Recent content on xssfox
<p>While taking some rubbish down I spotted a Cricut Maker in e-waste. A quick look at it revealed that the it was in fairly good cosmetic condition with the exception of the rollers being perished. I guessed that the rollers were the reason why the unit was trashed and decided to take it back home to investigate. I knew that Cricut were pretty aggressive with <a…
<blockquote> <p><span style="color:red;font-weight: bold">Caution.</span> Using traffic preemption devices such as described in this blog post could impact emergency response times. The use of these devices outside their approved use may be illegal in your area. Traffic light preemption systems are typically logged and intersections often have video recordings. Traffic lights might not respond how…
<p>For those not familiar, Horus Binary is a high altitude balloon telemetry system. It’s goals is to overcome some of the challenges compared to other general purpose systems as high altitude balloons have unique challenges.</p>
<p>This post is going to be broken up into 3 parts. Why you shouldn’t listen to me. A brief history and current status of identity in Australia. Why the current state is a problem and some possible ways out of this mess.</p>
<p>Do you want a search engine that works like old Google? Distributed and run by the people? Free and open source? No ads or tracking? Mastodon for search engines????</p> <p>I’m going to introduce to <a href="https://yacy.net">YaCy</a>, which is exactly that. Then break your heart and tell you why it doesn’t work.</p>
<p>If you follow my partners YouTube channel, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@DropTableAdventures">Drop Table Adventures</a>, you’ll be well aware that they have been entering the “Around the Bay” cycling event for several years now. Specifically “The Classic” route. This is a 220km circuit….. around the (Melbourne) bay.</p>
<blockquote> <p>I haven’t been in this sort of industry for awhile now, so I might be a bit of out of touch but I imagine this hasn’t changed since I left.</p>
<blockquote> <p><strong>tl;dr:</strong> it’s probably stolen</p> </blockquote> <p>Facebook marketplace seems like the perfect place to grab a bargain on preloved bicycles looking for a new home. But is that new bicycle stolen property? Facebook’s lack of regulation, enforcement and inherent design makes it the perfect platform for stolen goods. Combine that with police unwillingness to…
<blockquote> <p>If you’re reading this looking for possible solutions to Toyota LandCruiser 200 series 4WD system or door locks - remember that this post is very bias’d towards a very specific problem. If you have a sun roof then check electrical connectors and wiring for corrosion and water damage first. If your actuator isn’t working correctly start by cleaning it.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.areg.org.au">Amateur Radio Experimenters Group (AREG)</a> decided to plan a winter balloon launch. Something that they typically don’t do due to the unpredictable weather and cloud cover.</p> <p>One of the ideas for the winter launch was to be a crossband FM repeater and the increased winds to Victoria would mean a larger coverage area for possible interstate…
<blockquote> <p>This post is going to be unapologetically weird. No one is forcing you to read this.</p> </blockquote> <p>I don’t think there’s enough proper dummy spits<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> in cycling. After a lot of thinking about this I think I know why. Cyclists love data.</p>
<p>I am writing today laying on the couch both a little bit sick and with a sore knee (best to double up these things up to save on recovery time right?). This does present me with an opportunity to write about my budget running timing gate project.</p>
<p>I usually don’t write blog posts on things I’ve been doing at work, however AWS Backup is just so truly bad I want to warn people of some of the gotchas should you want to perform your own migration to it. Lets start with what AWS Backup thinks it is. (Emphasis by me)</p>
<p>Project Horus is a high altitude balloon project. My first memory of Project Horus was when they launched Tux into near space at <a href="http://www.projecthorus.org/index-php/launch-history/horus-14/">Linux Conf Au 2011</a> - my first Linux Conf Au. It would be awhile before I would start working on high altitude balloon related things. In that time Project Horus moved from using RTTY (radio…
<p>(tl;dr - If you are using a cheap smart watch, probably don’t. If you want to skip to the juicy bit jump to <a href="#Authentication">“Authentication”</a>)</p> <p>As with most complicated things in my life, it started with a simple question.</p>
<p>Unless you actively work across all layers of Australia’s national electricity market (NEM) there’s a high likelihood that this blog post will make you less confident in understanding the dynamics of the NEM.</p>
<p>During unrelated research I came across SNOCOM. Apparently Australia’s first transistor based computer which was used for the Snowy Hydro project in the 1960’s. I became a little obsessed with it. It’s a fascinating piece of Australian computing history. Given its age it would be amazing to read the computer programs and even run them. My brain suddenly latched onto the idea…
<p>The intercom. Now days it’s a taken for granted necessity of apartment infrastructure. Ours is a Fermax unit with a maze of wiring interconnecting 4 unique buildings, several access panels and cameras. And while it works<sup id="fnref:1"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote-ref" role="doc-noteref">1</a></sup> it lacks some modern day functionality. Currently it rings and unlocks doors from a…
<p>Just over a year ago I wrote about <a href="https://sprocketfox.io/xssfox/2023/10/09/veg/">becoming vegetarian</a> and I mentioned that at some point I wanted to switch to vegan. Well it was pretty much that day which I switched to a vegan diet. So lets do a quick update.</p>
<h3 id="garmin-fēnix-6s-smart-watch">Garmin fēnix® 6S smart watch</h3> <p>I purchased this on a whim to try and replace the pebble I was using for heart rate monitoring. It’s probably one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.</p>
<p>I feel a little bad delaying this blog post for so long. A few other things got into the pipeline. The tl;dr is WSJT-X 2.7.0-rc7 is pretty fine. It uses TOTP now and third parties can run their own verification.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://sprocketfox.io/xssfox/2024/05/01/selcall-pt1/">part one</a> I left you with a cliff hanger regarding page calls. And I particularly like this little note:</p> <blockquote> <p>This shouldn’t be hard</p> </blockquote> <p>Like it’s a radio from 1993. Easy right?</p>
<p> <figure> <img src="https://sprocketfox.io/xssfox/images/DSC_3420.JPG" alt="Lizard laying on the track. It’s as red as the red sand its laying on"> <figcaption style="font-style: italic; font-size: small; text-align:center"></figcaption> </figure> </p> <h4 id="the-plan">The plan</h4> <p>It’s simple, leave from Purni bore, and arrive at Birdsville… except its not that simple.…
<p>isomer reached out on Discord that they smelt something funny about the SuperFox verification system. They were investigating the system in hopes of creating an open source implementation. The usual red flags presented themselves - closed binaries, very few bits, hardcoded magics. I originally assumed this system was just using TOTP like some of the other dxpeditions in the past, but in a more…
<p>WSJT-X has published a release candidate which includes a new fox mode called <a href="https://wsjt.sourceforge.io/wsjtx-doc/wsjtx-main-2.7.0-rc6.html#NEW_FEATURES">SuperFox</a> which promises a +10dB total system gain compared to the old fox mode. It also comes with a “SuperFox digital signature” in attempt to alleviate dx-pedition pirates. Verification of dx-peditions is an…
<p><span title="9th of Jun 2024"><u>Last Sunday</u></span> I took part in the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/longestrunau/">Longest Run Gippsland</a>. The Longest Run is a series of unofficial parkruns (5km) at 7 different locations completed near to the shortest day of the year (usually Monarchs birthday long weekend).</p>
<p>I pretty much give out this information as a talk in any company I’ve worked with using or struggling with Terraform. None of these ideas are ground breaking and like the other posts in this series, very opinionated, but hopefully you learn something out of this post.</p>
<p><strong>TL;DR - I think you’re probably best off with Terraform</strong></p> <h3 id="preface">Preface</h3> <p>These are highly opinionated pieces. While they are based on many years of professional experience in the industry they don’t take into account individual nuance. Posts are mostly going to focus around AWS tooling as that’s where most of my experience is. What better…
<p>This is the story on how I spent far too much money and time getting a scanner to work over iSCSI so that I could prove <a href="https://superuser.com/a/1768884">“Chris O”</a> wrong on StackExchange. <strong>The TL;DR is that yes scanners work fine over iSCSI.</strong></p>
<p>We drive long distances in remote places. Sometimes we want people to be able to check-in on us while we are out and about. While cell coverage is getting better we still often find ourselves in places with no coverage.</p>
<p>JSON’s had a tough life. Before I was all that attached with the bike I didn’t exactly treat it with same the respect I do today. It was just a cheap bike to get me from point A to point B. The more I rode it the more I fell in love with it. Combined with damage from the previous owner and other general wear and tear the frame was starting to show some signs of rusting.</p>
<p>It feels like starting blog posts with “so I crashed my bike” is going to be a thing. So anyway, I crashed my new bike. Down a cliff, in the bush.</p>
<p>I ordered some old style bicycle pedals for my bike, JSON. These have a black outer body and a silver shaft assembly. They really suit the bike well and come with toe clips which match the pedals of the bike when I originally received it. <figure> <img src="https://sprocketfox.io/xssfox/images/PXL_20231212_042407391.jpg" alt="Pedals with toe clips in packaging"> <figcaption style="font-style:…
<p>So my next blog post was meant to be on how the brake install went. The good news is the brakes work great - I’ll get into more details on that later. HOWEVER while riding out to somewhere nice where I intended to take some nice picture I had a bit of an incident - so lets talk about that first.</p>
<p>I’m currently waiting for my bike parts to arrive today, but in the meantime I thought I was explain to y’all the plan.</p> <p> <figure> <img src="https://sprocketfox.io/xssfox/images/original_075721e1-eed2-4fa8-af3c-f0001e521be3_PXL_.jpg" alt="JSON My red vintage road bike"> <figcaption style="font-style: italic; font-size: small; text-align:center"></figcaption> </figure> </p>
<p>Last Sunday around noon I realised that I shouldn’t be sitting mindlessly browsing the internet when Melbourne for once had half decent weather. Normally I’d go out for a run however my body needed some good recovery time so I decided to go on a walk. (narrator: this adventure did not end up being good recovery time). I slapped on some sunblock and a hat and set off.</p>
<p>I’ve recently been able to sit down and do some more backend work on some SondeHub backend code. Some of these changes I wanted to ensure didn’t cause any problems or issues to end users. To help build confidence that the changes would ok I started looking at Python unit testing solutions. I’ve only done minimal unit testing in Python before some time ago, but with a quick…
<p>Yesterday I took part in the <a href="https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/12318860507">Melbourne Marathon Festival Half Marathon</a>. While this was my first half marathon race, this wasn’t the first time I had competed in the festival having <a href="https://sprocketfox.io/xssfox/2023/05/31/running/">completed the 5km event last year in 30 minutes</a>.</p>
<p>Here’s some apps I’ve recently started using and enjoying. They might be of interested to you.</p> <style> .apps_images img { width: 40% !important; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; display: block; } </style> <h2 id="ditmm--did-i-take-my-meds-"><a href="https://f-droid.org/en/packages/dev.corruptedark.diditakemymeds/">DITMM ( Did I Take My Meds? )</a></h2> <div…
<p>In the back of mind I’ve always been conscious about the environmental impact of eating red meat. If you haven’t had look at emissions of various produce types - <a…
<p>… and I’ll also blog more.</p> <p>Every time I think about writing a blog post I reactively think “no, someone else has probably written about this already and done a better job” or “people won’t find this interesting”. I get the impression that many of the bloggers I follow also have these same feelings.</p>
<p>I finally got around to being formally diagnosed with ADHD (go me! - I might blog about this later if I feel comfortable in doing so). I will soon start medication and I wanted to track improvements. I realised that my current distributed method of note taking and todo lists scattered everywhere wasn’t helping. For the last month I’ve been using an app called <a…
<p>Back in 2014/2015 I used to run. It was infrequent, short, slow and contained a lot of walking. I mostly gave up at that point as my mental health had deteriorated to the point that it wasn’t safe for me to run. In December 2021 I decided to put some shoes on and try again. Today I can run a half marathon and run 5km in under 27 minutes. Let’s have a look at how I got to this point…
<p>And with that, we are home. Over 10,000km of travel.</p> <p> <figure> <img src="https://sprocketfox.io/xssfox/images/Fbj6nBFaAAA91Wu.jpeg" alt="Map showing the trip"> <figcaption style="font-style: italic; font-size: small; text-align:center">Our trip as per reported by APRS</figcaption> </figure> </p> <p>Since being home the car has been serviced, CV boot replaced, replacement parts order.…
<p>It was in Alice Springs that I stopped writing my journal. We had completed the CSR and arrived back at a major city. The trip however was not over.</p> <h3 id="alice-springs">Alice Springs</h3> <p>First things first - car repairs. We gave the car a good clean, discovered the battery isolator had fallen loose so that had to be repaired. We also got a well needed wheel alignment and balance…
<p> <figure> <img src="https://sprocketfox.io/xssfox/images/PXL_20220822_232016965.jpeg" alt="My dorky boy friend trying their best to get internet along the way using a road side passive RF reflector"> <figcaption style="font-style: italic; font-size: small; text-align:center">My dorky boy friend trying their best to get internet along the way</figcaption> </figure> </p>
<p>Mostly travel today however we did stay at the Devil’s Marbles and got to enjoy the beautiful sunset on the rocks.</p> <p>I think I’d enjoy this place a lot more if I were alone, but alas it does make a very good stop between Katherine and Alice Springs, so I understand why it’s so busy.</p>
<p>Today was just meant to be traveling but even then Western Australia still has some tricks up it’s sleeve. Coming into Kununurra is just wow.</p> <p>Suddenly the desert turns into this beautiful green oasis and deep blue river. The contrast was amazing. I was so impressed I pulled over into a park to admire the river for a bit!</p>
<p>Ended up doing the walks. Glad I did, very worthwhile. This area and the rock face is just amazing. The scale is just insane. I think it’ll be a long time before I experience anything this cool again.</p>
<p>Early start, fill up, grab some sausage rolls and hit the road. Droppy spotted a car and a person in trouble so we radio’d Rusty to check it out. Rusty informed us that their battery had run flat so we pulled around to give them a jump start.</p>