TIL

Today I needed to convert a PDF to Markdown on macOS. I tried CLIs I could install with brew, but none of them gave me decent output for structure and formatting. marker-pdf was the first one that consistently gave me clean Markdown, even though it required more work to set up. I used this convert.py script: #!/usr/bin/env python3 import subprocess from pathlib import Path def convert_pdf_to_markdown(pdf_file: str) -> None: pdf_path = Path(pdf_file).expanduser().resolve() if not pdf_path.exists(): raise FileNotFoundError(f"PDF not found: {pdf_path}") root_dir = pdf_path.parent venv_dir = root_dir / ".venv" output_dir = root_dir / "output" python_bin = venv_dir / "bin" / "python" pip_bin = venv_dir / "bin" / "pip" marker_bin = venv_dir / "bin" / "marker_single" def run(cmd: list[str]) -> None: print("+", " ".join(str(c) for c in cmd)) subprocess.run(cmd, check=True) if not python_bin.exists(): run(["python3", "-m", "venv", str(venv_dir)]) if not marker_bin.exists(): run([str(pip_bin), "install", "marker-pdf"]) output_dir.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True) run( [ str(marker_bin), str(pdf_path), "--output_format", "markdown", "--output_dir", str(output_dir), ] ) if __name__ == "__main__": convert_pdf_to_markdown("path/to/the/pdf/you/want/to/convert.pdf") Then run: ...

Seeing RTNETLINK answers: Not supported during init-wireguard, or Error: Could not process rule: Not supported with add table inet hotio when starting ghcr.io/hotio/qbittorrent on DSM 7.2/7.3? That’s Synology’s 4.4 kernel lacking nftables support after hotio dropped legacy iptables workarounds. Typical failure logs look like this: [VPN] Creating interface [wg0-fix]. RTNETLINK answers: Not supported Or later during firewall setup: Error: Could not process rule: Not supported add table inet hotio The Fix Pin the image to the last known working WireGuard build from the TRaSH-Guides PR #222: ...

Cisco Umbrella can block domains by returning fake DNS answers, which makes a site look down even though it works elsewhere. If you only need access to a few domains, bypass the DNS layer for those domains on macOS. ⚠️ Disclaimer: This guide is for educational purposes. Bypassing corporate security controls may violate your company’s IT policies. Use responsibly and at your own risk. ...

Mail popped up an alert: “Mail cannot save information about your mailboxes because there isn’t enough space in your home folder.” My first two suspects in these situations are always Xcode junk or a full Trash. I opened OmniDiskSweeper and started scanning. I love it because there is no visual fluff. You scan, you delete, you move on. I cleaned up old runtimes, old Xcodes, and VM images. That saved ~70 GB. ...

A few months back I migrated my notes from Bear Notes to Obsidian. The switch has been great - I love what Obsidian offers. One feature I missed dearly from Bear Notes was the ability to quickly navigate between notes using up/down arrow keys. This couldn’t be replicated using Obsidian hotkeys or plugins, and other people were missing this feature too. Turns out Obsidian just added this in version 1.9.10! ...

Seeing a red dot with “401 unauthorized” status for Plex in your Homarr dashboard, even though your Plex server runs perfectly fine? The issue is likely your URL format. Instead of using the standard IP:PORT format like other containers, Plex requires the full web interface path. The Fix Change your Plex internal address from: 192.168.1.100:32400 To: 192.168.1.100:32400/web/index.html#!/ Why This Path is Required Plex’s web interface uses a single-page application architecture with hash-based routing. The /web/index.html#!/ path serves as the entry point to the bundled Plex Web App. This specific URL structure is how Plex handles authentication and routing for external integrations like Homarr. ...

When using Cursor’s Vim plugin on macOS, you might notice that holding down keys like j or k for navigation doesn’t repeat as expected. Instead of continuous movement, the system shows accent character options or simply doesn’t repeat at all. This happens because macOS has “Press and Hold” enabled by default, which interferes with Vim’s key repeat functionality. The Fix Run this command in Terminal to disable Press and Hold specifically for Cursor: ...

A few months ago, I decided to try Xcode’s new buildable folders feature in my project. However, right after converting all my groups to folders, I discovered that CocoaPods had stopped working. Attempting to install project dependencies resulted in the following error: $ pod install ❌ ArgumentError - [Xcodeproj] Unable to find compatibility version string for object version `70`. At the time, I updated CocoaPods to the latest version, confirmed my project format was set to the latest Xcode version (16.3), and tried again. When the issue persisted, I assumed CocoaPods was incompatible with buildable folders and that I would need to migrate to Swift Package Manager (SPM) to use them. This conclusion seemed to be confirmed by several closed GitHub issues where the suggested workaround was to manually convert folders back to groups. ...

My current project has a single target and multiple schemes. Each scheme represents the same app for different countries/regions. It’s essentially the same application with minor adjustments made for each of the supported jurisdictions. In Xcode projects, you define supported languages at the project level (not scheme level). Because of this structure, each app variant inherits the same language settings. My task was to force each app variant to support only the language for the region it was released in. The French app should only support French, no matter what the user’s device language is set to, and so on. This decision was made because large portions of the app are web-based and only supported a single language. ...

Update: 26/03/25 It looks like Objective-C is still an option in the default iOS project template. You can access it after setting the Interface to “Storyboard”. I hadn’t realized these dropdown menus were interconnected. All credit goes to Douglas for spotting this! tl;dr use macOS → Application → Game or Command Line Tool Recently I wanted to refresh my memory on Objective-C. My first thought was to open Xcode, create a new project with language set to Objective-C and play with it. To my surprise, none of the iOS Application project templates allow you to select any other language than Swift. ...

I run qbittorrent in a Docker container on my Synology NAS, with VPN configured at the Synology system level (Control Panel -> Network -> Network Interface) rather than the container level. For setup instructions, you can follow this guide. Even with killswitch enabled, I wanted to verify beyond the UI’s “Firewalled” status that my torrent traffic was actually routing through the VPN. To check this, SSH into your Synology NAS and run: ...