How to Take Ownership of Files and Folders Using PowerShell
Ever had to take ownership of a bunch of files and folders? It's a pain, right? Well, not anymore!
How to enable MacFuse/PCloud Drive on Mac Sonoma 14.2.1
I recently upgraded to Mac Sonoma 14.2.1 and MacFuse stopped loading which affected my ability to load PCloud and NTFS drives. I spent a few days trying to troubleshoot everything and in the end it turned out I had to disable Mac System Integrity Protection to get everything to load. I'm sharing in case it helps anyone else.
To disable SIP on your Mac Sonoma for extensions like MacFuse and pCloud Drive:
How to Delete a Row in Excel Using the Elgato Stream Deck
Recently I was working on a massive Excel Spreadsheet and needed to manually review each entry and clean up rows that were no longer needed. The Elgato Stream Deck came in handy for a quick shortcut so I thought I'd share it in case anyone else can use it.
I took this opportunity to practice creating the first of what I hope are many training videos. This took me around 30 minutes to do from start to finish as I had to learn the video editing software including how to record, how to split and edit, and how to add text overlays. Hopefully the next videos will be faster but it was a fun exercise and I hope someone else finds it useful.
How to Delete Folder with Special Character in Windows 10/11
I ran into an issue where a folder was created by some application with a special Unicode character that Windows Explorer doesn't seem to play nicely with. I also was unable to tell what the character was since nothing would reveal it. The folder's there, but you can't rename or delete it. If I tried to remove or delete it, I'd get an error saying the folder doesn't exist:
How to deploy a React app to Amazon S3 using Gitlab CI/CD
I've been trying to build more CI/CD scripts using Gitlab to automate pipeline deployments for work. Here's a useful one for building and deploying a React app to Amazon S3.
You'll need to add a variable called S3_BUCKET_NAME to your repo or replace the variable with your bucket path.
How to Setup CI/CD of Jigsaw Site to Digital Ocean Droplet Using Bitbucket Pipelines
I created a new personal resume site and decided I wanted to build a static site since it wouldn't be frequently updated. I evaluated Nuxt, Gatsby, and a few others but settled on Jigsaw, a static site generator based on Laravel. I had never used it before and figured this would be a good learning experience while building something I needed. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to use and setup, so kudos to the Tighten team for putting together such an elegant solution.
I wanted to get a CI/CD pipeline configured to handle the site's deployment but couldn't find any working tutorials, so I'm sharing my solution in case it helps others. I'm using Bitbucket for this since it's a personal private repo, so I'm using Bitbucket Pipelines.
How to Clear Archive & Read-only flags on Files in Windows in Bulk
I ran into an issue where I had to move files from one system to another and was running into issues because files had been set as read-only, had the archive flag set, or both. It was causing the system to skip files which wasn't acceptable. Normally you could just use Windows to clear it in bulk, but that could potentially mess up file permissions. I needed a way to automatically just clear all flags but respect permissions.
I did some searching and didn't find a utility that would do the job and most of the solutions I found required Powershell which wasn't available on the system I was on. I ended up writing a quick console application in C# to do the trick. I've made it free and open sourced it in case anyone wants to use it.
If you need just the app, you can find the release build here with instructions. The app also prompts for input to make things a bit easier to use. There's no install, no tracking or metrics, or anything else related to privacy concerns in this app. It's a simple throwaway utility to get the job done and move on.
https://github.com/gregvarghese/clearflags/releases/tag/1.0.0
If you want to see the source code, that is available here:
https://github.com/gregvarghese/clearflags/
Please note that I did this in about 10 minutes for my own use so error handling is pretty much non-existent. I mention this because I did run into one issue where Windows was somehow seeing a folder with files in it as a file and it couldn't be deleted or renamed and the utility couldn't get past it until it was resolved. I didn't spend much time debugging and just used my Mac to rename the folder and Windows was able to recognize it after the change, so the utility was able to continue processing.
How to execute SSH command with Bitbucket Pipelines
I inherited an old site that someone else setup that is just a basic static HTML, which was deployed using a git pull on the server. I wanted to automate the deployment, and instead of using rsync as the site will be re-built, I realized I could just configure the Bitbucket Pipeline to use SSH and run the pull command. This is probably a fringe case but here's the bitbucket-pipelines.yml in case anyone finds it useful.
Add the repository variables for $USER, $SERVER, and $FOLDER with the appropriate values and then you should be able to run the deployment.
How to get website average latency in BASH
I was working on a project today and wanted to be able to get the average latency for an API that I was working on. Performance is a concern because we're running the API over a VPN, and then SSH tunneling over to another server. I wanted a quick way to do it and wrote a little bash function that will calculate the average for me. I couldn't find an example on how to do this online so I'm sharing in case anyone else runs into the same issue.
This is tested on Mac only. Add these two functions to your .bashrc and do a shellupdate in terminal to load the latest, or just grab my dotfiles from my github: https://github.com/gregvarghese/dotfiles
List of my must-have Alfred Workflows
Use a mac? You'll want to grab Alfred App. I'm finding it an invaluable replacement for spotlight and the workflows allow me to supercharge my workflows. It's so useful that I've purchased the Powerpack lifetime license. In addition to the standard features, here are a list of the most useful workflows for dev/tech: Kill process – by Nathan Greenstein (@ngreenstein) I use it as an activity monitor for CPU usage, and from there I can easily force quit any process if needed. It’s easier to see all processes on the Alfred UI instead of opening Activity Monitor on your mac. There’s also the workflow Kill Application – by Sebastian Hallum Clarke (and also on his site you can find other cool workflows). Timer – by Daniel Bader I use this one a lot. It’s super simple and by writing “Timer” and the number of minutes, you can easily set a reminder. It's great for anyone using the Pomodoro technique or even if you leave something on the stove and want to go back to work. Copy SSH Public Key - By oldcai This one saves me time when I need to deploy my SSH key on a new server. Type 'pk [ssh key file name]' and it'll copy the ssh key to the clipboard. Incognito - by Nedwood I find myself using this when I need to test a page and bypass the cache. Type 'incog [url]' and it'll launch a new chrome window in incognito mode. Find Folder by Samvlu Finds a folder by name. I find this is faster than spotlight in just about every search. Smart Folders by Deanishe List all the Smart Folders/Saved Searches (same thing) on your system and drill down into their contents. Works in much the same way as Alfred's File Filter, but Smart Folders are also available outside Alfred and are a bit more flexible. For example, you can configure a Smart Folder to show all video/audio/image files without having to specify each different filetype individually. If you already use Smart Folders, this workflow can save you the work of re-implementing them as File Filters. What's more, you can exclude specific filetypes with a Smart Folder, which Alfred cannot do. Advanced Google Maps Search by stuartcryan This workflow gives you some quick and dirty shortcuts into Google Maps: Commands: To Configure: mapsethome <home address including street number, name, postcode> (i.e. what you would type into Google Maps) mapsetwork <work address including street number, name, postcode> (i.e. what you would type into Google Maps) Commands for Use: maps <query> - Search Google maps for an address dir <query> to <query> to <query> etc (seperate multiple addresses with " to " minus the quotes, and you will get a multiple location search) dirfw Show directions from Work to address dirfh Show directions from Home to address dirtw <query> Show directions from query to Work address dirth <query> Show directions from query to Home address trafficw - Show traffic from Home to Work traffich - Show traffic from Work to Home StackOverflow Search by deanishe If you use stackoverflow as much as I do, this is a must-have. Date Calculator I find myself needing to calculate differences between dates in my personal life a lot lately. This workflow saves me a lot of time to do that. Want to know how far Christmas is away in days? 'dcalc 12-25-16 - now d' returns the number of days (assuming you're using the US short format like I am). Wifi Control by miroman All my Macbooks periodically have issues with wifi. I've never been able to figure out what's causing it but I use Wifi Control to restart the wifi which allows me to connect successfully. Bugnot by vitor If you use bugmenot at all, this is a useful extension to get logins without loading a new tab. Type 'bn domain.com' and you'll get a list of matching passwords to use.