RUN TCP/IP | Morgan Lucas is Tech Blogging

 Remember that second hand Chromebook I bought for a client years ago? They upgraded and gave it back, so let's put Linux or Ubuntu on it. I'm going to see if I can put a distro in there and switch between Chrome OS and Linux. It took longer to find the correct package to install than anything else. Out of the proverbial Chrome Development Mode box, it doesn't recognize apt, apt-get, yum - Nor does it recognize any attempts to install them. Actually going through the Chromebook's Linux option puts Penguin on the machine., the default container to run Linux. It struggled to even get started, so I deleted the Linux container and am trying again.  Most of the instructions I've found say to make your Chromebook Developer Mode and then open a certain type of terminal; Instead of that, I've found that you have to enable Linux Penguin through the Chrome OS (Easy, check your settings) and then go through that containerized version. When you do this, Crostini is already ...

 A very brief look. The text says; Drag and drop any CloudFormation resource on a visual canvas Connect and configure enhanced components to automatically build IaC for an application architecture Seamlessly transition between authoring workflows visually with Step Functions Workflow Studio and defining resources with Infrastructure Composer Integrate your browser with your project through “local sync” or use Composer in the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code Again, there was something similar to this in 2019, using a GUI to build infrastructure that would be converted to code. Nice to know they bought it back. When you enter the Composer, it's a blank space with a light background with dots, very reminiscent to the screen for Cloud Formation. Infrastructure Objects are in a drawer to the left and you click and drag;  You see I've selected a bucket; I can rename it. I tried to connect a bucket to a Dynamo DB Table, because Buckets store data, but it's not available yet. ...

     Can I make an Alexa Skill That Searches Bing?   I use Bing as my search engine, and would love it if I could ask Alexa and have that trail of searches attached to my account to look back upon.  Fun fact: When you ask Alexa a question, it's already using Bing. But it's not using my account. So let's see if I can walk through the idea.  Questions:  Alexa searches the internet when you ask it a query. What specifically does it search? It's own database of information? Is it like ChatGPT where the system is not directly connected to the internet but has all of the internet up until a certain point in the past?  Can I make an Alexa Skill that attaches to a dataset of information I host on AWS? The preliminary search reveals Knowledge Skills , which seems to be "give us information and when people ask about it, we can just tell them within the scope of our knowledge." Would I need AWS to make an Alexa Skill at all? Most likely; When you cre...

 I now have the URL runtcpip.com pointed toward my Google Sites site. This change is reflected on the navigation as 'Projects (Cloud)'. Why? Despite both Blogger and Google Sites being owned by Alphabet/Google, Sites is actually maintained. Google Sites has better security posture and features. It looks more modern, and has multiple pages. I'm 89% sure the SEO is already built in and works better. I didn't have to finangle with attaching Analytics  This blog isn't going anywhere! It will be used as more general technology musings...which it kind of already was. One day I will have another URL to point here, but for now, you can reach it via https://runtcpip.blogspot.com/

 Out of all the online tools I've tried and tested, I can't believe I haven't talked about this one, one I've used over 4 years at this point and continues to add features that help. It's how I found many emails to politely and persistently ask about my application while sending relevant links to this blog but there's a lot more down there too! I uploaded the .CSV of emails to recruiters I use to send personalized, yet still batch, emails through Google Sheets to check for validity and acceptance rates.  It did work, but I retracted everyone's information.   I had used the tool to check a few individual addresses and it did find one that was no longer operational; Suppose the person moved onto a new role. I also converted it to a Campaign to send mass emails - which does have a neat thing to check how spammy one's email may be, though it doesn't give hints on how to better coerce click through and action for recipients.  It seems to correlate doing...

 With the Viacom removal of MTV News and Comedy Central clips dating back to the late 90s (and allegedly putting them on Paramount+, but who has that?), people are realizing "The internet is no longer fun, corporations run everything, and they are not interested in maintaining history." Sure it was possible for arts   So back up your stuff. Let's go. How To Back Up Your Blog on Blogger If you use Blogger, there's a general  landing page for your blog, with a list of posts both published and drafted, and a navigation bar on the side. Hit settings, then scroll down until you see this [right]. You can select 'Back up content', it's just not a clear hyperlink.  It will download a file to your computer. (You are reading from one of those, right? You do know how to download a file, right? You don't need to click this link to my video explaining it to you in less than a minute ?) How to Download Your Account Data on LinkedIn Click the photo of you / 'Me...

I have always wanted smart lighting, but didn't want to essentially have a hackable hub with minimal controls regarding security (It has to have improved since 2018 , right? Right? ). So, seeing these lightbulbs that did not require a hub setup, an app, and only cost 5$ (On clearance, I got mine at my local Target, originally the GE LED+ Color Changing Light Bulbs are about 17$-25$!), it would have been stupid to leave them behind. This is not an affiliate link, you can find them here . The subjects for these will be a variety of dolls in colors ranging from almost pitch black to stark white and things in between to really show off the color scope. Set-Up: Screw the lightbulb in a port. The remote already has batteries, and you take out that plastic bit. That's it! The remote is flimsy. With stronger remotes, you can point at a wall and the waves still manage to be read by the technology, but I'm not a wave scientist.  Despite that, with 16 colors, 4 lighting strengths, wa...