Author Archives: pappp

Macintosh LC Recap

Posted on 2016-03-17 by pappp

I’ve done some invasive repairs on the Macintosh LC from my small fleet of vintage computers. I figure it’s worth writing up because there is a lack of detailed information about this kind of work on the ‘net.
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Posted in Computers, DIY, Electronics, General | 7 Comments

Apparently a WordPress update caused some subtle breakage here a while back. The site has been spewing, among other things, a bunch of “&raquo” escapes in places that end up encoded as XML (thus breaking, among other things, RSS feeds). … Continue reading →

Posted on 2016-02-28 by pappp | 1 Comment

TP-Link Archer C7 with OpenWRT

Posted on 2016-02-07 by pappp

I bought myself a TP-Link Archer C7 because the 2.4Ghz congestion in my apartment has become so terrible that my good old TP-Link WR1043ND (no 5Ghz radios) is no longer adequate, and the C7 was very well spoken of among reasonably-priced 802.11ac routers. It also has some nice perks like two on-board USB ports, so I can use it as a print server (with p910nd) and have USB storage for logs (vnstat & co.) and such attached without a separate hub. I wasn’t feeling quite motivated enough to buy and set up one of the NUC-like cheap SFF Intel boxes as a router like Ars Technica and Jeff Atwood have recently noted is an increasingly good plan, based largely on the dearth of ac WiFi cards that work reliably in host mode.

Some notes that may be of use to others, particularly about firmware replacement on recent models and throughput:
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Posted in Computers, Electronics, General, Objects | 14 Comments

Breaking In to your Own Devices

Posted on 2015-11-04 by pappp

I gave an informal talk for the IEEE student branch about breaking in to your own devices this evening. I did the low-postable-content notes with live examples and links thing, but at least one person wanted to watch the video links, so here are the notes. There is something delightful about giving talks that require legal disclaimers. I don’t think there is anything in here that will get me in trouble…

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Posted in Computers, DIY, Electronics, Entertainment, General, School | Leave a comment

University Email Simulator

Posted on 2015-10-06 by pappp

A generic version of the email you will receive on a daily basis from the University of BS (Which is probably the school you deal with), as you will read it after the first few repetitions. Graduates can relive their college experience, or, for current students, simply stop checking your email and skim this page every day.


From: Dean of Posterior Coverage <sanjay@ubs.edu>
To: ALL-STUDENTS@UBS.EDU
Subject: Mandatory CYA Training
Body: All students need to take this course that the university paid a fortune to a third-party ed-tech carpetbagger to license, which provides the absolute minimum coverage of an issue required under a new federal regulation. Everyone must take it, because otherwise we might be liable for your behavior.
This is why tuition is so high.
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Posted in Computers, Entertainment, General, School | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Clevo P650SE/NP8651

Posted on 2015-08-30 by pappp

P650SET510Flat_web

My 5-year-old T510 has been showing its age, mostly by falling apart (speakers died, parts held on with gaffers tape, occasional probably-thermal GPU lockups, etc.) and I decided it was time for a replacement. Unfortunately, the laptop market right now has absolutely nothing appealing (clickpads everywhere!) so I gave up and bought a closest-match Clevo P650SE chassis that I could kit out myself. There are a couple annoyances, but overall it’s a nice machine. Really long detail notes including a bunch of Linux tweaking below.

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Posted in Computers, Electronics, General, Objects | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Seveneves

Posted on 2015-07-06 by pappp

I binged Neil Stevenson’s new[ish] novel, Seveneves, in the last 4 days while I should have been doing other things. I’ll call it my holiday. It isn’t my favorite of his (that would be Cryptonomicon followed by Snow Crash), and it isn’t my favorite genre piece, let’s call it long-perspective hard SciFi, but it’s damn good, and extremely fun. I have some thoughts that may be worth sharing.
[SOME SPOILERS, I’M AVOIDING BUT CAN’T MENTION THE LATTER THIRD WITHOUT]
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RFID Exploration

Posted on 2015-06-21 by pappp

I recently picked up a USB RFID reader/writer pod to play with, partly to learn enough to be dangerous about the tech, and partly hoping to tamper with the RFIDs in the current university ID cards. I’m pretty sure I failed on the latter point, but am succeeding at the former in the process.

RFIDKit

Notes from the first round of fiddling with it follow.

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Posted in Computers, DIY, Electronics, General, Objects | Tagged , | 21 Comments

Galaxy S5

Posted on 2015-05-10 by pappp
MyTouch 4G Slide vs. SGS5, flat dimensions.

MyTouch 4G Slide vs. SGS5, flat dimensions.

I got a Samsung Galaxy S5 (The T-Mobile flavor, SM-900T) a week ago. I’m pretty pleased with it overall, but many of the impressions worth sharing are not positive, particularly of the small-but-stupid variety. Much of the animus (and credit) is really for Google, not Samsung.
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New Chorder

Posted on 2015-03-05 by pappp

I’ve been playing with chorded input devices for years, and got the itch again recently.

CNChorder
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Posted in Computers, DIY, Electronics, General, Objects | Tagged | Leave a comment