PRACTICAL PARANOID

It's in that place where I put that thing that time

Convert a video to an animated GIF using ffmpeg

Pixelated scene from the movie Hackers with the main cast posing against a wall

This is an uber-quick post on how to convert a short video to an animated GIF using ffmpeg. As a bonus tip, we will also use ffmpeg to trim the video.

2 min | mac

Prevent sleep or screensaver on macOS via launchd

Pixelated scene from the movie The Matrix with Neo sleeping on his desk filled with peripherals in his appartment

In this post we will use a launchd agent to prevent macOS from going to sleep or activating the screensaver. This is particularly useful if you have a Mac laptop, enrolled in an MDM, with a policy that enforces the screensaver after a few minutes of inactivity. As a bonus tip we can tweak the agent to prevent sleep on battery power, a setting that was removed in the most recent versions of macOS.

2 min | mac

Export Apple Notes to PDF via Apple Script

Pixelated scene from the movie Johnny Mnemonic with Johnny dialing into the internet through his VR visor

Apple don't make it easy to export and backup all your Notes, unless of course you want to export each note to PDF one by one. So I decided to write a quick and dirty Apple Script that will export all my Apple Notes to PDF in one go.

4 min | security

Vaultwarden on Docker with Caddy and Cloudflare

Pixelated scene from the movie Jurassic Park, ah ah ah you didn't say the magic word

Tired of those VC-backed companies screwing with your password manager? In this post we are going to self-host Vaultwarden on a local server using Caddy as a reverse proxy and Clouflare for DNS. All of this privately available on the local network and secured by an auto-provisioned Let's Encrypt certificate.

6 min | security

Essential security for Linux servers

Pixelated scene from the movie Sneakers with Whistler hacking through his visor

In this post we are going to secure a freshly provisioned Linux server to protect it against the most common attack vectors. The aim of this approach is to create an acceptable security baseline while keeping the server easy to manage.