colourful words and phrases

techy tangents and general life chatter from a tired sysadmin

Bypassing a bone-headed battery block

Windows ThinkPad X40 ThinkPad Software Lenovo IBM Hardware Hacking Firmware

Note: This article discusses mechanisms for updating the BIOS and Embedded Controller of computers that haven't been made in almost 20 years. Exercise an abundance of caution when attempting to follow, reproduce… Read More

Oh god, social media

Thoughts ActivityPub

Hey guess what! Twitter sucks. It's sucked for years, it's getting worse, and they've just announced the addition of an actual child to their board. Fun fact, though: Alternatives exist, and they're… Read More

Thoughts on the ODROID Go series

Thoughts Programming Hardware Gaming Emulation Embedded

For reasons of “push button, receive serotonin and electronic gubbins”, I have both the original ODROID Go and the newer Go Advance. I’ll try to give a rundown of the two, my… Read More

Taking a ride on the Universal Serial Bus

USB Reverse-engineering Paperang Hardware Development C# .NET

Having some fun with USB, I reverse-engineer and document the communication protocol used by the Paperang-brand thermal printers, and implement it in C# Read More