Ten Things I Learned – December 5, 2023 Update

April Wine

I was sad to hear of Myles Goodwyn‘s death. Myles was the lead singer of April Wine, a Canadian band that had quite an influence on my musical tastes.

WordPress

Want to your open WordPress links in a new tab as the default? “External Links in New Window / New Tab” is your solution.

Speed Test

Google has a speed test webpage. (I’ve added it to my Google A-Z page.)

Continue reading “Ten Things I Learned – December 5, 2023 Update”

Quick Encryption/Decryption Utility

lock on keyboard

Need a quick program to encrypt or decrypt small amounts of text, such as passwords? Here’s a quick utility I wrote in Python using Google Colab, Google’s implementation of Jupyter Notebooks. You can run the program there or copy it to your own Google Drive first. Note that you’ll need a Google account to access it.

https://bit.ly/beens-encrypt

I personally use this utility to encrypt sensitive information in Google Keep, as shown in the screenshot below. I save the URL of the utility with the encrypted text so I can decrypt it quickly.

(For longer notes, I’d honestly recommend a proper password manager that can encrypt notes. I use the Premium version of Bitwarden, which I highly recommend.)

The instructions in the program should be adequate to run it on your own.

Bookmark it in your browser for quick access! (Ctrl-D on your PC or Command-D on your Mac)

Converting Lists of Data to CSV — Using a Colab Notebook Hosted in Gists

I’ve really been enjoying learning about data analysis lately. Part of what’s made it so enjoyable is the use of Colab, which is Google’s version of Jupyter Notebook.

I came across a need to convert some lists of data to a CSV (comma separated values) format so I could paste it into a Google Sheet. Not finding anything online to do I decided to write my own, and here is the product.

The Colab notebook I created has been saved as a “gist”, which is GitHub’s cousin for fast and easy file storage service. The Gist website is also very popular for sharing CSV files, which this search will attest to.

You’ll notice an “Open in Colab” button at the top, which is how you will open the document. A really nice feature is that it is fully usable without needing to save the file anywhere, but for those that do want to save their work, they can, into Google Drive.

When you first run it, you’ll get a scary message that was written by Google’s lawyers. You’ll see from the source code that the notebook’s not doing anything nefarious, so just trust me and click on “Run Anyway”. 😆

Google Colab Warning

This is a preview of the notebook. To open it, click here or on the filename on the bottom left corner of the preview.

Some Python programmers may want to remind me that I could have used Python’s built-in CSV library, but I felt Pandas would be faster, especially for large lists.

I hope some of you find this useful, although I’ll be happy if it gets some of you interested in Colab for Python programming or for data analysis, or even if it just introduces you to the Gist website.

Integrating Google Drive into Google Colab Notebooks

Why might we want to integrate Google Drive into Google Colab? The primary reason for this would be to easily access data files to use in your Colab notebooks. 

Here is a video that outlines the basic process. For written instructions, see below.

Integrating Google Drive into Google Colab is quite simple. The first step is to go to Google Colab, then open a new notebook.

Continue reading “Integrating Google Drive into Google Colab Notebooks”

Oh No! The Death of Waze

Waze iconI’ve been a long-time user of Waze, especially since the GPSes I own don’t have traffic subscriptions. I am fortunate to have a cellular plan with a generous data allowance, meaning I can use Waze often without being concerned that I will exceed my data cap. Heck, I would even use Waze to get to and from work, a route my car could probably do with me blindfolded. But it was a route that often had accidents, and Waze would change the route to get me work or to home as quickly as possible.

So it was with interest that I read the article “Did Google Just Deliver A Death Blow To Waze?” this morning. Continue reading “Oh No! The Death of Waze”

Google App Passwords

After applying an update to my UnRAID server a message popped up telling me that I didn’t have system notifications turned on.

2018-09-03 Unraid System Notifications

I popped into Settings > Notifications Settings only to have discovered that I didn’t have any notifications turned on. Well, that’s not good.

In the SMTP Settings sections Gmail was already listed, so this should be easy. Nope, it never passed the test. A quick search helped me find this forum where it showed me the proper SMTP settings for Gmail:

2018-09-03 UnRAID SMTP Settings

It still wasn’t passing the test however, likely because I have 2-factor authentication turned on. A little more digging on the forum, and that is where I learned about Google app passwords:

An App password is a 16-digit passcode that gives an app or device permission to access your Google Account. If you use 2-Step-Verification and are seeing a “password incorrect” error when trying to access your Google Account, an App password may solve the problem. Most of the time, you’ll only have to enter an App password once per app or device, so don’t worry about memorizing it.

I had never heard of this before, but it was the solution I was looking for. The service generated a simple 16 digit password that allowed me to send notification emails using my Gmail account.

This process only has to be done one time, and the password is never used anywhere else (I assume it’s locked to the sending device) so I don’t have to remember it.

The SMTP test passed. Problem solved.