Boshdirect

Personal blog of Josh Lyon

  • The Hidden Power of “Just”, “Easy”, “Simply”

    There’s a set of words deeply rooted in our everyday lexicon that, on the surface, seem to make our lives simpler – “just”, “easy”, and “simply”. We tend to use these words to demystify complex situations, impart advice, or share knowledge. But are we aware of the less apparent impact these words can have on…

  • Multiple Servers from One Port on NAS

    Have you ever wanted to have a single URL with a standard web port to access all the web services you run on your NAS? Most consumer Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices come with a built-in web server which can be used to share all of your services under one address. Summary How does this…

  • Azure Functions – Serverless Code

    Azure Functions provide a flexible and easy way to run code without having to worry about spinning up servers, managing an OS, or even managing a service. For that matter, with Azure Functions you only pay when your code is running. Microsoft takes care of spinning up the servers and services to run your code…

  • Reolink HTML5 IP Camera Viewer

    Reolink, the manufacturer of several IP camera and Network Video Recorder (NVR) products, recently released a firmware update for their line of IP cameras enabling the ability to view the camera streams through HTML 5 enabled browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. Update: An update to the firmware seems to have established Flash as…

  • Android TV: GuidedStep InflateException

    I’ve working on porting SharpTools, my Android home automation app, to Amazon Fire TV and Android TV using the Google Leanback library and ran into a snag today. After building a GuidedStepFragment, I was getting the error “Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{}: android.view.InflateException: Binary XML file line #22: Binary XML file line #22: You must…

  • Azure Queue via Shared Access Signature and REST

    What is an Azure Queue? Azure Queues allow you to store a large number of lightweight messages leveraging Azure Storage. Typical use cases for queues include buffering a set of data or actions for processing. And since the Queues are part of Azure Storage they are super cheap. As of writing this, each queue message…

  • Remove Folder from Git with History

    I was just cleaning up my desktop and came across a snippet I had saved which removes a specified folder from a Git repository including removing it from the history of the repository. In general, if something was committed to a repository, you shouldn’t remove it from the history, but there are cases where it…

  • SmartThings Tasker plugins and Widgets

    Looking for Tasker Integration or Widgets for SmartThings? You are headed in the right direction. Checkout the Android app SharpTools for additional information. http://sharptools.boshdirect.com/features

  • Stick-N-Find iBeacon

    A summary of my findings with the Stick-N-Find stickers and their usability as an iBeacon / Bluetooth LE proximity device. I ordered a set of Estimote Beacons and Stick-N-Find stickers and have been playing with automation concepts within Android. In particular, I wanted to be able to have my Android device understand the proximity to…

  • Install Raspbian on 2GB Card

    There are several options for running a Raspberry Pi operating system on a 2GB SD card, but in the this blog post I’d like to talk about how to install the ‘official’ distribution, Raspbian, on a smaller SD card. This method requires the minimal Raspbian Unattended Netinstaller which can be found at the following link:…

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