My little secret
Posted on December 8th, 2008
People often ask me how I know what I do about computers, and how I’ve managed to teach myself so much. For the most part, it’s just been years of tinkering, fiddling, and breaking every damn OS or piece of software I could get my hands on. However, the occasional how-to article or book never hurt anyone. So for all you neophyte hackers, wannabe sysadmins, or others aspiring to increase your technolust, I’ll share with you some of my favourite reference sites for all things technical:
HowToForge: This site is awesome. If there is an open source project out there that needs any sort of high-level configuration, chances are, Falko Timme and his wonderful user community have put together a helpful guide somewhere on this site for it.
My Digital Life: A wonderful little blog spanning both open-source and windows worlds, I’ve come across many a helpful tip here as well.
Added Bytes: Yet another helpful blog…but this one contains a gigantic repository of Cheat Sheets on everything from MS SQL Server to a quick list of Vi commands. These little cheat sheets are indispensible in my opinion, and they’ve saved my ass at least once or twice, as well as taught me something along the way (I’d be totally regex-illiterate without their Regex cheat sheet)
Hak5: Your weekly dose of Technolust. This is a weekly podcast hosted by Darren Kitchen, Matt Lestock and Shannon Morse (aka Snubs) I watch this show every week and it never ceases to teach me something new. It’s like what would happen if Bob Vila started a show about network security and system administration. New episodes are released every Wednesday at noon EST.
Securabit: Hak5’s sort-of-sister-podcast, hosted by Chris Gerling Jr. and Rob Fuller (aka Mubix), both frequent Hak5 contributors and IT Security specialists. If there’s an exploit for it, chances are they know about it and how to defend against it.
So that’s a little roundup of some of the sites regularly sitting in my del.icio.us bookmarks that I visit for tech help or tutorials when I get stumped. Hope this helps in your endeavours and If you have any suggestions for sites or resources that I could add to this list, I’d love to hear about them! Leave a comment or if you like, you can email me or send me an @ reply on Twitter and I’ll append this post with whatever you suggest.
Trust Your Technolust!
Ryan