt@mastodon.social

I just found this cool website that allows you to check whether an outgoing port is open/blocked on your internet connection:

http://portquiz.net/

Useful when you have connectivity problems behind a restrictive firewall!

I'm having a great day planning my next trip in Denmark with Wikivoyage!
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Jutland

I think it provides a nice, relatively unbiased and honest (compared to e.g. TripAdvisor) introduction to an area.

@mmarif Thank you for creating GitNex!
I'm really happy someone has finally created a Gitea companion app!
\(^o^)/

"Our teeth don’t fit [our jaw] because they evolved instead to match the longer jaw that would develop in a more challenging strain environment. Ours are too short because we don’t give them the workout nature expects us to."

https://www.sapiens.org/body/human-teeth-evolution/

Android Apps I use & recommend:
https://blog.cubieserver.de/2019/android-apps/

"Should" is such an overused word these days. It signals a necessity but does not indicate a reason.

Instead of saying:
"You should pick me up at the airport."

It's better to say:
"I want you to pick me up at the airport."

That not only states the What but also the Why (here: "because it makes me happy").

How to optimize your apology:

1. Don't wait! Forget your ego!
2. Apologize for what YOU DID - not for what other people thought about it.
3. Don't give context. The Why is not important.
4. Format: Address your victim, express remorse, state how you will improve.
5. Apologize ONCE.

A very moving and insightful podcast episode from Freakonomics:
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/apologies/

European website to buy used and refurbished IT hardware (including refurbished servers, workstations, desktop PCs, laptops and components):

https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/

An entirely self-contained Puppet control repository: custom Puppet code, internal and external Puppet modules, Hiera YAML configuration and all the boilerplate around it.

https://blog.cubieserver.de/2019/self-contained-puppet-control-repository/

A livereload web server in Python: a very nice tool when you want to fiddle with some HTML/CSS/JS. Just hit 'save' in your favorite editor and it will automatically refresh the website in your browser!

https://github.com/lepture/python-livereload

Two interesting lightning talks about e-mail @ FOSDEM19

Autocrypt - Automating E-Mail Encryption:
https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/autocrypt_email/

IMAP, JMAP and the future of open e-mail standards:
https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/email_standards/

----
And a lightning talk showcasing console oriented web services:
https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/console_services/

How to create a GIF from a video with FFmpeg and ImageMagick:
> ffmpg -i input.flv -vf scale=320:-1 -r 10 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm - | convert -delay 5 -loop 0 - gif:- | convert -layers Optimize - output.gif

https://superuser.com/questions/556029/how-do-i-convert-a-video-to-gif-using-ffmpeg-with-reasonable-quality

If you need to cut the video before that:
> ffmpeg -ss 30 -i input.wmv -c copy -t 10 output.wmv

https://superuser.com/questions/138331/using-ffmpeg-to-cut-up-video

This guy put a tremendous amount of studying into his application process. He really earned those offers.

https://blog.usejournal.com/i-interviewed-at-six-top-companies-in-silicon-valley-in-six-days-and-stumbled-into-six-job-offers-fe9cc7bbc996

http://blog.christianperone.com/2019/01/a-sane-introduction-to-maximum-likelihood-estimation-mle-and-maximum-a-posteriori-map/

Keep (Traefik) service secure and fail-safe by it sandboxing with systemd:
https://blog.cubieserver.de/2018/locking-down-traefik-systemd-service/

Computerphile has two excellent videos on the difficulties of modern IM platforms and how the Double Ratchet algorithm (also used in OMEMO) solves these.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXv1boalsDI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sO2qdTci-s

How to check Database / Table size in MySQL & MariaDB:
https://tecadmin.net/how-to-check-mysql-database-tables-size/