AirPods

Earlier this year (January to be precise) I backed a Kickstarter project for, what at the time seemed to be, some rather unique wireless earphones > https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/revols/revols-premium-quick-custom-fit-wireless-earphones

Unfortunately, as with many Kickstarter projects, these have failed to deliver on time (July, then November and now March 2017!) so when I saw Apple reveal their Airpods at the iPhone event back in September I was quite interested.  A little like the Revols, these have also been delayed from the original October launch, and it was looking like they weren’t going to arrive until 2017, at least until last Tuesday…

I must have been reading Macrumors at just the right time, as these hit the Apple Store last week, and within a few hours the option to have them shipped had slipped to 2017, but I managed to order a set and they’ve just arrived!

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Some WordPress tweaks

I know, another blog that doesn’t continue the eOS saga, but I’ve got things to a point that I really need to be trying to use it on a daily basis and I just don’t have the time, or faith, to attempt that at the moment.  Hopefully, I will at some point, but for now it’s somewhat parked.

Now I’ve caught the blog bug, though, I have spent a little more time playing with WordPress which I was finding a little clunky to use with the vanilla install I’d created.  I mentioned at the start of my blogging journey that I’d set-up a WordPress server as I was working for a client that provided multi-site WordPress to its customers.  On that basis, I’d set-up a multi-site WordPress server, as I had a few ideas about using for other things (my company website for one) but other than trying a few different themes, I hadn’t done much with it at all, other than a plugin for 2FA to secure things a little more.

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SSL

Another non-eOS blog, but this has wasted some of my time this week and thought it might be useful (at least to me in 3 months time!)

In today’s internet world, creating and using a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate (cert) should be much easier.  Ok, it’s actually a lot easier than it used to be a few years ago, but it’s probably still beyond most people running a simple web site/server (including me!)

I first got interested in SSL when I started using ownCloud and initially used a self-signed cert.  These are great for testing stuff out but invariably will generate error messages when accessing the sites through most browsers.  If you have complete control over the machine, you can trust the self-signed cert, but where you don’t it’s a case of ignoring the errors which become a pain every time you go there.

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Episode IV – A New App?

I’ve decided to try and break this down into 2 blogs, and as a small homage to the greatest film ever made I’m calling the first one Episode IV!  

I thought it would be useful to understand what I use in macOS before diving into the alternatives available in eOS.  This is likely to be a real deal-breaker, as I know some of the things I use daily just don’t exist outside macOS, but let’s cover off some of this to begin.  

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Tweaking

Not with Miley Cyrus!

One of the good things about a default eOS install is the lightweight feel.  It really doesn’t come with a lot installed, which is good if you want to add just what you need, but I do feel it’s missing a few fundamental things.  There are also some settings and switches that can make it feel a little more macOS like, so I’m going to cover these here.  Some might say they’re just apps (and they’d probably be right) but I’m still working on that blog(s)…

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Take 3

You didn’t actually think I was done?  

I’ve actually been playing around some more with my eOS MBA and after installing a few more things and trying a few alternatives managed to break it again!  It wasn’t broken in the same sense that it wouldn’t boot, but I couldn’t install or update anything through the AppCenter (or Ubuntu Software Center I’d installed as an alternative) so after not too much trying to fix I thought I’d start again, hence Take 3.

Are you crazy I can imagine some people thinking?  Possibly, but I also wanted to see how long it would take a 3rd time and how much easier it would be knowing I’d blogged everything last time.  And unsurprisingly it was much quicker and easier!  I’m back to where I left, and have resolved a couple of self-inflicted issues from Take 2:

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