Recently, I upgraded my home NAS from a DS212J to something a little more modern and powerful. The DS212J is quite old, and Synology is very likely to drop software support for it very soon - in fact, they've already stopped providing major firmware updates. I figured it'd be fun to see how difficult it … Continue reading Running Debian on a Synology DS212J →

A few weeks ago, I was diagnosing an issue on a 1993 JZA80 Toyota Supra. As I was researching, I came across a suggestion to check for a faulty engine control unit. According to service manuals and sources on the internet, the check engine light (or malfunction indicator light) is supposed to switch on when … Continue reading Fixing the dash status light panel on a Toyota Supra →

Recently, I came up with the idea of creating something that will let me charge my phone via a MagSafe charger. The use case for this is a bit limited (since you could just plug the phone into the laptop to charge) but could be handy sometimes when you don't want to set up a laptop … Continue reading MagSafe to USB charger →

Since I bought the Final Fantasy X HD remaster, I've been (re)playing through the game (75 hours now!). I'm currently playing through a lot of the side quests. Now, some of you Final Fantasy players may remember the 200 lightning bolt challenge. If you don't, let me explain briefly. There is a mini-game in FFX … Continue reading A Final Fantasy X lightning strike dodging aimbot →

I am a casual kernel developer so it's helpful for me to get an idea of roughly when the next merge window will open. Here is a handy tool I wrote to keep track of Linux releases, inspired by the Mac Buyers Guide. It has an estimate of when the next major Linux release along with … Continue reading Linux Release Tracker →

A lot of 3D work I do involves working with round corners. In this case, I was designing a case to be fitted onto an appliance with a round corner. The item was essentially rectangular except with corners rounded. While I could figure out the dimensions of the item quite easily with a calliper, I … Continue reading Deriving radii for round corners →

When you create a virtual hard drive for use with VMWare, it doesn't actually pre-allocate all the space for it (unless you ask it to). For example, if you chose to dedicate 20GB to your virtual machine, it won't immediately take up 20GB of your (real) hard drive space. What will happen is the file … Continue reading Consolidating VMWare hard disks →

A few weeks ago, I was made aware of the Open Source Watch project while looking for some inspiration for projects to build. It looked really well done. But, there was room for improvement and I thought I would have a crack at building my own smart watch too. For the most part, I only used … Continue reading DIY smart watch →

I recently shelled out around $900 and bought myself a Prusa i3 3D printer kit for rapid prototyping. Unfortunately, I spent quite some time getting the 'calibration' working. The RepRap wiki was very helpful in helping to calibrate. However, I was quite lucky and the supplier where I got my kit from actually provided me with … Continue reading 3D printing adventures →

//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/pbssA7Hg0GY?rel=0 This box was made with a button to press after a major achievement to boost your morale. It plays a song of your choice (or a random song) from a USB drive plugged into the side of the box. Personally, I prefer the Final Fantasy victory fanfares. With a little tweaking, you could easily … Continue reading The Success Box →