Getting Organized with Notion

This article is written and published by a community member; I am not a member of the Notion Labs team and this content is in no way endorsed by or affiliated with their organization, nor does it reflect the views or opinions of the organization or any member thereof. Thank you for taking the time to stop by and check out a community member’s content!

Introduction

People. Things. Places. Ideas. Stuff. There’s so much information that we deal with on a daily basis. Not only is there an interminable amount of information, but then there’s the stuff you have to do with that information — which usually ends up generating more information, or more stuff for you to do with the new information. That explanation might sound as muddled as the actual process of managing everything going on in life.

Enter: note taking and organization applications. There are a variety of apps and tools that help with managing information like notes, schedules, files, etc. These solutions range from the simplest of apps — such as the Notes app included in iOS or the To-do app in Windows 10 — to more robust solutions such as Microsoft’s OneNote, as well as more speciality and niche solutions such as Milanote. There are tons of options, though they range in functionality and compatibility with various platforms.

For example, many people love Bear and it’s Markdown-based formatting, but it is only available on iOS and macOS. Others prefer OneNote for it’s wide compatibility across many platforms (even Linux distributions, if you’re willing to put in a bit of work), but then struggle with many of the glitches and downfalls of Microsoft’s less-than-consistent user experience and functionality.

With just as many options as the information you have to manage, there has to be one that sticks out among the others. I have a notion that there are a few. One of them is…well…Notion!

What is Notion?

Notion advertises itself as the “all-in-one” workspace for your whole team. It provides writing, planning, and organizational utility in a way that can easily be harnessed by either individuals or entire teams and companies. The features are so robust that many organizations ranging from enterprises such as Pixar, IBM, Nike, and Slack to prominent creators and platform providers in various industries such as Spotify, Square, and even content creators such as Linus Media Group. But it’s also used by many students, teachers, writers, podcasters, and many other individuals.

What can Notion do?

Notion is one of those solutions where you get a lot of flexibility to make it do most whatever you’d like it to. But out of the box, there is a wide range of things that it can do to help you keep track of all your notions.

Organize just about any information you can think of
Central, powerful search of all your stuff
Realtime collaboration with other users
Scalable – start as small as you and grow your workspace with your needs
Embedded apps such as Google Docs, Figma, Twitter, Github, CodePen, Spotify, and more
Project and task management
Multi-database view
Focus-based notetaking
Drag and drop organization — or metadata organization
Rich and varied content support
Content creation and tracking
New API functionality to tie in other applications and automate functions
And so much more…

Why should I use Notion?

The reason to use Notion can vary from person to person, however most people use it because it is an effective and easy solution to organize all kinds of information, and it’s free. One of my favorite reasons to use it is that it is one of the few solutions that I have used where it really feels like it was designed by actual people, for actual people to use.

By and large, it is simple to pick up and start using right away without diving too deep in guides and having to learn. If you want to dive into more advanced stuff, you absolutely can and there is a great website, many community members’ blogs, and a Discord server full of helpful people that make advanced tinkering and organization easy.

Whatever your reason is, there’s nothing to lose by giving Notion a shot and making a go at organizing anything and everything you could want. Get Notion for free here and be sure to comment and let me know what your thoughts on Notion are, or about any other tracking/organization solutions you use!

Organization beginner or aficionado? Feel free to join the Tools for Thought Discord server here!

Cheers.

I didn’t want to go into too much detail on the specifics of Notion, as there will be many more blog posts about Notion and the endless things you can achieve with it. Stay tuned for more!

Signal — What this app is and why we should use it

In a world of always-online, marketing, and advertising, what data of yours *isn’t* being tracked anymore? With Signal, you can take your text messages, group messages, and phone calls out of the equation and start taking back your privacy for free.

You may have heard of Signal, or seen the Signal icon in your phone’s respective App Store. But what is it? This well-built, open-source, and peer-reviewed app for your phone and computer can send and receive text messages and multimedia messages, group texts, handle phone calls for you, and more!

But this isn’t your grandma’s messaging app. There is something specific about it that makes the free app worthy of mention, and recommendation:

Privacy.

Ah, privacy. It used to be something we all had. However, with the rapid growth of a connected and online world, most people enjoy significantly less privacy than they previously did. Websites track you, apps send data about you to their developers, your purchase history, search history, web browsing history, and so much more is bought and sold by businesses around the world in an effort to better advertise to you — or accomplish more nefarious objectives. So…Signal?

Signal offers privacy that other messaging applications do not. Any phone calls or messages sent from a Signal user to another Signal user are end-to-end encrypted, making them very difficult for unwanted listeners/viewers to access. Beyond that, you can rest assured your data isn’t being collected and sold to the highest bidder since the only data Signal retains about its users is:

Unix timestamps for when each account was created
the date that each account last connected to the Signal service

You can read more about the data they store, and also examples of data they have provided when previously subpoenaed in this article.

Signal provides a variety of optional features that we’ve seen claim popularity on other platforms (that are definitely tracking you and selling your data) such as:

Group messaging
Stickers, emojis, GIFs, and other animated graphics
Disappearing messages
Typing icon/notifications and other chat-like features
Customizable conversations and notifications per-conversation
Voice and video calls — including group video calls
Registering with your phone number instead of creating a complicated account
No cellular service required when sending between Signal users as long as you have WiFi (think like iMessage or Facebook Messenger, both of which may invade your privacy, especially given their companies’ history with data and privacy issues)

…and all of it can be encrypted and completely private. If all your contacts aren’t on Signal yet, that’s okay; it won’t get in the way of communicating with them. Signal handles regular unencrypted text, multimedia, and group messages just a quickly and elegantly as Signal messages.

Funded by grants and donations, open-source, peer-reviewed and audited, Signal is a best bet in maintaining your privacy while communicating.

You can get Signal for your device at these links as of date this article was published:

Android | iOS | Windows | macOS | Debian-based Linux Distributions

Give it a try! Getting started and using Signal is fast, simple, and secure. A best of all, it’s both private and free. Join me on Signal today! If you’re already a Signal user, or decide to try it, leave a comment below with your thoughts on the encrypted messaging service, what you like or don’t like, as well as any thoughts you have on the privacy issues surrounding our online world.

This article is not sponsored by Signal or any of their affiliates.

Featured image from dnaindia.com.

Print Server using Windows Server Core

Introduction

Many administrators are always looking for ways to simplify the required management of their environments, save on overhead, resources, etc. With the advent of Windows PowerShell and it growing to be a commonplace administrator utility in Windows environments, simple systems such as print servers no longer really require a full-fledged graphical user interface. Print servers are prime candidates to be hosted on the CLI-based Windows Server Core variant of Windows Server, especially where they are so easily managed through remote PowerShell. In this brief article, we’ll take a quick look at spinning up a core print server and some of the options available for administering the new server.

Spinning up your machine

Whether you are using traditional hardware for your server (a rackmount server, blade server,tower server/desktop PC) or a virtualized environment, you’ll first need to actually install Windows Server Core on your machine. For my environment, I spun up a virtual machine in my Proxmox virtual environment, but many may be using VMware, Hyper-V, or other solutions which will work perfectly fine.

Adding the features and roles to the server

Once you have Windows installed and your requisite network and domain configuration done, add the necessary services and features to the server:

Install-WindowsFeature Print-Services

This will install the Print Services role as well as the Print Server Role Service. No further configuration is necessary as far as the services and features go. All that is left to do is add some printers!

Administering the server

There are multiple ways to administer your new Windows Core print server.

PowerShell

Arguably the correct way to manage a Windows Core server, is PowerShell. Like other deployments, a print server is managable through the command line with general ease. Beginning with Server 2012’s Core version, there are many print management commands available to administrators.

As an example, we can configure a printer using just two commands:

Adding the printer port: Add-PrinterPort -Name "192.168.254.5" -PrinterHostAddress "192.168.254.5"

Adding, sharing, and publishing the printer: Add-Printer -Name YourPrinter01 -DriverName "HP Universal Print Driver PCL6" -PortName 192.168.254.5 -Shared -ShareName "YourPrinter01" -Published

VBS

An archaic option also exists. At C:\Windows\System32\Printing_Admin_Scripts you’ll find a variety of VBS scripts that can be used to administer the print server. But seriously, who is preferring VBS when we have PowerShell?

As an example, we can configure a printer using the following commands:

Creating the printer port: cscript prnport.vbs -a -r 192.168.254.5 -h 192.168.254.5 -o raw

Adding a printer on the above printer port: cscript prnmngr.vbs -a -p YourPrinter01 -m "HP Universal Print Driver PCL6" -r 192.168.254.5

Sharing the above printer: cscript prncnfg.vbs -t -p YourPrinter01 -r 192.168.254.5 -h YourPrinter01 +shared -direct -m "Default printer for HR" -l "YourDesiredLocation"

Publishing the printer to Active Directory: cscript pubprn.vbs \\printserver\YourPrinter01 "LDAP://CN=YourContainer,DC=YourDomain,DC=com"

GUI

If you really just can’t let go of using the graphical user interface just yet as you ease into command-line-based administration you can still get your hands on the GUI by executing: C:\Windows\System32\printui.exe /il

Additionally, on a remote machine, you can connect RSAT to your Windows Core print server and use the Print Management snap-in for the Microsoft Management Console to visually administer the print server.

But seriously…get comfortable with PowerShell. This is the way.

Conclusion

And, well, that’s pretty much it. There is certainly a more granular level of detail we could go into, but for the purposes of a general overview, I think that does it. Windows Core servers are quick and easy to spin up and an absolute breeze to configure if you are comfortable with PowerShell. In a lab environment, they can also be a great way to get more comfortable with PowerShell if you are just learning. Go ahead and spin up a Windows Core server in VirtualBox or your choice of virtualization bench and give it a try!

What are you using core servers for in your environment, and how do you like it? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Additional Reading

Install Print and Document Services | Microsoft Docs

Using Server Core as a Print Server – Microsoft Tech Community

Proxmox Node Cannot Update Packages via apt-get

Problem

A virtualization host/node running Proxmox (whether clustered or not) will fail to update packages via apt-get and produce the below error messages in the task queue:

Environment

Proxmox Virtualization Environment (confirmed for versions 6.2 and newer) running the free/community editions without and enterprise subscription.

Cause

The cause of this issue results from not having a Proxmox Enterprise subscription/license. These errors are caused by apt-get attempting to procure updates from the subscription enterprise proxmox repository, but because the node or cluster does not have a valid enterprise subscription, the update fails and produces an error.

Solution

Access the shell for the node/virtualization host producing the error and run the following command:

cp /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-enterprise.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-enterprise.list.backup && echo -e "#$(cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-enterprise.list)" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-enterprise.list

This command copies the repository sources list, renames the original as a backup so the system does not use it, then comments out the line of the list for the enterprise repository.

Once this command runs successfully, you should be able to either (a) wait for the scheduled updates to try to run again or (b) manually search for and install updates using apt-get update/upgrade. Either way, no errors should be produced.

Additional Reading

https://dannyda.com/2020/06/19/how-to-fix-proxmox-pve6-1-26-1-7-update-failedfailed-to-fetch-401-unauthorized-task-error-command-apt-get-update-failed-exit-code-100/

How to Revert Node Certificates to Default Configuration in Proxmox VE

Purpose

The purpose of this document is to explain the steps necessary to reset and regenerate the state of the node/host certificates.

Assumptions

This document assumes you have a properly functioning Proxmox cluster with all nodes accessible on the network/via web browser. You’re replaced or modified any of the certificate or key files generated by PVE and now need to revert to the default state.

Step 1 – Cleanup existing certificate files

Delete or move the following files:

/etc/pve/pve-root-ca.pem
/etc/pve/priv/pve-root-ca.key
/etc/pve/nodes/<node>/pve-ssl.pem
/etc/pve/nodes/<node>/pve-ssl.key

The latter two need to be repeated for all nodes if you have a cluster.

If you do not repeat the latter two on each host, your issue will return.

Step 2 – Regenerate certificates

Afterwards, run the following command on each node of the cluster to re-generate the certificates and keys:

pvecm updatecerts -f

Additional Information

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/HTTPS_Certificate_Configuration_(Version_4.x,_5.0_and_5.1)#Revert_to_default_configuration