My Tech
Computers
- Macbook Air
- iPad Pro
- iPhone
- Microsoft Surface
- Raspberry Pi 4
- Arduino
Peripherals
- 4K monitor
- Wireless keyboard and mouse
- Time Machine
- Inkjet printer/scanner
- Microscope
- Oscilloscope/logic analyser
- DJI Mavic Pro drone
- HackRF One software defined radio
Cloud
- Amazon Lightsail
- Microsoft 365
- Google Documents
- Twilio
- IBM Cloud
- Dropbox
- iCloud
- Apple Developer
Macbook Air
I bought the Macbook Air from Officeworks in 2015 because I needed to support Macintosh computers but my employer only supplied me with a Microsoft Windows based laptop. Once I demonstrated the ease with which a Mac could work with other Macs
my employer provided a Macbook Pro and began promoting the Mac Mini as a configuration server to State Schools. Five years on and the Macbook Air on which I am typing is still my go-to workstation outside my workplace.
Time Machine
Who has ever deleted part of a document that later turned out to be important? Or attempted a system change that made the device unbootable? Only me? OK, but the Apple Time Capsule has saved me more than a few times. This unobtrusive device sits forgotten next to my Internet Router.
Whenever my Mac comes within range, Time Machine backups are made automatically. These are continuous incremental backups so I can go back in time a few minutes, a few hours or a few months or years and restore previous versions of any file. Or an entire device. It just works.
Amazon Lightsail
Having a server on the Internet is essential for an IT professional.
Searching the market I found Amazon Lightsail to be the best value for the small scale test server I needed. This page is being served from a WordPress instance on a virtual server. I have root access to this virtual server and Amazon takes care of the network, hardware and operating system patching for me. For plain old HTML pages I simply create a sub directory below the WordPress directory and add HTML files. The Apache server that drives WordPress handles these pages just as a standalone Apache server would. I installed the Apache Jena Framework on Lightsail by following the standard installation instructions. This allows me to store data in a TDB triple store and query it using Fuseki. Literally anything I want to test or serve can be accomplished on Lightsail for $4.50 per month. If by some miracle I need to upscale I can buy incremental services and serve up to petabytes per second.