I’ve always been interested in the stories behind designs, and one particular point of interest is in the development of the original Apple Macintosh computer, well chronicled in the website Folklore.org, and eventually collected in the book Revolution in the Valley. Susan Kare, designer of the original Macintosh icons, says she based the design of…
The Future Tornadoes Want: Twister
When Jan de Bont released Twister in May of 1996, he probably thought he was being sneaky. He probably didn’t expect anyone to figure out that he’d made a horror film in which the monster represents the death of heteronormativity in the American nuclear family structure. He probably thought he got away with it. Well,…
What do I like about horror?
I’ve been doing a sort of movie scavenger hunt the past month called HoopTober, which has several “quick easy” rules; different categories and directors and such that you have to find horror films to fit into. The event is named after Tobe Hooper, probably most well known as director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but…
SSL Certificates in Python 3.6
Note to self: After installing Python 3.6 on your Mac, run /Applications/Python 3.6/Install Certificates.command so your SLL connections don’t fail. The error you might get, when this is the case, is: ssl.SSLError: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:749) Python 3.6 no longer links to the macOS-supplied SSL libraries and now includes its own copy of…
Reverse Proxy with macOS Server
Visualize this outcome: site1.example.com -> my single public IP -> Port forwarding 80 and 443 to LAN 192.168.1.10, a Mac mini running Apple macOS Server 5.3 on macOS 10.12 Sierra. site2.example.com -> my single public IP -> LAN 192.168.1.10 -> reverse proxy? -> :80 and :443 on LAN 192.168.1.15, another Mac mini running GitLab CE…
Installing a Let’s Encrypt Certificate on macOS Server
I have had a hell of a time finding a way to install a Let’s Encrypt certificate on macOS Server the Right Way™, due to how Server customizes the Apache config in weird and annoying ways. For the moment, I am going to use this way to “trick” certbot into issuing the cert to a…
Alternate Production Methods for Borg Prosthetics
I’ve moved this article to my new “maker” blog at Vixen Labs. Go read it there!