New Orleans Rapper Dee-1 Raps About Personal Finance
Despite being a millionaire Dee-1 still drives the same car, his old 1998 Honda Accord with 300,000 miles on it.
Simulate Sunrise With WiFi Bulb and Home-Assistant
Living up North in the Winter we have long hours of darkness because of the earth’s tilt away from the sun. This means getting up before the sun rises, and it’s a bit annoying to be jolted awake at 6:00am by an alarm when it’s pitch black outside. Or if I wake up before … Read more
Wireless APs and Switches | UniFi
When all of your network devices lose access to the internet all at the same time regularly throughout the day, there is not much to blame other than a bad network cable to your Wireless Access Point (AP), or the Access Point itself. It wasn’t the cable. My old Cisco-Linksys E3000’s days were numbered. Skype … Read more
DNS Hijacked? Slow? Setup Unbound on pfSense
Why Is It Slow? When you request a website, say, b3n.org, your computer needs the IP address. So it sends out packets through your router/firewall, your modem, and out to your ISPs DNS Servers. Your ISP’s DNS server will probably have it cached, if not it queries the authoritative (starting with the Root Name Servers) … Read more
$5 DigitalOcean, Vultr & Lightsail Benchmarks
Amazon Lightsail has entered the VPS market, competing directly with DigitalOcean and Vultr. I for one welcome more competition in the $5 cloud server space. I wanted to see how they perform so I spun up 24 cloud servers, 8 for each provider and ran some benchmarks. $5 Cloud Server Providers Compared DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Amazon … Read more
Best Gifts for Computer Hackers 2016
Looking for a Christmas gift idea for your computer geek? Here’s a short gift guide with a few ideas I think would make great gifts. Unlike a lot of other top gift idea lists written by non-tech people just to make a sale, I’m actually a developer and these are the sort of things that … Read more
Eli Playing Chess
Magnus Carlsen is the best chess player in the world. And I’m going to beat him. – Elijah Bryan
Is Your WiFi Unstable?
The most Frequently Asked Question from my Family, Friends, and FOAFs… Laptop Buyer: What Kind of Laptop Should I buy? Ben: Get one with an Intel Wireless card WiFi Cards Matter The first piece of advice I have is make sure your wireless card is made by Intel. Do not get anything else. You might … Read more
499th Reformation Day Trivia
This October 31st, 2016, is the 499th Reformation Day, alongside All Hallow’s Eve (or Halloween). We owe much to the reformers. Many were involved, most notably Ulrich Zwingli and later John Calvin, but Martin Luther is said to have started the Reformation by posting the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. … Read more
Ben’s Phone Guide (2016 edition)
Phones depreciate in value fast, their useful life is less than their lifespan. Not because old phones don’t work anymore. But because manufacturers stop providing security updates after about 3 years (at best!) What If I Told You a Hacker Can Take over Your Phone with One Text… And You Don’t Even Have to Open … Read more