• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Ubuntu

    Simple XPath options with Jamf Pro

    Given the increased reliance on XML in scripts and exchanging data, a number of different solutions leverage XML traversal options to get all the things done. We frequently use path to bring a file into a script or program, or accept input from STDIN. The most basic task that we then perform is simply selecting an item from that file or STDIN and then variabalizing it. One common tool that we use here is Path. XPath calls these objects nodes, and uses path expressions to select these nodes. A path expression is the path along the xml input that is followed to find a piece of data. There are some…

  • Mac OS X,  Mass Deployment

    Quick And Dirty Language Management In OS X

    I bet you thought this would be the article where I showed you how to make your computer curse more. Well, language can mean much more than that. In fact, Apple has dedicated a whole binary to switching your default language in OS X, in languagesetup. This command, located at /usr/sbin/languagesetup, is capable of changing the default language used by a system to a number of different languages. There are other ways to accomplish this, but none quite so easy. To get started, note that there are two ways to run languagesetup. The first is interactively, which I mostly use to figure out what I actually want to do with…

  • Articles and Books

    Lern For Free

    Learn some stuff! For Free! There are so many resources available for learning these days that it’s hard to keep track of it all, or to find the things that are actually worth doing. So I decided to make a list of some of my favorites: Code Academy: Using Code Academy, you can learn a little JavaScript, HTML/CSS, jQuery, Ruby, Python and PHP. There are also projects for the web and integrating with APIs so you can hook into YouTube and Twitter.  Duolingo.com: Learn a real language, like Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese or French at this site, which has digestible chunks of lessons that you can use to get ready…