Matt Zaske Online Blog

Hotend Thermistor With A Silpat, Revisited

• December 04, 2023
• 3 minutes
• 3d printing, mistakes, tech

I decided to post a quick follow-up to the original fix I'd implemented about ten months ago.

The $1M question was...

Back to a Regular Schedule?

• November 27, 2023
• 5 minutes
• personal, tech

Man, it's embarrassing to see that I haven't published anything really technical (beyond my MMS Miami Beach recap) since the end of July...and before that anything on a regular schedule since April! Despite my best intentions, some aspects of life got complicated.

MMS Miami Beach Recap

• November 13, 2023
• 5 minutes
• inspiration, tech

I had the great honor and pleasure of being a speaker at MMS Miami Beach Edition at the end of October. It was the first speaking event I've had since 2019, largely due to the pandemic, and the experience was marvelous! The entire team behind MMS is outstanding, and their attention to detail really makes a difference in the experience both for attendees and speakers.

The Overall Experience

The speaker attire this edition was pretty rad: lots of flamingo gear!

Enabling Pi-hole DNS Across Multiple VLANs

• July 31, 2023
• 4 minutes
• automation, inspiration, tech

I recently (and finally) upgraded my home network to a UniFi system after years of consideration and an incorrect assumption it would cost a small fortune to enact. My existing "core" router was reaching the end of its normal life, though, and I wanted a real mesh network with better outdoor coverage instead of using the range extender during the "not winter" months and connecting to a different SSID.

Turn off the fan already! Tales of an automation modification

• July 10, 2023
• 5 minutes
• automation, home assistant, inspiration, tech

It's been a couple months since my last post, and while I had some things in the queue I have lacked time to finish them out due to MMS in early May, being involved in a community theatre production that just wrapped up a couple weeks ago, and for random reasons building a chicken coop of all things. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here's to a return of more regular posts, assuming I have adequate time to write and revise them!

Addressing Firmware Updates for Dell Latitude 54X0 in a Task Sequence

• April 24, 2023
• 8 minutes
• automation, inspiration, mistakes, powershell, security, tech

For about two years we fought with getting firmware (BIOS) updates to install on our Dell Latitude 54X0 models during their build/rebuild using a MEMCM task sequence. No matter what random trick I tried or thing I read, I just couldn't get the update executable to successfully apply the update in our primary build/refresh task sequence. Our techs (self included) would have to apply the update manually after devices were [re]built.

Semi-Automatically Offering Dell BIOS/Firmware Updates

• April 10, 2023
• 9 minutes
• automation, inspiration, powershell, security, tech

Several years ago I implemented a mechanism in our primary [re]build [Configuration Manager/MEMCM/SCCM] task sequence to address upgrades of our fleet's firmware (BIOS). On the whole, the process has worked very well and definitely helped keep things updated.

Creating a Reference Sensor Template in Home Assistant

• March 27, 2023
• 10 minutes
• automation, home assistant, inspiration, tech

It's been a while since I wrote about any Home Assistant stuff so I figured this was as a good time to write about something I'm super happy with: custom/reference sensor templates!

Going Dual Camera with OctoPrint

• March 13, 2023
• 6 minutes
• 3d printing, automation, inspiration, tech

Almost as soon as I started using OctoPrint, I also set up an old webcam to let me remotely "see" things since I keep the printer in the basement. That whole process was an adventure, because I don't use a Raspberry Pi for OctoPrint like most folks; I have an old Intel NUC (also used as a local dev server) running Ubuntu on which I installed OctoPrint.

Creating a Practical and Automatic Server and Data Backup Solution

• February 27, 2023
• 8 minutes
• automation, inspiration, personal, tech

If you had disk/storage failure (on any of your important devices/things/places), would you be "up the creek?"

For many folks, the answer to that question is "absolutely."

Upgrading All The Things to Ubuntu 22.04

• February 13, 2023
• 5 minutes
• inspiration, mistakes, php, security, tech

One of my "winter break" projects this year was to get all of my disparate Ubuntu server instances upgraded and into parity. Last year I wrote about my adventure moving WSL Ubuntu from 18.04 to 20.04, which happened before 22.04 was officially released.

Mister Thermistor, Fixed With a Silpat

• January 30, 2023
• 8 minutes
• 3d printing, inspiration, mistakes, personal, tech

I got hooked into 3D printing late last summer. A problem that cropped up after the first couple months of tinkering and relatively error-less printing was an issue with thermal runaway. Something I could correct for short periods of time, but never make totally go away...

Powershell String Manipulation - A One-Liner

• January 16, 2023
• 4 minutes
• inspiration, personal, powershell, tech

See also: asking a friend for help can save oodles of time and effort.

Around Thanksgiving 2022, an friend of mine asked to talk through a problem he thought might be solvable with Powershell, but he'd been stuck on the design. Naturally, I agreed to help out if/where I could and it provided an opportunity to chat via Zoom which I am not one to turn down.

Smart Independent Control of a Ceiling Fan & Light with Shelly 1L

• October 24, 2022
• 6 minutes
• automation, home assistant, inspiration, personal, tech

As I've noted before, my 1940's-era house has its own quirks with regard to smart home automation in large part due to 1940's wiring standards.

Smart Control of a 1940's Three-Way Switch with Shelly 1L

• September 26, 2022
• 8 minutes
• automation, home assistant, inspiration, personal, tech

Once I settled on jumping into home automation and Home Assistant (HA), the first "practical" thing I wanted to address was the issue of lights being left on at random throughout the house.

Jumping into Home Assistant: The Installation (and Hiccup) Process

• September 12, 2022
• 6 minutes
• automation, home assistant, inspiration, personal, tech

About a month ago, I took the plunge.

After considering it for a long time and hearing about some cool stuff folks were doing with home automation, I decided it was time to start my own dabbling adventure. A warning to folks: home automation is a little bit like owning horses. There can be a bunch of expense in the process for little obvious reward.

Adding Push Notifications to the Tempest WeatherBot

• August 22, 2022
• 7 minutes
• automation, bots, inspiration, php, tech, weather

This is the "final" installment of my summer 2022 blog series about the development of my Slack Tempest WeatherBot.

Adding External Data to the Tempest WeatherBot

• August 08, 2022
• 5 minutes
• automation, bots, inspiration, php, tech, weather

This is the third in the short series of my journey building the Slack Tempest WeatherBot. In this post I'm walking through the steps to incorporate external data from the National Weather Service (NWS) API for alerts and forecast options.

Expanding Interactivity with the Tempest WeatherBot

• July 25, 2022
• 5 minutes
• automation, bots, inspiration, php, tech, weather

In the last post I wrote about the basics of building the Slack Tempest WeatherBot and its basic set of command arguments. This post builds on those commands with an overview of expanding the Slack interactivity by adding a bot app home tab.

Creating a Slack Bot for Tempest Weather Station

• July 11, 2022
• 5 minutes
• automation, bots, inspiration, php, tech, weather

In summer 2020, I picked up a WeatherFlow Tempest station...a purchase I'd been considering for the better part of a year. It's an awesome and compact little thing, and on the whole I've been super happy with it. In my location it tends to over-report rainfall as the haptic rain sensor is also sensitive to vibrations on the mounting point (a pole in my yard).

DMARC: Moving to a Monitor-As-Necessary State

• June 27, 2022
• 3 minutes
• inspiration, security, tech

After a year-and-a-half of implementation (mostly monitoring), it is time to switch to a 'steady' or 'monitor-as-necessary state' for all of my things DMARC. I've written about this journey before, with the last major summary in November, 2021.

Upgrading an Old Application to 21st Century Passwords

• June 13, 2022
• 7 minutes
• automation, inspiration, mistakes, php, security, tech

I have a confession to make: I've ignored a Really Bad Password Form on an inherited web application for about at least a decade too long.

I'm not proud, but every time I considered changing the password mechanism to something more modern (and more secure), decision paralysis would set in...in great part due to the design challenges I anticipated in quietly upgrading this for users of the app in question.

An MMS 2022 Recap

• May 23, 2022
• 4 minutes
• inspiration, tech

Two weeks out from the last MMSMOA and the technical overload hangover lingers on...but in a Good Way. This post isn't terribly original, but it's my own highlights/recap/pitch of MMS.

The MMSMOA Retweet Bot in Action

• May 09, 2022
• 8 minutes
• automation, bots, inspiration, php, tech, website

Hot on the heels of last week's triumphant return of the "MOA" edition of MMS, I'm writing up a post-conference review of my somewhat-accidental creation: the MMSMOA Retweet Bot.

I shared the bot's story with a number of folks during the conference, often while peddling the bot's stickers, but several folks also encouraged me to share the details via blog post as well so here it is!

In-Place Upgrade of WSL Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04

• April 25, 2022
• 5 minutes
• inspiration, mistakes, php, security, tech

About two months back (early March to be exact), I had the opportunity to finally deprecate some old versions of applications and packages due to planned retirements and upgrades. Most specifically a full-on move to PHP 7.4 was in sight, though there were other bits.