Every geek has his/her favorite set of tools for accomplishing various tasks. Here are mine.

I tend to split my time between Linux and Windows so where possible there will be solutions for both. Preference is of course given to cross-platform FOSS projects.

This will be updated as I …

I've been playing with a new research tool called Zotero, which helps you keep track of research papers, etc. as you come across them.

I'm using their standalone version, which Chrome can push to via an extension. So far it seems really nice.

Zotero doesn't come with an installer on …

I'll briefly summarize this blog post on installing rdesktop on Centos 7.

First, we'll set up the RPM build environment (as your local user):

$ sudo yum install rpm-build make gcc
$ mkdir -p ~/rpmbuild/{BUILD,RPMS,SOURCES,SPECS,SRPMS}
$ echo '%_topdir %(echo $HOME)/rpmbuild' > ~/.rpmmacros

Now, fetch and install the source …

Update: I've created scripts to automate much of this process. You can find them on GitHub.

I often need to connect to a VPN with a Cisco ASA box at the head-end, using a DoD CAC (smart card) for authentication.

On Windows, this is often accomplished using Cisco's AnyConnect VPN …

The 1 TB drives for my HP server came today. Scott at All Computer Parts was very helpful and quick to reply. I quickly went to hot-plugging them into my server running Proxmox VE.

Create RAID

After the drives spun-up, I logged into the HP System Management Homepage (download) and …