Building, Programming on Darth Null

Dark Mode, and other site improvements

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 16:12:51 -0400

I’ve been listening to the Accidental Tech Podcast for years. They recently had a members-only special about the technology they use for their personal websites. Building customized, Rube Goldberg-esque systems for managing a website is a time-honored time sink for many, myself included. And since an earlier version of this site used a system developed by one of the podcast’s hosts (and inspired its look and feel), I was looking forward to the episode.

Using an Adafruit NeoTrellis Keypad with MQTT

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 10:45:00 -0400

I’ve been building a light-up keypad for home automation devices (and Zoom sessions). Last time, I gave an overview of the project. This entry will detail the hardware itself, completing a basic remote-only setup, while the next post adds more advanced features and connects it to a server. You can browse the entire series from the link in the header, or by clicking here.

Building a remote-control home automation keypad

Sun, 25 Apr 2021 16:20:00 -0400

I use Zoom. A lot. Obviously, a whole lot more since we all started working from home. It’s not a big deal – I’ve gotten pretty used to it, and it’s a good system. So much better than the PictureTel VTCs I occasionally used in the early 90’s.

What’s annoying, though, is when someone asks a question and I’m on mute. Suddenly, there’s a scramble to figure out which monitor the mouse pointer is on…jiggle…jiggle…JIGGLE! Oh, there it is. Now, where’s the window? Over – no, wrong way. Over here. Hover. Up comes the control bar. Down to the left and click – shoot, missed. Hover again. Okay, NOW mute is off.

Infosec Conference Badge Display

Tue, 17 Oct 2017 12:17:00 -0400

My first infosec con was the first ShmooCon, in 2005. Then I went to Black Hat and DEFCON. Then ShmooCon again. Then Vegas again. And before long, I had a whole lot of badges cluttering up drawers.

Probably a code violation. (Circuit breakers are behind these doors).

In 2010 I won, as part of the ShmooCon crypto contest, a stuffed moose head for the wall (“But not a real moose head, that’s cruel 🎶”). So I started hanging the badges from that, and it followed me from office to office for a while. By the time I moved into a home office, I had far too many badges to hang from the moose and so I moved them to nails on top of my circuit breaker doors. Which is probably a violation of several building and safety codes. So back in May of 2014, I decided to correct the situation.

New Website Engine

Mon, 07 Aug 2017 21:16:00 -0400

A few years back, I moved from a fairly generic Wordpress-based blog to a statically-generated system based on secondcrack. It was a fairly simple system, that I immediately hacked up to add different post types, lists, and other taxonomy-like things. And I pretty much stole the look and feel of the primary site secondcrack was built for.

It worked out pretty well, overall, but I did notice at times that it was a little too bare-bones. Especially difficult was navigating past a really long post at the top of the page, to get to something shorter and totally different buried beneath it.

New Standing Desk

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 14:17:00 -0400

A few months ago, I set up my computer on a counter-level table in the home theater for a few days, to see what I thought of the idea of a standing desk. I liked it, but definitely didn’t want to be standing all the time. I needed something adjustable.

Then a couple months later, The Wirecutter posted a review of standing desks, and their top pick was the Fully Jarvis Bamboo desk. Unfortunately, that was a little too small for the large collection (2 monitors plus the laptop screen, plus various other stuff) I had on my IKEA Gallant corner desk. However, they sell an L-shaped version, the Jarvis J3. And it’s available as just the frame, so I can even keep my desktop.

Blizzard of 2016 Time-lapse

Fri, 22 Jan 2016 02:30:45 -0500

For the last several years, we’ve tried to keep a big “snow stick” out on our deck to capture images of big snowfalls. In particular, the winter of 2009-2010 was exceptional for this, with no fewer than 3 very large storms in our area (including the crazy storm which happened at ShmooCon 2010). That storm dumped nearly 30" over two days at Dulles Airport, just a few miles away from our house.

DerbyCon 2013 - Apple TV and Raspberry Pi Slides

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 12:30:43 -0500

Slides from my DerbyCon 2013 talk about building a car media center on Raspberry Pi, and how to make that appear as a native application on Apple TV.

Unfortunately, the method I outlined here was blocked days later by Apple. Current Apple TV development requires specific configuration profiles signed by Apple.

Internet of SCADA, or, why does my HVAC blow?

Fri, 05 Sep 2014 01:21:22 -0400

We live in a house that was new-built, so it’s got all the modern trimmings. It’s also got all the modern cut corners, including an air conditioning system (two, actually) that even 12 years later we’re still struggling with. It seems that every year or two something else goes wrong, especially with the combined cooling / heat pump unit that handles the upstairs.

I’ve been thinking for a while that I should be able to build a temperature monitor to track how the system is running, to detect problems (loss of freon, etc.) early, and maybe even forestall costly repairs. Maybe. So I asked for some Arduino gear for Christmas, and earlier this summer, I finally started playing around with it.

Making Tunnelblick + Google Authenticator Easier to Use

Fri, 30 May 2014 02:29:43 -0400

I’ve been occasionally using a VPN that requires a Google Authenticator code to connect. I say “occasionally” because it’s a pain to use – I have to launch Tunnelblick (the VPN client I’m using on my Mac), then get the VPN password out of my password manager and paste it in, then open my phone, launch Google Authenticator, and enter the displayed tokencode next to my password.

It’s not horrible – but it’s awkward enough that I find myself looking for ways to avoid using this particular connection. Then the other day, a co-worker suggested using a script to dump the credentials into the VPN config on the fly and re-launch. And so, my lunchtime project was decided for me.

Raspberry Pi Media Center on AppleTV - No Jailbreak Required

Sun, 29 Sep 2013 04:04:00 -0400

A few months ago, I started looking into using a Raspberry Pi (I’m gonna call it rPI from now on) as an access point / media server for the car. It started off as a way to let my boys play Minecraft with each other during long car trips….and then kind of went a little over the top after that.

RPI in Car

In June, an interesting AppleTV hack called PlexConnect got some press, and I started thinking about trying to get videos from the rPI onto an AppleTV.

InfoSec Archive

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000