The War Chest

So, during the pandemic I decided I needed a little project to keep me busy. I’ve recently been promoted into a more Cybersecurity focused role, and had a large collection of Raspberry Pi‘s laying round, so made sense to combine the two… Which is when the ‘war chest’ was born!

I wanted to focus on creating something self-contained, and portable – so as a result, my initial hunt was for a ‘flight case’ to house all of the cool stuff! I searched for quite some time before settling on the Rock Box 2 Utility Case, which is the perfect combination of rigidity and compactness.

(more…)

Read More

I’m a NCSAM Champion

I'm a NCSAM champion

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM)

This October marks the 15th NCSAM which is co-lead by NCSA & Cyber. As part of my role at my current employer, one of my main focuses is on the business and its staff’s Cybersecurity compliance and awareness. This is also something I am pationate about outside of work. Therefore, I have registered to become a NCSAM Champion.
(more…)

Read More

Elite Dangerous: Arena Available for Free This Weekend

Frontier Developments plc (AIM: FDEV) has made the PC version of Elite Dangerous: Arena free on Steam and FrontierStore.net until 10am PST on Monday July 11.
Elite Dangerous: Arena thrusts players into first-person dogfights against the galaxy’s greatest pilots in the ultimate 34th century gladiatorial contest, featuring:

  • Four agile, combat-honed space ships. Choose from the fast and aggressive Federal and Imperial Fighters, the damage-dealing Eagle or the heavyweight Sidewinder.
  • Multiple tactical options with custom loadouts unlocked by ranking up.
  • Four Arenas: Elevate’s towering view, Cluster Compound’s mining facility, Asteria Point’s cavernous space station and Ice Field’s frozen asteroid belt.
  • Eight-player Free for All, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag game modes.
  • Realistic, agile starship handling powered by Elite Dangerous’ advanced simulation technology.

Elite Dangerous: Arena will be completely free on Steam and the Frontier Store this weekend. (See the links below the trailer)

Players who download Elite Dangerous: Arena between now and 10am PST on Monday July 11 will receive the game for free, and will retain access to the game permanently. This 100 percent discount will bring a host of Commanders to the CQC Arena. Recruit some new wingmates and launch into CQC combat now!

Download the game on Steam or FrontierStore.net.
For more on Elite Dangerous: Arena, visit EliteDangerous.com

Read More

TextExpander for iPhone & iPad Adds 12″ iPad Pro Keyboard Layouts

Smile, the developer of productivity applications for Mac, iPad and iPhone, has released an update for TextExpander for iPhone & iPad, the mobile version of the popular typing shortcut tool for Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Windows (in beta). Version 4.1 adds support for keyboard layouts in English, French, and German on the 12″ iPad Pro.

This update also brings improvements to the snippet editor, adding all fonts to the font list, improving color picker selection, and adding tables and formatted lists to the insert menu.

What is TextExpander?

TextExpander is your typing shortcut tool for Mac. Save time at work or at play, whether replying to email or filling online forms, by typing abbreviations which expand to snippets of text, whole paragraphs, images and more.
Create short, expandable abbreviations for email signatures, standard greetings, formatted text and pictures. TextExpander comes with autocorrect libraries in English, French, and German to correct your typing in all apps. Even make snippets to fix your personal typing foibles.
Create more advanced snippets with fill-in-the-blank areas, paste in copied text, insert the current or future date, choose the final cursor location, and run scripts.

(more…)

Read More

FIX: Operation not permitted as root in OS X Terminal

Switch OffWhen running commands in El Capitan OS X terminal, even as root  you may be greated with a rather unhelpful error message of ‘Operation not permitted’. In fact, this isn’t an error message at all – it’s part of an OS X El Capitan feature called System Integrity Protection.

The following is a description from the Apple website:

System Integrity Protection is a security technology in OS X El Capitan that’s designed to help prevent potentially malicious software from modifying protected files and folders on your Mac.

In OS X, the “root” user account previously had no permission restrictions and could access any system folder or application on your Mac. Software gained root-level access when you entered your administrator name and password to install it and could then modify or overwrite any system file or application.

System Integrity Protection restricts the root account and limits the actions that the root user can perform on protected parts of OS X.

Read more

 In order to switch off the System Integrity Protection, you firstly need to boot your Mac from the built in recovery partition, to do this follow the steps below;
  1. Power off your Mac
  2. Press and hold CMD + R on your Mac keyboard
  3. From the Utilities menu, select Terminal
  4. Copy and paste or type in the following:

    csrutil disable
    reboot

Once El Capitan has finished booting back up, you should be able to perform your advanced file manipulation without any more operation not permitted messages.

It is worth bearing in mind, if you leave this switched off you’re leaving your Mac vunerable to accidental or malicious system level file changes, which could result in it needing a complete reinstall or worse. So unless you are a confident advanced user, it would be worth repeating the steps above but replacing disable with enable.

Read More