Intel NUC8i7BEH mini PC

After experimenting with various virtual machines and facing lots of weird issues, I decided to go for a dedicated hardware for the build machine. It is an Intel NUC8i7BEH.

macOS: install Oracle VirtualBox on macOS 10.13

Apple continuously enhanced the security of recent macOS versions and with High Sierra 10.13 it introduced a new feature that requires user approval before loading newly-installed third-party kernel extensions (KEXTs)

There are lots of complaints from users not being able to install applications with KEXT, like Oracle VirtualBox. The mechanism is relatively complex, but basically each developer is required to get a developer ID from Apple, and users can approve that software signed by that developer is allowed to run.

macOS: S.M.A.R.T. status checks

Recently I was off for a few days, and before leaving, I shut down the machines, including the Mac Mini server, which has an external disk.

macOS: com.apple.quarantine

I recently faced a weird behaviour from one of my Eclipse instances: all settings and plug-ins installed were forgotten, and the Eclipse looked like freshly installed.

BASH recommended initialisation sequence

Writing scripts to automate repetitive tasks is very common, but it is not commonly known that bash defaults are not very robust.

Markdown – the future of writing on-line content

Markdown is around since 2004, but it was GitHub that pushed it to a celebrity status.

How to use calibre with a network drive? With NFS!

calibre is not exactly the program that will win a beauty contest, but functionally it is ok.

OS X: How to start the NFS daemon?

I recently reactivated my backup Mac Mini as a server; for convenience, I installed the OS X Server package.

OS X: How to change an alias icon?

I recently did some backup/restores and I noticed that the restored aliases, although fully functional, did not preserve the original icons.

OS X: How to change the main screen?

In multi-screen setups, for example a laptop with an external monitor, OS X prefers the laptop screen, which makes things a bit weird when using mainly the big screen, especially when having to confirm message boxes in the other screen.

SourceTree – graphical git manager

Git is currently the prominent version control system used for software development. However using the command line git command is tedious, and SourceTree from Atlassian is probably the best graphical git manager available.

feedly – reading news utility

Reading news is generally a time consuming task, and any help, including syndicating feeds, is welcomed.

TG Pro – temperature monitoring utility

After the video chip in my laptop died and the entire PCB had to be replaced, I became more sensitive to heating issues.

Timelime – a nice time tracking utility

Timelime (with second m, not n), is the easiest and most beautiful way to track and visualise your working hours.

OS X: Time Machine backup after hardware repairs

Courtesy of Apple, my laptop suffered a brain surgery, and the main board was replaced. Now it is almost as good as new, but since it still has a history, I would like to preserve it.