Bluetooth Tank Game
Tank Game is a multiplayer tank game using Bluetooth/WiFi peer-to-peer connectivity. Download for free on the App Store!
Josh Spicer
Notes on software, security, homelabs, travel, and projects.
Latest posts
Jetlag the App ✈️
MapCalipers is a flexible mapping toolkit built to help you defeat your friends in Jet Lag: The Game Hide and Seek Transit Game!
HabitBridge: A Habit Tracking App For Hackers
Meet HabitBridge - a habit tracking app designed for developers, hackers, and anyone else who wants real control over their digital habit tracking.
🐰 Download my iPhone Game
Bunny Bunch is a free adaptation of Cubirds by Pandasaurus Games. If you enjoy Bunny Bunch, please consider purchasing the original game! This YouTube video explains the rules...
Reversing a Bluetooth LE Light for Home Assistant Integration
I was recently gifted a beautiful LED sign with a significantly less beautiful mobile app to control it. There are no buttons on the device, so ultimately I was left no choice...
Show and Tell: 🪡
The ethos of this website is to express creativity and share topics I find generally interesting. Lately, I’ve explored the process of sewing and embroidery.
Tailscale Lock & Mullvad Exit Nodes
I love Tailscale. It's my first install on any new device and an indispensible tool. This is my first and only example of a non-stellar experience.
KK7VUA here. Getting my Amateur Radio license
I got my amateur radio operator’s license — callsign KK7VUA!
An E-Ink Recipe Frame with Inkplate 10
The Inkplate 10 is an awesome, hackable e-ink display. It's a 9.7" display with a resolution of 1200x825. It's also a dev board, with an ESP32, SD card slot, and LiPo battery...
Heartbox: An IoT Present for your Significant Other
👋 [Sept 2024] This post was updated with improvements to both the service (now hosted as an Azure Function) and the ESP module programming (using an esphome config). See the...
My OS Config(s)
Configuration notes for the operating systems and machines I use.
Transparent Apple Watch Auth (with CloudFlare Client Certificates)
I recently set up a Cloudflare Tunnel and wanted to find a way to protect that resource. I primary use an Apple Watch app to communicate with this service.
Local LTE Failover with Pfsense
My Xfinity cable internet connection has been shockingly unreliable since I last moved. That got me thinking about alternative options to keep my home connected.
DNS over HTTPS in iOS
I recently discovered Paul Miller's blog post and repo sharing how to craft iOS configuration profiles that instruct iOS (or macOS/tvOS/watchOS/etc) to use a provided DNS over...
Docker Config(s)
Pi-hole & Cloudflared (DoH)
Jarvis: A home automation ChatOps bot (+ Azure & Kubernetes)
🚧 NOTE: Jarvis is currently a work in progress
Hacking my Air Purifier 🌪️
A while back, I got one of those "smart" air purifiers to sit in my room while I work-from-home. Like a lot of IoT devices, this fan works only with a proprietary app, requires...
Building my own NAS
For a long time i've wanted to add a NAS to my homelab setup. I found that offerings from Synology seem great, but are quite pricy for the lack of flexibility the device...
Monthly Playlists 2021 🚀
I don't often think of myself as an innately creative person, yet each year I feel a sense of pride (and emotion) looking back at the music i've collected each month. I don't...
Spotify "Now Playing" v2 (Exploring Azure Functions)
The most astute readers of this blog would've noticed that for the past couple months, its homepage has been missing its characteristic Josh is listening to "XXX" on Spotify....
Bypassing SSL pinning on Android in 2021
This article is a braindump of how I was successful in bypassing SSL pinning on Android 11 in 2021. Please see the acknowledgments at the end for the various guides that helped...
Reverse Engineering my A/C into a HomeKit Accessory
As a part of homekit-ifying my apartment, i've been wanting to make my window A/C unit a bit smarter. I have a Keystone remote-controlled A/C - below is the journey of...
Homemade HomeKit (with an ESP8266 microcontroller)
HomeKit-ifying every last corner of my apartment - for better or worse - has become a "hobby" of mine as of lately. After stumbling upon Andrew Ngai's awesome YouTube video on...
Create a btrfs data disk with Azure + Packer
Recently, I spent some time creating a repeatable method of generating a customized Linux disk image. This disk image is then consumed within an Azure VM Scale Set, (and...
Reverse shell to your Azure VM without inbound access
Purpose: For any Azure Compute Linux VM where you have permission to execute one-off commands via the Azure CLI, issues a reverse shell command to the VM and sends the shell...
Monthly Playlists - 2020!
My third annual monthly playlist series!
CONCERTS
A running archive of concerts I've attended.
Advent of Code (2020)
Join me this year as I participate in my first Advent of Code month-long coding challenge!
Bluetooth Low Energy devices on HomeKit
I recently bought a bluetooth thermometer/hydrometer (Govee H5072) for $15 on Amazon to use in my apartment. After purchasing, I thought of several smart home automations that...
Touchbar Quick Commands in VSCode
On my Github you'll find my first (not work-related) vscode extension - a simple tool to map your commonly used extension commands to touchbar buttons.
Daily Word (WidgetKit/SwiftUI)
Daily Word is now on the App Store if you want to add a little language to your homescreen. Its source can be found on GitHub.
Docker VM on Proxmox (rancherOS/Portainer)
⚠ RancherOS appears to be unmaintained at the moment, so I no longer recommend this as the best approach!
Detect New Devices on your Network (OpenWRT + Telegram API)
One feature I really liked from my old Xfinity router were the push notifications it sent when new devices first joined my wireless network. In this post we're recreating that...
A trip to Japan and Thailand in 250 seconds
A one-second-per-day video from a trip through Japan and Thailand.
Add Font Awesome Icons to a Xamarin Forms App
Mobile apps need icons! Read on to learn how to add Font Awesome's rich selection to your Forms App!
Suggested Tech Guides (a growing list)
I follow a lot of guide & writeups online covering a range of topics. Here I will leave an (ever growing) list of guides I found useful!
Pi-Hole & Wireguard on Azure (in 10 minutes or less!)
UPDATE: Sept 2021 - I've recently made some edits (thanks to a helpful email and slack message) that should resolve a pesky DNS issue. Please contact me or put up a PR if you...
Bridge iPhone Hotspot to LAN with Pfsense
Bridging your iPhone hotspot is useful for an array of reasons. Just move and not have internet from the local ISP yet? Want some redundancy in case the ISP fails? Maybe your...
Repurpose an old iPhone as a (Teams/Slack/Zoom) Mac Webcam
Like many people these days in the quarantine/COVID-19/social distancing world, i've been living my life through video calling apps like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom. When...
My MacOS Tips & Tweaks
Last updated on May 13, 2021
Homelab Update - Proxmox
Over the past few days i've been upgrading my homelab setup. The biggest change - ditching ESXi for open source, KVM hypervisor Proxmox! I wanted to try something with better...
Pi ContrHOLE - Xamarin Forms & Pi-Hole
"Pi ContrHOLE" is a simple Xamarin Forms Shell app to manage your local Pi-hole instance. The app provides quick toggles and display information that would be useful at a...
Azure Function & Siri Shortcuts - Playlist Quicksave
“Hey Siri - add this song to my monthly playlist!" Not helpful...
Italian Citizenship through Jure Sanguinis (Updated 2024)
Welcome to my Italian citizenship journey! I'm going to be posting here in chronological order as things happen.
My Home Lab - ESXI/PiHole/PfSense/Docker
Introducing my Home Lab! As a software engineer and general tinkerer, I was incredibly excited to get a home server set up to run services, VMs, and other tools. I often find...
My Top Songs (2019)
These are my all time top songs as of January 6, 2020!
Husky Hunt - Visualizing 1st Place!
Last November I participated in my third Northeastern Husky Hunt, this time with the aid of our team's homebrew'ed app PawPrints. HuskyHunt is a continuous 24-hour scavenger...
Monthly Playlists (2019) - Turkish Edition!
Every month I pour all my favorite tunes into a playlist with that name (this year, in Turkish because why not). Here's my reflections back on 2019 through Spotify.
I graduated!
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. From Northeastern University.
My Microsoft internship in 206 seconds
A one-second-per-day video from my 2019 Microsoft internship.