set -u

You will then start seeing warning messages like the following:

./my_script.sh: line 419: FOO_BAR: unbound variable

Note that this mean you can’t check for the non-existence of environment variables with a simple [[ -z "$ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE" ]]. Instead, you could do something like the following:

[[ $( set | grep "ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE=" | wc -l ) -lt 1 ]]

Unfortunately, PuTTY has some terrible defaults. For example, it limits itself to 200 lines of scrollback by default, which guarantees that you’ll lose some history in most SSH sessions.

There’s a way to fix this and other defaults.

First, load the “Default Settings” saved session: Then, configure the defaults as you like. For example, I’m increasing my lines of scrollback from 200 to 20,000:

Then, save the new default settings:

PuTTY will now have a sensible defaults whenever you’re connecting to a random server.

I had to harden my WordPress some time ago. Here are the guides I followed when hardening my installation:

• My WordPress Site Was Hacked
• Hardening WordPress
• Ultimate Security Checker plugin (guide)

Additional steps I’ve taken today:

• Install the Limit Login Attempts plugin

Requirements:

• Paid service (If you aren’t paying, you are the product, not the customer)
• Search-driven interface
• Reasonable limits on message and mailbox size

I’ve heard of HushMail. Is there anything else worthwhile?

Edit: HushMail is a no-go. It doesn’t have a way to set up a filter or rule to automatically file incoming mail.

NewsBlur and The Old Reader are two services I’ve seen mentioned. Unfortunately, both are currently buckling under the load of my fellow reader-heads fleeing the sinking Google ship. (Edit: More alternatives are listed in the roundups at Kikolani and LifeHacker.)

Accordingly, I’ve just installed Fever on my shared hosting. I’m not going to recommend my hosting provider as my account is based on a grandfathered plan, but Dreamhost is popular. The more technically inclined may want to spin up an Amazon EC2 instance.

Fever is a PHP/MySQL web application. It’s very easy to install, assuming you have access to a web server. It costs a one-time $30, which is likely why it is very easy to install. It also comes with lots of really neat features that innovate beyond what Google Reader ever did, none of which I care about.

Migrate from Google Reader to Fever

1. Log into Google Takeout.
2. Download your Google Reader data.
3. Unzip it. The subscriptions.xml file contains your feeds and folders in standard OPML format.
4. Download the Fever Server Compatibility Suite
5. Upload it to your server and let it verify compatibility.
6. Is it compatible? Great! Paypal over the $30.
7. Copy the activation code from the email in your inbox into the wizard.
8. Let the wizard install Fever for you, importing your precious subscriptions.xml.
9. Fever will display a brisk progress bar as it quickly processes your myriad feeds.
10. Oh, you may want to enable the unread messages count:

Enable unread messages count

Voila!

My fever feeds

On Windows, you can fix the issue by opening up the Command Prompt as Administrator and running the following command:

ipconfig /flushdns

touch creates a file if it does not exist, or updates its timestamp if it does. It’s handy if you want to write to a file without checking for its existence, as otherwise you’d need to determine whether or not append is the correct mode. It’s also handy for setting flags for yourself on the filesystem.

mkdir -p creates a path if it does not exist, or does nothing if the path already exists. mkdir -p /foo/bar/baz will create /foo, /foo/bar, and /foo/bar/baz for you. Conversely, mkdir -p /usr/local/bin will not complain because those directories already exist.

Why would you need this? A couple reasons that came up for me tonight:

• You cannot redirect output to a file if the file is in a directory that does not yet exist
• You cannot create a symbolic link in a directory that does not yet exist

The first two apps I tried that promised the remove duplicates didn’t, so I nearly decided to write a duplicate remover myself. However, the third app I tried — GCalToolkit – worked. I used its free trial mode to purge all of the duplicates, and my calendar is clean again.

Incidentally, I ended up signing up for Google’s 2-step authentication, as one of the non-functioning apps was password-based rather than OAuth-based. I was unwilling to give it my actual password, so I used Google’s application-specific passwords feature which depends on 2-step authentication. I’m still somewhat apprehensive about being able to access my email should I be travelling or should I lose my phone.

Unfortunately, TurboTax crashed on startup and running it as Administrator did not help. It turns out there is a known workaround involving copying some DLLs around.

When adding a service (chkconfig –add my_service –level 35), you can specify startup order by including a chkconfig clause in the header:

#!/bin/sh
#
# chkconfig: 35 59 80

The above service should start at run level 3 and 5 as the 59th service to run (the numbering is sparse, so there isn’t necessarily as a 58th service).

The 80 specifies the shut down order.

Obviously, do not rename the symbolic links yourself. Use chkconfig to manage them.