Tinkering

Huawei E5885L 4G Router Tinkering Notes

Thursday, September 27, 2018

Introduction I frequently rely on a 4G hotspot for work-related travel. The E5885L is an incredibly versatile device: it supports LTE, UMTS, and GSM bands, functions as a power bank, operates as both a router and a cellular modem, and offers both wireless and wired connectivity options. With a proper unlock, it is possible to customize the IMEI, bypass ICCID–IMEI binding restrictions, and evade certain network censorship measures. …

Building OpenWrt Firmware from Source

Friday, February 24, 2017

Preface …

Nexus 5 Can’t Retire Yet — Be My Backup Phone!

Saturday, October 8, 2016

Why I used my Nexus 5 for two years. The battery got worse and worse—going from charging once a day to three times a day. When I was out, even plugged into a power bank, the battery percentage still kept dropping. It ended up dying and going offline by itself multiple times, which delayed a lot of things. …

Lenovo Y410p BIOS Recovery Notes

Monday, June 20, 2016

Preface Yesterday I was messing with a third-party BIOS flash on my laptop. Some options were undocumented, so I tried them manually—and after switching the panel color depth from 18-bit to 24-bit, the machine went down hard. …

Add a Free SSL Certificate to Your Website

Monday, May 9, 2016

Why add an SSL certificate / use HTTPS? The HTTP protocol commonly used on the internet transmits data in plaintext. Traffic is “transparent” on the network and can be abused by a man-in-the-middle. …

First Hardware Mod: OpenWrt on a Router

Monday, April 4, 2016

Introduction Our hackerspace recently got a new tool: a hot air rework station. I decided to use it to practice by hard-modding a router to run OpenWrt (I had never done this kind of hardware work before). …

ESXi 5.5 Tinkering Notes

Monday, November 16, 2015

Introduction VMware ESX is a hypervisor that partitions and consolidates systems on standard hardware. It is an efficient and flexible virtualization platform with advanced resource management capabilities. ESXi (now called VMware vSphere Hypervisor) is free; its core functionality is largely similar, but it is smaller and more secure. …

Deploying a Hexo Blog on GitCafe

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Hexo is a Node.js-based static blog framework. It’s fast, easy to write with, and highly extensible. …