ARCHIVE
Archive
32 ENTRIES · 2010 – 2026
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3 MIN
How to Open the Factory Menu on the Acer Predator XB273U GX
For the last few years, my daily driver monitor has been an Acer Predator XB273U that I picked up from Micro Center around the
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Culture 25 MIN
Authenticity's Triumph
When LLMs counterfeit thought itself, a New Renaissance emerges, and its currency is authenticity.
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Sociology 7 MIN
The Outrage Oscillation Theory
My theory on why outrage pays best when the party in power is idolized by a minority, and how analytics and generative AI will supercharge the grift.
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Introspection 5 MIN
Why Honesty About Our Passions Matters
Why hiding our passions in order to maintain a sanitized "professional" image dehumanizes us and deprives us of countless opportunities for human connection.
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Music 2 MIN
Pianoteq 8 Released for iPhone and iPad
I am pleased to share that Modartt has released the long-awaited Pianoteq 8 for iOS (iPhone/iPad). As of this writing, Modartt hasn’
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Music Tech 2 MIN
Preamp Vacuum Tubes for Jazz and Blues Guitarists
If you’re a jazz or blues guitar player, there is a good chance you’re not interested in much distortion in your tone.
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Vintage Tech 5 MIN
The Visual Study of Vacuum Tubes
Understanding how to perform the visual study of vacuum tubes can enable you to readily identify the unique characteristics and applications of a given
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Gear 5 MIN
The Unmatched Beauty of the Rhodes Electric Piano
My 1975 Rhodes Stage Eighty Eight Electric Piano, where to hear the best examples of the Rhodes sound, and a VST showdown.
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Gear 4 MIN
Studiologic Numa X Piano GT: A Well-Rounded Digital Piano
How a hefty price tag on the Nord Stage 4 turned a Nord Stage 3 loyalist into the smitten owner of a barely used Studiologic Numa X Piano GT.
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Vintage Tech 4 MIN
The EICO 667 Vacuum Tube Tester
I was recently fortunate enough to get my hands on a workhorse vacuum tube tester, the EICO Model 667 Dynamic Conductance Tube and Transistor
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Introspection 2 MIN
Artifacts of Unbridled Consumerism
When our descendants dig up useless trinkets like Funko Pops and fidget toys, they'll wonder what we could possibly have been thinking.
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Introspection 4 MIN
Metamorphosis: Variety is the Spice of Life
This blog is now 13 years old, certainly a relic by Internet standards. It’s now 2023, and it’s been some time since
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Tutorials 19 MIN
Build Your Own Home Router
How to use a mini PC, Linux, and some iptables rules to build a home router that rivals most retail options.
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Administration 5 MIN
Setup a Headless Raspberry Pi with Raspbian Jessie on OS X
To celebrate Halloween I’ve decided to put together a guide that will show you how to install Raspbian Jessie, the (as of this
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Administration 3 MIN
Updating the BIOS firmware on the Supermicro X9DRW-iF
Yesterday evening I posted a detailed tutorial that explains how to flash/update the IPMI firmware on the X9DRW-iF server from Supermicro. Today
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Administration 5 MIN
Flashing the IPMI firmware on a Supermicro X9DRW-iF
Note: Since this post was published, Supermicro released a new version of the firmware below. You'll want to replcae many of the
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Administration 4 MIN
Automating Your MacOS X Deploy - Part I
In this post, I’ll begin to demonstrate how beneficial it can be to automate some of the more tedious tasks involved with setting
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Administration 1 MIN
How To Disable Java on OS X Lion to Protect from Zero-Day Bug
A Java zero-day exploit was reported today. Here’s how to disable Java on Mac OS X Lion so that for the time
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Administration 1 MIN
Fixing OpenLDAP Authentication on OS X Lion
If you’ve upgraded to Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) from Mac OS X 10.6.x (Snow Leopard), and you’re managing
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Tutorials 6 MIN
Setup a Django VM with Vagrant, VirtualBox, and Chef
If you’ve decided that you want to learn the Django framework, but you don’t know where to begin, you’ve come to
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Linux 1 MIN
Tip: Easily Find Files In The Current Directory
If we insert the following function into our .bashrc or .zshrc we can then easily run what I call a “quick find” on the
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Tutorials 7 MIN
Using Git and Github to Manage Your Dotfiles
If you use OS X or Linux on your desktop/servers, you may be at a point where you have configured a lot of
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Spotlight 2 MIN
Spotlight - namebench
Almost every single time you visit a website you are using DNS. DNS serves a lot of functions, but the most frequent thing most
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Administration 3 MIN
Fix for Ubuntu 10.04 Server USB Install
A bunch of tricky issues arise when trying to install Ubuntu Server from a USB drive. Also, there exists a bug in the GRUB
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Administration 1 MIN
Fix for MySQL Community Server 5.5.8 on Snow Leopard
I recently installed MySQL Community Server 5.5.8 on one of my MacBooks. One of the nice things about the DMG version of
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Administration 7 MIN
Install Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 10.10
In my post, Install CakePHP on Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.10, we took an in-depth view into installing CakePHP on Ubuntu 10.
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Administration 5 MIN
Install CakePHP on Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.10
CakePHP is a framework that allows for rapid PHP development. I recently installed it on one of my home test servers and there were
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Administration 1 MIN
Drupal 7 Released
Today Drupal 7 Final was officially released into the wild. Drupal is a content management system (CMS). This basically means that it can be
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Linux 1 MIN
Download the Linux Source Code
It is said that the best way to learn how to program is to read and modify other people’s code. Through an open,
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Linux 4 MIN
Basic Ubuntu Linux: sudo and apt-get
The power of Linux lies in the strength of it’s terminal and the ability to process complex commands. New users may be a
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Programming 2 MIN
The Art and Balancing Act of Flexibility
When developing any application, it’s important to ask oneself, “How much flexibility am I granting the end user?” The programs that run on
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Introspection 1 MIN
Introducing The Smalley Creative Blog
I’ve been doing I.T. consulting work for a long enough time that I feel I have something to contribute to the community
