PiHole System v2.0

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So I’ve noticed the PiHole being a little bogged down as of late. I’m only running it on a Raspberry Pi 3b+ at the moment so I know I am a little limited as to the performance…but as I have a couple of background projects I want to tackle this year, I thought I would take the oppotunity to replace the SD card with an NVME SSD drive (only about 5000 times faster).

Overall it was a pretty painless process…the big part was realizing that it takes 5-10 seconds for the USB to recognize the booth drive…but then it’s *BOOM* and we are back up and running almost instantly (pretty impressive actually).

The drive went together without a hitch, and was recognized and everything…but then…ROADBLOCK.

I boot off of an SD card…how do I image that to the NVME drive?

Thankfully someone else ran into this same issue and wrote a script/small app to resolve this very issue…and DAMN is it easy and impressive. With a small installation and a simple command of…

$ rpi-clone sda

I was up and running with no issues!

================================================================

Mad props to https://github.com/billw2/rpi-clone

On a Raspberry Pi:

	$ git clone https://github.com/billw2/rpi-clone.git 
	$ cd rpi-clone
	$ sudo cp rpi-clone rpi-clone-setup /usr/local/sbin

Make sure /usr/local/sbin is in your $PATH and then run rpi-clone or rpi-clone-setup with no args to print usage.

rpi-clone-setup is for setting the hostname in /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts files. It is run automatically by rpi-clone if -s args are given, but before your first clone using a -s option, test run rpi-clone-setup with:

      $ sudo rpi-clone-setup -t testhostname

And check the files under /tmp/clone-test to be sure the files have been edited correctly. If you need additional customizations to a clone, add them to the rpi-clone-setup script.

Boba Fett is BACK!

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I have no words.

40 years ago we were introduced to Boba Fett. He had all of 4 lines in the entire movie…

  • “As you wish.” – Boba Fett to: Vader
  • “What if he doesn’t survive? He’s worth a lot to me.” – Boba Fett re: Han Solo
  • “He’s no good to me dead.” – Boba Fett
  • “Put Captain Solo in the cargo hold.” – Boba Fett

But…he was the fiercest, most badass bounty hunter in the galaxy when it came to the books and comics…and EVERY kid wanted to be Boba Fett when we ran around and played Star Wars.

Flash forward 40 years, and we have a grizzled and scarred up Boba Fett that somehow escaped the sarlacc pit. Has he spent all this time on Tattooine? We have questions!

Regardless, he’s seemingly faster, stronger and tougher than we have ever seen in a movie. He fights off TWO squads of stormtroopers almost single-handedly…and that’s without his armor. It’s when he spots his armor in the Razorcrest that things get interesting…it’s like a switch goes off and Badass Ultimate Warrior Boba Fett is activated and we finally see his glory unleashed on our high-definition 4k television sets.

Like many of us, 40 years has taken its toll. He’s battered, beat up, but still has some serious fight in him.

I’d argue that he’s probably scarier now than he ever was.

Raspbian Commands – RFKILL

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RFKILL is a handy tool to hard disable wireless and bluetooth from Raspbian devices like a pi. Unlike other command line tools, this is persistant meaning that it will survive reboots until it is unblocked.

sudo rfkill block wifi
sudo rfkill block bluetooth

to undo…

sudo rfkill unblock wifi
sudo rfkill unblock bluetooth

Crazy Hot Chicken Chili

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So last week we brought home some canned Ancho chilis. We had never cooked with them before, and thought we would cool chili with them…only to discover they are stupid hot.

So I waited a week…and until the wife was out of the house to do it.

Step 1. lightly oil a frying pan

Step 2. chop up 2 white onions

Step 3. add 1 1/2 tbsp of garlic

Step 4. fry them until the onions are lightly see through and then add a 28oz can of Ancho chilis cook for approx 5 min(apparently the heat opens up the chilis oil)

Step 5. use a blender and blend them together until they are a puree

Step 6. add a 28oz can of chopped tomatos to blender and mix in with the chili

Step 7. next add / mix in

2 tsp cumin

1/2 tbsp chipotle

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tbsp chili powder (you can probably skip this)

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups sour cream (NOTE: if you want it crazy hot…cut this to 1/4 cup of sour cream)

Step 8. pour contents of blender into a large pot, and add two 12oz cans of kidney beans and 1 cup of frozen corn.

Step 9. in another pan lightly brown chicken cut into 1/2 inch blocks and then add to chili mixture

Step 10. let it simmer on low/medium heat for 1 hour

It’s tasty…but will open pores and nasal passages shortly thereafter.

Amazon Alexa – Announce Feature (How to exclude a device from an announcement)

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This took a few minutes to figure out.

Basically you are making a standard timed announcement…but FIRST you need to set the Do Not Disturb flag to the Amazon Echo device (or devices) that you want to ignore.

In this example, I want to set up a bedtime alert for each kid. Before 10pm it’s perfectly fine to make an announcement on every device, but once 10pm rolls around, I want to make sure that my wife’s sleep isn’t disrupted in the bedroom. This means removing our Echo from the Announce listing…except that it’s not really an option.

So first, I set the Do Not Disturb flag for the Amazon FireStick TV and Amazon Echo that are in the master bedroom for a duration of 1 minute.

Then I have it play the required announcement. Confirmed, nothing plays in the master bedroom for 1 minute.

Once the 1 minute is up…I can send any required notifications to all devices as normal.

This is the way – The Mandalorian S2E01

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*** SPOILERS ***

OMG OMG OMG, The Mandalorian is such an amazing series. It’s hard to belive that it’s been almost a year since we’ve received a new episode…but here it was…and BOOM right out of the gate we get another 10/10 episode.

*** SPOILERS ***

Today we were gifted the Star Wards trifecta..in ONE episode of The Mandalorian. As I just told my wife…I’m screaming with happiness inside. There are literally fireworks in my head.

Growing up and moving around so much, I really attached myself to reading. The Star Wars books were my thing, the comics were my tomes. I am literally SCREAMING inside wanting to tell everyone about this episode.

I can’t…because…

So episode review…

  1. We return to Tattooine and get the classic “starship flying by a bantha”
  2. Peli Motto has R5 aka “RED” (R5D4). The droid that had it’s motivator malfunction (or if you read the books…you know it did this on purpose). It still bears the scars from it’s experience (ref.book->From a Certain Point of View).
  3. We meet “The Marshall” (Cobb Vanth), and get a backstory that “kind of” matches what has already been written (ref. book -> Aftermath). We also learn how he came across the armor of Boba Fett.
  4. We finally see a Krayt Dragon (no relation to the planet Crait), what I can only imagine is (thus far at least) the biggest and scariest monster in Star Wars (at least to date). How scary? We learn that they eat Sarlacc’s.
  5. The “Sand People” are back. I love that they have a relationship with Din Djarin that they seem to have with no one else.
  6. Anytime we see a Mandalorian I get giddy, but to see them in action…it always an awesome episode…to watch the Sand People, the Mandalorian, The Marshall and the village work together was pretty awesome.

BUT THEN…there was the ending.

Stick around for the final 2 minutes…and you’ll see that they are being watched by a very scarred Temuera Morrison…the actor that played Jango Fett in the prequels. We know that Jango is dead…and the only other clone that could be on Tattoine would be BOBA FETT.

That’s right. We just learned that after 30 years of hoping…Boba Fett is alive and well. That we saw him at the end, and we haven’t see Jin Djarin leave the planet yet…makes me wonder if Boba Fett will make an attempt to recover his armor in the next episode?

Time will indeed tell.

…and now the news.

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Perhaps something to think about.

What source of news is actually legitimate anymore? With companies like the CBC and CNN sitting so far “left”, and other outlets like FOX sitting so far “right”. When there are only the extremes…it would make sense that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

So…who covers the middle. Who covers, and provides the truth?

If we as a society can’t figure that out….How can a “news aggregator company” like Facebook, Twitter, or Google source legitimate news without being politically unbiased.

I don’t think it’s possible.

Raspberry PI – Wireless Scanning

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We stepped up to a wireless mesh network at the house this weekend. We’ve been having a lot of weird wireless issues in the last week or so…so we updated our old Linksys routers to a new wireless mesh.

Switching wireless id’s wasn’t the end of the world…I thought it would be a bigger pain in the butt…but it’s really not that terrible. Most applications have a method to be able to switch the wireless network they connect to “fairly painlessly”. Even the Ring doorbell (which has 2 extra steps) wasn’t terrible.

I did want to try and figure out how to wirelessly scan and confirm which networks the pi’s were on as they serve a couple of purposes for us.

wgetid will show you the network the pi is connected to.

sudo iwlist wlan0 scan | egrep “Cell|ESSID|Signal|Rates” will provide a quick wireless scan and show you the strength and rates available.

Playing with Amazon Lightsail

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I’ve discovered PLESK can be used right out of the game with an Amazon Lightsail instance to basically do what I am doing now with my hosting service to control multiple domains, etc. I just have to figure out what sort of bandwidth is being used so I can try and determine if it’s a better deal for us or not.

We bought a Traeger

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Rachel and I have been talking for the past few years about “getting a smoker”. With some many things going on, and such busy lives, it never seemed like the right time to do it…until now.

What else are we doing? Why not learn to do it right when we have nothing else to do?

So I returned to my “research phase” of smokers. I contacted the people that I know that have used smokers for years, as well as a couple of people that are new to it. The idea was to determine the pros and cons from people of varying experience levels so that I can go into this with as much knowledge as possible. The results determined that we should spend the money on a good unit, and not to buy one that’s too small (we might regret it).

There’s a lot to learn about smokers, and unlike BBQ’s the shapes and sizes really are a lot different.

There are vertical and offside style smokers. The offside style smokers tend to use wood pellets for fuel and smoke, while the vertical units seem to use more electric and propane usage.

Interestingly I kept reading that the vertical units might have a better heat range and moisture control…but I was really more interested in the offside smokers and their usage of pellets for smoke flavor.

After hearing about how you can’t go wrong with Traeger, and the amazing app they have (so amazing that other smoker brands recommend it). Then hearing how well built they are…I had to check them out…so I went and took a look at them over at Strodes Deli & BBQ in Brantford.

The very first determination was that the model we were looking at was smaller than I initially thought we would want…so we went a little bigger for our first unit. Our purchase wasn’t determined by “features” per se, but by the size of the smoking area.

Ultimately we settled on a Traeger Pro 575.

I would consider this to be a medium sized smoker, and as advertised…it fired right up and just did what it was supposed to do. The initial fire up was perfect with no issues, and and hour and a bit later we were good to start putting food on it.

Which is when I ran into a small issue with connecting the app to my grill and my wireless network. Yes…it’s actually a feature.

(warning IT speak to follow)

There are lots of people complaining about this one, and having gone through the same thing I think I’m able to explain it a little better now. So if you buy a Traeger grill that allows you to connect to your wifi (and you are having issues)…here’s what you’ll need in order to set it up successfully.

  1. a wireless G network running 2.4ghz
  2. a visible wireless name (no ssid hiding)
  3. a password to connect to your wireless
  4. an ios or google device with the Trager app loaded

When you open the app you’ll click to connect to your grill. It will ask you which wireless network you want to connect to which is where lots of people (including myself initially) get thrown off.

Accept the message that pops up, so that the grill will connect to your phone directly.

Think of it this way….the wireless unit on the grill doesn’t have a way for you to connect to your wireless network from the grill, so it connects to your phone. When you enter the information on your phone, you are likely creating a small file that the phone will then hand off to your grill (which will give it the login / password to connect to your network)…this is why the very first step is to connect from your phone directly to the grill.

When it gets to the next step…move indoors away from your grill and closer to your wireless network. This lets you phone get a stronger wireless signal for the first step…a firmware update.

I can’t belive there are firmware updates for a smoker…but there are. This will take approximately 5 minutes, but once it’s over…you can rename your smoker to a more civil name and then you are complete.

The Traeger is definitely a solid unit, although others will have more accessories that will come with them. It’s one of those items that I feel like the name is worth paying the extra little bit for.

Update April 27th,2020

I’m not even kidding with this one…but you can connect the Traeger 575 to your Alexa app so that you can control the temperature and get temperature updates with your voice. I’m NOT going to do this as the app works fine for me…but it’s hilarious to think that at some point down the road we can ask Alexa to fire up the grill and tell me when it’s ready to start cooking.