Using Short gifs vs Long Boring Videos

Working in iT as a security enthused sysadmin of sorts, I find myself watching a lot of really stupid videos people make demonstrating various penetration testing techniques and other hacker like things. (Man I hate that word.)

I found an incredibly useful node.js program that lets you record the Linux TTY as a gif or apng. It is extremely simple to use. So, I was trying to come up with good uses for it and I think it might be useful as a teaching aid. When people do security and penetration testing other people like to watch, hoping to learn something. Without the headache of a screen recorder and making actual videos this is perfect for short demonstrations that people can watch over and over till they get the hang of it, and as a bonus you don't have to host it on a video site, you could post them here or on the other evil social media sites.

I made an example of running a speed test from the cli, something that a lot of people do when there are connectivity and speed issues with their internet provider.

So, here is my example.

The command is this simple, here I have it save to my public folder in Dropbox so it can be shared extremely easy.

ttystudio ~/Dropbox/Public/output.gif --log

When you are done you press ctrl+q to end it and then it compiles it to an image.
More information and the source can be found here (https://github.com/chjj/ttystudio)

If you want the TLDR; version of installing the source it uses node.js and npm so a simple:

sudo npm -g install ttystudio

In Conclusion

If my life stops being so hectic, I might try to make an effort to post Linux and other IT related tips and tricks. (No, I will not show anyone how to do something harmful, I do have some honour.)

Thanks,
Michael Garcia a.k.a. @TheCrazyGM