Arch Linux: update mirrorlist

It’s a good idea to update the Arch Linux mirrorlist file from time to time. This post discusses how to use the reflector package to generate a new mirrorlist.

dmcrypt cheat sheet

Cheat sheet of some dm-crypt commands and configs that I seem to use somewhat frequently.

FZF: usage and installation

FZF, the fuzzy command-line finder, is a really useful small tool for your command line that makes it easier to 1. quickly search your shell’s command history, 2. quickly find+select files/folders to pass to a command, and 3. quickly find a directory and change into it.

Linux: change timezone via filesystem

On most Linux machines the timezone is configured with the file /etc/localtime. This file most often is a link to a timezone settings file, e.g. inside /usr/share/zoneinfo/. As a consequence, the local timezone can easily be changed by pointing /etc/localtime the target timezone file.

Arch Linux: pacman cheat sheet

Here's a "cheat sheet" style list of useful Arch Linux pacman commands that I use frequently (some from time to time). Some of those commands require root permission, hence will require sudo on most systems.

Linux: change mouse pointer speed with xinput

On Linux, when using X as a graphical user interface, one quick way for changing the mouse pointer speed - independently of the distribution you are on - is using xinput. This posts highlights practicalities and gives hint for using xinput for this purpose.

Windows firewall rule to block Internet but allow LAN

This post covers how to configure the Windows firewall to block Internet access for a given program, but still allow it LAN access.

Play LAN-only games together over the Internet with WireGuard

This post describes how to configure WireGuard, an open-source point-to-point tunnel, to play LAN-only games together over the Internet. This includes games that never had Internet-based but only LAN-based match-making in the first place (mostly older games) - but also games that by design would have had both, but for which the Internet-based match-making servers sadly are no longer active.

pdfcrop: automatically remove margins from pdf files on Linux

Want an easy way to get rid of margins in a pdf file on Linux? For example, when embedding the pdf file as figure somewhere? Then pdfcrop might be the tool for you. It is an extremely easy (probably the easiest possible for such a tool), quick, and reliable tool to sove your problem.

Anaconda Python/R: free disk space by removing old packages

This post highlights how to quickly clean old packages from anaconda, the scientific Python/R distribution.