Journal

There’s this Polish Aero2 mobile network provider that offers a free, unmetered 512 kbps data plan, which is perfect for use as a failover link for your home router/server. And while my rather obscure, $10 Huawei USB LTE modem works out-of-the-box with Linux and NetworkManager, I struggled for quite a while to get it running under the FreeBSD-based OPNsense firewall. Turns out the modem’s peculiarities required a deep dive into tracing USB communication and its protocols to eventually get it initialized with a one-line command sending a raw USB message to device.

I ran into an issue with my server where my Yamaha TSR-5810 (RX-V581) receiver connected to an Optoma projector would display a blank screen during the POST/BIOS phase. I immediately suspected that HP’s BIOS couldn’t handle the low resolution of 720x480 reported by the projector, with the main suspect being the vintage DisplayPort to HDMI 1080p converter I was using. The immeddiate diagnosis was that the HP’s BIOS couldn’t handle the low resolution of 720x480, as reported by the projector, and the main suspect was the vintage DisplayPort to HDMI 1080p converter I was using.

I wanted to include some on-scroll content transitions to blog posts on my Hugo-based website, which I was just finished porting over from the initial Wordpress + LayTheme design. Turns out it’s fairly easy using JavaScript’s IntersectionObserver API and some Hugo magic.

I bought a second-hand HP Z2 G9 W680 motherboard for less than 100 USD and within last 3 months had gained enough experience to share. Considering all other W680 motherboards cost upwards of USD 500 at this point, this turns out to be a fairly attractive solution to get a modern Intel system with low idle power consumption, PCIe Gen 5, and, most importantly, ECC memory support.