finch.am

A lot of the things I'm working on these days end up directly in my source code repositories (and their GitHub mirrors or sourcehut mirrors).

Electronics

• Probably the cheapest way to add SMS to an Arduino (2010) - Add GSM capability to an Arduino or other microcontroller for about $25 USD delivered. A very simple module to interface.
• MSP430 LaunchPad (2010) - Tools and some loose notes about using the LaunchPad board from TI with GNU/Linux (Debian, mostly).
• Sonim XP 3.20-e Quest - To perform a proper "factory reset" on this phone (or probably any Philips Xenium 9@9q based phone) enter #20070101# in the dialer and press the green dial button. I am telling you this only because this information is otherwise impossible to find online.

Computering

• If you enable Secure Boot (sometimes referred to as part of Shielded VM) in Google's GCP Compute Instance VMs you get Linux kernel lockdown too:

      root@instance-1:/home/michael_hotplate_co_nz# dmesg | grep -i lock
      [    0.000000] Kernel is locked down from EFI secure boot; see https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot
          

• In a July 2020 update to bsdmainutils, Debian patched out the ability for cal(1) to highlight the current day in the calendar output, but didn't update the manual page to reflect this. If you're using Debian and you want cal to still highlight the day you can work around this for now by adding alias cal="ncal -b" to your ~/.bashrc or similar shell startup script.
• GNU tar blocking factor, blocks, records and checkpoints (2020) - I try and explain how to configure GNU tar's blocking factor and checkpoint options when using modern tape drives.
• sudo on different Debian versions (2015) - Clarification of what various "get me a root shell" type commands do on different Debian and Ubuntu versions.
• netfilter SYNPROXY with LVS NAT (2014) - Protect your Linux Virtual Server NAT setup against SYN floods.
• xscreensaver-placate plugin for Totem (2011) - Do you run Totem and XScreenSaver? Do you want one to talk to the other just like they used to? Install this simple Python plugin to Totem.
• Tracking down "unauthorised content" errors on SSL pages (2011) - A tip for a simple and comprehensive way to work out what content in a web page isn't using https URIs when the page itself is served over https. Help avoid scary warnings for your users.
• QuickPage patch (2011) - A quick and dirty patch to the QuickPage daemon to allow it to bind to specific addresses at startup. Bonus Debian init script.
• Arpitrary (2010) - Automated arbitrary ARP spoofing daemon. A stand-in for "arpcatch" if you need one in a pinch.

Keyboards

• Enabling Razer BlackWidow Macro / FN keys under Linux (2012) - A port of someone else's Haskell code to Python + plans for a more complete utility.

Aerospace

• Team 9.99 - N-Prize competition attempt.
• Canterbury Aerospace (2009) - We worked on high altitude balloons.