The bunnycdn is really easy to use, costs almost nothing and improves your loading times, especially for websites with many files incredibly. For small website it is worth just 10€ to charge and thus several years to deliver his images ultra fast.

You simply create a so called pull zone, link it to a storage zone if necessary, that's all just a few clicks and bang the thing is up and running.

After that you have to link your CMS or project with it, which is also ultra easy to do. Either you do it yourself or you simply use one of the 1000 instructions from bunnycdn or one of their many plugins for almost every CMS.

Instructions from bunnycdn: https://support.bunny.net/hc/en-us/sections/360005461680-Integration-Guides

So for me the setup really couldn't be easier, I've been using the wprocket plugin for several years and am more than thrilled with it, never really felt the need to use a cdn because of it. Thanks to wprocket I could still integrate bunnycdn super easy, there was even for this constellation even a separate tutorial of bunnycdn.

honestly the loading time of my website has improved only minimally but from 800ms to 600ms seems like an insane difference, even if it is not noticeable for the visitor it has proven to me how powerful the use of bunnycdn can have an effect. well let's see how it continues but I can more than recommend bunnycdn at this point.

rClone

rClone lets us mount multiple storage types on Linux or Mac in Finder or File Explorer. There is no way to connect the sharepoint at first sight, but we can do it using WebDav. First we have to install rclone.

sudo apt-get install rclone

On Ubuntu it was pretty easy, if this doesn't work for you, try the instructions on this page.

Once you have installed rclone you can add a new file storage with this command:

rclone config

Add a new remote connection with n and ENTER and name the new connection.

Now select WebDav, at my version which is 1.50.2 it was Connection Type ID 29, so i typed 29 and hit ENTER.

now rclone asks for a URL, for this we go to our sharepoint webpage and call the documents tab, we should get a URL similar to this:

https://COMPANYNAME.sharepoint.com/sites/OldiCloud/Freigegebene%20Dokumente/Forms/AllItems.aspx

now i deleted the last bit of the url until the name of the shared folder, which resulted in:

https://COMPANYNAME.sharepoint.com/sites/OldiCloud/Freigegebene%20Dokumente/

now give rclone this URL, rclone will ask which kind of webdav connection you try to configure, there should be a option "sharepoint".

select sharepoint and enter your credentials.

at the option bearer_token a went for the default option. after that, i went for no advanced configuration and confirmed my infos at the last step.

now the new connection should be configured. lets mount it.

rclone --vfs-cache-mode writes mount "NAME OF THE CONNECTION": ~/FolderPath/

you should of course exchange the connection name and path with your own settings, but hopefully that goes without saying 😉.

now the files should start syncing.

In the large warehouse of the online shop, iPods with a scanner case are used to collect and send the parcels, on which an app from the shipping provider runs. This app can of course also print shipping labels via a thermal printer.

The Problem

The only problem here is the printer service provided by iPhones or iPods, either printers can be connected via the app that natively support AirPrint, are connected via a Mac computer via USB and shared in the network or via Google Cloud Print.

However, thermal printers often do not have the option of being connected via AirPrint, let alone have a network card. Connecting via USB using a separate MAC computer also seems pointless as it then has to be permanently online... so the only option left is Google Cloud Print to connect the thermal printers.

Fortunately, Google has completely discontinued support for their cloud printing service as of 01.01.2021 (yes, that's sarcasm) and updates for the app to an alternative service are of course not available either, YEEEEHAAAAWW 😍! (yep, also sarcasm).

The Solution

Well, it can't really get any easier. Because Mac OS has a simple Cups service running in the background that releases the printers connected via USB on port 631 when sharing and CUPS is also available on Linux, I opted for a Raspberry. Surprisingly, this works very well.

I simply installed Debian (Raspbian) on the Raspberry Pi3, configured a static IP, installed a network cable, installed Cups and connected all printers via USB.

sudo apt-get install cups

First we allow administration via the network. Later, we can administer the CUPS server from any client on the network in a web browser.

sudo cupsctl --remote-admin

The next setting allows the locally set up printers to be shared on the network (printer sharing).

sudo cupsctl --share-printers

The following setting allows printing from any computer on the network.

sudo cupsctl --remote-any

Then we have to add a user to the user group "lpadmin". This can be the standard user "pi". You can also create a new user for this if you wish. However, this is not absolutely necessary, you can this step als root also, if so ignore this step.

sudo usermod -aG lpadmin pi

Afterwards, a restart of the CUPS server is necessary.

sudo systemctl restart cups

now we can access the CUPS web interface via IP and port 631.

With our Zebra thermal printers this was very easy, we just had to connect the printer via USB. Then in the CUPS web interface under Printer -> Add Printer, select the port with the Zebra printer and click on Next, just make sure that you click on "Share this printer on the network", the driver was already installed and only had to be selected.

Most printers have linux drivers anyway, just install them via the command line and they are automatically displayed in CUPS for selection, very cool.

Well we have now connected all the printers and added them to CUPS, now what? We have the option of setting up printers manually on the iPods. To do this, we open the app From Shipping Service Provider and add the link from CUPS under Printer Configuration, i.e. IP:631/printers/PRINTERNAME, so that they can be controlled.

Now the printers can be addressed normally via AirPrint (also works in the normal printer dialogue from iPhones or iPods, of course also on MAC OS).

Also a cool way to make your old USB printers fully AirPrint capable. 🤯

🥰 Additional problems and troubles 😍

We all love and appreciate them, problems that come up only after using a cool idea. Here is a small additional list of all the problems we had with this setup and also the corresponding solutions (hopefully).

180 degree thingy

We also had the problem with the original driver for the explicitly described model, but with our thermal printers the shipping labels were simply printed upside down. Unfortunately, there are no exact settings for AirPrint (at least on the iPod or iPhone), so we had to solve the problem on the CUPS page, but it works well, so it's not so bad.

Source reference: https://askubuntu.com/questions/954779/change-printer-orientation-in-terminal

We connect via terminal to our Raspberry and edit our Printer.conf.

sudo nano /etc/cups/printers.conf

We look for our printer in the list, the printers are divided into <DefaultPrinter> and end with </DefaultPrinter> who has basic HTML knowledge, this will seem logical to you.

With our printer, we simply add this one line and all print jobs to this printer are rotated 180 degrees.

Option orientation-requested 6

now just save and restart the cups service, problem solved.

2021 and still no linux drivers

You are only really fucked if you are using a printer for which no standard driver works and no Linux driver is provided on the official website. We had exactly this problem with a Chinese NoName thermal printer.

The only option left is to download 7-Zip onto a Windows computer and disassemble the driver files down to the smallest detail, a ppd file would be important here. This is used by CUPS as a driver and contains all the necessary information. Sometimes this can be traced in drivers. However, this is a tedious process that takes a lot of time.

Infos regarding this problem

1: https://www.suse.com/support/kb/doc/?id=000016775

2: https://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?t=2079

3: https://superuser.com/questions/1496842/windows-10-how-to-use-a-ppd-file-for-a-network-postscript-printer

please inform yourself in advance about linux capable printers as it seems that many manufacturers don't give a damn if they support linux, it's not impossible but much more difficult than getting the driver directly from the manufacturer ready to install.

but before we get to that, we need to discuss what a jamstack is, here's what the internet says:

JAMstack stands for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup. The term was coined by Mathias Biilmann to describe a modern web development architecture based on client-side JavaScript, reusable APIs, and prebuilt Markup.

that sounds all well and good but what good does that do me? that also apparently tells us there:

Picture a CMS-based solution. For every visitor, the web app would have to generate a number of backend database queries to gather the information needed to generate a web page and send it back to the user.

With a JAMstack app, you serve generated HTML instead of rendering documents live on the server. This ensures faster loading times, reduces security risks and is a solution that is easy to integrate with a CDN.

But the real beauty of the JAMstack approach is perhaps how easy it is to pull in content from third-party APIs. Because no matter how well-crafted your pre-generated pages are, you will probably have to pull in additional data from external sources at some point. And this is where Contentful comes into the picture with a JAMstack-ready CMS.

ok cool but how do i get to this jamstack now?

very easy. the answer is stackbit.

Stackbit is the first open, complete platform for the Jamstack — it's the easiest way to get started with the best tools for the modern web.

get started bois..

first of all we have to sign up on stackbit.

then just log in to the stackbit dashboard and create a new project. now you just choose a prefabricated theme, of course you can also search on GitHub for other themes, there are now really many that also support stackbit, but normally one is enough to just use the e.g. Gatsby as a static site generator.

now the same fun with the selection of your cms, here you have a few known to choose from, but of course it is also possible completely without cms. i recommend here netlify because it was in the past always very pleasant to use netlify and also in the basic plan is free.

additionally you have to connect to GitHub, stackbit will then create a repository there that the jamstack will eventually use, so you can provide a complete jamstack in these few steps, without any programming or effort on your part. Without worrying about hosting or deployment, unbelievable!

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE!

if we have everything set up, selected and connected correctly we can just create the page.

now our site is completely uploaded, we have received a unique public link under which we can access the website and can immediately start editing the page.

and you can get completely creative with your jamstack. you can also add your own domains easily in the netlify backend, the mapping is explained there sufficiently and is no science.

right at the first start you will realize why jamstack is so powerful, the loading times are incredible and you have to worry about very little, SEO configurations are mostly done by stackbit itself, but can be adjusted later. your project is always available on GitHub should you want to take everything into your own hands.

🤯🤯🤯

sources used: https://www.stackbit.com/, https://www.contentful.com/r/knowledgebase/jamstack-cms/

xattr -cr /Applications/Application.app

just enter the command and drag the .app to the terminal, then the path fills itself.

🤯🤯🤯

because i never found a proper tutorial how to finally install moonlight on your raspberry correctly, i have a short tutorial in my apple notes for 2 years now, i want to share it with you in an adapted version. I forward exactly this tutorial for so long without having thought much about it.

i assume that everyone can install raspbian on his raspberry by himself. for this tutorial a debian based distro is required for everything to work.

url: https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/

first we ssh into the raspberry pi and add sources to the sources.list

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

add the following line

Add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file for Raspbian Stretch based distributions

deb http://archive.itimmer.nl/raspbian/moonlight stretch main

Add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file for Raspbian Jessie based distributions

deb http://archive.itimmer.nl/raspbian/moonlight jessie main

Fetch and install the GPG key

wget http://archive.itimmer.nl/itimmer.gpg
sudo apt-key add itimmer.gpg

Install the package using

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install moonlight-embedded

Now you just have to make sure that your raspberry is in the same network as your pc. Running over wifi is a stupid decision in most cases.

now you can start pairing to your pc just find out the internal ip of your pc and pair it with the following command

moonlight pair X.X.X.X

if it is paired, i.e. you have set everything correctly in the Nvidia software, code pairing etc. but still no image is displayed, you can start the streaming mode on your own with the following command

moonlight streaming -1080 X.X.X.X

ready to go 🤯

some streaming commands input

-720 Use 1280x720 resolution [default]
-1080 Use 1920x1080 resolution
-width Horizontal resolution (default 1280)
-height Vertical resolution (default 720)
-30fps Use 30fps
-60fps Use 60fps [default]
-bitrate Specify the bitrate in Kbps
-packetsize Specify the maximum packetsize in bytes
-app Name of app to stream
-nosops Don't allow GFE to modify game settings
-input Use as input. Can be used multiple times
-mapping Use as gamepad mapping configuration file (use before -input)
-audio Use as ALSA audio output device (default sysdefault)
-localaudio Play audio locally

funnily enough, I myself have now come across the tool clo3d...

not only can you simply buy new fabrics from clo3d, you can also download ready-made patterns from the shop. you don't have to be a magician to do this.

for my client this was exactly what he was looking for, not only can he now easily render his design realistically on a person without ever having to release the piece for production, he can also transmit the cut of the production in a simplified way thanks to clo3d.

Pricing

Get it yourself or try it..?

try (no cc info needed): https://www.clo3d.com/join
buy: https://www.clo3d.com/pricing

compatible with: windows/mac

because i've always been a lazy bastard when it comes to blogging, let's try a new start in all things. this will be my bin for thoughts, maybe it will help one or the other. first of all, there's an update to bigsur, hope my old macbook can handle everything without problems, i haven't read any reviews or anything regarding... hopefully i won't be disappointed. ofc it wasn't bigsur before.