EST. 2026 — Notes from real server work SYSADMIN · SECURITY · AI · DIRECTADMIN Issue 01
THE SYSADMIN ALMANAC
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8 articles
Workflow
Drawing SVG Electrical Panels You Can Measure on Paper
Hardware

Drawing SVG Electrical Panels You Can Measure on Paper

The electrical panel drawings I generated from HTML looked good, but the technician said the proportions were wrong. I rebuilt the whole sheet, anchored it to actual catalog dimensions, wrote the viewBox directly in millimeters, and added a scale bar so the technician could use a ruler to verify that the drawing in hand really was at 1:10.

#drafting#cad#electrical#printing
9 min read·24 Oct
Scripting Government PDF Forms and Making Safer ID Copies
AI

Scripting Government PDF Forms and Making Safer ID Copies

Government PDFs distributed as fillable forms often cannot actually handle Thai text. Subdivided fields let digits run over the borders, and tone marks collide with vowels above the line. This article covers listing field names first, filling the fields and flattening them into page content, drawing Thai text with a font that includes all the vowel marks, and making actual-size ID copies with purpose-specific watermarks.

#pdf#python#document#printing
10 min read·22 Oct
Reverse Engineering Spreadsheet Constants into Formulas
AI

Reverse Engineering Spreadsheet Constants into Formulas

A sheet has a criteria table sitting beside the calculations, but no VLOOKUP connects them. People read the table and type values into cells themselves, and mistakes go unnoticed. This article covers separating formula cells from manually entered cells, then reconstructing a single formula that matches all 16 values in a multiplier column.

#spreadsheet#python#reverse-engineering#audit
10 min read·20 Oct
Food Factory Drawings: Sheets, Scales, and Paper Sizes
AI

Food Factory Drawings: Sheets, Scales, and Paper Sizes

A food factory application drawing set has 7 items, each with its own scale range, and some numbers to work out before drawing—how wide a plan will fit on A4 or A3 at 1 to 100, and how to split it across sheets without changing the scale if it will not fit.

#drafting#cad#sketchup#3d-modeling
10 min read·4 Oct
SketchUp Drawing Sheets with Automatic Labels and Dimensions
AI

SketchUp Drawing Sheets with Automatic Labels and Dimensions

A finished model is not ready for submission yet. What the authorities accept is a set of paper sheets with building numbers, dimension lines, a north arrow, and a scale. This article covers extracting geometry from the model as numbers, rendering a top ortho view as black lines on white, and letting a script place numbers and dimension lines without overlaps, with overrides for individual items.

#3d-modeling#sketchup#ruby#python
10 min read·2 Oct
A Single-Page PHP and SQLite Document Vault That Keeps Originals
Linux

A Single-Page PHP and SQLite Document Vault That Keeps Originals

A document photo storage app for government submissions, using photos taken on site with a phone. Each upload produces three files—the display image, the original, and saved crop settings—so adjustments can be made later without losing quality, with automatic migration from JSON to SQLite and web server restrictions on folders containing personal data.

#php#sqlite#document#security
9 min read·27 Sep
Printing Dozens of Government Forms from HTML with Correct Margins
Linux

Printing Dozens of Government Forms from HTML with Correct Margins

A government submission document system where users click Print in their browsers and every sheet must fit within its margins, from measuring the actual printable area in millimeters and repeating headers and footers without position fixed, to four image frame types for different documents and automated overflow checks with Playwright instead of inspecting every sheet.

#pdf#php#css#printing
10 min read·26 Sep
Generating Thai PDF Quotes with Chromium and the Pitfalls I Hit
Linux

Generating Thai PDF Quotes with Chromium and the Pitfalls I Hit

Building a system to generate PDF quotations from HTML with Chromium for multiple companies in a group and multiple templates, from an Executable doesn't exist error caused by looking for the wrong headless shell, to A4 layout and pagination, sanitizing Thai filenames, and a token-based document numbering system where an accidental slash broke the path.

#pdf#chromium#playwright#python
9 min read·31 Aug