Baitisj

Outstanding Network Monitoring for OpenWRT

2026-05-13T22:35:53.641-07:00

As of the time of this writing, the OpenWRT "Network Monitoring" guide doesn't have a link to an absolutely fantastic tool: luci-app-bandix.

Again, as of the time of writing, the author hasn't submitted this as an "official" OpenWRT package apparently because of performance concerns on less capable hardware. However, this package works great on my BananaPi BPI-R3 with less than 10% CPU load while actively rendering in my web browser window.

Screen Fonts For The Win 2025: My choices for readability

2025-12-25T14:04:00.000-08:00

I experience sans serif suffering and the lack of consistency in fixed width font choices. Given multiple systems installations in multiple GNU/Linux environments, this post serves as a personal reminder to myself; maybe someone else will benefit.

Best monospaced (fixed width) font

Consolas Regular 10.5

Runner up:

Andale Mono Regular 10.5

Why 10.5? Interestingly, I've noticed that Consolas Regular 10 is significantly smaller when rendered than Andale Mono Regular 10. When I bump the rendering up to 10.5 point, the size of Andale Mono doesn't change, but Consolas does increase slightly. Andale Mono renders with extremely crisp and clean thin lines. Consolas looks just slightly "fatter" and is easier for me to read.

Best sans serif (and default font)

Noto Sans 16

Runner up:

DejaVu Sans 16

Noto Sans scales well and doesn't waste space between ascenders and decenders.

Best serif font

Google/ Sorkin Merriweather

Runners Up:

Adobe Source Serif Pro

DejaVu Serif

In my experience, serif fonts that are supposedly used for screen reading tend to be obnoxiously tall / skinny. DejaVu Serif offers very uncrowded letters and is very legible on screens at larger sizes but at smaller sizes the height of the characters begins to suffer with much wasted screen real estate. Source Serif Pro is quite well balanced -- although I do wish it was slightly wider. A balance between Source Serif and DejaVu Serif was welcomed by this author, and Merriweather fits the bill.

I've screen tested other options, including Atkinson Hyperlegible (which I do VERY much like at higher font sizes but not at small ones). Noto Serif is just too skinny/tall.

Audacity on Void Linux - Just use pw-jack

2025-12-25T13:00:00.000-08:00

Just a short note: If you're using Void Linux with PipeWire for managing audio, be sure to install the libjack-pipewire package.

To launch Audacity:

$ pw-jack audacity

After this, you should be able to select any PipeWire device through the JACK interface in Audacity's user interface. (PortAudio does not directly support PipeWire... but who cares when you have awesome wrapper libraries!)

Flatpak gets grumpy if your home directory is in /usr/home

2025-09-03T20:30:00.000-07:00

Useful but dumb tidbit about Flatpak.

Over the years, I migrated my system from OpenSolaris to FreeBSD and then back to Linux thanks to the now-defunct Project Trident.

Due to Trident, I migrated to Void Linux (which remains my favorite distribution so far) and happily chugged away for several years with my $HOME in '/usr/home'. Flatpak? Seemed somewhat broken and I was never hugely concerned because I never truly had reason to use Flatpak.

Errors such as

Not sharing /usr/home with sandbox: Path "/usr" is reserved by the container framework

... never really bothered me. Instead, I used xchroot when needed.

I never realized how simple it would be to fix the issue. It appears that Flatpak expects $HOME to be in /home, which is essentially the current Linux and Solaris standard.

There's other ways of fixing this problem, other than moving the home directory location, but... I figure this will probably save me headache down the line.

Getting IEEE 802.11s (mesh) and 802.11r (fast transition) working on some old hardware in OpenWRT 21.02.1

2021-11-26T17:49:00.001-08:00

OpenWRT has got to be one of my favorite Linux distributions of all time. It is small, efficient, simple, and well-thought-out. I've been running OpenWRT (and LEDE, and OpenWRT) for a very long time on TP-Link hardware, which can often be scored off of eBay for $20 -- and even less -- at the Goodwill Store (imagine my incredible glee when I scored a WDR3500 for $6).

The TP-Link WDR4300, 3600, and 3500 all use Atheros system-on-chip and offer 802.11g/n and 802.11an, which, for my modest home use, has been satisfactory since 2012. What's really interesting is that OpenWRT *still* is still supported on these devices.

Making a more "modern" network consisting of mesh networking and fast transitioning has been a challenge because of how many iterations the software has gone through. For some time, I have wanted to walk through the house and roam across APs with minimal service interruption. After tinkering, I finally have mostly everything working.

I will now dispel old Internet lore regarding these devices:

802.11s mesh networking works "out of the box." You do NOT need to install wpad-mesh-wolfssl any more. However, on my hardware, 802.11s does NOT work with encryption. SAE encryption is supported in the LuCI UI, but when this is attempted, the devices refuse to talk to one another. Perhaps this will be fixed in a later version of OpenWRT.
802.11r fast transition requires identical SSIDs and encryption on all APs you want to roam between, which should seem obvious. What is not obvious is that all APs must have the same user-specified mobility domain, and "Generate PMK locally" must be checked. Options involving PMK, R0 and R1 keys do not need to be specified and are automatically managed by OpenWRT. I have read documentation stating that mobility domains are automatically generated by OpenWRT but what I have found is that if they are not specified, then fast transition does not work correctly.
I have found that a lot of IoT devices do not enjoy dissociation on low acknowledgement at all. As soon as the AP dissociates them, they immediately re-associate. Even my Windows 10 laptop seems to do this. So I figured that I would disable this option (it is enabled by default). This seems to make things a little less bumpy for these low-cost devices.

Below, I have included /etc/config/wireless from my "gateway" AP which serves as the central point of access:

config wifi-device 'radio0'
	option type 'mac80211'
	option hwmode '11g'
	option path 'platform/ahb/18100000.wmac' # There will be some default here, don't change it 
	option htmode 'HT40'
	option channel '9'
	option cell_density '0'

config wifi-device 'radio1'
	option type 'mac80211'
	option hwmode '11a'
	option path 'pci0000:00/0000:00:00.0' # There will be some default here, don't change it
	option htmode 'HT40'
	option channel '36'
	option cell_density '0'
	option noscan '1'

config wifi-iface 'mesh'
	option ifname 'mesh0'
	option network 'mesh lan'
	option device 'radio1'
	option mode 'mesh'
	option mesh_id 'YourSSIDMesh'
	option key 'your_secret_key'
	option mesh_fwding '1'
	option mesh_rssi_threshold '0'
	option encryption 'none' # maybe 'SAE' will work one day

config wifi-iface 'wifinet0'
	option device 'radio0'
	option network 'lan'
	option mode 'ap'
	option ssid 'YourSSID'
	option encryption 'psk2+ccmp'
	option key 'your_secret_key'
	option auth_cache '1'
	option skip_inactivity_poll '1'
	option ieee80211r '1'
	option ft_over_ds '1'
	option ft_psk_generate_local '1'
	option mobility_domain '3137' # four digits, same across all interfaces
	option max_inactivity '20'
	option disassoc_low_ack '0'

config wifi-iface 'wifinet1'
	option device 'radio1'
	option network 'lan'
	option mode 'ap'
	option ssid 'YourSSID'
	option encryption 'psk2+ccmp'
	option key 'your_secret_key'
	option auth_cache '1'
	option skip_inactivity_poll '1'
	option ieee80211r '1'
	option ft_over_ds '1'
	option ft_psk_generate_local '1'
	option mobility_domain '3137' # four digits, same across all interfaces
	option disassoc_low_ack '0'
	option max_inactivity '30'

Similarly, the following is the configuration from a mesh "repeater" node.

config wifi-device 'radio0'
	option type 'mac80211'
	option hwmode '11g'
	option path 'platform/ahb/18100000.wmac' # There will be some default here, don't change it 
	option htmode 'HT40'
	option channel '3'
	option cell_density '0'

config wifi-device 'radio1'
	option type 'mac80211'
	option hwmode '11a'
	option path 'pci0000:00/0000:00:00.0' # There will be some default here, don't change it
	option htmode 'HT40'
	option channel '36'
	option noscan '1'
	option cell_density '0'

config wifi-iface 'mesh'
	option ifname 'mesh0'
	option network 'mesh lan'
	option device 'radio1'
	option mode 'mesh'
	option mesh_id 'YourSSIDMesh'
	option key 'your_secret_key'
	option mesh_fwding '1'
	option mesh_rssi_threshold '0'
	option encryption 'none' # maybe 'SAE' will work one day

config wifi-iface 'wifinet0'
	option device 'radio0'
	option network 'lan'
	option mode 'ap'
	option ssid 'YourSSID'
	option encryption 'psk2+ccmp'
	option key 'your_secret_key'
	option auth_cache '1'
	option skip_inactivity_poll '1'
	option ieee80211r '1'
	option ft_over_ds '1'
	option ft_psk_generate_local '1'
	option mobility_domain '3137' # four digits, same across all interfaces
	option disassoc_low_ack '0'
	option max_inactivity '20'

config wifi-iface 'wifinet1'
	option device 'radio1'
	option network 'lan'
	option mode 'ap'
	option ssid 'YourSSID'
	option encryption 'psk2+ccmp'
	option key 'your_secret_key'
	option auth_cache '1'
	option skip_inactivity_poll '1'
	option ieee80211r '1'
	option ft_over_ds '1'
	option ft_psk_generate_local '1'
	option mobility_domain '3137' # four digits, same across all interfaces
	option disassoc_low_ack '0'
	option max_inactivity '20'

Installing an MSI (Windows Installer Package File) in Microsoft Windows without administrator privileges

2021-11-21T16:20:00.005-08:00

Assuming you have an MSI file you need to install as a non-Administrator user, open up a `cmd` window. (Press Windows Key-R and type 'cmd' in the box.)

💡 Drag and drop files and folders into the `cmd` window from the Explorer and it will insert the full path to the file or folder (thereby saving a lot of typing).

Type (and/or drag paths!):

msiexec.exe /i C:\Path\To\something.msi
INSTALLDIR=C:\Path\to\someplace\where\your\user\has\write\access\
MSIINSTALLPERUSER=1 ALLUSERS=2

Additional information:

➤ If the value of the ALLUSERS property is set to 2, the Windows Installer always resets the value of the ALLUSERS property to 1 and performs a per-machine installation or it resets the value of the ALLUSERS property to an empty string ("") and performs a per-user installation. The value ALLUSERS=2 enables the system to reset the value of ALLUSERS, and the installation context, dependent upon the user's privileges and the version of Windows.

➤ The MSIINSTALLPERUSER and the ALLUSERS properties can be set by the user at installation time, through the user interface or on a command line, to request that the Windows Installer install a dual-purpose package for the current user or all users of the computer. To use the MSIINSTALLPERUSER property, the value of the ALLUSERS property must be 2 and the package has to have been authored to be capable of installation into either the per-user or a per-machine context. For information about authoring a dual-purpose package, see Single Package Authoring. If the value of the ALLUSERS property does not equal 2, the value of the MSIINSTALLPERUSER property is ignored and has no effect on the installation. The value of MSIINSTALLPERUSER property is ignored when installing the package using Windows Installer 4.5 or earlier.

Serial device passthrough from Linux KVM host to guest operating system

2021-02-05T11:12:00.002-08:00

Today's challenge was to run some archaic Windows software within a kernel virtual machine (KVM) with the end goal of programming radio equipment through a RS232 serial connection.

I own a programming cable that has a male USB-A connector on one end and a male RJ-45 connector that is plugged into the serial port of a Motorola CDM1550-LS+. This connector presents a Prolific PL2303 USB to serial chipset on the USB, which is handily recognized by Linux. I was then able to get this to show up as a normal serial port under KVM, but, unfortunately, virt-manager 3.2.0 doesn't provide this capability in the UI when adding serial hardware.

Therefore, XML editing must be enabled before making the appropriate addition to the hardware tree.

Thanks, virt-manager, but where's "Pass-through serial device (dev)"

Fixing fontconfig for proper rendering of Microsoft fonts

2020-08-04T21:37:00.004-07:00

This post is more of a reminder / howto to *me* and is lifted from stefan.angrick's blog.

This, in particular, applies to Cambria and Calibri.

If it doesn't already exist, create a file fonts.conf in the directory ~/.config/fontconfig/ That file will need to contain the following content:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <match target="font">
    <edit name="embeddedbitmap" mode="assign">
      <bool>false</bool>
    </edit>
  </match>
</fontconfig>

The actual way of getting CUPSD to share printers

2018-08-29T12:23:00.001-07:00

Although modern cupsd documentation describes a couple of simple steps that should theoretically enable sharing of printers on your system, one critical component is missing.

Documentation on cups.org suggests using cupsctl and lpadmin to enable sharing of a printer; this is all fine and good:

cupsctl --share-printers
lpadmin -p printer -o printer-is-shared=true

Inside of the default cupsd.conf there is a section

Allow @LOCAL
Order deny,allow

You need to add the Allow @LOCAL line in order to enable sharing from local subnets, which is probably the most common user case.

Afterward, restart the cups daemon.

A better formatted version of the clinically useful depression outcome scale (CUDOS)

2018-08-02T12:42:00.000-07:00

iohyve / bhyve USB controller passthrough goodness

2018-01-18T16:21:00.000-08:00

I used to have a Windows machine that was dedicated to running software for our printer since the open-source software wouldn't scan and print correctly. Thanks to iohyve and a $20 PCI USB card, I was able to eliminate this machine and replace it with a slimmed down virtual machine.

Here are some tips and steps to get it working:

Only PCI devices that support MSI (message signaled interrupts) will work. You can figure all of this out with the command:

pciconf -lvc

In my case, I get:

xhci1@pci0:3:0:0:        class=0x0c0330 card=0x12421b21 chip=0x12421b21 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'ASMedia Technology Inc.'
    device     = 'ASM1142 USB 3.1 Host Controller'
    class      = serial bus
    subclass   = USB
    cap 05[50] = MSI supports 8 messages, 64 bit
    cap 11[68] = MSI-X supports 8 messages
                 Table in map 0x10[0x2000], PBA in map 0x10[0x2080]
    cap 01[78] = powerspec 3 supports D0 D3 current D0
    cap 10[80] = PCI-Express 2 endpoint max data 128(512) NS
                 link x2(x2) speed 5.0(5.0) ASPM disabled(L0s/L1)
    ecap 0002[100] = VC 1 max VC0
    ecap 0001[200] = AER 1 0 fatal 0 non-fatal 0 corrected
    ecap 0019[280] = PCIe Sec 1 lane errors 0
    ecap 0018[300] = LTR 1
bhyve expects that PCI devices that will be passed through must be associated with the ppt driver. Rebooting your machine is not required. In the above example, the device is associated with the xhci driver. To associate it with the ppt driver:

devctl detach pci3:0:0
devctl set driver pci3:0:0 ppt
If you execute pciconf -lvc again, you'll now notice:

ppt1@pci0:3:0:0: class=0x0c0330 card=0x12421b21 chip=0x12421b21 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
In modern bhyve, you must supply the -S argument to bhyve in order to get PCI passthrough working. Note that -u is provided to make Windows like my UTC clock:

iohyve set vm_name_here bargs = "-H -w -S -u"
Create the mapping for the PCI device in question:

iohyve set vm_name_here pcidev:1=passthru,3/0/0
Limit or completely disable network access to your virtual server!

Installing Windows 10 in TrueOS (FreeBSD) in a bhyve container using iohyve

2018-01-14T01:24:00.002-08:00

Here's an abbreviated HOWTO install Windows 10 using iohyve on TrueOS.
iohyve is a handy script that helps manage virtual machines in bhyve. More information is available here.

Download installation ISOs
You can use the Windows Media Creation Tool to download .iso files for Windows 10.
Download the Red Hat VirtualIO network adapter ISO.
Install the prerequisite packages for iohyve and bhyve
pkg install tigervnc bhyve-firmware uefi-edk2-bhyve iohyve
Initialize iohyve if you have never used iohyve before
iohyve setup pool=zfs_poolname_here net=network_nic_here kmod=1
Initialize components
iohyve cpfw /usr/local/share/uefi-firmware/BHYVE_UEFI.fd
iohyve cpiso /path/to/Windows_10_installer.iso
iohyve cpiso /path/to/virtio-win.iso
Create and configure device (example uses 32 gigabytes for C:)
iohyve create win10 32g
iohyve set win10 loader=uefi ram=2G cpu=2 vnc=YES vnc_tablet=YES vnc_port=6901 vnc_wait=YES bargs="-H -w" fw=BHYVE_UEFI.fd
Install Windows 10
iohyve install win10 Windows_10_installer.iso
vncviewer localhost:6901
... stuff happens.
Once install is completed and the VM shuts down, install the virtio network driver
iohyve install win10 virtio-win.iso

Navigate the explorer to the "d:" drive, open the NetKVM directory for your architecture, find the .inf file and right-click it to "Install." Congratulations, your VM can now download teh viruz!
Do cool things to your Windows using zfs commands.

Some caveats about bhyve:

You can't run bhyve and VirtualBox at the same time.
If you try to run bhyve, and then want to run VirtualBox, it seems that it is not possible to kldunload the byhve module vmm that occupies the hypervisor (it is possible to unload nmdm).

Experimental 2 meter / 70 cm dual-band high-gain flower pot antenna using RG6 coax

2017-10-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

I decided to modify the original VK2ZOI Experimental

Dual Band Flower Pot Antenna to work with RG6 coaxial cable and utilize a ten-foot-long section of 1+1/4" PVC pipe that is found endemically here in the United States. This resulted in an antenna with SWR of about 1.0 on 146.52 MHz simplex, and 2.0 on 144 and 148 MHz.

Changes from Original Design

Compared with the original VK2ZOI Experimental Flower Pot:

Lengths of all segments were implemented as drawn in the VK2ZOI plan
"Double-shielded" RG6 that used both foil and light outer braid instead of RG58
Top coil: 4 tight turns of RG6. The total length of this cable segment was therefore changed to 630 mm.
Bottom coil: 4 loose turns of RG6.

The plans of mice and men...

My original plan involved using a bottom coil of 5 turns RG6. Using SELFRES3.EXE as the calculator, I back-calculated the self-resonant frequencies of the VK2ZOI coils: top coil from 125 through 150 MHz, and bottom coil of 135 MHz. I did not compensate for velocity factor differences and assumed solid-core RG6 has a similar velocity factor to that of solid-core RG58.

The parameters that I used for my RG6:

Coil width 5.6 mm
Conductor diameter 5 mm
Diameter of coil = 42 mm OD of PVC + 6 mm diameter of RG6 = 48 mm

# of Turns	Solenoid length, mm	Calculated resonant frequency, MHz
3	17	180
4	22	143
5	40	135
5	28	122

Play-by-play

With the five-turn bottom coil, the SWR measured 3 at 146 MHz and ~1.2 at 144 MHz. Trimming the top of the antenna resulted in a reduction of SWR at 144 MHz and 146 MHz to 2.5; further shortening then increased the SWR to about 3 at 146 MHz and was stopped.

Because of the seemingly sharp "knee"-like SWR increase at ~145 MHz, I hypothesized that my lower coil was imparting too much inductance with high Q as the bottom coil ended up being a lot more tightly packed than I had expected. I therefore removed one turn from the bottom coil and my SWR dropped dramatically at 146 MHz to be nearly 1.0.

I used aluminum foil for coupling sleeve only on the bottom of the antenna at the time of testing.

Prelimiary result with only lower sleeve in place:
SWR 2 144 MHz, 1 @ 146 MHZ, 2 @ 148 MHz.
SWR ~ 1.5 throughout 70cm band.

Special thanks to Roger W7RC (espouses the benefits of RG6) and Bill KG7ULE for
practical advice via the 146.52 MHz Portland Graveyard Net.

Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome mnemonic

2016-11-26T00:44:00.003-08:00

Wiskott is riding an ostrich.

The ostrich is sick because it has immunodeficiency; it has epistaxis due to thrombocytopenia and a lot of eczema eggs.

X-linked disorder that causes cytoskeleton rearrangement.

Cytochrome P450 Inducers & Inhibitors mnemonics

2016-11-23T20:42:00.001-08:00

Moderately offensive mnemonics that induce CYP450:

Nevir drive your carb by Ma's pines,
through the barbwire fence, and
up the ramp
into St. John's woods.

De-phen-ding griseoly bear (on a cycle, "Phossy,") will mo'dafinetly attack your drunk ass.

Nevirapine
Carbamazepine
Barbiturates
Rifampin
St. John's wort
Phenytoin
Griseofulvin
Cyclophosphamide
Modafinil
Chronic alcoholism

Offensive mnemonic that off-puts, or inhibits, CYP450:

Ami and Quinn pro-teased Sonia'z azole with grapes and Clara's myce on the ciment floor.

Amiodarone
Fluoroquinolones
Protease inhibitors
Isoniazid
-azole antifungals
Grapefruit juice
Clarithromycin
Cimetidine

Neural crest cell / MEN2 mnemonic

2016-11-22T16:28:00.000-08:00

Here's a word-picture to help remember the facts.

Two men "A" and "B" are wearing crowns (neural crests) and are both eating melon (melanocytes).

Man B is really tall and skinny (marfanoid) and has big orthodontics, and he chokes on the melon -- it's gone down his trachea! He freaks out! His lips and his eyelids are swollen!

Man "A," Larry, gives him a cricothyrotomy -- right in his larynx.

Now that it's 10AM, man B enters a muffin store in order to RETurn his melon. There are some seriously lumpy muffins inside...

Man "A" goes to the middle of the store. A swan in the middle of a simulated "sea" (C cells) wearing a royal crest is giving birth. The swan wields a para -- an M249 machine gun, and has HUGE thighs, 'cuz it has been using 'roids.

With the help of her dula, who is pounding on a tympani to help the swan count, she gives birth to a baby swan. Baby swan spirals around, covered in a membrane.

MEN2A/B is a gain of function mutation in the RET (tyrosine kinase) proto-oncogene found on chromosome 10. This affects cells derived from the neural crest. Both types are associated with pheochromocytoma and parathyroid hyperplasia (in type 2A) or Marfanoid habitus and mucosal neuromas (type 2B). These cells are derivatives of neural crest cells and are listed in order of appearance:

Melanocytes
Odontoblasts
Tracheal & laryngeal cartilage
Enterochromaffin cells
Parafollicular thyroid cells
Schwann cells
Adrenal medulla
Spiral membrane / tympanic surface

Benzodiazepine mnemonics

2016-11-21T14:33:00.000-08:00

The Benzos have a contest crossing the Alps.

TOM tries with an ox mid-day;
Team Lorax crosses the Alps in less than a day;
The heavy Latin girls, Flura and Chlora, take more than one dia.

Short-acting: triazolam, oxazepam, midazolam (t½ < 6 hrs.)
Intermediate: temazepam, lorazepam, alprazolam (t½ < 24 hrs.)
Long: flurazepam, chlordiazepoxide, diazepam. (t½ > 24 hrs.)

HIV drug mnemonics

2016-11-03T12:19:00.002-07:00

Sometimes all you need to do is recognize part of the word.

Nuclear reverse transcriptase inhibitors

NRTI and Aba did ten vudine (voodo) tricks.

Abacavir
Didanosine
Tenofovir
Zido-, Lami-, and Stavudine
Emtricitabine

Non-nuclear reverse transcriptase inhibitors

No, NRTI, Neva-raping Delaware's ef-favor!

Nevi-rapine
Delavirdine
Efavirenz

Fusion inhibitors

Mars virus docs, 120, enfer (enter) virus 41.

Maraviroc - blocks GP120 and inhibits "docking" or attachment to surface receptors
Enfuvirtide - blocks GP41 and inhibits "entry" or viral penetration into the cell

Others

Protease inhibitors all end in -navir ("Never tease a pro-tease.")

Integrase inhibitors all have -tegr- integrated into their names.

Microbiology: mnemonics, Baitisj-style

2016-10-03T15:22:00.003-07:00

This post is primarily for medical students.

My brain doesn't work well with normal mnemonics, so I have to create sentences that use multiple letters from the organisms.

Aerobic bacteria:

Mona's heart and lungs need air.

Pseudomonas
Nocardia (cardia = heart)
Mycobacterium (infest the lungs), good enough for me

Anaerobes:

Ana's mice fuse bacteria and robes together in her closet.

Actinomyces
Fusobacterium
Bacteroides
Clostridium

Obligate intracellular:

Outside, it was rilly cold and chlammy, so I went inside because I needed to ATPee with my rilly chlammy cox.
(needs host ATP)

Rickettsia
Chlamydia
Coxiella

Facultative intracellular:

I listened in as the facultative French Legion pestered my nice salmon brood.

Listeria
Francisella
Legionella
Yersinia pestis
Neisseria
Salmonella
Brucella

Catalase-positive:

Because she was Aspergers at heart, Mona Ecolied (coiled) her candid list around her serrated cattle-staff instead of her helical book-holder.

Aspergillus
Nocardia
Pseudomonas
E. coli
Candida
Listeria
Serratia
Burkholder
Helicobacter pylori

Urease-positive: (this is the only acronym that works for me.)

Struvite stones? PEe CHUKSS!

Staph. epidermidis
Proteus
Cryptococcus
H pilori
Ureaplasma
Klebsiella
Staph. saphrophyticus

Encapsulated bacteria:

Jesus (GBS)! Mona klubbed HIs nice, pnew-ly-colied salmon capsule.

Group B Strep
Pseudomonas
Klebsiella
Haemophilus influenzae (type B)
Neisseria meningitidis
Strep. pneumoniae
E. coli
Salmonella

git: Using the branches in a remote repository

2016-09-06T12:10:00.004-07:00

This is more of a personal note -- something that I need to record in order to use git efficiently.

If you git clone a repository in (e.g. from GitHub), you generally end up on the 'master' or 'origin' branches, assuming that you accept the default nomenclature for referring to a remote repository. To show the other branches available to you:

git remote show [origin]

git ls-remote

To show you what you are currently tracking:

git branch -vv

You can then switch to one of the remote branches shown in ls-remote:

git checkout remote_branch

You may find that git warns you about untracked files that are present that may be overwritten by changing the branch.

Assuming you have a bunch of untracked files or cruft that you are certain that don't need and you want to discard:

git clean -d -fx ""

... and then you can proceed with the checkout.

This is what replacement nibs (tips) for the GT-N8013 look like

2016-09-05T13:33:00.003-07:00

Nibs for the Galaxy Note 10.1 GT-N8013 (first edition, from 2013) are increasingly hard to find. An Internet search turns up a lot of tips that look like they're incompatible -- and indeed, they probably are.

It turns out that the nibs for this particular model are straight: no curves, no blobs -- just a tube of plastic with a rounded tip. A #2 Philips is included for scale:

And yes, you can just yank them out of the pen barrel.

Building Python3 modules from FreeBSD ports

2016-09-02T11:57:00.001-07:00

If you're like me, you will have python2.7 selected as the default interpreter in your TrueOS installation. However, some programs may require Python version 3 (and associated python3 modules). However, there aren't many py34 modules available using pkg install.

The solution to the problem is simple if you have a FreeBSD ports tree installed.

To build a port for a specific version of python, execute:

PYTHON_VERSION=pythonX.X make

Substitute X.X for the appropriate version that you require. Instead of the default py27-modulename, FreeBSD will build pyXX-modulename.

The default, of course, can be changed in make.conf (see man make.conf for details.)

Prevent websites from hiding UI elements in Firefox browser window

2016-02-19T11:11:00.000-08:00


This is freaking annoying

I find it very annoying when websites disable the menu bar, back and forward buttons, navigation bar, or bookmarks in windows. Banking websites and Paypal both have pop-up windows that 'castrate' my browser.

The JavaScript / HTML code that does this is quite straightforward; this is a comma-separated properties list of string tokens that define the new window behaviour:

window.open ("url","title",
"toolbar=no,
status=no,
scrollbars=no,
resizable=no,
location=no,
directories=no,
copyhistory=no,
menubar=no")

It took some digging, but Firefox allows you to disable modification of the attributes of windows with a little bit of about:config magic. Simply search for disable_window_open_feature as shown below, and double-click on the attributes that you don't want websites to be able to enable or disable. My preferences are to manually set the following properties to true:

dom.disable_window_open_feature.menubar
dom.disable_window_open_feature.minimizable
dom.disable_window_open_feature.personalbar
dom.disable_window_open_feature.scrollbars
dom.disable_window_open_feature.titlebar
dom.disable_window_open_feature.toolbar

LibreOffice: Interpreting CSV money "$XX.XX" as numeric value

2016-02-06T15:27:00.002-08:00

For as long as I can remember using LibreOffice, I found that CSV files did not seem to be interpreted in a way such that monetary values preceded by a dollars sign (e.g. $12.34) would be interpreted as a numeric value. For example, when highlighting multiple numeric values, LibreOffice very conveniently shows the sum of the values in the lower-right area of the window.

The fix is simple. Check the box "Detect special numbers" as shown in the image below:

After this fix, LibreOffice very nicely formats any negative numbers in red ink.

Hurray! Now I'm all ready to analyse my 2015 expenditures!

Chase Ultimate Rewards sale item: Kohl's card 10% off

2016-02-01T13:23:00.001-08:00

As part of my quest to hunt for cash back credit card bargains:

As of Feb 1, 2016, I had about $100 of Chase Ultimate Rewards built up, and noticed the Kohl's cards are currently 10% off.