twlee.nz

Online again; now locally built

2025-07-10T02:19:59+00:00

After being down for some time due to an issue with the hosting provider, this twlee.nz is online again. This static site is now locally built rather than relying on an cloud-based build step. One extra step to do but it provides more control over builds and deployment.

Some longer term goals:

Convert from Jekyll to Hugo: Jekyll is more of a pain to install than Hugo, so I’m planning to migrate to Hugo to build the static site.
Move TrackScribe away from Google Maps to be an OSM-based mapping app.
See if I can provide a web-based version of Rātā me te rākau to make it more accessible.

Converted to Jekyll

2021-09-29T08:17:32+00:00

My website has now been converted to Jekyll. A few notes for myself:

You’ll find this post in your _posts directory. Go ahead and edit it and re-build the site to see your changes. You can rebuild the site in many different ways, but the most common way is to run jekyll serve, which launches a web server and auto-regenerates your site when a file is updated.

Jekyll requires blog post files to be named according to the following format:

YEAR-MONTH-DAY-title.MARKUP

Where YEAR is a four-digit number, MONTH and DAY are both two-digit numbers, and MARKUP is the file extension representing the format used in the file. After that, include the necessary front matter. Take a look at the source for this post to get an idea about how it works.

Jekyll also offers powerful support for code snippets:

def print_hi(name)
  puts "Hi, #{name}"
end
print_hi('Tom')
#=> prints 'Hi, Tom' to STDOUT.

Check out the Jekyll docs for more info on how to get the most out of Jekyll. File all bugs/feature requests at Jekyll’s GitHub repo. If you have questions, you can ask them on Jekyll Talk.

Rātā me te rākau

2020-02-05T04:39:23+00:00

I made a game for my pūrākau assignment for Te Reo Māori classes at AUT, based on the pūrākau of Rātā me te rākau. This was made using RPGMaker VX Ace, and should run on a Windows PC. It is available for download here: Rātā me te rākau

Get the NT Hash of a password

2019-11-24T08:55:19+00:00

I’ve added a simple script to calculate the NT Hash of a password:
get_password_nt_hash

Preventing automatic restarts in Windows 10

2018-09-22T14:18:54+00:00

Windows 10 annoyingly automatically restarts without warning to install updates, potentially causing you to lose work that is left open. There is no easy option to stop this, but it is possible to continuously change the active hours window for your computer so that Windows 10 can’t find an inactive window to do this restart. Changing the active hours can be done by editing the registry, at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings with the ActiveHoursStart and ActiveHoursEnd keys (DWORD values). I’ve tested this ‘fix’ for a few months and so far it seems to work as expected, although knowing Microsoft it may stop working at some stage, or for certain updates.

Provided here are three files to implement this scheme:

ChangeActiveHours.bat which edits the registry to change the active hours to -1 to +9 of current time
ChangeActiveHours.xml which is a Task Scheduler XML file to automatically execute the above batch file every hour in the background. This file will need to be edited with the location of ChangeActiveHours.bat under <Command>.
CreateTaskChangeActiveHours.bat which automatically adds the above XML file to the Task Scheduler. Run as follows: CreateTaskChangeActiveHours.bat /ru "ComputerName\Username" /rp and it will prompt you for your password.

Simple local+cloud backups with Duplicacy

2018-09-22T13:24:05+00:00

I’ve started using Duplicacy to do my backups. It’s marketed as a ‘cross-platform cloud backup tool’ and I’ve been happy with it so far. I previously used Duplicati 1 but found it be extremely slow preparing the list of files to back up. In comparison, Duplicacy has been fast and easy to use.

Although I originally tried the GUI version of Duplicacy, I found the CLI to be more to my liking. The CLI version is free for personal use, but if you do find it useful, I suggest paying for a personal license to support the developer.

Duplicacy CLI quick start

Here’s a quick run down of how to get Duplicacy up and running in a few minutes using the CLI:

Create a folder .duplicacy in the root of the location you wish to back up (this is called the repository). All files and directories to be backed up must be under this root.</p>
Create a file filters in the .duplicacy. The filters file allows you to set up what files and directories to back up using wildcard matching. A complete description of this is in Duplicacy User Guide. For a Windows system, an example filters file is provided here. This includes some directories under users/John Doe, excludes an unwanted_directory/, includes please_back_up_another_wanted_directory/ under the root, but excludes all other directories under the root by default, as well as unwanted Windows Thumbs.db, desktop.ini, ~*, shortcuts, and directories marked with _del*.
Initialise the repository for backup by setting the default storage location for the backup by running:

`cd root_folder`

`duplicacy init <snapshot id e.g. COMPUTER1-user-C> <backup storage location e.g. \\network\folder> -e`

This command will create storage named `default` for this repository. The `-e` option enables encryption. Duplicacy will ask for the encryption password when you execute the command.

Do a dry run to check everything is set up correctly:

`duplicacy backup -dry-run -stats`

Modify any settings (e.g. the filters file) as needed, and when ready run the backup proper:

`duplicacy backup`

Obviously, the above command can be run whenever you want to do a backup.

Multiple storage locations using the `copy` command

A useful feature of Duplicacy is you can add multiple storage locations for each backup repository. You can then use the copy command to copy the backup from one storage to another. In addition, the copy command can be run from a different computer than the one containing the initial repository. Therefore, it is possible to have a repository on Laptop1 that is backed up to a (local) network storage location (e.g. shared directory) on Desktop1. On Desktop1, you can add an additional cloud storage location for that backup and run copy to copy the back up to the cloud, ensuring that you have two copies of the backup in different locations, and with the copying running in the background on a computer with a more reliable network connection.

To set up the above scenario, follow these steps:

On the computer that is doing the copy, run: cd backup_storage_location_root (e.g. /backups/duplicacy)

`duplicacy init <snapshot id e.g. COMPUTER1-user-C> <backup storage location e.g. /backups/duplicacy/computer1> -storage-name <name e.g. default_computer1> -e`

This initialises a repository with storage of the provided name at the specified location. (If `-storage-name` isn&#8217;t used, the name `default` will be used, but I suggest a more descriptive name in the case where you want to use the same root directory to store multiple backups). If you have already run `init` for a different backup here, you can instead add the storage as follows:

`duplicacy add <name e.g. default_computer2> <snapshot id e.g. COMPUTER2-user-C> <backup storage location e.g. /backups/duplicacy/computer2> -e`

Add a cloud storage location:

`duplicacy add <name e.g. GoogleDrive_myaccount_computer1> <snapshot id e.g. COMPUTER1-user-C> <backup storage location e.g. "gcd://duplicacy/computer" -copy <original storage name e.g. default_computer1> -e`

This adds a new storage location; the `-copy` commands ensures that is compatible with the original storage.

Do the copy:

`duplicacy copy -from <original storage name e.g. default_computer1> -to <new storage name e.g. GoogleDrive_myaccount_computer1>`

Obviously, you will need to recopy whenever you do a new backup to the local folder.

Note: For Windows users, the doskey command can be used to make an alias for Duplicacy:

doskey duplicacy="path\to\duplicacy_win_x64_2.1.1.exe" $*

Changing an exFAT volume serial number

2018-05-18T13:59:33+00:00

Reformatted an SD card and want it to be recognised as the same SD card by your Android Phone? Or want to change your volume serial number for some other reason? You need to record the original volume serial number and replace the new one with this number after formatting. Here’s how to do that for an exFAT volume.

Changing an exFAT volume serial number is relatively trivial with a disk editor. All you need to do is change the serial number at offset 0x64 of the boot sector (the boot sector is the first sector of the volume, has “EXFAT>” at offset 0x03, and you should recognise the serial number at 0x64).

The only tricky part is you need to re-calculate and update the boot sector checksum (sector 11 of the volume contains a repeated checksum of sectors 0‒10, which is calculated by summing shuffled bits, excluding a few variable bytes of the boot sector).

To help with this, I’ve made a simple Python script to help calculate the checksum: exfat_bootsector_checksum.py

Further instructions are in the script description.

TrackScribe: A run/cycle/walk route planner for New Zealand

2017-04-18T01:51:04+00:00

I’ve deployed the first public version of TrackScribe on this website. This is a run, cycle or walk route planner that sources elevation data from the NZTopo database.

TrackScribe is a Google Maps API-based front-end that allows running, cycling etc. tracks to be planned by manual point placement and Directions API auto-routing. Tracks can be loaded and saved to a simple csv format.

A unique feature of this webapp is that it interfaces with my own NZLookDEMUp Google AppEngine-based backend that looks up New Zealand elevation data from NZSoSDEM v1. This is a digital elevation model (DEM) created by the School of Surveying at the University of Otago that covers the whole of New Zealand at a spatial resolution of 15m and generated by fractal interpolation of LINZ topographic data from the NZTopo database. This should given path elevation data that is ‘as good as’ the NZTopo map series. Elevation look ups outside of New Zealand are not supported.

The version has had limited testing and may be buggy! It was created mainly for my own enjoyment, but hopefully the interface is straightforward enough for others to use. Note that elevation is not looked up until you click the “Lookup height” tool twice. This to prevent my backend being overloaded.

The GPL-licensed source code for the TrackScribe webapp and the NZLookDEMUp back-end are available on my GitHub page.

CopyPMID Chrome extension

2016-05-17T12:01:25+00:00

I’ve published my CopyPMID Chrome extension in the Chrome web store. It’s one of the most boring extensions in the world, as all it does is add a button to PubMed pages to allow quick copying of the PubMed ID to the clipboard, but I needed to publish it on the web store so I could use it myself! I use it quickly import PubMed references into JabRef by PMID. The source code is also available on my GitHub page.

My GitHub page and profscore

2016-02-08T10:30:09+00:00

I’ve added a link to my GitHub page to the sidebar. At the moment, the only project available there is ProfScore, the profile-based conservation score for biopython published in the Proteins: Structure, Function and Bioinformatics (doi: 10.1002/prot.24711).