Garbage In Garbage Out : Tech Blog

A collection of technology tips and other words

About Chris Brewer

My most recent work and biography is at http://chrisbrewer.me (my home page, by the way).Chris Brewer has worked in both industry and academia for years at the intersection of information systems and communications. His background is in areas ranging from technical consulting with Fortune 500 companies, developing award-winning web sites, publishing the Denver Scene, and operating small business concerns. Chris has a unique mix of in-depth technical skills ranging from web and database development to server administration, and strong creative skills in traditional and rich media. Chris actively illustrates his love for the impact and promise of web-based media by fusing creative and technical inputs into seamless integrated output. Chris is also a dynamic lecturer and an innovative technical instructor, and holds an undergraduate business degree from the University of Colorado.

High impedance headphones on MacBook Pro 2021

Posted on November 18, 2021 by Chris Brewer

Good news for audiophiles out there. Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Pro Max MacBook Pros feature an adaptive voltage headphone amplifier, meaning it optimizes itself to the headphones you’re using. With these two models, gone is the concern whether 80 ohm or 250 ohm headphones will work.

“When you connect headphones with an impedance of less than 150 ohms, the headphone jack provides up to 1.25 volts RMS. For headphones with an impedance of 150 to 1k ohms, the headphone jack delivers 3 volts RMS. This may remove the need for an external headphone amplifier.”

So, if you love Beyerdynamic’s DT 990 Pro 250 ohm Open-back Studio Headphones, you can rest assured that your new MacBook Pro will power them with aplomb.

Make your Mac chime at startup again

Posted on April 22, 2020 by Chris Brewer

I miss the startup chime on my MacBook Pro.

To enable it, open up terminal and type:

sudo nvram StartupMute=%00

To disable it, either reset your parameter RAM by pressing Command-Option-P-R at startup, or in terminal type:

sudo nvram StartupMute=%01

MariaDB and the mysterious #mysql50#.rocksdb

Posted on April 13, 2020 by Chris Brewer

If you’re using MariaDB, you may be wondering why #mysql50#.rocksdb is listed with a “SHOW DATABASES;”

This database is associated with the rocksdb-storage-engine. I am investigating further.

Colorize your Terminal shell on Mac OS

Posted on October 9, 2019 by Chris Brewer

Apple’s default settings for BASH are less than lovely — just shades of gray.

Terminal with Apple's default colors

Here’s how to add color to BASH for your visual enjoyment. Continue reading →

Configure NPM for global user without sudo on Mac OS

Posted on October 9, 2019 by Chris Brewer

Using ‘sudo’ with NPM is a no-no, as it can cause all kinds of havoc with file permissions. You can specify a default directory for globally installed packages and thus absolve yourself of sudo chaos. Continue reading →

Fix for Command & Conquer: Generals crashing in Mac OS Sierra 10.12

Posted on January 25, 2017 by Chris Brewer

As any Mac user knows, running Command and Conquer Generals (including Zero Hour) tends to crash on startup on a Mac running OS X. Here’s how to fix it. Continue reading →

Installing a wildcard domain SSL certificate on Amazon AWS EC2 Ubuntu

Posted on March 10, 2016 by Chris Brewer

I recently needed to add a wildcard SSL certificate, purchased from Network Solutions, to an AWS EC2 instance running Ubuntu 12.04. Here’s the steps I followed for success:

Continue reading →

Remove TimeMachine Backups.backupdb file manually via terminal command line

Posted on December 23, 2014 by Chris Brewer

I recently needed to delete the Backups.backupdb file via command line using the rm command. However, sudo user can’t do it, and neither can root. What’s a guy to do?

Continue reading →

Clear DNS cache in Mac OS X via Terminal command line (all versions)

Posted on December 5, 2014 by Chris Brewer

The method for clearing or flushing the local cache in Mac OS X has changed over the years. Clear your DNS cache on Yosemite, Mavericks, Lion, Mountain Lion, Snow Leopard and Leopard using the following Terminal commands:

Continue reading →

Enable OS X Server Messages (Jabber) account login from different domain

Posted on December 4, 2014 by Chris Brewer

I have various Internet services like email, web and messages running on a Mini server running OS X on a subdomain.

Often, I want services like Messages to appear to use our main dot-com address, yet actually run on our internal dot-net domain.

So, how do I configure Messages server to appear to virtually function on our dot-com, yet still reside on a sub-domain?

Continue reading →