metaruss

A few weeks ago, I started looking into what it would take to convert this WordPress-based site back into a static site using a static site generator. My main motivation was to end the update treadmill, constant security threats, and the fire hose of comment spam unless I also pay for Akismet. I post to my site in bursts and it can go years without any updates. This does not mesh well with WordPress. Although it can auto-update itself, the plugins need constant attention. I’ve had two security incidents, one where I had to restore from backups. Then there is the inevitable bit-rot that happens with abandoned plugins and my customized theme as major WordPress versions are released. The site is in need of a re-theme, but I’d rather do it once and be done.

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One particular part has always been a problem in the after market for these: power steering racks.  Parts stores have always done a poor job of keeping track of the different types and their applications (Rock Auto is no exception).  For the mid-late 80’s and early 90’s L and K-based stuff, this has been my understanding: there were two main manufacturers: Saginaw and TRW, each having a few variants (different turn ratios, valving, and stops).  These are some that I personally know about for K-based cars:

• Saginaw
  • 3.18 turns, standard feel
  • 2.50 turns, firm feel
• TRW
  • 3.25 turns, standard feel
  • 2.50 turns, firm feel
  • 2.06 turns, firm feel with larger turn radius to prevent wheels from hitting fenders

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It is starting to become a little tricky to find certain parts for these cars and the overall quality has been in decline for a long time.  While Chrysler’s parts-bin approach has been helpful to keep the unique part numbers for major components down, we are still talking about 30-40 year old cars at this point.  The market is drying up, so it makes sense.  I’ve been collecting various parts that I know I’ll need to get the CSX back into shape and I’ve noticed some things.  I’ll keep updating this as I find new details, as it’s mostly for my own posterity anyway (the Internet of olde is dead).  Let the parts hoarding commence!

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The CSX, which has been slumbering in the garage for the past dozen or so years, was slowly entombed in boxes of stuff and donations and whatnot.  I recently cleaned most of that out with the goal of getting the CSX up and running again.  It needs body work and while I have everything I need to fix it, I intend to just bite the bullet and pay a shop to finish it properly for me.  Despite my best efforts on Frankentona, I know I lack the skills and facilities to do a proper paint job in my garage.  I’m not looking for a concourse finish, just something durable that looks roughly stock and will polish up nice.

The motor is a bit of a hodge-podge right now.  I threw this car back together with whatever I had lying around about 12 years ago, as we had sold our house unexpectedly quickly and I had to clear out and pack the garage.  I don’t remember what head is on it, what turbo, what cal, what injectors, what clutch, etc.  I do I know the trans is an A555 with an OBX and the axles are Diriveshaft Shop.  I kept the motor and trans from the Daytona before I sold it, so I will definitely be using the bottom end from that.

Anyway, I swapped out the decade-old gasoline from the tank, put a new battery in it and it fired right up.  No drama.

So I finally bit the bullet and stood-up a MythTV front end on this Raspberry Pi 4 that had been hanging around the office for years.  I had back-ordered one during the post-COVID supply chain crunch and it turned up many months (possibly more than a year) later, but I hadn’t had the motivation to tackle the project.  The Raspberry 5 announcement reminded me, so I ordered one and decided to try to get Myth working on the RP4 to start.  There are some issues with the decoder and graphics software stacks on the RP5 at the moment, but I knew the RP4 would work.

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I’ve been using MythTV for more than two decades now.  I have separate front and back ends, as I’ve always had some sort of server running in the basement that is on all the time.  Our first front end was an original Xbox with a Cromwell BIOS running Xebian.  It was just powerful enough to do the job at standard definition and we already had the DVD remote accessory, so it was the perfect choice.  The Xebian project was eventually abandoned and despite my efforts to keep Debian on the Xbox going, software bloat made the experience rather sluggish.  A VIA EPIA M10000 Mini-ITX system took its place in our living room, while the Xbox moved into our bedroom.  We used the EPIA for many years until the capacitors started to fail.

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I recently switched back to Cinnamon from MATE on one of my machines and found I needed to reapply this patch again.  I’ve updated it a bit to support all three modes of operation (workspace desktop preview, workspace labels, and the original useless numbers), selectable from the configuration dialog.  You can also specify the button width in label mode, which can be nice if you want control over the aesthetics.

This patch works for version 6.x of cinnamon:

• workspace-switcher@cinnamon.org.v6.patch

Download it and apply it thusly on a Debian-based system:

$ cd /usr/share/cinnamon/applets/workspace-switcher@cinnamon.org
$ sudo patch -p1 < ~/Downloads/workspace-switcher@cinnamon.org.v6.patch
patching file applet.js
patching file settings-schema.json
$

Then restart cinnamon with Alt+F2 and then “r” and enter.

This is a brain-dump of what I ended up doing to setup an “Eaglercraft Server”.  I’ve been running small Minecraft servers since around 2011.  It was just for myself and a few of my work colleagues.  I enjoyed experiencing MC coming out of beta and eventually growing up.  We ended up with two servers, the original that started in Beta1.3 became a creative server and a “newer” 1.4 server running in survival mode.  Over time, I eventually lost interest in the game but left the servers running.  Like so many kids over the past decade or so, mine inevitably got into MC in a big way and still spend time on the old servers with their friends from time to time.  I also stood up a third server for them to have a fresh start, since the old worlds are massive and had been generated using such old versions (there are some pretty weird chunk transitions in places).  One day, my youngest asked me if I could help him setup an “Eaglercraft Server”.  Boy, what a rabbit hole that turned out to be…

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Wow, so it’s been almost a decade since I last posted here.  I’ve switched hosting situations multiple times in the intervening years and this site has suffered its fair share of bit-rot along the way.  I actually took it down at one point, as I assumed no one would notice.  It turns out there are a number of forums and whatnot that direct links to files in here, so I brought it back after receiving some frantic emails.  WordPress was hopelessly out of date and when I jumped to the latest release, it broke this ancient theme, a number of plugins, and there were also some problems with the DB due to its age (using a very old storage engine).  I thought all was lost, but I somehow got it going again.  I’m sticking to my guns on this highly dated-looking theme and I absolutely hate the new WordPress editor, but I found this plugin called “Classic Editor” that has saved the day.

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I am documenting here, for posterity, my journey while trying to maintain support for the Adesso Vista MCE remote control on my MythTV front ends.  Yes, I still use Myth and I believe I have had a backend running continuously since 2004, possibly earlier.  I’ve had plenty of misadventures with it over the years, but the one thorn that has always been in my side is IR remote control support.  In the early days, this was pretty clumsy as it required the use of LIRC: an out-of-tree set of drivers to support IR receivers through a serial interface.  I would usually use it with some generic universal remote control or a remote that came with a video capture card.  Once it was working, it usually worked fine for a while.  However when it came time to perform an OS upgrade, the remote would always be broken because of issues between LIRC and the kernel.  LIRC went through several generations of config changes as well, so my painstakingly-created lircrc would often not work even when I managed to get LIRC itself working.  Eventually I threw in the towel and bought a bespoke MCE remote that was supposed to “just work”.  There were a number of these available that were designed to work with Windows Media Center.  I chose…poorly.

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