Category: Random

I regularly like to make rough diagrams/plans by drawing on paper. As I have an iPad Pro with a stylus sitting next to me I have often thought there would be some benefits to being able to use a sketching diagram to:

• Stop losing/damaging paper sketches
• Easily undo mistakes
• Leverage things like copy and paste
• Infinite canvas
• Ability to zoom in and out

To this end I am trying: Concepts App • Infinite, Flexible Sketching

Starting with a SkillShare course Draw with Concepts app: Basic Digital Illustration for Beginners

SkillShare – Course

• Vector based app (infinite canvas + no pixilation)
• User interface
  • Supports pressure sensitive stylus + palm rejection
  • Projects -> Files
  • Top right tools, customizable change tools
    • Line thickness, Opacity, Smoothness (0 for pen tip)
    • Color palette (make your own palette)
    • Layers pallet (automatic will separate layers by tool, recommended)
      1. Coloring with pencil, drawing with pen easy with auto layers
      2. Duplicate layers, transparency, visibility etc.
    • Tools + Brushes
      • Can buy new via pro
    • Precision palette
      • Grid, Snap, Measure, Guide
    • Gestures
      • 2 finger tap – undo
• Workflow
  • Ran through a demo, drawing an images from a picture
    • Changing tools/brushes
    • Hold push + item select/select all layers

Other resources

• Concept app tutorials
  • 3 ways to draw a straight line
  • Create a floor plan
  • All tutorials

In a scenario where a VM is moved to different underlying hardware, it is generally a good idea to validate CPU, memory, disk IO and network.

CPU Benchmark

sysbench cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run

sysbench threads --num-threads=10 --thread-yields=0 --max-requests=100000000 --thread-locks=1 run

Memory Benchmark

sysbench memory --memory-block-size=1M --memory-total-size=100G run
sysbench memory --memory-total-size=10G run

File IO

sysbench fileio --file-total-size=5G prepare; sysbench fileio --file-total-size=5G --file-test-mode=rndrw --time=300 --max-requests=0 run
# Clean up
sysbench fileio --file-total-size=5G cleanup

Network latency, upload and download

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/master/speedtest.py; ./speedtest.py; rm -f ./speedtest.py

If you want to have a single mailbox on Office 365 and be able to send as aliases of that mailbox, you will need to do some work around as it is not really support by Microsoft, see:

• https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365/Sending-email-as-alias-in-office365/td-p/60802
• https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365/Sending-an-email-as-an-alias/td-p/98103

1 – Create Distribution List

1. Create distribution group for the desired email address (ensuring is does not exist as an alias or otherwise in the tenant)
2. Add desired destination mailbox as a member
3. Open the Exchange Admin center
4. Select “recipients” (side navbar) -> Select “groups” (top) -> Select the distribution group you just created, click the pencil icon to edit
5. Select “group delegation” add your main mailbox user to the ‘Send As’ list
6. Wait for approx 30 mins for Office 365 to provision the distribution list and update contact lists
7. Optionally set up message rules in your mailbox to ensure emails to the distribution list email address are put into a specific folder

2 – Send As the distribution list via Outlook (Windows)

1. In your Outlook client, create a new message
2. If you cant see the From box, click ‘Options’, Click ‘From’
3. Click on the now display ‘From’ dropbox and select ‘Other email address’
4. Click on the ‘From…’ in the popup box
5. Click on the ‘Offline Global Address List’, select ‘All Distribution Lists’, select your desired From address.

3 – Exchange Online

1. Create new message
2. Click the ellipsis to the right of the send button
3. Right click on the from address, click remove
4. Start typing the address you want to send from, select it from the drop down autocompleter

Building a toy house module

Looks primarily at changing object shapes, introducing the move too and the 2-point arch tool. Using double click for repetition of push/pull tool also proved to be convenient. We then used the move tool to alter slopes of surfaces, including using the up key to match slope and then height of another surface.

Next up is the arc tool, which has 4 variants:

• Arc – Main point of this method determines where the center point of the arc will be
• 2 Point Arc – select two points that will be the width of the arc
• 3 Point Arc – Firts 2 points determine form, and the third point gives that exact length Ideal for irregularly shaped objects
• Pie

The week 3 assignment was creating a house to match a floor, wall and roof plan. Unfortunately it appears that the assignment specification had a couple of slight errors. This was a bit of a time waste and student from the previous course had reported it so it is a bit disappointing that the course writers have not noticed/corrected it: https://www.coursera.org/learn/3d-cad-fundamental/discussions/weeks/3/threads/QTxAZ5UGEeir3xJNYGdMZA

Again the first pass took a while and was quite difficult, but a complete redraw took only 5 mins. When drawing structures like this, with eves and and sloped roofs it is important to complete a room (minus the eves and roof thickness) to make slope matching easier.

Python script for downloading snapshots of all attachments in all of your Evernote notebooks.

#!/usr/bin/python
import json, os, pickle, httplib2, io
import evernote.edam.userstore.constants as UserStoreConstants
import evernote.edam.type.ttypes as Types
from evernote.api.client import EvernoteClient
from evernote.edam.notestore.ttypes import NoteFilter, NotesMetadataResultSpec
from datetime import date

# Pre-reqs: pip install evernote 
# API key from https://dev.evernote.com/#apikey

os.environ["PYTHONPATH"] = "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages"

CREDENTIALS_FILE=".evernote_creds.json"
LOCAL_TOKEN=".evernote_token.pkl"
OUTPUT_DIR=str(date.today())+"_evernote_backup"

def prepDest():
    if not os.path.exists(OUTPUT_DIR):
        os.makedirs(OUTPUT_DIR)
        return True
    return True

# Helper function to turn query string parameters into a 
# source: https://gist.github.com/inkedmn
def parse_query_string(authorize_url):
    uargs = authorize_url.split('?')
    vals = {}
    if len(uargs) == 1:
        raise Exception('Invalid Authorization URL')
    for pair in uargs[1].split('&'):
        key, value = pair.split('=', 1)
        vals[key] = value
    return vals

class AuthToken(object):
    def __init__(self, token_list):
        self.oauth_token_list = token_list

def authenticate():
    def storeToken(auth_token):
        with open(LOCAL_TOKEN, 'wb') as output:
            pickle.dump(auth_token, output, pickle.HIGHEST_PROTOCOL)    

    def oauthFlow():
        with open(CREDENTIALS_FILE) as data_file:    
            data = json.load(data_file)
            client = EvernoteClient(
                consumer_key = data.get('consumer_key'),
                consumer_secret = data.get('consumer_secret'),
                sandbox=False
            )
        request_token = client.get_request_token('https://assetowl.com')
        print(request_token)
        print("Token expired, load in browser: " + client.get_authorize_url(request_token))
        print "Paste the URL after login here:"
        authurl = raw_input()
        vals = parse_query_string(authurl)
        auth_token=client.get_access_token(request_token['oauth_token'],request_token['oauth_token_secret'],vals['oauth_verifier'])
        storeToken(AuthToken(auth_token))
        return auth_token

    def storeToken(auth_token):
        with open(LOCAL_TOKEN, 'wb') as output:
            pickle.dump(auth_token, output, pickle.HIGHEST_PROTOCOL)    

    def getToken():
        store_token=""
        if os.path.isfile(LOCAL_TOKEN):
            with open(LOCAL_TOKEN, 'rb') as input:
              clientt = pickle.load(input)
            store_token=clientt.oauth_token_list
        return store_token

    try:
        client = EvernoteClient(token=getToken(),sandbox=False)
        userStore = client.get_user_store()
        user = userStore.getUser()
    except Exception as e:
        print(e)
        client = EvernoteClient(token=oauthFlow(),sandbox=False)
    return client

def listNotes(client):
    note_list=[]
    note_store = client.get_note_store()
    filter = NoteFilter()    
    filter.ascending = False
    spec = NotesMetadataResultSpec(includeTitle=True)
    spec.includeTitle = True
    notes = note_store.findNotesMetadata(client.token, filter, 0, 100, spec)
    for note in notes.notes:
        for resource in note_store.getNote(client.token, note.guid, False, False, True, False).resources:
            note_list.append([resource.attributes.fileName, resource.guid])
    return note_list


def downloadResources(web_prefix, res_array):
    for res in res_array:
        res_url = "%sres/%s" % (web_prefix, res[1])
        print("Downloading: " + res_url + " to " + OUTPUT_DIR + res[0])
        h = httplib2.Http(".cache")
        (resp_headers, content) = h.request(res_url, "POST",
                                        headers={'auth': DEV_TOKEN})
        with open(os.path.join(OUTPUT_DIR, res[0]), "wb") as wer:
            wer.write(content)

def main():
    if prepDest():
        client = authenticate()
        user_store=client.get_user_store()
        web_prefix = user_store.getPublicUserInfo(user_store.getUser().username).webApiUrlPrefix
        downloadResources(web_prefix, listNotes(client))

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Python script for downloading snapshots of all file in your google drive, including those shared with you.

source: https://github.com/SecurityShift/tools/blob/master/backup_scripts/google_drive_backup.py

Downloading youtube audio and converting mp3 is very simple now thanks to these guys: https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/

Installing:

# on Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install youtube-dl avconv
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SecurityShift/tools/master/scripts/random/GetYoutubePlaylist.sh -o GetYoutubePlaylist.sh
chmod 755 GetYoutubeAudio.sh

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SecurityShift/tools/master/backup_scripts/google_drive_backup.py

# on OSX
brew install youtube-dl libav
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SecurityShift/tools/master/scripts/random/GetYoutubePlaylist.sh -o GetYoutubePlaylist.sh
chmod 755 GetYoutubeAudio.s

Contents:

Usage: sh GetPlaylist.sh [youtube playlist URL] [output_directory]

Example:

sh ./GetYoutubePlaylist.sh http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL702CAF4AD2AED35B ~/Music

To get the youtube playlist URL view the playlist by clicking on its name, no videos will be playing, then click on share and the url will be highlighted: