TJ's Blog

So you want to get around by bike...

Everything you've ever wanted to know about getting around your city by bike — especially how to get started.

Short & Sweet

Edit GoPro MAX Footage with Insta360 Studio

Learn how to edit your GoPro MAX's footage with Insta360 Studio so you can use its advanced features like Deep Track.

Home Automation

The Ultimate Guide to Local and Private Home Automation — Part 1: Foundations

The first in a series of posts about how to stand up your very own local and private home automation system using Home Assistant.

Home Automation

Adding PM2.5-based Indoor AQI to Home Assistant

Add indoor AQI to your Home Assistant instance with an existing PM2.5 sensor.

Short & Sweet

Bloom in Eevee with Transparency

There is a Blender bug which prevents bloom from being exported properly when transparency is enabled. Here's how to get around it.

Projects

Designing and Building a Custom Gamepad From Scratch

How I learned to design and build my very own custom arcade-style gamepad in just under a month, complete with custom hardware, software, and PCBs.

How to (Kinda) Download More RAM

That's right. Jest no more.

Home Automation

Making a Dumb Lock Smart with DIY Hardware and ESPHome

It turns out you *can* teach an old lock new tricks!

Home Automation

Unlock the Full Power of Cheap Smart Plugs with Tasmota

Learn how to install open source firmware on a cheap Emporia smart plug in order to unlock its full potential.

Workshops & Guides

Creating a Comprehensive Personal Backup Solution

Learn how to create a comprehensive backup solution for all your important stuff based on the 3-2-1 backup strategy.

Short & Sweet

Linux Fingerprint Authentication on ThinkPads

Learn how to enable fingerprint authentication on your ThinkPad with a Linux distro.

Short & Sweet

Custom Scripts for APC UPSes

Write scripts that react to events that happen on your APC UPS!

Life

Life After High School—What's Next?

Why I'm skipping college and diving into a job hunt right out of high school.

Short & Sweet

Switching to Ghost

If you've been here before, you probably noticed that things have changed. That's because this blog is now powered by Ghost! It's a very nice publishing platform that really beats writing Markdown for every post.

Projects

Hacking Chinese Drones for Fun and (No) Profit

Reverse engineering a WiFi-enabled Chinese drone to figure out how to control it from my own software.

Hacking

Hacking Voting Machines at DEF CON 25

Let's rig some elections.