I couldn’t find this anywhere, so I thought I’d blog about this. Thanks to the #general channel on the MacAdmins Slack for the help. To find a serial number for a Mac when booted into the Recovery Partition or the macOS installer, to go Utilities and choose Terminal, type in ioreg -rd1 -c IOPlatformExpertDevice | awk -F'”‘ ‘/IOPlatformSerialNumber/{print $4}’ That’s it, it will output the serial number for the computer.
I’m new to APIs. Have quite a bit of FileMaker experience. I’ve decided to see if I can build a system to track parent-teacher contact. This is a system that once existed for the school in an ASP system that I mocked up and outsourced. It was replaced with Edsby, an LMS system that wasn’t truly designed for this purpose. We were smashing a square peg into a round hole. My proof of concept for this system involves seeing if I can build something that does three things I’ve never done in FileMaker before. OAuth login using Google authentication Sending nightly emails of any records that have changed for those… Read More »Importing Data to FileMaker 16 via APIs
Recollection is a project to review my record collection. I will listen to an album I own and review it. The album will be chosen randomly by computron 2.0. Today computron chooses… Album: Gaslight b/w Rimb Nugget Artist: The Ugly Ducklings Released: 1967 Format(s) I own it on: 7″ The Ugly Ducklings were a Toronto band and Gaslight was their biggest hit. This has been sitting in my drafts folder for almost a year. I seem to do this, get stuck on a single review and not power through. Well, I’m doing it. Gaslight is a weird song. It’s about a woman gaslighting the singer. Kinda. I think. Either way, he’s in an unhealthy… Read More »Recollection Volume 42 – Gaslight
Last time on Never Had To Fight… Adam installed a certificate using Let’s Encrypt for a macOS server running 10.12.6 and Server.app. It wasn’t exciting, but it worked. Now, three months later, we need to renew. It was actually really easy. Renew the certificates sudo certbot renew Transfer the .pem files to desktop Using the cp command enter these to copy your files. Replace <<FQDN>> with your FQDN. Replace <<USER>> with your username. sudo cp /etc/letsencrypt/live/<<FQDN>>/privkey.pem /Users/<<USER>>/Desktop/privkey.pem sudo cp /etc/letsencrypt/live/<<FQDN>>/fullchain.pem /Users/<<USER>>/Desktop/fullchain.pem Hooray, now these files are on your desktop. Install Certs Open Server.app Go to Certificates. Click on the + Choose Import Certificate Identity… Drag and drop the two .pem… Read More »Renewing Let’s Encrypt on a macOS machine running 10.12.6 and Server.app
Are you doing your web hosting with Server.app? You’re probably not the biggest fan of it, but it works, so… let’s keep on keeping on. Do you want to have a free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt? Well, I found some really bad guides, so this is much better. *Hat tip to MacAdmins slack for a few key points Open up your Terminal.app (Go to the Go menu, choose Utilities, double-click on Terminal). This isn’t even a step, you should know this. Step One – Install Homebrew /usr/bin/ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)” At this point, you will be prompted to press RETURN to continue. Press the return key. It will… Read More »Let’s Encrypt on a macOS machine running 10.12.6 and Server.app
Recollection is a project to review my record collection. I will listen to an album I own and review it. The album will be chosen randomly by computron 2.0. Today computron chooses… Album: Original Music From The Motion Picture “The Such” Artist: Elevator Through Released: 1998 Format(s) I own it on: CD After the break up of Eric’s Trip, Rick White began some home recordings under the name Elevator To Hell, eventually adding Eric’s Trip drummer Mark Gaudet, and Orange Glass alumnus and White’s then-wife, Tara White. Elevator To Hell eventually became Elevator Through who later became Elevator. Elevator was one of the best psychedelic bands in Canada during the 1990s and 2000s. This… Read More »Recollection Volume 41 – Original Music From The Motion Picture “The Such”
Recollection is a project to review my record collection. I will listen to an album I own and review it. The album will be chosen randomly by computron. Today computron chooses… Album: On The Beach Artist: Neil Young Released: 1974 Format(s) I own it on: CD This is the final selection by Computron 1.0. It was a FileMaker database, that somehow went missing. I don’t know where the file ended up. As I unpacked from my move, I recreated Computron as a Google Sheet. The next entry will be generated from that. I haven’t been able to put down On The Beach, it’s one of Neil Young’s best records. I’ve had this record on loop… Read More »Recollection Volume 40 – On The Beach
Recollection is a project to review my record collection. I will listen to an album I own and review it. The album will be chosen randomly by computron. Today computron chooses… Album: Another Side Of Bob Dylan Artist: Bob Dylan Released: 1964 Format(s) I own it on: CD/Vinyl I was excited for this one. I don’t listen to Bob Dylan much these days, but still like his music. Back in the high school days, this was one of my favourites. Something changed. I don’t know exactly what it was, but here I am, nearly three years after having started this post, and I’m only just getting back to it. It didn’t help that the FileMaker… Read More »Recollection Volume 39 – Another Side Of Bob Dylan
Apple has been seeding developer previews of macOS Sierra (10.12) since the Worldwide Developer Conference in June. I installed developer preview 6 and have been using that and version 7 since their release. Fortunately, everything seems to be running quite well. One of the features of 10.12 is Siri on your Mac. The one thing I use Siri for the most is the clock functions. Timers and alarms. I tried setting a timer on my Mac using Siri, and there’s no functionality for that in 10.12. Perhaps Apple will add this functionality. In the mean time we are seeing SiriKit being made available to iOS developers in iOS 10, so… Read More »macOS Sierra Beta
At my work, I have a motorized standing desk. I was looking for apps that would remind me to stand and sit at regular intervals. In the long run, I want an app that conditions me, so it starts at standing for an hour a day for a week, then two hours a day for a week, and so on and so forth. I can’t find that app. Instead I made a quick AppleScript that will prompt me to change position every 45 minutes. set answer to “” repeat while answer ≠ “Quit” set answer to the button returned of (display dialog “Please rise.” buttons {“Quit”, “Okay”} default button 2)… Read More »Standing Desk