automation - Jacob Salmela

Hosting Tabletop Game Nights During COVID Complete With Sound Effects

As we approach a year of the virus, I missed having my monthly game nights. I have done a few virtual sessions of Cartographers, in which I used my phone as a camera for the components, and then each participant was able to use their own print-and-play copy of the

dropbox

Four Years Later: Symlinks and Dropbox for Backup and Restore

Note: This post is about is a homegrown solution to backups/restores I developed four years ago, not the newly-announced Dropbox Backup. I originally developed this method for four reasons: restoring from backups was never a seamless or pain-free processsettings and preferences I adjusted over time were inevitably lost and

shell-scripts

Coming Soon and Paying Respects

The image is my only clue.

windows

How To Make An Automagic Windows 10 Boot Camp Install .pkg

I spent a long time trying to automate a dual-boot deployment of macOS and Windows 10. The reason being is that it’s very useful to only buy a single piece of hardware (Apple) and have it run Windows and macOS (and maybe Linux, too). But getting two completely different

netcat

Run PJL Commands From A Shell Script

I love learning obscure and under-utilized things in the tech world; PJL commands fit that bill. You can use PJL commands to get and set printer preferences. This includes getting the page count, setting the serial number, and changing the LCD display message. I was recently tasked with evaluating our

windows

Customize WinPE With Wallpaper and Custom Startup Script

WinPE is a useful tool for booting a computer and laying down a new operating system. In this post, I’ll show you how to make WinPE a little more useful by automatically running a custom script at startup. Generate WinPE File StructureOn your Windows 10 machine, make sure the

automator

Merge PDFs Natively With A Right-Click In OS X

UPDATE 2020-05-23: I removed the Get selected Finder items, which was causing duplicates (see comments). I also updated it with screenshots from macOS Catalina. I updated the post to reflect all these changes. UPDATE: If you installed this script today (2016-08-15), you may need to update it. I added a

shell-scripts

Batch Download All Of GarageBand's Loops, Jingles, And Sound Effects

GarageBand has a lot of cool loops and sound effects. If you are a systems administrator, you might be tasked with deploying these sounds and loops so you don’t need to download it onto each computer when GarageBand opens up. Or maybe you just want to have these effects

automation

I Made My Own Script To Fill Out Tedious PDF Forms For Me

I often need to fill out a PDF form for requesting medical records. I have typically done this using Preview since I can use it to digitally sign the form. But requesting new records after every appointment started becoming tedious–even when doing it digitally. I also did not want

windows

How To Image A Computer With Windows 10 Using dism

If you want to image a lot of computers with a clean Windows 10 image, Microsoft has lots of built-in tools to help do this, but it’s easy to get lost and overwhelmed with their documentation. To alleviate that headache, I will explain step-by-step how to: create and use

automation

Automatically Change .om to .com To Prevent Malware

Malcontents are sneaky. In their latest ploy, they are counting on you misspelling “.com” so they can send you to one of their fake domains. So instead of going to netflix.com, you end up at netflix.om–a phony site determined to infect you with malware. If you are

automator

Convert DOCX to PDF Natively With A Right-Click

Microsoft Office for OS X is usually very sluggish and slow. This is one reason I don’t like working with DOCs or DOCXs in OS X. Yes, you can easily view the document using QuickLook (pressing the Space bar while the file is highlighted), but if you actually want

shell-scripts

Quickly Download Or Install Common Apps Without Going To The Website

While helping friends and family with their computers, I often need to download an app they don’t have or update it to the latest version–something I don’t really want to spend my time doing. This is definitely a first-world annoyance for me, but I

hazel

How I Went Paperless And Clutter-free For $32

Ever since I discovered Dropbox, I felt weighed down by the clutter of physical documents. I use it for all of my digital documents. After a while, physical documents and pieces of paper began to get on my nerves. It was much easier to have searchable PDFs that I could

automator

Make Animated GIFs In OS X With A Right-click

UPDATE 2020-05-23: I updated the post with instructions and screenshots for newer versions of macOS. The biggest thing to note is to remove the "Get selected Finder items" task. Create animated GIFs from the OS X Finder in just seconds. It only takes a few minutes to set up and

dropbox

Automatically Sort Dropbox Camera Uploads Based On Their Geographical Data

I have been a long time fan of using Dropbox to manage my photos, even with the release of Photos. I have especially liked it ever since Dropbox enabled Camera Uploads from their iOS app. With my latest script, I can now upload photos from my iPhone and have them

shell-scripts

Bash Script: Fix Paused Printers In OS X

You need an administrator password to un-pause a printer in OS X. It is possible to add a user to the lpadmin group. sudo dseditgroup -n /Local/Default -o edit -a username lpadminThis will give them rights to the printer, but if your users aren’t admins of their machines,

automation

Python Script: pmset--Set Energy Saver Settings For Multiple Computers At Once

If you have 1,000 computers and don’t want them all to power on at the same time, but rather come on at different times, you can use a simple Python script to do so. I use this in an educational setting where each lab needs a different

shell-scripts

Bash Script: Set Favorite Servers In "Connect To..." Menu

The Connect To… menu (Command+K) lets you quickly connect to a server using different protocols. If you are deploying these settings to a bunch of computers, it can be done quickly using a simple bash script. Just replace or add whatever servers you want into the servers variable

netcat

Send Commands To All Installed Printers

Using a simple for loop, you can send a PJL command to all of the printers installed on your machine. For instance, if you wanted to change the display message on all your networked HP printers, you could loop through all the IP addresses and send it a command. Finding

shell-scripts

Prevent Access To Certain Wi-Fi Network SSIDs Via Bash Script

In enterprise environments, there is often an open guest network and a secured enterprise network. Often, you do not want users to connect to the guest network because it is throttled down and does not grant access to organizational network resources. Below is a script that can be run as

automation

OS X: Triggering Automation Scripts Using launchd

Desktop management software, such as Casper, has the feature of running scripts when a computer meets a certain criteria. You can create a similar effect using launchd by creating a Launch Daemon or Launch Agent. These run in the background and you can use them to trigger a script to

hazel

Batch Rotate Photo Files With Hazel and sips

If you have a ton of photos that are all facing the wrong direction and don’t want to do them individually, you can use Hazel to automatically go through a folder and rotate the images for you. All it takes is a one-line bash script and a Hazel rule.

automation

OS X Mail: Create HTML-formatted Auto-response With AppleScript and Rules

Do you respond to a lot of emails with the same or similar content? You can use Apple’s Mail app to do this for you automatically with some AppleScript and email rules. Hopefully, you already know about the privacy glitch associated with Apple’s Mail program and Spotlight and

hazel

Reduce And Resize Dropbox Camera Uploads Automatically With Hazel

I usually use my iPhone to take pictures for my Website and then upload them via the Dropbox app so they appear on my computer. This is a nice feature, but the photos are way too large to use on a Website. Instead of opening each one in Preview, scaling