Categories
Fixing Stuff Samuel

Cleaning A Few Things Round The House Without Chemicals

This is just a reminder post to myself about a few super useful cleaning techniques I have tried recently to clean stuff around the house.

1.) Cleaning microwave with lemon. Cut Lemon in half, squeeze into small bown then fill the bown with 2 cups of water. Place in microwave on high for 4-5 minutes. Once the timer finishes let the bowl site in the microwave for 1 minute (do not open the door). Last step is open the door and wipe everything down with a sponge (dip the sponge in the lemon water if anything is still stuck on the microwave surface).

2.) Repeat steps above but in the oven. Turn oven to 350 for 40 minutes when cooking the lemon water (make sure to place water in oven safe container, pyrex is best). Use same sponge to wipe off oven surface after lemon water has cooked for (make sure the water gets hot enough to boil).

3.) Clean cast iron skillet with potato. Cut potato in half, pour salt into the pan then rub potato over the cast iron (can use baking powder as well). If the potato gets too dirty, just cut the end off and repeat. Super effective for cleaning the cast iron and not scraping it.

Better explanation of the potato trick here: http://toriavey.com/how-to/2014/02/how-to-clean-and-season-a-cast-iron-pan/

Categories
Julia

Thinking through a project

Mulling over an idea isn’t inherently bad. But letting an idea or a plan sit alone for too long may make you resent it, and vise versa. So if you’ve got something that you think will work, or will make you happy to try (even if it fails) but you feel underqualified…here’s what you can try,

1. write the idea down. Get specific about where it would be and how big and how much (based on averages in that market)

2. Look online for associations or groups that exist solely for the purpose of helping people like you with this plan

3. When you find that association or organization (and you will) ask them to send you any manuals, laws, rules, assistance they can.

4. Don’t wimp out on #3. Because if  there is one thing people love to do, its talk all day about the thing they do/love/promote.

5. Carve out time from your day job and your other obligations to go through what was sent to you. And figure out how much applies to you specifically and your plan

6. Add this to your written down notes and idea.

7. To anyone who has ever been scared by a dream or a hope or an idea, you know that the 6 steps above are not easy to do and they don’t come all at once. So take a second and be proud of actually thinking you can do something new, and of the learning you did.

The next list of hurtles will involve more research, learning how to wrie your plan, writing it, and creating a budget.

Categories
Samuel Technology

Backing up P90x3 into ISO disk image files

We just bought the new P90X3 DVD’s and so far they are very solid. Like I’ve done with the past P90’s I wanted to burn these to ISO files for safe keeping, and also its just much easier to mount them virtually on any computer in my house and run them without the disks. These CD’s had a little bit different encryption on them, so just wanted to post a note about converting them to ISO files.

First, what programs will not work to convert them:

PowerISO
CloneDVD
Handbrake

Program that did work:
WinX DVD Ripper Platinum: (http://www.winxdvd.com/dvd-ripper-platinum/)

Notes about saving:

1.) You can save the image files without all of the intro content, so that it will auto start right at the beginning of each workout. To do this you just have to open up the CD’s, watch all the way through till where you select the workout, and take note of the track title. (Most of the CD’s start on track title 4 or 5). When you are looking in Winx DVD you can also take note of the time, since the workouts are all exactly 30 mins you can find the titles that are close to 30 mins and get a good idea of the content.

You can save the files in whatever format you want, but I chose to convert them to MP4 files so that they are smaller and I can play them without having to mount them as Disk Images. In terms of a “backup” this is not really a full backup, however in terms of ease of daily use having the MP4 file is a lot easier/more useful than having the full .iso backup.

–update–
When choosing the titles to copy, look for the titles with 40:06 listed as their time. There will be 2 on each DVD, those are just the workouts without the filler ads or any other content

Categories
Fixing Stuff Samuel

notes for troubleshooting wamp install

To see what else is running on port 80:
(in the command prompt run)
netstat -aon| findstr :80

To Fix error message:
vcruntime140.dll is missing from your computer

Fix by downloading Redistributable C++
or
If that one doesn’t work, fix by downloading the 2012 version

–note–
the 2012 version successfully installed for me on windows 7, 2015 version would not install

path to httpd.conf file:
C:\wamp\bin\apache\apache2.4.17\conf

**tip** open this in notepadd++ for improved formatting

Fix the broken links to folder on the default localhost page:
find the local host suppression code and set to false
$suppress_localhost = false;

That is all for now, I will continue to add tips onto this page as I find them…. the next thing I would really like to do is set a symlink from the wamp www folder to my local freenas machine, this would look something like:

/wamp/www/projectx /freenas/path-to-website-files/projectx

I’m pretty sure this can be done, it for sure can be done locally but adding in the complexitiy of doing of a cifs windows share is a little too much for today….. will save that for another time.

Categories
Fixing Stuff Samuel

SSH Commands to Search for Hacked Files

So if you have a WP site that gets “hacked” and you want to search for what files are effected there are a couple nice server commands you can run to make the process of finding the files much faster:

1.) Search your entire site for base64 code

grep -r base64_decode *

2.) Search for files recently changed

find ~/public_html -type f -ctime -7

*This example searches for any files changed in the last 7 days, you can update the -7 to any day amount

Categories
Fixing Stuff Freenas Samuel

fixing file permissions for windows on freenas cifs share

So I ran into an issue today where I could not copy a file from my freenas machine down to my local windows machine. The exact error message was:

you need permission to perform this action

you require permission from Unix User\”username” to make changes to this file.

The solution to this problem is to open up your freenas shell window (just navigate to your machine in the browser window, login and hit shell). Once you do that locate the file you want to move and type “chmod 777 filename” and hit enter. That will change the permissions on the file and you will be able to copy it over to your local windows machine.