RUN TCP/IP | Morgan Lucas is Tech Blogging

 An unintentional part 1. So Bicep is like Terraform but a different language that's native to Azure ! That's fun. Here's a video about it (I love how enthusiastic the person is) Now that you get it, let's try it. First we have our resource group; This is where things like virtual machines (virtual computers), storage account, and some configurations are stored for organizational ease. az group create --name runtcp  -l eastus 💡 Check the naming convention of the locations. I kept putting in us-east Ala AWS Then we make the storage account to go in! this can store resources that can be open to the greater internet for people to download - Or it can have the proper security measures in place for certain people to have access to. az group deployment create --resource-group runtcp  --template-file main.bicep --mode Complete A very cool thing the video Azure Bicep Crash Course, by Meet Kamal Today does is use an array to push the same resource in multiple regions (3:30) ...

 (This is a bit of a departure but I'm still waiting for my cables to use my MacBook Air and finish the Bicep work.) On LinkedIn, saw a post by one of my connections -   " You don't have to post on websites you don't like to build your 'brand'. "  It was so simple and succinct that I went "You know what? Yeah, they're right." -- And, after 6 years of use, hibernated my LinkedIn account on about October 18th 2023 without warning. I don't have to read a bunch of cringey nonsense or watch companies accept bad behavior while "Hey, bigotry is bad" is "not a value alignment with our company". It's great.  I do miss the head-nod-glance acknowledgements of my connections, who have been greatly helpful, as well as watching animators spoil future Dreamworks projects by having them on their profiles and box office news. I do miss being able to send a message to someone to get some insight or let them know of an issue with the...

  I was hired to fix up a tumblr website of Minorities in Publishing through a mutual friend, a podcast that focuses on the voices of the global majority. I like projects like this; You give voice to typically excluded people and find interesting books to read. So, what was the issue? 😬The old website was dated, with an impersonal, grey aesthetic, having last been updated circa 2012 or so. 😬 It wasn't optimized for smaller viewports. What is a viewport? When you adjust your browser window (on desktop or mobile) to be bigger or smaller. 😬 It couldn't be easily updated with new information; The old code was no longer maintained. While a lot of the feed functionality has been eliminated, I; 📙 Fixed outdated side pages of links while providing a template that improved workflow , so they could easily update the pages. 📘 Improved navigation; Instead of linking to individual MP3s, I directed the 'Episodes' link to head to their libsyn library, so people can play the...

Yep, this is another mouse review, and about nine months. I have a tendency to move around a lot with my mind, and I end up dropping them a bit. So my Anker mouse can't really take a drop. The scroll wheel is busted to the point where I have to scroll multiple times to go down once - before it pops back up. But now, I have this; The Logitech Marathon M705; @runtcpip varies a little with other opersting systems but you're smart you can figure it out. runtcpip.com #techhelp ♬ original sound - runtcpip I teach people simple computer stuff over on TikTok. When I plugged the USB dongle into my MacBook Pro, Apple immediately decided it was a keyboard for reasons unknown.  I specifically wanted a Mouse with a USB dongle, because I do not like having my Bluetooth on all the time. That is a vector for attack. Then again, everything is a vector for attack, but I just like having a dongle there because my Bluetooth is going to be off 97.54% of the time. My MacBook needs a Apple US...

  As you may not know, but now know, Google Domains is being sold to Squarespace -- To the annoyed groans of many around the world, myself included.  Word spread on Twitter (I will not call it X) on how Squarespace was often a costlier option for people. I don't remember exact numbers people had experience with, but it was more. 36$/yr sticks in my head, but check for yourself. With a domain costing 12$ through Google, I thought above making the choice to transfer myself; and after perusing this Twitter thread , decided to go with Namecheap on a whim. I didn't know there were so many choices to host domains, DNS options, email services. That would actually be a field of interest to own a business in. It has that old internet charm (robot text anyone?). Now, this very site is hosted on Blogger, which is owned (and ignored) by Google, so it probably isn't being killed anytime soon (I hope). Google Domains was owned by, well, Google, so attaching the domain to the site was qu...

9/20: The open source version of Terraform is now OpenTofu   I swear, this is not a recurring series. The problem just -- finally -- got solved. Part 2 is over here . I went back to tfsec after seeing the simple start guide posted here , by Liam Galvin at Ghost Security. There are two aspects of my code:  Allow buckets starting with [word]  deny buckets that don't start with [word].  The initial guide only has "don't allow buckets that are exactly named this", but that's all I needed to actually get going! The problems could have been; The rego file and the terraform file don't play well in the same folder. Having the options in two separate subfolders helped even though there was a command that I used to read both files in the same folder. Trivy ... I don't know. Maybe the metadata setup was incorrect - but if it's set up as comments -- readable by the program but not acknowledged in the rego -- who knows. I can work on that in the future. The code w...

  It started, late one summer evening... This laptop is pretty much lightly used, was package well for shipping, and only sat on my desk after arrival.  description:  a computer monitor with a silver base and black border with a photo of a desert landscape. white lines dance across the surface. I see other people have tried steps listed as to remedy the problem, to no solution. One person on Apple's forums even received an entirely new (to them) machine, and it still persisted, so I'm thinking it's a software problem.  After restarting several times, I restarted into the diagnostics tools. I had dead pixels on my old MacBook Air and I dropped that more than once - no flickering. How can a laptop that simply sat for a few months flicker on the display? [ I forgot to make a video while the issue was happening. If it starts again - hopefully not - I will edit one in ] The stripe is only on light backgrounds.  Anything darker than white does not see the stripe. ...

  Fun fact: This was initially about Roblox, but when I came across a survey about making a meta verse avatar, I decided to go the whole hog with it. I've always loved create your own avatar games. While the metaverse as a concept to the GP is already outdated, some interesting things were created before everyone decided machine learning via ChatGPT and its clones were the hot new ticket to claw our way out of Web 2.0 First, ReadyPlayerMe is a place to create a Metaverse avatar that you can import into the surprising amount of meta verse games out there. I hit the androgynous face type and couldn't change it again but you know what, I like it! Even if it's still somewhat masculine. These days, people seem to be very 1:1 about their virtual avatars. It's just them in a shirt and pants. The world is your oyster, make your virtual hair green and give yourself android lines on your body. Building a level is a lot more intuitive (and doesn't kill my CPU) than using Robl...

 While this is the free tier, I cannot share or collaborate with others, nor can I publish content to other people's workspaces, but they will not stop me from screenshooting and recording these self-taught adventures,so! I'm doing this because I idly searched "Mattel careers" and "Information Technology", and seeing a bulletpoint saying the following: Analytical and reporting skills such as creating dashboards and establishing KPIs such as experience with PowerBI, Cognos, Tableau, and Google Data Lake/AWS is preferred And thought "Well, I've used Tableau, and I've heard about PowerBI,  even if its in-demandness is questionable , so how similar is it? And can I write about it?"  First, PowerBI (PIB) does have a downloadable, local version, but apparently Windows-only. I could download the .exe but I couldn't run it / drag it to applications on my MacBook.  Not a problem, we'll use the online SaaS version, and a dataset found here, ...

9/20: The open source version of Terraform is now  OpenTofu    Part one is over here . This comes as the 3rd tool in a long line of tools I am using to make Terraform (OpenTofu) code consistent. I went back to the Styra Academy courses for OPA Policy Writing. I am a very "Just show me the general idea, and I can probably figure it out", and I am reasonable enough to say that it didn't work this time, and I had to take the slow road. Good start; Trivy told us where it installed; trivy info installed /usr/local/bin/trivy /Users/morganza/Library/Caches/trivy the homebrew package had an outdated version, so I had to install v. 0.40.0 myself and link it to the previously installed 0.18.0 I believe -- See the GitHub discussion here . We are now back to rego, but fortunately, Trivy works as intended when you run it locally with the following command; trivy conf --policy . --namespaces morganza . There was an odd combination of YAML with a bit of rego involved for tfsec -- can ...

 A Lambda is an anonymous function. Places like AWS have services set up entirely just to host these simple functions that don't require a ton of code or backend. To run the Python here, I go back to Google Colaboratory; Check out my Lambda book here   Ex. 1   g =  lambda  x:  3 *x +  2 g( 3 )     Simple.  Ex. 2   full_name =  lambda  fn, ln: fn.strip().title() +  " "  + ln.strip().title() full_name( "   Ember" ,  "Serros" )     Notice the spaces in front of the first name (' Ember')      Ex. 3     def   func ( x , y ):    """Does things"""   func2 =  lambda  x: x + y+ 3 print (func( 2 , 7 ))   Using def seems to be hit or miss. This returns None, which technically is correct,  but I'm expecting a number (12). It's missing a return statement; ...

  If there's an official website for Omni -- Not the hotel chain -- and this camera has a specs page, I'm not finding it. I did, however, find a person looking for a copy of the manual in 2011. I got you!  Wonder if they folded or if someone bought them out. Now, with 12 MP, we're not running the gamut on high-resolution photos here, but let's look at some context. Even when I sold phones in 2013, the Samsung Galaxy S4 had 13 MP for the rear camera. Why weren't leaps and bounds happening here?  That's a story for another author. The Omni 2 has a very plastic case. While I can't bend it greatly, I can still bend it, lending to a cheap feel.  There's a very chunky USB port that I recognize. I have another digital camera that's older than this and doesn't look nearly as outdated that also uses the cable. The slidey switch right above it (there's a blue line right beneath it) -- It may have originally been another focus feature, as there are ico...

9/20: The open source version of Terraform is now  OpenTofu     Sometimes, I write articles even when things don't work. It's about showing a learning process.  Using IaC means consistency, and one thing you don't want to do is have 5 open S3 buckets on AWS that anyone on the internet can reach.  That's where tools such as Terrascan and Tfsec come in, where we can make our own policies and rules to be checked against our code before we init.  As this was contract work, I can't show you the exact code used, but I can tell you that this blog post by Cesar Rodriguez of Cloud Security Musings was quite helpful, as well as this one by Chris Ayers . The issue is using Rego; I found a cool VS Code Extension; Terrascan Rego Editor , as well as several courses on Styra Academy; Policy Authoring and Policy Essentials . The big issue was figuring out how to tell Terrascan to follow a certain policy; I made it, put it in a directory, and ran the program while in that ...

 Good on Netflix for being more like cable television, from adding ads , to attempting to livestream in 2023.  I am not familiar with Netflix's "Love Is Blind" show, but on 4/16, Netflix had intended to livestream a reunion at 8/7c, and it was hotly anticipated. To their credit, they did it successfully earlier this year, after a comedian's stint at the Hippodrome Theater in March, where there was apparently a waiting room for viewers while technical checks were run. When it did not start on time, tweets began to flow in confusion -- and jokes. Netflix tried to play along and soothe impatient fans: Love is ... late #LoveIsBlindLIVE will be on in 15 minutes! — Netflix (@netflix) April 17, 2023 Even (the last existing) Blockbuster took to the stage to fire shots: Remember renting vhs’ from us. You could start it on time no problem… This is what we get. — Blockbuster (@blockbuster) April 17, 2023 Apparently, the internet at the venue had issues :   That's Vanes...

There's no need to buy new technology just for the sake of having new technology, in my opinion. I will use things until they wear out to the ground. I held onto my LG phone a year after they stopped manufacturing phones entirely. I still use a laptop from 2019 that I got refurbished from Best Buy despite it literally having pieces falling off of it. And I do have other computers that I use (Thank you, you know who you are) but technically, that laptop still works so why not use it for personal stuff? Two, count 'em, two FitBits. This (Yellow one) is the Fitbit Inspire 3. I have the Fitbit Versa 2 (Blue one) from 2018 or so, which means it was probably made in 2017 and just sat on the shelf. I was a bit due for a wearable technology upgrade. It took a lot of thought to spend the 99$ to buy this watch, when my old one was, while failing, still doing the basics. I don't like to throw things out if they can still be used.  Maybe I'll put it on my dog. This recent FitBit w...