Posts

Welcome

Welcome to the virtual home on the web of Lionel Ferette. Friends and visitors alike, make yourself home, and enjoy the place. This place is dedicated to things I like as well as things I do. Since this is not really the place for me to talk about my job, you’ll mostly find links to friends’ web sites or sites that I find interesting, and of course some photo galleries. Photography is one of my main hobbies, the others being toying with computers, ans scuba diving. I'm also the proud dad of twin little girls, so you may find the odd parenting post. Except when specified otherwise, all the pictures on this web site were made by me, and Copyright by me. If you like them, feel free to drop me a note, and if you want to use some, just ask first.

Recover Nexus 9 lost in a boot loop

 My old Nexus 9 tablet was caught in a boot loop: it would boot up, then freeze, reboot, freeze, ... until the battery was exhausted. The instructions at  stackexchange  helped a lot. Here is a summary of what I did: Download the latest OTA file from Google's Developper site . This is a zip file. Do not uncompress it. Reboot in Recovery Mode. For the Nexus 9, press the power and volume up buttons until a menu appears. Choose Recovery Mode. Once in Recovery Mode (recognisable by its Android mascot laying on its back), quickly press the Power Button and Volume Up to enter a hidden menu. Choose "Apply update from adb" On the computer, run "adb sideload <ota_file.zip>" After the update is done, choose "Reboot system now"

Loss of Administrator access after upgrade to macOS Big Sur

 It appears that in some cases the upgrade from macOS Catalina to macOS Big Sur causes a user with Administrator access to lose these admin privileges. One of the main symptoms is the inability to unlock the Security and Privacy System Preferences app. There is a thread on the Apple developper forum that describes the issue and provides possible fixes: Reset the SMC. This actually worked in my case, and I didn't try the other proposed fix. Reboot in Recovery Mode (press Command+R right after turning the computer on), open the Terminal (using the Tools menu) and delete /Volumes/Macintosh HD/var/db/.AppleSetupDone

Change DNS servers in Ubuntu 20.10 (systemd)

 Edit /etc/systemd/resolved.conf:      [Resolve]      DNS=1.1.1.1 8.8.8.8      Cache=no then restart resolved:      sudo systemctl restart systemd-resolved

Renaming the git master branch

 For people who don't like the "master" terminology in git, changing the name to "main" is as easy as:         git branch -m master main

Limoncello recipe

  Limoncello ingredients: Full Batch (6-8 bottles): 1.5 L of 90% or higher alcohol (1.58 quarts 180+ Proof) 15-20 lemons worth of peel 1.98 l of water ( 2 quarts) .99 l of sugar (850g or 29.9 oz) Half Batch(3-4 Bottles):.75 L of 90% or higher alcohol (0.8 quarts 180+ Proof) 7-10 lemons worth of peel .99 l of water ( 1 quart) .5 l of sugar (425g or 14.9oz) See recipe .

Mirror a web site with wget

In order to mirror a web site for offline use or preservation purposes, wget is the tool of the day: wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites --no-parent <URL to the website>  The options are as follows: --mirror: recursive download and other useful options --convert-links: change links to relative links for offline and local viewing --adjust-extension: fixes extensions when they don't match the type of their content --page-requisites: makes wget download all necessary files to display the web pages (e.g. style sheets, inlined images, etc.) --no-parent: only download pages below a certain hierarchy Before using, make sure you have the right to mirror the said web site. Using too much bandwidth or making too many requests in a certain time might get you blocked.

Mauritius Underwater

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Back in 2016 we spent a very nice holiday in Mauritius. The island is beautiful, the people so friendly, and the diving is great. Here are a few pictures from this trip. Follow the links for the rest of the album on Flickr.