Unfortunately for me - my WiFi router was fried by lightning at the end of last year so I needed re-set it up. And I’d realised I had forgotten the steps and needed to backtrace what I had done. So here’s a guide on how to set it up for yourself.

1. 1. Set up your PC (on Windows 11)
   1. 1.1. Enable Remote Desktop on your windows machine
   2. 1.2. Get PC IPv4 address
2. 2. Configure your Router Settings
   1. 2.1. Login to your router
   2. 2.2. Select the “Advanced” Tab
   3. 2.3. Configure NAT Forwarding
   4. 2.4. Configure Dynamic DNS
3. 3. Connect to the PC via Microsoft RDP
   1. 3.1. Create a new remote connection
   2. 3.2. Save user account details
   3. 3.3. Save the PC name details

1. Set up your PC (on Windows 11)

1.1. Enable Remote Desktop on your windows machine

Navigate to the settings menu and select the “Remote Desktop” option.

Then, turn ON the Remote Desktop Setting. Optional: You can rename your PC here to something more meaningful if you wish.

You can click the dropdown menu to see what port is listed. It will most likely be 3389. Note this down for later.

1.2. Get PC IPv4 address

Navigate to the Wi-Fi settings by selecting the Network & Internet settings tab. Select the Wi-Fi connection your PC is connected to and note down the IP Address. For this specific PC, it’s 192.168.1.135.

2. Configure your Router Settings

2.1. Login to your router

This can usually be accessed via the web by accessing the IP:

http://192.168.1.1/

I’m using a TP-Link router, so the steps I’ll show will be directly related to their interface. But most other routers will have similar configuration screens. It doesn’t matter whether you complete this on your PC or your other machine - as long as it is connected to the same network.

2.2. Select the “Advanced” Tab

Note down the public IP address on the main page (IPv4).

2.3. Configure NAT Forwarding

Click on the “NAT Forwarding” tab and select “Virtual Servers”. You’ll need to expose the RDP port (the one that we noted down from earlier) so that it is accessible remotely.

Click on the “Add” button and fill in the port and internal IP address (the IPv4 address noted down from your PC). The rest of the settings should as shown in the image below.

2.4. Configure Dynamic DNS

Now, click the “Network” tab and select “Dynamic DNS” in the dropdown menu. You’ll want to set up a dynamic DNS server so that when your IP address changes, you don’t need to redo your RDP set up. Additionally, it’s much easier to remember a web URL than an IP address. You can get one of these for free from a Dynamic DNS service provider, such as No-IP. From this menu, you can click Go to register to get there as well.

In your Dynamic DNS Service Provider (No-IP), from your dashboard, select Dynamic DNS and “No-IP Hostnames” from the dropdown menu.

Select Create Hostname to make a new hostname. You can call it whatever you want. In the IPv4 Address section, enter in your public IP Address that we got from the main router settings menu.

Then, return to your Dynamic DNS router settings menu and log in with your username and password. Everything should be set-up now. All that’s left to do is to login and use your new RDP!

3. Connect to the PC via Microsoft RDP

For this, we will be using the Microsoft RDP client which can be downloaded as an app. But you can use any remote desktop client that you wish.

3.1. Create a new remote connection

Open the Microsoft Remote Desktop App on the device you wish to connect to the PC with. Then, Click the + Icon at the top and select “Add PC”. We’re going to save the connection the RDP in here so that you don’t need to re-enter credentials each time you use it.

3.2. Save user account details

In the “Add PC” pop-up window, Select the dropdown for User Account (Default value is “Ask when required”) adn select “Add User Account”.

This will open up the Add User Account settings, where you put in your Username and PC password (of your remote desktop).

If you’re unsure about what your PC username is, you can check this by opening a terminal window on your PC. It should default to:

C:\Users\[YOUR_USERNAME]>

The [YOUR_USERNAME] is the User to enter in. The password is just your PC password (or Microsoft account password if you’re logging in using that method). It is not your pin number or any other type of passkey.

3.3. Save the PC name details

Once you’ve set up your user account, select the User from teh dropdown menu and put in your dynamic DNS URL in the “PC Name” field. You can then configure these settings in anyway you wish. I recommend giving your PC a “Friendly name” which is displayed in the Microsoft Remote Desktop menu and turning on “reconnect if the connection is dropped” and “Connect as an admin session”.

In these settings, you can also change things like what periperhals you’d like to share and also enable file sharing between your devices. You can play around with these settings to suit your needs. Just make sure you save these settings!

Now all that’s left to do is to launch your new remote desktop connection. You can do that by double clicking on the PC in the menu and accepting the certificate for connecting.

And voila! You should be connected now, and you can do this from any network. Just make sure that your PC is on and connected to the internet as well.

Otherwise, you’ll end up with a commit history similar to this:

In other words, you may want to “hide” your testing and changes before deployment.

0. Follow the fast AI blog post to set up your blog

You can view the blog post here.

1. Install the Jekyll bundler

Get into your blog repo and install jekyll (you’ll need to have ruby installed first).

bundle install

You will then see a Gemfile in the directory.

2. Create a Drafts Folder

Create a folder called _drafts at the same level as the _posts folder. Here, you can add your drafts, written and formatted just like how you would write a post. This provides a good storage space to put work-in-progress blog posts which can be committed to your repo without publishing.

3. Run the test server

Now that the Gemfile exists and you have a draft ready to go, you can run it locally as a test server by using:

bundle exec jekyll serve --drafts

Then, to view your blog, in your web-browser access:

http://127.0.0.1:4000

Everytime save a change to your blog, you can reload the test server webpage and your changes should be able to be synced immediately.

When you’re happy with your post, you can just move it from the _drafts folder to the _posts folder and publish like you normally would.

Without submoduling, each time I log in to a remote desktop session to remote lab computers, I’d need to clone each of these repos individually which is a lot more effort than it’s worth.

1. Steps to add a submodule repo
   1. 1. Clone your main repo
   2. 2. Clone in your sub-module repo/s
   3. 3. Add your repo to git
2. Clone your repo with submodules
3. Troubleshooting and Warnings
   1. Removing a submodule

Steps to add a submodule repo

1. Clone your main repo

git clone <YOUR_MAIN_REPO>

2. Clone in your sub-module repo/s

Just clone in your submodules like normal here. The magic is in the next step.

cd <YOUR_MAIN_REPO>
git clone <YOUR_SUBMODULE_REPO> <SUBMODULE_REPO_NAME>

3. Add your repo to git

git submodule add <YOUR_SUBMODULE_REPO_LINK> <SUBMODULE_REPO_NAME>

If successful, you should get a message saying that it has been successfully added.

And voila! You should be able to verify that a submodule has been added on github.

Clone your repo with submodules

Now, when you’re cloning the main repo to a new destination, you’ll need to add the recurse-submodules flag. This ensures that the contents of the submodules will also be cloned in. They will also retain the branch/commit number you’re using for the submodule as well (if it happens to be different).

git clone --recurse-submodules <YOUR_REPO_PATH>

Troubleshooting and Warnings

Submodules can be very tricky and cause grief if not used properly. A couple good rules of thumb to follow are:

1. Only make a submodule of a repo once (don’t clone it into two spots within your main repo)
2. Only use submodules when there is some level of dependency. I’ve used submodules just because it helps with organisation. But this can get gnarly very quicky with an abundance of git issues.

Here are some troubleshooting guides:

Removing a submodule

1. Delete the relevant lines from the .gitmodules file. The lines should look like this:

   [submodule "<SUBMODULE_REPO_PATH>"]
    path = <SUBMODULE_REPO_PATH>
    url = https://github.com/<SUBMODULE_REPO_URL>
   

2. Remove the link via git in the command line:

   git rm --cached <SUBMODULE_REPO_PATH>
   

3. Finally, remove the folder locally if it still exists. Then stage and commit your changes

   rm -R <SUBMODULE_REPO_PATH>
   

Also, be prepared to deal with an abundance of merge conflicts and branch rebasing. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart!

1. Basic setup
2. Basic formatting
3. Lists
4. Boxes and stuff
5. Images
6. Code
7. Tables
8. Footnotes

Basic setup

Jekyll requires blog post files to be named according to the following format:

YEAR-MONTH-DAY-filename.md

Where YEAR is a four-digit number, MONTH and DAY are both two-digit numbers, and filename is whatever file name you choose, to remind yourself what this post is about. .md is the file extension for markdown files.

The first line of the file should start with a single hash character, then a space, then your title. This is how you create a “level 1 heading” in markdown. Then you can create level 2, 3, etc headings as you wish but repeating the hash character, such as you see in the line ## File names above.

Basic formatting

You can use italics, bold, code font text, and create links. Here’s a footnote ¹. Here’s a horizontal rule:

Lists

Here’s a list:

• item 1
• item 2

And a numbered list:

1. item 1
2. item 2

Boxes and stuff

This is a quotation

…and…

Images

Code

General preformatted text:

# Do a thing
do_thing()

Python code and output:

# Prints '2'
print(1+1)

2

Tables

Footnotes