Often connections are TCP based, but sometimes UDP is all you have to test with, so I was quite surprised that testing that was quite forward. The solutions by [Wayback/Archive] How to Do a UDP Ping in Linux works on any platform where you can have nmap or netcat on installed (which by now is almost all platforms including Windows):
Archive for the ‘Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS’ Category
How to Do a UDP Ping in Linux
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/01/07
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Apple, BSD, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, netcat, nmap, Power User, Windows | Leave a Comment »
See a List of All Wi-Fi Networks a Mac Has Previously Connected To
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/12/24
[Wayback/Archive] See a List of All Wi-Fi Networks a Mac Has Previously Connected To
n modern versions of Mac OS, like macOS Mojave, Catalina, Sierra, OS X El Capitan, and Yosemite, you can shorten the syntax considerably as so:defaults read /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences |grep SSIDStringIn prior versions of Mac OS X, you can opt for the same as the above command, or use the lengthier string below with heavy regex:
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Apple, bash, bash, Development, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, MacBook, Power User, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
What is the best free PDF Editor for Mac?… – Apple Community
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/11/24
Need to check this out:
- [Wayback/Archive] What is the best free PDF Editor for Mac?… – Apple Community
- [Wayback/Archive] Why did Preview lock my PDF after I edited it?? – Apple Community
Query: [Wayback/Archive] pdf editor macos – Google Search
--jeroen
Posted in Apple, Apple Silicon, M1 Mac, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, MacBook, MacBook-Pro, Power User | Leave a Comment »
MacOS: open file in other monitor
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/11/24
When I have an external monitor connected to my 2015 era Retina MacBook Pro machines, I wanted some apps to appear on the laptop screen and others on the external one.
That was harder than I hoped for as no single solution works in all cases.
What I do now is to make sure the icon bar is on the monitor where I want applications to open. Not perfect, but works for most cases.
Here are some links that helped me:
Posted in Apple, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Pro, Power User | Leave a Comment »
When Spotlight fails to find some files: mdutil revisited
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/11/07
On my M1 MacBook, somehow Spotlight started to fail returning some indexed files (especially recently added ones would not show up or it would take a very long while for some of them to show up).
So I revisited mdutil and related commands while writing a comment on the YouTube movie [Wayback/Archive] How To Rebuild the Spotlight Index on Your Mac – YouTube which since then vanished, but luckily I saved it and here I amended it with formatting:
Posted in Apple, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Notes in case I want to create my own homebrew cask for installing software they disabled/removed
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/09/16
Some notes as it might enable me to install software that homebrew has deprecated or removed (note that local changes by default are ignored as the brew API takces precedence):
- [Wayback/Archive] Alert API users that edited formulae won’t be included automatically in commands · Issue #15073 · Homebrew/brew
- [Wayback/Archive] What are the precise step-by-step instructions for creating a cask in the Homebrew repo? · Homebrew · Discussion #4640 · GitHub
- [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – Homebrew/homebrew-cask: 🍻 A CLI workflow for the administration of macOS applications distributed as binaries
- [Wayback/Archive] Adding Software to Homebrew — Homebrew Documentation
- [Wayback/Archive] Taps (Third-Party Repositories) — Homebrew Documentation
…
brew tap <user>/<repo>makes a clone of the repository athttps://github.com/<user>/homebrew-<repo>into$(brew --repository)/Library/Taps. After that,brewwill be able to work with those formulae as if they were in Homebrew’s homebrew/core canonical repository.…
- [Wayback/Archive] How to Create and Maintain a Tap — Homebrew Documentation
- [Wayback/Archive] Interesting Taps and Forks — Homebrew Documentation
Despite the homebrew repository being a high commit-volume one which makes following it from a clone hard, just did already clone it Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Apple, Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, GitHub, Home brew / homebrew, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, Ruby, Scripting, Software Development, Source Code Management, Versioning | Tagged: 15073, 4640 | Leave a Comment »
command line – Why does a cURL request return a percent sign (%) with every request in ZSH? – Stack Overflow
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/31
I try to stay on the default shells of environments as much as possible, especially as that makes life easier when needing to work on an non-customised system.
Apple switched back from an ancient latest GPLv2 version 3.2 of bash (they regard newer GPLv3 as toxic to their revenue stream¹), introduced MIT-license based zsh and introduced a bash nag screen a few years ago forcing users to switch. Suppressing that message reliably is trickier than you might think².
After so many years of bash, I still stumble over things that zsh does differently: [Wayback/Archive] command line – Why does a cURL request return a percent sign (%) with every request in ZSH? – Stack Overflow (thanks [Wayback/Archive] Travis and [Wayback/Archive] zaTricky) is a “feature” with a simple workaround for cURL:
This is a zsh feature that prints a percent-and-newline after a command completes if that command does not already include a newline at the end of its output. If zsh did not do this, you would either not ever notice the fact that the command didn’t print a newline – or you’d see zsh’s command prompt not start on the margin and think it was a bug in zsh.
…
$ curl http://api.macvendors.com/0015c7 Cisco Systems, Inc% $ curl -w '\n' http://api.macvendors.com/0015c7 Cisco Systems, Inc…
Since the above example now writes a redirect messages (good bye HTTP, welcome HTTPS), and I very much dislike short command-line parameters, here is version with the long form of the [Wayback/Archive] curl -w or --write-out parameter :
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Apple, bash, bash, Development, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, macOS 14 Sonoma, macOS 15 Sequoia, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, zsh | Leave a Comment »
Running Android applications on Apple Silicon: is the Android Emulator from Android Studio the only option?
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/06/13
On my research list: running Anrdoid apps on Apple Silicon.
I wonder if using the Anrdoid Emulator from Android Studio the only straightforward option.
Links:
Posted in Apple, Apple Silicon, ARM Mac, M1 Mac, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, MacBook, macOS 14 Sonoma, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Interesting take by Florian Roth on Twitter: “First security application I install on … “” covering various platforms (both server and workstation) with tools that are easy and quick to install
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/26
[Wayback/Archive] Florian Roth on Twitter: “First security application I install on … macOS: LittleSnitch Linux Server: Fail2ban Linux Workstation: etckeeper Windows Workstation: GlassWire Windows Server: Sysmon — What are yours?”
Full thread at [Wayback/Archive] Thread by @cyb3rops on Thread Reader App
Some interesting responses to the original tweet, hence me saving it.
–jeroen
Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Apple, BSD, FreeBSD, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, Windows | Leave a Comment »





