By Rian

Gray, a writer.

App to Test Outgoing Port Blocking

I was thinking of adding a category for ‘app for that’, but after some research I found out Apple had already trademarked the phrase “there’s an app for that”. So no luck there, and this time around this isn’t about the app either. It’s a web utility that is concise and beautifully designed to serve…

How to Adjust Aspect Ratio for Image Class in WordPress

If you are posting regularly on WordPress-run websites, you are most likely also posting an image as visual aid —best way to describe what the post is without a single word. And as I had discussed it in an op-ed, aspect ratio is a thing for modern readers, and images will play a major role…

CE Ultrawide, Aspect Ratios and Photography

What is the aspect ratio of your display? Was it ever the core concern behind a purchasing decision? I am aware of this rave behind the ultrawide displays, canonically “21:9”, but mathematically “64:27”, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It only became a concern not because I was in the shop for new…

How to Replace WP-Cron with Linux Cron

In my previous posts, I tried fixing WordPress’ weird behaviors with scheduled post not publishing correctly when the site uses a caching plugin. One such attempt was to add hooks to activate cache purging, and another was to forcefully activate wp-cron.php. I had hoped this would solve the problem, but I couldn’t get the stable…

Apple Intelligence, PCC, and M4 Macs

Apple Intelligence is in beta still. Some articles I’ve read unfortunately did not understand Apple Intelligence is to be deployed gradually, and while I would argue Apple’s ‘sell now, build later’ tactic to be disingenuous, I would simply disagree current Apple Intelligence is what will be for the remainder of fiscal year. But let us…

Microsoft Office, Windows, and Subscriptions

Subscription is the new bane of the internet. It’s been the bane of the modern technology as many users would wail. We are living in a world where some products and services are inherently subscription-based, where it is simply not possible to acquire the said products or services without subscription, say Netflix. But this isn’t…

How to Change WordPress Tag Cloud Tag Number

The title might be mouthful, but WordPress’ embedded tag cloud widget has a default limit on how many tags it will display. The widget does not update automatically based on the space, —yes, I was surprised to find out about it too— and the maximum number of tags the widget displays is set as a…

Windows 10, Subscription, and Security Update

Microsoft announced that the company will provide a subscription-based security updates, $30/year for “legacy” PCs. It is truly a diabolical plan considering Windows 11 has the infamous TPM requirements, thereby the older PCs simply became obsolete. On Bootcamp side of the business, we are yet to hear from neither of the companies on whether or…

Silent Hill 2, Innocence, and Fog World

This post contains a major spoiler of Silent Hill 2, albeit it is about 20 years late and all the other installments do share the same principle behind the world of Silent Hill or Silent Hill phenomenon in The Short Message. If you are unfamiliar with the world of Silent Hill, I will try my…

How to Test Proxy Servers from Remote Client

Normally a user can test the proxy server with any tools, —mine was Firefox until recently— but there is a time when more bare bone approach is needed —like when my Firefox started acting up. Jokes aside, it’s good to have an appropriate tool to test just the right subject, in which case the proxy…

Raspberry Pi, VLAN, and Docker

A bit of rant while exploring different routes to host multiple OpenVPN clients on a single Raspberry Pi device. If you are a subscriber to paid VPN services, you would immediately know most services offer multiple server destinations. And you would also know, by following the previous post, that the said how-to only allows one…

How to Setup External Access of Home Devices

There is a problem with all IoT or smart home devices: external access. This is a problem that all users at some point have to ask themselves how they would like to approach it. What’s the point of having internet-enabled, sensor-filled, micro smart devices in each room, if none of them will respond soon as…

How to Setup Tmux Pane Synchronization Shortcut

Tmux comes in incredibly handy in multitude of situations, and one of them is when you are handling multiple ssh connections to pi devices or something akin to IoT devices. Assuming all the setup is already done on the local device, and this is part of your regular maintenance routine, logging in to each device…