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:
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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,
tccutil OS X: Scripting "Needs Access To Assistive Devices" Accessibility “Some app needs access to assistive devices.” This message appears on a lot of software starting in Mavericks and Yosemite and is slow to fix without scripting it.
