It's about time… NIST has updated their password formatting recommendations to better align with modern use and the reality of how we use passwords. For example, the new rules bar the requirement that end users periodically change their passwords. This requirement came into being decades ago when password security was poorly understood, and it was common for people to choose common names, dictionary words, and other secrets that were easily guessed.
Ollama Farm is a CLI tool that intermediates REST API calls to multiple ollama API services. Simply make calls to the Ollama Farm REST API as if it were an ollama REST API and the rest is handled for you.
Install dotnet 8 or later from https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download and then install Ollama Farm with the following command:
You should relaunch Terminal/cmd/PowerShell so that the system path will be reloaded and the ollamafarm command can be found. If you've previously installed the dotnet runtime, this won't be necessary.
You can update to the latest version using the command below.
You can remove the tool from your system using the command below.
Ollama Farm is a system-level command line interface application (CLI). After installing you can access Ollama Farm at any time.
To get help on the available commands, just run ollamafarm in Terminal, cmd, or PowerShell. This will launch the application in help mode which displays the commands and options.
For example, you can launch Ollama Farm with one or more host addresses to include in the farm:
In this example, Ollama Farm will listen on port 4444 for requests to /api/generate. The requests are standard Ollama API REST requests: HTTP POST with a JSON payload. Requests will get sent to the first available host in the farm.
You can also change the default Ollama Farm listening port of 4444:
And if you run any ollama hosts on a port other than 11434, just specify the port in the host names using colon syntax:
Requests made to the Ollama Farm service will be routed to one of the available Ollama API hosts in the farm. Requests should be sent to this service (default port 4444) following the standard Ollama JSON request format (HTTP POST to /api/generate/). Streaming is supported.
Hosts are checked periodically and are taken offline when they are unavailable. They are also brought back online when they become available.
To optimize performance Ollama Farm restricts each host to processing one request at a time. When all hosts are busy REST calls return status code 429 (too many requests). This allows requesters to poll until a resource is available.
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Monitoring Analytics was established in 2008 as the fully independent external market monitor for PJM Interconnection by the Market Monitoring Unit of PJM. PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission organization, ensures the reliability of the electric power supply system in 13 states and the District of Columbia.
Monitoring Analytics (MA) partnered with Fynydd to create a new web platform optimized for a modern user experience.
The goal of the project was to provide visitors with easy access to the Monitoring Analytics quarterly reports and other support documentation, as well as an updated visual appearance.
One of the challenges was the creation of a new taxonomy for their 20 year document collection. It needed to be easy to manage in the back office, but also provide better on-site search results. We were able to work with MA to categorize and organize their document collection and provide a user flow that made finding and downloading documents quick and easy.
Due to various compliance requirements, some aspects of the hosting were non-standard. But we were able to meet all their needs. For example, we deployed the platform CMS without the back office code, and with the CMS management APIs disabled, providing additional security in production. This meant creating a unique publishing workflow whereby a separate instance could be used behind a firewall and approved changes could be deployed through a VPN connection.
Some of the key features of the platform include:
NOTE: THE WEBSITE IS NOT YET LIVE
CSS3
HTML5
JavaScript
Sass/SCSS
Amazon Web Services
C#
Github
Microsoft .NET
Microsoft Windows
Umbraco CMS
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Qualys has a free tool named SSL Labs that anyone can use to check the security of their website TLS certificates and certificate hosting configuration. This is an frequently overlooked area of securing a website and we highly recommend using it on your own website. In fact, we use it on all our website projects to secure our client websites, and dog food it for fynydd.com (we score an A+ by the way).
The SSL Labs tool will evaluate a ton of certificate hosting exploits like BEAST, POODLE (SSLv3), POODLE (TLS), Zombie POODLE, GOLDENDOODLE, Sleeping POODLE, and more.
It will also scan your server's TLS/SSL protocol support to ensure that you're using the latest version (TLS 1.2 at the time of this writing) and that your server has disabled legacy protocols to prevent protocol fallback attacks. In fact, if you're hosting with Microsoft Internet Information Service (IIS) we highly recommend installing the "Setup Microsoft Windows or IIS for SSL Perfect Forward Secrecy and TLS 1.2" PowerShell script to lock down your server TLS/SSL protocol support.
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Web developers rejoice! There's an easy way to animate the height of an HTML element even if the height is dynamic, determined by its content, with only CSS. This is typically used for navigation menus and the like, and now it's much easier to code and maintain.
The strategy is to actually animate the grid-template-rows not the height. For example, take the following HTML markup:
The CSS for this markup would be:
Initially the outer div will be hidden since it has no overflow and the grid template rows are zero. When you add active to the outer div element's class list, the browser will animate the transition from zero row height to 1fr, which essentially means the height it needs for its content to render.
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By default the ollama API runs on the localhost IP address of 127.0.0.1. If you want to host it on all of your Mac's IP addresses it requires that you set a system-wide environment variable. The problem with doing this is that Login Items (in System Settings) can launch before Launch Agents. This means that Ollama (in the menu bar) may not see the host settings. To solve this you need to launch Ollama at startup after a delay.
Here's how to add the host binding for all IP addresses on the Mac and then have Ollama launch 10 seconds after you sign in. This works in macOS 14.5 Sonoma and should work in later versions.
Step 1: Create a launch daemon plist file below. Save it as com.fynydd.ollama.plist.
Step 2: Copy the file to two locations:
This will set the host bindings at the system level, and also at the user level. So you should be covered no matter how you launch Ollama in the future.
Step 3: Set file permissions on the system-level file.
Step 4: Install the launch agents:
Now your system will start up and bind the Ollama host address to all IP addresses on the Mac.
Step 5: To launch Ollama after a 10 second delay, Open Script Editor and create the simple AppleScript file below.
In the File menu choose Export, and then export it as type “Application” and name it “LaunchOllamaDelay”. Save it to your user Applications folder.
In System Settings go to Login Items and add the LaunchOllamaDelay application to the startup items. Also remove any existing Ollama startup item.
Now when you restart and sign in, Ollama will launch after 10 seconds which should be enough time for the Launch Agent to have executed. And if Ollama updates itself in the future it should also just work when it restarts.
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Sfumato is a lean, modern, utility-based CSS framework generation CLI tool. It is compatible with the Tailwind CSS class naming structure and has the following additional features:
Visit the repository to see how you can install this tool to begin using it right away.
Create one simple sfumato.yml file (manually or using the Sfumato "init" command) for your web-based app or website project and run the Sfumato CLI "watch" command. It will watch your project files as you work, keeping track of your markup changes, and will transpile your SCSS files into custom, tiny CSS files based only on the Sfumato features you use.
Use the following command for more information on Sfumato commands and options:
1. Install Microsoft .NET
Sfumato requires that you already have the .NET 9.0 runtime installed, which you can get at https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download.
2. Install Sfumato
Run the following command in your command line interface (e.g. cmd, PowerShell, Terminal, bash, etc.):
Later you can update Sfumato with the following command:
If you need to completely uninstall Sfumato, use the command below:
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On macOS it's pretty easy to automate the installation of all your apps, including Mac App Store apps, for those times when you get a new Mac or wipe your current one. As a software developer I find this capability indispensable, as would any professional or power user.
All you need to do is install Homebrew and then use it to install mas (which is an acronym for Mac App Store). Once they are installed, you can install all your software using a convenient Bash script. Homebrew will be used to install non-store apps, and mas will handle installing the Mac App Store apps.
Note: only Mac App Store apps you have already installed previously can be installed with mas. You cannot install new apps you have never installed from the store.
The most obvious reason to script out your software installations is that it greatly reduces the time to set up a new Mac, as well as ensure that you don't forget to install one or more apps. It also provides a way to update all the apps at once via the brew upgrade command. And it also provides a way to update apps that don't have their own update feature.
Apps installed with mas will be updated normally by the Mac App Store.
In order to use this process you need to know the names of the Homebrew formulae/casks for each application, and you also need to know the IDs of the Mac App Store apps for mas. Fortunately this is super easy.
First, Homebrew has a tool for finding software available in their service at https://formulae.brew.sh/. Simply use this to find your apps and make sure you're installing the right ones. Those listed as “casks” are GUI Mac apps (normal apps you don't run from the Terminal). Ones listed as “formulae” are typically command line tools run from the Terminal or services without an interface.
Second, for Mac App Store apps you simply use mas to list what's currently on your computer from the Mac App Store.
This will give you a list of currently installed apps from the Mac App Store, with their IDs:
You can also search for Mac App Store apps by name using the mas search command:
This will show a similar result for matches. You can even install all search results with a single “lucky” command. See the mas help for these and other options.
Here's an example of a Bash script to get you started. I keep a similar script updated as I use new apps or stop using others. Then I'm ready to go when I have to set up a new or wiped Mac.
You can name the Bash script something like install-software.sh and execute it in a Terminal like this:
The first time you use the script will absolutely justify the time spent writing it. The second time you run it you will thank your past self for being so smart 😉.
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Fynydd partnered with Blue Sequoyah Technologies to build a community-driven learning platform named Coursabi, which gives learners a simple but powerful way to grow as they follow their learning journey. Their dashboard shows them progress to-date and what assignments are next. They can explore the content library for elective learning, sign documents, and complete forms. And the community gives them a way to learn from peers and content authors.
Coursabi Mission Control is where authorized users can create and organize training content like documents, forms, and courses. There are also libraries for audio and video content, as well as imported learning modules. People and learning assignments are managed here. And administrators and training managers can stay up-to-date using dashboards, reports, notifications, community activity, and so much more.
Blazor
C#
CSS3
HTML5
JavaScript
Microsoft .NET
Sass/SCSS
Amazon Web Services
C#
Github
Microsoft .NET
Microsoft Windows
SQL Server
There's usually more to the story so if you have questions or comments about this post let us know!
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SqlPkg is a 64-bit .NET command line (CLI) wrapper for the Microsoft SqlPackage CLI tool with the goal of making common backup and restore operations easier and more powerful. It does this through new Backup and Restore actions that provide additional features like the exclusion of specific table data in backups and destination prep prior to restore.
Visit the repository to see how you can install this tool to begin using it right away.
/Action:backup
This mode is equivalent to Action:Export to create a .bacpac file, with the following differences.
/Action:restore
This mode is equivalent to Action:Import to restore a .bacpac file, with the following differences.
/Action:backup-all
This mode will back up all user databases on a server.
/Action:restore-all
This mode will restore all *.bacpac files in a given path to databases with the same names as the filenames.
When not using SqlPkg special action modes, the entire argument list is simply piped to SqlPackage and will run normally. So you can use sqlpkg everywhere SqlPackage is used.
1. Install Microsoft .NET
SqlPkg requires that you already have the .NET 8.0 runtime installed, which you can get at https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download.
Because SqlPkg uses Microsoft SqlPackage, you will also need to install the .NET 6.0 runtime as well as SqlPackage.
2. Install SqlPkg
Run the following command in your command line interface (e.g. cmd, PowerShell, Terminal, bash, etc.):
Later you can update SqlPkg with the following command:
If you need to completely uninstall SqlPkg, use the command below:
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