Alan Siu's Blog

  • Distributing Inspiration using Munki

    If you have a volume license and want to distribute Inspiration to your Munki clients, just activate Inspiration on one Mac and then import the activated Inspiration.app bundle into Munki. That’s it.

  • Enable SSL on your web server using Let’s Encrypt and Certbot

    If you have a public-facing web server you manage and want to enable SSL on it (you should want to), you can generate a self-signed certificate… or you can use Let’s Encrypt as a certificate authority and generate a proper certificate. There are Certbot downloads for various Linux and Unix platforms (including macOS). If you’re…

  • Skipping Apple updates in Managed Software Center manual checks

    Why would you want to selectively disable Apple software updates? Munki allows you to change a preference on client machines to check for and install Apple software updates. This is pretty cool. It means I can bundle Apple software updates and third-party software updates together for my users. But sometimes, it’s a little frustrating when…

  • Google Drive “low space, can’t sync” in selective sync

    I recently ran into a weird situation in which the Google Drive desktop app was complaining about there not being enough space to add a folder to my selective sync options. It made no sense. I had at least 100 GB of free space on my drive, and I wanted to additionally sync only another…

  • When shared VideoNot.es files show up blank

    Can’t say this will be the fix every time, but if you use Google Drive to share VideoNot.es with others and the shared notes show up blank, it’s likely that you didn’t save the notes before sharing. People can get used to Google Docs autosaving documents as you type (almost in real time) and forget…

  • Using GET input to search in a PowerSchool custom page

    As far as I can tell based on what scant documentation there is for PowerSchool custom pages, on trial and error, and on PowerSchool forum responses, there doesn’t appear to be a way to use a not-equal-to comparison operator. Any PowerSchool power users who want to correct me—I’d love to be wrong about this. If…

  • The 12 Days of Christmas… or any countdown song

    Loops are a big part of programming, because one of the benefits of programs is that they can automate repetitive tasks for humans. If we were to type out the complete lyrics to “The 12 Days of Christmas,” we would end up having to do a lot of typing! And it wouldn’t be fun typing—it…

  • Script “Restrict changing networks to administrators only” on macOS

    There is an option to prevent non-admin users from switching wireless networks if you go to System Preferences > Wi-Fi > Advanced > Wi-Fi > Require administrator authorization to: > Change networks. If you want to script that for multiple machines (instead of having to click through the GUI on each one), run this command:…

  • Generating a random passphrase

    Disclaimer I’m not going to go into all the politics of passwords. Users are always trying to balance security with convenience. The point of this tutorial is not to say “This is how you generate the best password.” It’s more like “If you want to generate a random passphrase, this is one way to do…

  • Can’t paste from Google Docs to Microsoft Word on Mac

    Obviously not the one solution for any time this happens, but I’ve come across this only once (just now), and this is what worked. The problem was the user was copying from a Google Doc and then trying to paste into a Word doc. Nothing pasted, even though the Edit menu item flashed blue as…

  • Making a Rock, Paper, Scissors game in Python

    Before you code, figure out what you’re trying to do with the code A brief note on codeUsing comments in code Expanding shorthand logic Considering another approach No one right way to approach problems Let’s actually start writing some code Don’t trust user input Picking a choice at random Comparing values with if/elif/else Extra Credit…

  • Fix Evernote sticky notes for Windows remembering a ton of empty windows

    We have a Windows user who uses Evernote Sticky Notes, and a whole bunch of blank notes would appear (at least 20 of them) every time the application was launched (at login), and they would have to be manually closed. I thought renaming the Evernote folders in C:\Users\username\AppData would fix it, but that did nothing.…

  • Anatomy of a no-image workflow

    For some background on what a no-image approach to deployment is and its benefits, read Thick imaging, thin imaging, and no imaging macOS and “BUILDING” 2015 MACS. I tried a few approaches to no-imaging never-booted Macs, and I’m presenting here a way that worked for me, but you may very well have success with the…

  • Using a FileVault institutional recovery key to unlock an encrypted disk

    You may have set up FileVault encryption using an institutional recovery key (more details in Enabling FileVault Encryption for Client Macs). It’s possible you have a local admin account on the FileVault-enabled machine, so if a user says “Oh, no! I forgot my password,” you can reset the password. But what if your user also…

  • Getting Wabbit Emu to work on a Mac retina display

    Acknowledgements Huge shoutout to @damienbarrett on the Mac Admins Slack Team for the fix. I’m just documenting it here, in case anyone else runs into this problem and is searching for the solution. Problem You launch up Wabbit Emu and try to run your TI-## calculator ROM, and the onscreen buttons don’t match up with…