How To Archives

The main subject of this site: how to get something done, further divided by tags.

How to build an Amazon link efficiently

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When you want to share a product on Amazon with someone else, the easiest thing to do is to copy whatever is in the browser bar at the time and paste that elsewhere. While this works, it’s not an efficient way to link to a product.

The URL is often extremely long and contains additional parameters that tell Amazon’s systems either how the product was found or referred, or what else to display on the current product page. Most of that additional information makes the URL longer than it needs to be.

In this article I’ll show you how to build a short and efficient link without additional parameters, such as tracking information.

All we really need is the regional Amazon domain and the ASIN of the product and add these two together, separated by the letters “dp”.

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How to find the URL for your own YouTube Playlist (2018)

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I’ve seen a lot of web interfaces in my time. YouTube’s has got to be one of the worst ever. Fact! I am frequently shocked how unintuitive the simplest of things are, and how cumbersome and ugly the whole design is.

Take something as simple as sharing your own Playlist. There’s this unbelievably unhelpful Google article that apparently explains how it works.

Which it doesn’t. At least not at the time of writing.

Here’s how to find and share your own YouTube Playlist’s URL (with screenshots, as of August 2018).

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How to share ebooks with WordPress (EPUB and MOBI files)

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If you’ve ever tried to upload an ebook in .MOBI or .EPUB format with the WordPress Media Uploader, you will have noticed an error message appear. Something along the lines of “Sorry, this file type is not permitted for security reasons”.

The only way then appears to be to ZIP the file and share it. That’s not a great experience for mobile users, who would simply like to click on a file and open it in an application such as iBooks or Kindle.

The solution to this puzzle lies in adding the required mime types to WordPress, so that these file types are allowed.

Let me show you how to do it in this article.

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Fan Maintenance on my Samsung NC10

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My Samsung NC10 Netbook has been in constant operation since 2013, for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s doing a great job as our internal office server, purring along quietly running CentOS 6.

When I put it in operation 5 years ago, I made sure no mechanical parts we being used anymore to avoid wear and tear: I’ve added an SSD, and once a day valuable data is backed up on a permanently mounted SD card.

The only mechanical thing still in use is the internal fan. I knew the day would come on which the poor thing would either give up and need replacing, or at least require some maintenance to make it go a few extra miles. Well, that day has come at the beginning on this month, when I noticed a bit of rattling noise that started happening behind my big monitor. That’s where I keep the little guy.

Turns out that the fan can be easily whipped back into shape with a drop of bicycle oil. It’s really easy to disassemble too – let me show you how I did it.

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How to remove OSSEC Agent on macOS Sierra

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I’ve been trying to find a way to remove OSSEC on one of my Macs. Most documentation is a bit outdated and references files from yesteryear, so here’s how to do it on macOS Sierra in 2018. These instructions were written with OSSEC 2.8 in mind. I’m not familiar with later versions. Removing the three … Read more

How to embed images in GitHub Readme Files

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In this screencast I’ll show you how to add images to your GitHub Readme files. You can use the Markdown or HTML syntax for this, I’ll show you both versions. Make sure to upload images to your own repository and provide the relative path to them. Here’s the syntax: In Markdown In Markdown syntax, use … Read more