Author Archives: Gary Sone

chat.openai.com – terrarium

Some plants that are suitable for terrariums include:

Mosses (such as sphagnum moss or fern moss)
Ferns (such as Boston fern or bird’s nest fern)
Ivy (such as English ivy or dwarf ivy)
Spider plants
Succulents (such as hens-and-chicks or burro’s tail)
Air plants (such as tillandsia or xerographica)
African violets
Peperomia
Creeping fig
It’s important to keep in mind that terrariums are closed and have a different environment than open ones, so you should choose plants that like a humid and moist environment.

The soil composition for a terrarium should be well-draining and able to hold moisture. You can create your own mix by combining the following materials:

  • Sphagnum moss or peat moss: These materials help to retain moisture and improve drainage.
  • Sand, perlite, or vermiculite: These materials improve drainage and aeration, preventing water from pooling in the soil.
  • Charcoal: This is optional, but it can help to keep the soil clean and free of odors.
  • A small amount of fertilizer: A slow-release fertilizer may be added to the soil to provide essential nutrients to the plants.

A suggested proportion would be 2 parts peat moss, 1 part perlite and 1 part sand, but you can adjust the proportion based on the plants you are growing.

It’s also important to note that you should not use regular potting soil as it may not drain well and could lead to mold or fungal growth in the terrarium.

How to bypass blocked Windows 11 upgrade.

First a disclaimer – don’t do this! (Something about MS withholding security/updates)

Quick regkey hack – Computer\HKEYLOCALMACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup

Create a new dword called AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU with a value of 1

This also seems to imply it can be used to bypass the TPM check as well.

HT: https://apple.news/A1PnZHIa7RY2VNgf20tS7GA & https://www.theverge.com/22715331/how-to-install-windows-11-unsupported-cpu-intel-amd-registry-regedit

Pimoroni.com – Keybow and Keybow MINI

I saw this tweet and wanted to set something similar up for Microsoft Teams… i.e. to mute and unmute the microphone during a call.

We can see that the Arduino is emulating a HID and responding to an input (from a button press) – and sends the appropriate ‘keyboard short-cut‘.

In this example the key presses are

  • Command+Shift+M

I do have some Arduino’s laying around (as you do!) but can’t easily navigate the C/C++ language, so after some research i found myself on the pimoroni.com website looking at Keybow and Keybow mini – at the time only the mini was in stock, so i decided to take the plunge.

Arduino on Adafruit. Trinket USB volume knob and TrinketHidCombo code

…and this is where the ‘fun’ starts – if ‘teams’ is not in ‘focus’ i.e. in the foreground then this key sequence is presented to the application that is! So you first need to switch to teams by using MacOS spotlight and sending ‘teams.app’ – however this can considerably ‘slow’ down the responsiveness – i.e. its not instantaneous.

This becomes the sequence

function handle_minikey_01(pressed)
-- keybow.set_key("1", pressed)
-- green
    if pressed then
        keybow.set_pixel(1, 0, 255, 0)
        mac_snippets.spotlight("teams.app")
        keybow.set_modifier(keybow.LEFT_META, keybow.KEY_DOWN, keybow.LEFT_SHIFT)
        keybow.tap_key("M", pressed)
        keybow.set_modifier(keybow.LEFT_META, keybow.KEY_UP)
    else
       keybow.set_pixel(1, 0, 0, 0)
    end
end

In the end given the limited keys on the mini model i opted for one button to launch/switch to the Chrome.app, one button to switch to teams.app and the final button to just send the Teams keyboard short-cut to mute/unmute.

It took a bit of work to get it working, and only have this setup for a Mac (after obtaining a usb-c to micro-usb cable from Amazon)

Following this guide on pimoroni – there is a paragraph missing…

Note that if you’re using Keybow MINI then you’ll need to add the following bit of code….

 -- Keybow MINI --

function setup()
    keybow.use_mini()
    keybow.auto_lights(false)
    keybow.clear_lights()
end

…And the macos.lua shows launching ‘cmd’ instead of ‘terminal’

My completed macos.lua file is on github as is a working image that you can copy to a blank Fat32 formatted SD card.

3 keybow mini orientation

Now the keybow with 12 keys has arrived…

…and I found some github repositories that allows for ‘pages’ – i.e. over-comes the limit to the 12 keys…

…Watch this space!

  • Windows 10 – teams
  • Colour coded key presses
  • Pages

Moving a self-hosted OpenVPN server to a new server

So the Raspberry pi v4 launched recently, I thought the gigabit ethernet and the ram boost to 1gb (2gb & 4gb also available) would be a good upgrade for my self-hosted OpenVPN server , I had previously seen on the pivpn github issues that moving to a new server can be achieved with just one command!

I installed the Raspbian Buster Lite image and then installed OpenVPN via this command

 curl -L https://install.pivpn.io | bash 

Before starting its wise to stop the openvpn server first! (on both servers)

 sudo systemctl openvpn stop 

Then to copy the files over

scp -pr openvpn/* root@[ip]:/etc/openvpn/

HT: scp – https://www.computerhope.com/unix/scp.htm

I knew i had a little more work to do, my setup does not benefit from having a fixed IP address, so i have a couple of python scripts running via cron to monitor for a change in the public IP address and then update a DNS record so that my VPN setup still works, so i had some additional tasks around copying over the cron tasks and the python scripts.

I ran the scp command and it immediately failed, ah looks like a permission problem, so i ran it again with ‘sudo’ first – this had some limited success but curl.pem and the easy-rsa/pki files through up some interesting errors, after some googling of those errors the pki files/certificate were set to permission 600, they had to be changed to 644 – also the only real way of copying these files over In the end was by enabling the root account on the raspberry pi (not covered here.)

Exporting and the importing the cron tasks was straightforward.

On the ‘old’ server run this command from the bash command line

sudo crontab -l > cron.bak

then on the new server its (after you have done a remote copy via scp – see above)

 sudo crontab cron.bak 

The python scripts were also copied over using scp – i experienced some ownership/permission issues but a quick chmod sorted that out.

I changed the hostname of the new pi to match the old one (sudo raspi-config), and configured the new pi with the old PI ip address.

 sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf 

Thinking i was home and dry i attempted a connection via wifi and happy days!, it connected, but then i realised the internet was not accessible – this lead me to needing to do something on the new pi/setup that is not on the old one.

I believe this issue is caused by me running pihole on another Raspbery pi!

this was ultimately fixed by editing the file /etc/rc.local and adding these two lines after fi but before exit 0

/sbin/iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables --table nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

wifi and bluetooth are not needed and can be disabled by adding two dtoverlay= lines to the config.txt file.

 sudo nano /boot/config.txt 

dtoverlay=pi3-disable-wifi
dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt

Good luck if you decide to do the same, in hindsight creating new profiles may have been easier, but i have issued some family openvpn client/profiles that would be difficult to update.

Microsoft 365, The Mermaid – Wed. 27th Mar. 2019

Microsoft 365 , The Mermaid – Wed. 27th March 2019

Previously attended

Started by Levente Nagy (‘LN’)

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6516586509028651008

⁃ LN is with 12 peers today

⁃ (Office365) Microsoft 365 has been running for ~3.5 years

⁃ 3 customer stories today

⁃ – Tanveer Habib ( BAT)

⁃ – Tom from Siemans Gamesa

⁃ – Hanna Greenfield

⁃ Setup an immersive area, please visit in the breaks.

⁃ – Integrated business applications

⁃ – Cursor immersion experience

⁃ – Live events

⁃ – First line workers

⁃ Email UKreg@Microsoft.Com for Yammer access

⁃ #ukmicrosoft365club tag for social media interaction.

Agenda

Next up Kerri Hollis

Intercall.com/beenthere broken link but i found it on youtube

Teams launch march 2017

What’s new in teams

Replace your background – make it look like you are in the office when you are at the beach!

White board

Ends,

Tanveer Habib ( BAT)

Have previous blogged about BAT at the UKMicrosoft365club (http://108.61.197.96/content/uk-microsoft-365-club-14mar2018/) this time it’s on Teams (2 months, 40,000 end users)

Teams migration done within one change window

Ends with Q&A (10.48)

Tom from Siemans Gamesa

Tom talked about how Yammer is very close to 100% adopted, no all employee emails from the MD

/ internal Jobs are posted – allows for questions, or location everyone sees the answer

Had an internal campaign around engagement

Used menti.comhttps://www.mentimeter.com/powerpoint

Ends 11.27 with Q&A

Keri back on stage Yammer is very important.

Business value programmes

Manuela – CIE customer immersion experience

⁃ CIE will get you hand on with business scenarios (up to 20)

⁃ Walk through real life scenarios using the latest technologies and applications.

Ends 11.48, break for lunch.

Afternoon session resumes

Avois, Hannah

Business had been around for 30 years

Experimental culture

⁃ Leaders in corporate transformation in 2 years

⁃ Ran an innovation roadshow, message can’t continue as we are.

⁃ – digital disruption was not something that was understood.

⁃ The man drawer by Michael McIntyre – starts 1m.30s [https://youtu.be/yBBYnQJ9MSI]

⁃ Nokia failed to respond to Apple innovation – exposing digital disruption.

⁃ Digital survey – to capture before and after around business disruption caused by digital disruption

⁃ 4 of 5 employees have business improvement ideas but have no way to raise them. / Light the bulb (ideation)

Squads/Tribes

⁃ Small

⁃ Cross functional

⁃ Self organising

⁃ End to end

⁃ Have about 10 product squads

⁃ Autonomy motivates people

⁃ Step for was to find a tool

⁃ – some were already using teams. Lotus of email silos. Laugh at the end of November “no email week”

⁃ Graph shows this to be a step change.

Ends with Q&A

Angela Bos, Journey from Skype for business to teams

-show of hands shows no one running skype have plans to move to teams!…

Teams creates a hub for team work

-resistance is a normal human behaviour that takes time

-Shadow IT,

Organizations are made up of innovators, laggards and everyone in between

-plan, pilot and Deploy both activities together

Aka.ms/skype2teams start with a proven framework

…ends

Teams demo -exciting new technology coming

@polly for polling (within teams)

Head to aka.ms/uc2019

Ye olde Yammer versus teams question.

Yammer is your companies (enterprise) social site.

Teams is collaboration.

You will see overlap (no gaps)

⁃ Not trying to kill off email, just the silos

Ends

Next up is Kerri on accessibility

What does a billion represent?

-the total number of people with a disability seen and unseen.

3 areas

Permanent

Situational

Temporary

A quick look today at our accessibility tools

Windows 10, ease of access

Day ends

Microsoft 365 Enterprise Admin role-based exam prep: MS-100 Identity & Services

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/learning/on-demand-course-partners.aspx

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Ignite-Content-2018/Microsoft-365-Enterprise-Admin-role-based-exam-prep-MS-100/m-p/224831#M2549

https://myignite.techcommunity.microsoft.com/sessions/66853?source=speakerdetail#ignite-html-anchor

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2016/THR2021

PC Caffeine

save this as a vbs – runs until you end via taskman or restart…

set wsc = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Do
WScript.Sleep (60*1000)
wsc.SendKeys ("{SCROLLLOCK 2}")
Loop

#UKMicrosoft365club 11-Sep-2018, Hilton Bankside.

#UKMicrosoft365club 11-Sep-2018, Hilton Bankside.

Missed last one, previously attended 14-Mar club meet up

9.59am – Starts with a Video [Heathrow, Samit Saini]

Levente introduction, Powerpoint overlay with real-time captioning.

Next up Kerri Hollis

  • Share your experiences via the hash tag #UKMicrosoft365club
  • Don’t forget about External Yammer group
  • Agenda (below)

Agenda

Nick Cottrell [Mitie facilities management group]

Mitie facilities management (starts with a video)

  • Planning and delivery
  • Pilots, Workshops, trading, transformation and lift and shift
  • Had 112 servers
  • Used sharegate
  • Design
    • information architect
  • Governance
  • Self help site
  • Templates
    • GDPR added to templates
  • Migration

Mitie – Communications

Communications (see above)

  • Super user network
  • Migration s two approaches
  • MS fast track and sharegate
  • Private files, team files, archived files, other

Lessons learned

  • review and analyse your servers early
  • Review communications channels
  • Use the fast track service
  • Prepare but don’t over prepare
  • Upgrade the network in advance

Adoption

  • 700+ spo sites
  • 700+ super users
  • Good bad case studies (see below pciture)

Good bad case studies

Next up, Dan Fernandez Cao & Katie Gifford using the Microsoft whiteboard app.

⁃ Dan and Katie go on the road to demonstrate the new Surface go and collaborate via the whiteboard app

Roland Beverley from BP

West Nile Delta (WND)

Emails (10 tips)

  • Emails (10 tips – see above)
  • Turn off email notifications

  • Chasing people
    • Use planner as the sole action tracker
    • Meet a real need
    • Led by the team
    • Senior sponsorship
    • Prioritise the journey not the findings
    • Fixed timescale
    • Can now good each other to account (even senior leadership)
    • Ended with Q&A

Kerri up next

  • Yammer is 10 years old
  • How to use and new features
  • Digital transformation is about employee empowerment

Live events demo

Live events

Yammer live events using teams (in preview)

live events with Microsoft 365

Break for lunch.

Richard halbert, teams Engineering

  • Staff hub is moving into teams
  • Have a look at powershell (more available via powershell than the GUI)
  • Staff hub becomes teams, staff hub closes (to setup) next year

Linda Parkinson-Hardman [Dorset county council]

  • Business change engagement officer
    • Creating a culture of influence by building a culture of influence
  • Channel shift // transformation
  • What we really want if for them to create their own transformation we cannot do this for them

Groups

⁃ Picture missing on Personas, will see if i can add from the shared slide deck.

⁃ Picture missing on plans?, will see if i ca add/update from the shared slide deck.

Beth Hughes on top 10 change points (See my previous blog-posts for Beth content!)

Lev closed the club meeting.