Disassembling things I’m not supposed to

Thanh Phu on August 29, 2020

Replacing the brita water filter’s battery

The water pitcher that’s synonymous with the middle class in the 80s

Studies have shown they are pretty much useless in filtering out harmful stuff (which would be the subject of another post). However, they survived thanks to a loyal following that swear by the taste of their water and… planned obsolesce

This little thing measure when you have to change your filter again. It’s “designed to last up to 5 years” with no mention of how it can be reused – you are supposed to just trash it and buy a new one when the battery is out.

Harmful for the environment. Let’s change it!

First you need to pry the little device from your pitcher, do this with a flat-head screwdriver. The thing may scratch and breaks a little bit because they used some glue to make your job harder.

The back is cleary two simple pieces of plastic that you could have pried out easily… but couldn’t, thanks to more glue!

After you have pried it open, it’s a pretty straightforward battery. A pack of 5 of those batteries cost 1$

They even punched the battery to make it sticks to the receptors and damaging them if you aren’t careful when removing the battery. What an asshole design!

Voilà! Like new!

Korean bank OTP

This one is actually easy to disassemble. Just unscrew the face plate and you’ll get access to the board. However don’t try this on your main device. Upon removing and replacing the batter. the screen shows “Download 13” then fades away… forever. Probably a self-destruct feature to prevent tampering of the device.

How to add ssh keys to multiple hosts

Thanh Phu on January 6, 2020

Requisite

  • list.txt: list of hosts
  • ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub: keys to add

Bash script

copy.sh

#!/bin/bash
for ip in `cat list.txt`; do
    sshpass -p "yourpassword" ssh-copy-id -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub [email protected]$ip
done

Explanation

  • sshpass pass your password to the ssh prompt
  • -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no ignores the “host identity not established” prompt, allowing sshpass to do its job

How to execute

sudo apt install -y sshpass
chmod +x copy.sh
./copy.sh

Reference

How to create application shortcut and add to launcher in Ubuntu

Thanh Phu on November 22, 2019

Time Needed : 0 days 0 hours 10 minutes

How to create application shortcut and add to launcher in Ubuntu

  1. Install gnome-panel

    This contains a utility to create desktop shortcuts

  2. Create a shortcut in ~/.local/share/applications

    This is where launchers for your account go

  3. (Optional) Move the shortcut to /usr/share/applications for other users on the machine to use

    The shortcut creator can be found in the “sundries” folder

Tools
  • Ubuntu
Materials
  • Computer

Free Lined Handwriting Paper

Thanh Phu on November 22, 2019

Today suddenly I need to write something by hand. I tried to find lined templates on the internet but couldn’t find any that is free (unbelievable!). I know it’s easy to create such a template using Word but sometimes you just don’t have the time.

So here’s what I whipped up, enjoy it for the great price of FREE!

Lined-Handwriting-Paper (PDF)Download
Lined-Handwriting-Paper (DOCX)Download
Line handwriting paper

Additions (31 Dec 2019). For Korean learners

KoreanWritingSheetDownload
KoreanWritingSheet (docx)Download
Korean Writing Sheet