aaron.cc

Troubleshooting Time Machine Backup Issues on a Locked Mac

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 20:52:10 +0000

Time Machine backups on macOS can fail when the Mac is locked. In this post, I walk through how I diagnosed the issue using the log command and resolved it by rewriting the affected files.

How I Almost Switched From Spotify to Apple Music

Sat, 03 Feb 2024 20:23:10 +0000

In this post, I outline how I became excited about ditching Spotify for Apple Music, but then found more and more things that were broken or felt unfinished—or just didn’t work the way I expected them to work.

Copying The Current Safari Tab as a Clickable Link

Sat, 11 Nov 2023 23:23:52 +0000

In this post, I outline how to quickly copy the URL and title of the active Safari tab as a clickable link, a convenient feature for referencing web pages in emails, to-do lists, documentation, and messaging platforms like Slack.

My Journey from EdgeRouter to MikroTik

Tue, 23 May 2023 20:25:37 +0000

I switched from an EdgeRouter 4 to a MikroTik CCR2004-16G-2S+ for my home network. I learned that MikroTik also has its quirks, but overall, I’m pleased with the transition. In this post, I will share a few insights I found particularly interesting.

Fixing Date and Time for Photos and Videos Saved from WhatsApp

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 15:05:37 +0000

When saving media from WhatsApp, it lacks an Exif timestamp which will make your media appear out of order in your photo library. This post explains how ExifTool can be used to create the Exif DateTimeOriginal field from the filename.

Opening Screenshots From a Vintage Macintosh in Modern macOS

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 18:10:55 +0000

Apple’s System 6 stored its screenshots in MacPaint format. Learn how to open them in recent versions of macOS.

Restoring WireGuard Tunnel Configurations From a macOS Backup

Wed, 14 Apr 2021 16:56:29 +0000

On macOS, WireGuard stores its tunnel configurations in the login keychain. This post explains how to extract them from a backup.

How to Fix Broken Search in Apple Mail After Upgrading to Big Sur

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 12:55:54 +0000

Upgrading to macOS Big Sur broke search in Apple Mail for me. In this post, I explain different solutions that might fix this.

Using FFmpeg to Create HEVC Videos That Work on Apple Devices

Sun, 17 Mar 2019 14:35:48 +0000

The HEVC (H.265) video codec will produce smaller file sizes at the same level of video quality. FFmpeg can create those files, however, a certain tag is needed for the files to be recognized by Apple software.

Prevent Unencrypted Ansible Vaults from Being Pushed to Git

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 15:01:27 +0000

Ansible Vault is a nice tool that allows you to store sensitive data (such as passwords and application secrets) securely along with your Ansible Playbooks, so you have all your configuration in a single place. Obviously, you don’t want to store unencrypted secrets in your repository, so that’s why Ansible Vault encrypts them with AES-256 encryption by default.

However, a big drawback is that it can easily happen that people forget to re-encrypt the vault file after editing it. You can argue that this shouldn’t happen if you use the ansible-vault edit command: this decrypts the file, opens it in your default editor (based on the $EDITOR environment variable), and takes care of re-encrypting it for you when you’re done editing. When making a lot of changes though, it can be easier to decrypt it with ansible-vault decrypt, load it in your favorite GUI editor, and the manually re-encrypt it when done. Unfortunately, in this case, no one will remind you to perform the last step. Everything will continue to work just fine. This is because your vault is just a regular YAML file that Ansible will accept as a source of configuration variables—encrypted or not.

Tracking Your Kraken Balances in MoneyMoney

Thu, 11 May 2017 18:58:33 +0000

I wrote a MoneyMoney extension in Lua to track crypto currency balances from a Kraken account.

Removing Personal Information from MP3s bought on Amazon

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 20:17:05 +0000

When you buy MP3s on Amazon, it is likely that they contain a “unique purchase identifier” which can be used to link the MP3 file to your Amazon account.

Storage Format and Location
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This special block of metadata is stored in private frames (PRIV). This makes it harder to be detected and removed, as most MP3 tag editors simply ignore these frames.

Using Google’s Invisible reCAPTCHA to Protect ve_guestbook from Spam

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 07:30:58 +0000

The first question that comes to your mind might be: “Who uses guestbooks nowadays anyway?”. Well, personally I don’t, but I maintain two sites that were created in the mid 2000s that have a guestbook installed—and people are still using it. It’s ve_guestbook for TYPO3.

In the past years, guestbook spam has become a real issue for me—even though I had been using the captcha TYPO3 extension (screenshot above). Apparently, spam bots have evolved over the years and can now easily circumvent those CAPTCHAs. Suddenly, the guestbooks were flooded with hundreds of spam entries:

The Windows 95 Boot Screen As an Endlessly Looping GIF

Sat, 18 Mar 2017 22:53:53 +0000

Just in case you forgot how this looks.

Monitoring an APC Back-UPS With openHAB 2

Sat, 18 Mar 2017 14:39:47 +0000

openHAB doesn’t have a binding for APC UPS devices. Luckily, there are other ways to integrate them into your openHAB setup.

In the following, I’m describing how the exec binding can be used to regularly poll the UPS status using the apcaccess command-line utility.

The result will look somehow like this:

I’m using a APC Back-UPS BX 700VA here—a relatively cheap model with Schuko outlets and a USB connector.

Prerequisites
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APC Back-UPS connected and configured (the apcaccess command needs to work)
Working openHAB 2 installation

Configuration
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We’ll need to add a binding, a thing, various items, and finally an entry in the sitemap.

Quaak (1992)

Fri, 17 Mar 2017 20:21:32 +0000

“Quaak” is a simple Frogger clone for Windows from the year 1992. I got it from my father on a 3.5″ floppy disk when I was 6 or 7. I played it on my father’s workstation (at his job) and also at home on his 486 laptop running Windows 3.1.

The game has pretty cheap graphics. Still it was a lot of fun to play, especially at that age.

Rollin (1995)

Fri, 17 Mar 2017 19:15:00 +0000

“Rollin” by SAV Creations (published by Ticsoft) was one of the DOS games I played the most as a kid.

I got it from my grandparents, and I played it with my brothers on their old PC, which had also been a gift from them. I think it was a 386. This was around 1996, when I was 9 or 10 years old. It had a Turbo key that switched between 16 MHz and 40 MHz. If I pressed that key while playing, the game became noticeably slower.

T-Online über DFÜ-Netzwerk

Thu, 25 Jul 2002 00:00:00 +0000

Die T-Online-Software läuft instabil und ist ressourcenfressend. In früheren Versionen gab es sogar Bugs, die den Benutzer zwangen, eine Internetverbindung herzustellen. Daher ist von dieser Software dringend abzuraten. Die Einwahl ins Internet über T-Online kann auch ohne die Software von T-Online erfolgen, nämlich über das DFÜ-Netzwerk von Windows.

Autorennen in Microsoft Excel 2000

Sat, 02 Mar 2002 18:38:00 +0100

Sogar ein Autorennen haben die Programmierer von Microsoft Excel 2000 im Programm versteckt.

Die eigene Homepage im WWW

Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Jetzt kann jeder problemlos seine eigene Homepage einrichten: Überall im Internet wird kostenloser Speicherplatz für eine Webseite angeboten. Kunden von T-Online z.B. haben automatisch die Möglichkeit in wenigen Minuten ihre Webseite auf den Server zu laden.

Netter Assistent in Office 97

Fri, 24 Dec 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Der Office-Assistent in Office 97 ist Ihnen gerne behilflich. Er schaut Sie freundlich an und wird Ihnen bei allen Problemen mit Word, PowerPoint, Excel usw. helfen.

Computerchaos im Jahr 2000

Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Im Jahr 2000 wird es in sämtlichen Rechnern zu Problemen kommen: Keiner weiß genau, ob es eher harmlos sein wird oder so dass gar nichts mehr funktioniert.