Category Archives: Uncategorized

(Virtual) Server Pricing

04 Tuesday Jun 2019

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My goto services:

Digital Ocean
Special sauce: Incredible UI/UX, super fun to use. I’ve stopped thinking about it anymore, I just go to DO.
Downsides: Many (probably most?) of the IPs are blacklisted for email. Most aren’t great exits for VPN services either for the same reason.
CLI tool (doctl has pretty shit UX though)		 $5/GB of RAM
Linode $5/GB of RAM
OVH
Special sauce: The lowest cost option, but it’s Canada and Europe only. No SE Asia, no USA.		 $1.68/GB of RAM
Yep it’s 66% cheaper than everyone else.
Vultr
Special sauce: awesome plans with $2.50 for a node with IPv6 only, 512Mb RAM		 $5/Gb
Amazon LightSail
Special Sauce: oh well, it’s the IBM of servers, so I might as well document it here: They have this clone of Digital Ocean, called LightSail, that s3cks, obvs. It’s the same price $5/Gb (same as Linode/DO/Vultr). Available in a few more locations than most of the above (incl. Mumbai; Digital Ocean has Bangalore).		 $5/GB of RAM

Prices as of June 5, 2019. I may update this page someday, but then again I may not 🙂 Bookmark if you’re adventurous (ctrl + d, or cmd + d)

My ‘goto’ SpeedTest Services

13 Saturday Apr 2019

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Fast.com: Provided by Netflix, this runs on the same server and infra that Netflix runs on. So it’s a good check of Netflix speed and whether your ISP throttles connections to Netflix. Also few ISPs are optimizing (faking) results to fast.com as yet (because it’s not trivial to do so without also making all of Netflix faster)…

proof.ovh.net: OVH is by far the cheapest and probably the best hosting / colo / dedicated server provider in the world. How fast you can get to OVH servers is a good proxy for general internet speeds. (France, Canada, Singapore, Sydney). Mostly you just need to check speeds to the USA/Europe/Singapore/Australia.

speedtest-cli: Much easier to use than the advertisement laden, anti-user speedtest.com site. Easier to script too 😀

brew install speedtest-cli ripgrep #mac
sudo apt install speedtest-cli #ubuntu

#List all servers
speedtest-cli --list

#Test with 3 random servers
for server in `speedtest-cli --list | rg -i 'India\b' | cut -d')' -f1 | sort -Ru | head -n3`; do speedtest-cli --server $server; done

Cloud Storage Pricing 7/Apr/2019

07 Sunday Apr 2019

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Provider Storage Per Year
Google Drive 2TB  $          100
iCloud 2TB  $          120
Dropbox 2TB  $          200
B2 2TB  $          120
Mega 1Tb  $          144
pCloud 2TB  $          100
OVH SYS 2TB  $          360
DreamObjects (DreamHost) 2TB  $          600
OneDrive 1TB   $          70
MediaFire 1TB   $          30

Notes:

  • 2TB is the sweet spot for me; YMMV.
  • iOS does not seem to search Google Drive like it does Dropbox
  • Google’s One (https://one.google.com/) may make Google’s offering more attractive
  • Google does a lot of rate-limiting apparently
  • Microsoft is giving you Office 365 (which you’d have to pay for anyways) with the 1Tb
  • pCloud: I’d trust Google over pCloud… and Drive is searchable, has an excellent API and is probably supported by a lot more tools and services.
  • iCloud: The worst by far in terms of performance; sync is slower than molasses from India. And they ($AAPL) don’t care. With Google Photos, iCloud’s limited advantage of deep integration with iOS Photos is not as relevant.
  • MediaFire: No search;

Also see https://rclone.org/

 

macOS Productivity Apps every dev needs!

10 Monday Sep 2018

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Window Management/Misc Util

Spectacle, Free, Open Source
BetterTouchTool, Donationware
Magnet , Mac App Store, about $2.

Winner: BetterTouchTool

Spectacle App is really, really good window management; shortcuts to dock windows to left/right half (or quadrants, or top/bottom) of screen. Some stuff, like hitting the ‘dock right’ shortcut (ctrl + cmd + right) twice makes a window use the right third then right half then right 3/4ths etc. It’s just magically good. Having said that you can replicate (95%) the functionality of Spectacle App with BTT and since BTT does Window Management and Keyboard/Mouse Remapping and so much more – it makes sense to use BTT alone. 

Magnet is Spectacle App with the added ability to dock windows on drag (i.e. drag to top of screen to make a window full screen). BTT does this out of the box too; but takes it further… BTT lets you define snap areas / layouts and activate them using the mouse alone!

BTT does not come batteries included, so you have to make your own shortcuts and assign window management operations to them. There’s a community forum for sharing presets but it’s still a chore. Also BTT can do Touchbar based Window Management (though I’ve not found that very useful; and I hate the touchbar anyways).

Application Launcher / Search Everywhere

Alfred, Freemium

Better spotlight, including deep integration with Google / Gmail / Drive and other custom searches (via plugins). Really good, no competition here. No discussion, just install it and thank me later.

Alfred Workflows

Note Taking

OneNote, Free, Proprietary 

The best note taking app out there. Period. I’d say Apple Notes is now the best note taking app out there, because it’s so fast and has great integration with iOS & macOS. The web version is not too shabby either. It’s not very cross platform though and if you have thousands of notes (as I do) sync breaks every now and then. It doesn’t have all the “nice” touches of OneNote – like napkin math or keyboard shortcuts to apply styles like Heading 1, Heading 2 etc.

Screen Sharing / Collaboration

ScreenHero (now owned/murdered by Slack)

AnyDesk

TeamViewer: The free version just randomly stops workign for me — it says commercial use detected and stops. So AnyDesk, though TeamViewer is very good.

Other:

CleanMyMacX, Freemium 

Itsycal, Freemium

Developer Tools 

  • PHPStorm
  • Visual Studio Code
  • Homebrew,

Homebrew packages/bottles: 

brew install php swaks htop telnet ffmpeg mysql pstree aria2 pv q jq autojump keychain nmap readline node redis beanstalkd ripgrep rsnapshot wget rsync bzip2 git xz yarn speedtest-cli parallel composer go sqlite curl grep sshfs coreutils

Other Stuff

Google Chrome, FireFox, Microsoft Edge (Chrome)

XCode

Office 365

Parallels Desktop

Coconut Battery

WhatsApp (Desktop)

Blackmagic Speed Test

Amphetamine

Reeder

Dropbox

Tinkerwell

VLC

Beyond Compare: Don’t leave home without this!

Paw

SuperDuper

(Git) Tower 2

Docker

Pocket

SecurePDF

XQuartz

Calibre

Intel Power Gadget

Mailplane

Backup and Sync from Google

MacDown

WireGuard

MySQL Workbench

Skype

OpenAudible

Resolutionator

Local By Flywheel

JetBrains Toolbox

Trello

GIPHY Capture

Yoink!

OpenInTerminal

MacsFanControl

Trader Workstation (IB)

 

One-Liners

01 Wednesday Mar 2017

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Q: Can February March?
A: No. But April May!

Q: Did you hear about the painter who was hospitalized?
A: Reports say it was due to too many strokes!

Q: Have you heard the joke about the butter?
A: I better not tell you, it might spread!

Q: How do you know that carrots are good for your eyesight?
A: Have you ever seen a rabbit wearing glasses?

Q: Music Teacher: What’s your favourite musical instrument?
A: Kid: The lunch bell!

Q: What did the triangle say to the circle?
A: You’re pointless!

Q: What do you call a ghosts mom and dad?
A: Transparents!

Q: What do you call a group of men waiting for a haircut?
A: A Barbercue!

Q: What do you call a person that chops up cereal.
A: A cereal killer!

Q: What do you call a South American girl who is always in a hurry?
A: Urgent Tina!

Q: What do you call two fat people having a chat?
A: A heavy discussion!

Q: What kind of emotions do noses feel?
A: Nostalgia!

Q: What kind of shorts do clouds wear?
A: Thunderwear!

Q: Who cleans the bottom of the ocean?
A: A Mer-Maid!

Q: Why can’t a leopard hide?
A: Because he’s always spotted!

Q: Why can’t your nose be 12 inches long?
A: Because then it would be a foot!

Q: Why did the boy tiptoe past the medicine cabinet?
A: He didn’t want to wake the sleeping pills!

Q: Why did the tomato turn red?
A: It saw the salad dressing!

Q: Why did the tree go to the dentist?
A: To get a root canal!

Q: Why don’t you see giraffes in elementary school?
A: Because they’re all in High School!

Q: Why was the math book sad?
A: Because it had too many problems!

Postfix: Add a catch-all domain

14 Sunday Feb 2016

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Configure postfix to forward all email for a domain to another destination. (#Ubuntu #Trusty)

$>vim /etc/postfix/main.cf
virtual_alias_domains = domain.com example.org
virtual_alias_maps = static:<email@example.org>
#virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual
$>service postfix reload

Any email sent to *@domain.com, *@example.org will be redirected to email@example.org, assuming of course that you setup the MX record for domain.com / example.org to be the postfix server.

One risk is that any spam will also get forwarded; this is normally ok, but gmail etc will lower the sending MTA / IP score such that future emails that are not spam will still be treated as spam.