Jekyll2023-11-15T11:58:20+08:00http://ma.tthi.as/feed.xmlMiscellanea\[mətiːəs\] / Never send a human to do a computer's job / Opinions are my own etc.Matthias LiffersHidden settings for the Pedal Comet ebike2023-02-03T00:00:00+08:002023-02-03T00:00:00+08:00http://ma.tthi.as/blog/pedal-comet-settings<p>The <a href="https://www.99bikes.com.au/pedal-comet-st-electric-cruiser-bike-black-orange">Pedal Comet</a> is an inexpensive ebike
from <a href="https://www.99bikes.com.au/">99 Bikes</a>, a chain of bicycle stores in Australia and New Zealand.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/pedal-comet.png" alt="Pedal Comet bike" /></p>
<p>Although I would prefer to ride my more traditional bicycle to work as often as possible, the ebike adds more flexibility
as I can get to work without turning into a sweaty mess and needing a shower. This means I can avoid using the car when I
sleep in or have to do some chores before work.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for a nerd like me, the bike is so inexpensive that they seem to have forgotten to include the manuals for
all the ebike components, such as the motor (a Bafang SWXH6 250W), the battery (“Samsung”), and the LCD display (labelled
only as “Key Disp”).</p>
<p>Thankfully, using my librarian powers I was able to determine the model number for the LCD display (KD21C) and get a copy
of <a href="/assets/pdf/kd21c.pdf">its manual</a>. The manual details all of the button presses you need to make to access the settings
menu and change various options.</p>
<p>Please be careful, however, as the settings menu lets you change the maximum assist speed of the motor. Increasing the
speed might let you go faster, but it will probably have a negative impact on your battery life and, even worse, you might
be breaking the law in your state or country.</p>Matthias LiffersThe Pedal Comet is an inexpensive ebike from 99 Bikes, a chain of bicycle stores in Australia and New Zealand.Co-hosting vanity Matrix and Mastodon servers2022-11-18T00:00:00+08:002022-11-18T00:00:00+08:00http://ma.tthi.as/blog/well-known<p>Quite a few years ago I met a <a href="https://www.globallink.com.au/contact-us/">travel agent whose email address was <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">tr@vel.com.au</code></a>.</p>
<p>He inspired me to look at interesting domains and, to my great delight, American Samoa let me register tthi.as - resulting in my website at <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">https://ma.tthi.as</code> and my email address of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">m@tthi.as</code>.</p>
<p>More recently I’ve become interested in open and federated social networks, resulting in the great usernames of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">ma:tthi.as</code> and <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">@m@tthi.as</code> on Matrix and Mastodon, respectively. I’m running a server for each in Docker on a server in my store room.</p>
<p>Both Synapse (the “default” Matrix server) and Mastodon let you run a server at a subdomain, but both require the root domain to point to the correct subdomain. Matrix wants something served from <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">http://{domainurl}/.well-known/matrix</code> and Mastodon looks at <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">http://{domainurl}/.well-known/webfinger</code>.</p>
<p>Since I already run everything in containers behind Traefik, I decided to use a small Nginx container to serve this content. First up, my <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">docker-compose.yml</code>:</p>
<div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>version: '3'
services:
web:
restart: unless-stopped
image: nginx:alpine
networks:
- web
volumes:
- ./nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf
- ./content:/var/www/
environment:
- TZ=Australia/Perth
labels:
- "traefik.enable=true"
- "traefik.http.routers.wellknown.entrypoints=websecure"
- "traefik.http.routers.wellknown.rule=(Host(`tthi.as`))"
- "traefik.http.routers.wellknown.tls.certresolver=letsencrypt"
- 'traefik.http.routers.wellknown.tls.domains[0].main=tthi.as'
- "traefik.http.services.wellknown.loadbalancer.server.port=80"
- "traefik.docker.network=web"
networks:
web:
external: true
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>Secondly, a bare-bones <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">nginx.conf</code>. It serves the Matrix content from static files on the local filesystem, but redirects Mastodon requests to my Mastodon server.</p>
<div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>events {
use epoll;
worker_connections 128;
}
http {
server {
server_name tthi.as;
listen 0.0.0.0:80;
location / {
root /var/www;
index index.html;
}
location /.well-known/webfinger {
return 301 https://social.tthi.as$request_uri;
}
}
}
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>So far, so good. Nothing broken!</p>Matthias LiffersQuite a few years ago I met a travel agent whose email address was tr@vel.com.au.Contributing to science!2022-07-28T00:00:00+08:002022-07-28T00:00:00+08:00http://ma.tthi.as/blog/calcinus<p>I used to be in the habit of uploading my “good” shots to Flickr. Where possible, I’d include the Latin scientific name. I also slap on an open and permissive Creative Commons licence so that others can reuse my work in return for attributing me.</p>
<p>Some time ago I was asked if <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mpfl/16178957261/in/dateposted-public/">one of my photos</a> could be used in a scientific publication.</p>
<p>I’ve just received a notice from the author that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1590/2358-2936e2022014">the publication</a> (Poupin and Lemaitre, 2022) is now published - and is likewise openly licensed so I can see my photo in situ without paying a cent!</p>
<p>And it goes without saying that I should cite the article appropriately in my blog post.</p>
<h2 id="references">References</h2>
<p>Poupin, Joseph and Lemaitre, Rafael (2022) A new hermit crab of the genus Calcinus from Rapa Island, French Polynesia with affinities to Calcinus dapsiles Morgan, 1989 and Calcinus sirius Morgan, 1991 (Decapoda: Anomura: Diogenidae). Nauplius [online], v. 30 (Accessed 28 July 2022) , e2022014. Available from: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1590/2358-2936e2022014">https://doi.org/10.1590/2358-2936e2022014</a>. Epub 25 July 2022. ISSN 2358-2936.</p>Matthias LiffersI used to be in the habit of uploading my “good” shots to Flickr. Where possible, I’d include the Latin scientific name. I also slap on an open and permissive Creative Commons licence so that others can reuse my work in return for attributing me.Default Raspberry Pi OS password deprecated2022-07-16T00:00:00+08:002022-07-16T00:00:00+08:00http://ma.tthi.as/blog/rpi-os-security-changes<p>I just felt like I was beating my head against a brick wall for the past thirty minutes. I wanted to set up a headless Raspberry Pi with a fresh Raspberry Pi OS image and completely failed to SSH in with the time-honoured default username “pi” and password “raspberry”.</p>
<p>Trying to search for the issue was useless because of the eleventy million pages proudly stating that the default Raspberry Pi OS password was, indeed, “raspberry”.</p>
<p>Eventually, I found a <a href="https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-bullseye-update-april-2022/">news post from Raspberry Pi discussing changes to the default OS security</a>. I’m very happy that they’ve increased the default security, but it would have been lovely if they could have uploaded that information directly to my brain when it happened.</p>
<p>So from April 2022, you can use the <a href="https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/">Raspberry Pi Imager</a> to set up an account. At the same time you can add your WiFi defaults and localisation options.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/2022-07-16-rpi-imager-options.png" alt="Raspberry Pi Imager options" /></p>
<p>Hopefully blog posts like this will become the top result when people search for “raspberry pi default password”…</p>Matthias LiffersI just felt like I was beating my head against a brick wall for the past thirty minutes. I wanted to set up a headless Raspberry Pi with a fresh Raspberry Pi OS image and completely failed to SSH in with the time-honoured default username “pi” and password “raspberry”.Where have all the nudibranchs gone?2022-07-06T00:00:00+08:002022-07-06T00:00:00+08:00http://ma.tthi.as/blog/nudibranchs<p>I used to have a page dedicated to nudibranchs on my website.</p>
<p>I have since built a dedicate website: <a href="https://nudi.app/">nudi.app</a>. Check it out.</p>Matthias LiffersI used to have a page dedicated to nudibranchs on my website.