J. Random Hackery

hacker: n. [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities... -- from the jargon file

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Let's Encrypt!

I missed this last week -- Let's Encrypt is expecting to start generating certificates in mid-September. SSL/TLS for everybody!

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Imagination vs reality in cryptanalysis.

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Just a reminder to set this up at home...

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How to install SyslogNG on a FreeBSD system.

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EFF's "Security Starter Pack" for online privacy

Tips, Tools and How-tos for Safer Online Communications

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Raspberry Pi+old iPhone+HVAC=Home Automation

I saw an interesting project on AdaFruit -> Hack-a-Day -> The Nooganeer using a Raspberry Pi to control an HVAC system, with an old iPhone providing the on-the-wall display/control functions. Great idea!

The project (or at least the blog posts about it) is still in-progress. I wasn't able to find a single link for the entire project, but for now here are the two articles I can see:

System Overview

Hardware Overview

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There are some great ideas in this tutorial. In particular, I like the case mods for tripod-mounting and magnetic lens attachment.

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A nice little intro to installing and using GnuPlot on the Raspberry Pi.

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Designing Circuit Boards with EAGLE

I was thinking about buying Designing Circuit Boards with EAGLE: Make High-Quality PCBs at Low Cost on Amazon, but the 1- and 2- star reviews (which is where I always start my research) fault the book for numerous errors and lack of an errata page online. There is a copy at the UC Davis library, so I'll go through that before any purchase.

The 1-star review referred to the EagleCAD tutorials on SparkFun, and that would surely be a good resource! There are (currently) 7 tutorials in the "EagleCAD" category. I haven't gone through any of them yet, but I would probably go through them in this order:

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/how-to-install-and-setup-eagle

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/using-eagle-schematic

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/using-eagle-board-layout

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/designing-pcbs-advanced-smd

? https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/constant-innovation-in-quality-control

? https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/designing-pcbs-smd-footprints

? https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/making-custom-footprints-in-eagle

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Chris Newman's succinct Raspberry Pi blog

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Node Red for RPi

More cool stuff for Raspberry Pi! A quick little Node Red tutorial from Adafruit: https://learn.adafruit.com/raspberry-pi-hosting-node-red?view=all

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CFEngine reporting front-end

Neil Watson announced his Delta Reporting web front-end for CFEngine (Community edition). GPL3 license. Uses Neil's free Promise Library, also GPL'd. Check it out!

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SparkFun has a good description of a few of the typical RF connectors one might see nowadays, along with a bit of history. I should have known that only marketroids would have been idiotic enough to come up with "reverse polarity" connectors (RPSMA's).

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Explanations of each of the 5 status LED's on the RasPi. Also (in the comments), a labeling mistake on early boards.

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A robot to help you rip all your CD's/DVD's, very cool!

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Arduino IDE on Raspberry Pi

How to get Arduino IDE on Raspberry Pi

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