Soarer's Converter

Yesterday, I purchased an ATmega32U4 to build Soarer's converter for my IBM M Keyboard. I'll be mostly following this guide to do the conversion, as Soarer used a Teensy 2.0 in his original design, and this guide uses the same one I've ordered. I'm still debating on whether to do the conversion internally or externally. If I do it externally, I'll likely get a low-profile case that I can attach to the keyboard where the Num, Caps, and Scroll lock LEDs would normally be so that I can add those. I'll also likely either map some of the extra keys, or use optional external buttons, to quickly remap the keyboard for Linux, Windows, and Mac usage, and possibly emulator usage as well. I'd love to dye the keycaps black and paint the frame black as well, but I'm not sure how to re-do the lettering on the keys without them completely wearing out. Unicomp has some cool keycaps, but nothing in black and, sadly, it appears the largest set the sell is 104 keys, and there are no 122-key sets.

Yamaha Heritage Classic?

Some years ago, I owned what I thought was a 1982 Yamaha Heritage Classic, which had a 650cc engine and was an absolutely beautiful bike. It was really heavy for its size, and was the perfect height for my 5'6" frame. I got rid of it a LONG time ago, but recently started thinking about getting another motorcycle. When I Google "Yamaha Heritage Classic," I get results for "Yamaha Heritage Special" instead. I'm not sure if I'm mis-remembering the name of the motorcycle I owned, or if it's just a rare beast and my Google-fu simple isn't strong enough. The Heritage Special looks quite a bit like my old bike, but it's hard to say because the seat had been replaced on mine with something completely different from stock long before I owned it. I'll be keeping an eye out, for either. If any of my readers run across a reasonably priced one within a few hours driving distance of central Ohio, let me know...

IBM M Keyboard

A couple weeks ago, I managed to snag the holy grail of computer keyboards off of eBay, an IBM M keyboard, for a really good price. What I didn't realize is that there are so many different versions of it ;) The one I wound up with is the 122 key terminal keyboard with a 5 pin DIN connector. Except the DIN connector isn't the same as the PC/XT/AT connector. The pins are spaced further apart and have a different layout. The good news is the these keyboards have a header connector inside them for the cable, so it's easily replaced. The bad news is that when connected to a PC with a replacement cable (or adapter) they act as an 84 key keyboard, wasting all those extra keys. But there's an adapter that I can build to use it with USB, allowing me to map all those extra keys. I can build this adapter externally, or mount it inside the keyboard itself. Alternatively, I can build something similar using a Pi Zero, putting an entire PC inside the keyboard. I think I like the idea of the external adapter better, though, as is allows me to add Num, Caps, and Scroll Lock LEDs, which this version of the keyboard lacks, and also allows up to five external buttons as well.

ssl

I've re-enabled SSL for the site by using Cloudflare's services. Unless your DNS is stale, like mine is, you should be seeing https in the address and a lock in your browser. :)

Site registration

It appears that site registration is mostly broken.

I discovered that the site wasn't sending activation emails, so I found a plugin to bypass that and automatically register new accounts. It partially works in Chrome, but only returns a blank page once the account is created. During troubleshooting, I discovered that other browsers give a javascript and cookie error when trying to register, even when they are enabled in your browser. This error is caused by an anti-spam plugin I'm running, which I have temporarily disabled. Now, the other browsers behave the same as Chrome did. If you create an account, just go back to the main page after the blank page appears, and log in using the new account credentials. I will keep an eye out on spam and may have to re-enable the anti-spam plugin (or find a new one) if this becomes a problem again. I will try to track down the bug with the new plugin. It hasn't been updated in quite some time, after all.

edit: Partially resolved. The system now proceeds to the page that says the activation email has been sent, even though activation is not needed. You can click Log in and proceed from there.

edit2: Resolved! There's a "redirect" option in the plugin, which I sent back to the main page. The original problem turned out to be with the Gmail SMTP plugin I was using for outbound e-mail. Turns out something had happened, and it was failing authentication. I disabled it (for now), so site-wide e-mail is currently not working. Any password resets will need done manually until I get it working again ;)

edit3: site-wide email should work again as well :)

CoCo

After a looong amount of downtime, I've resurrected my old CoCo page, including my old CoCo Serial# Database. The database likely needs an update... Maybe move it from a flat file to a MySQL database, and make the entries easily editable.

Letsencrypt

Does anyone know how to get Letsencrypt working with U Host Full? I moved the website over, as my poor little netbook just couldn't keep up, and it just fails when verifying ownership. Unfortunately, I can't use DNS to verify the domain, as I can't add TXT records. If I could, this would be a non-issue.

edit: It appears that it's getting an error: 403 - Access Forbidden. When I visit the URL to validate ownership, it displays fine. When I use wget to access the same URL, I get the Access Denied error. And if I debug the letsencrypt client, it actually shows a bunch of headers that I don't see when accessing it myself. Go figure.

edit2: It looks like U Host Full doesn't like the user agent that wget or Letsencrypt sends be default. Changing it for wget to just "firefox" does the trick, even though "firefox" by itself isn't a valid user agent. I think I can change the client reported by Letsencrypt as well, so I should have ssl enabled soon.

edit3: wget issue resolved, but U Host Full is serving up some javascript to Letsencrypt for some reason. Trying to figure that out.

edit4: The javascript that's being served up is some anti-bot measure that U Host Full has in place. It's also blocking validation for a couple other things I'm working on :/ I've opened a ticket with them, but it looks like I may be looking for a different hosting provider again. Granted, I'm using their free hosting plan, but I don't mind upgrading to their premium hosting, but not unless they prove their serious about securing the web by allowing it to work on their free plans.