Author: be3n

I've been working with, playing with, thinking about, building, or demonstrating the wonders of technology for decades. I am a freelance consultant in Los Angeles supporting some of its most creative residents and businesses. This is a writing exercise and in truth I don't know if I will lean more toward the technical or the bizarre. Either way, expect to see some technical writing here in the near future. This is just a place for me to ramble, rant, rave, or reticulate. Got something to say about it? leave a comment.
art, Culture, Literature, movies

More photos from Stan Lee tribute

| be3n

Incredibly, we were provided with a seemingly endless supply of White Castle Burgers.  These delicious tiny devils were a delight. I ate too many. #noregrets
Stan Lee Tribute -White Castle Appetizers Abound

Amazing art was on display prominently featuring Stan. The honors kept coming.  The army provided a color guard with taps. Celebrity panels and pre-recorded messages from people across the spectrum of entertainment media.  Even the mayor of Los Angeles presented POW Entertainment with a specially produced key to the city.  The documentary and other videos offered incredible insight into the history of Stan and his many many creative endeavors. I probably watched 45 minutes of Stan Lee cameos.  In fact, I am grateful that I had watched Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse before coming to this event.  I teared up during Stan’s particularly moving cameo. I doubt it would have had the same impact seen out of context.  I met many incredible people. From fans to speakers and even the event staff were all comic (or comic based movie) lovers. This was an experience I will never forget.

Stan Lee Tribute - Stanverine art
Stan Lee Tribute - Celebrity Panel
Stan Lee Tribute - Seth Green and be3n

Culture, hardware, Media, retro, revolution, technology

Visiting iFixit and finally fixing my laptop!

| be3n

be3n at the iFixit set

I got the full tour, the place is amazing and far tidier then any workshop I have been in. They have pieces for nearly everything and almost everything in pieces. I got to try out their tools. I even touched their flame thrower!

iFixit’s Boring Conpany flame thrower

It turns out this little bugger was the cause of all my problems or at least my technical ones. Once I got this guy replaced, my 2011 MacBook Pro was back kicking ass. Thanks Daniel you are awesome!

MacBook Pro 13-Inch SATA cable

I brought this gift to show my appreciation, I hope you like it. It is TechStep diagnostic tool from Apple for testing and diagnosing vintage Macs. I don’t even remember what i traded it for nearly 20 years ago, but i never once used it. I hope you enjoy it and maybe even do something cool with it. I cannot wait to come back.

Apple TechStep Diagnostic Tool

Internet, Media, technology, Web

Pilgrimage to the Internet Archive

| be3n

Internet Archive

The offering I brought was nearly 100 lbs of technology from my childhood.  I met some amazing staff and volunteers (they even archive their employees). Even visited the blinking lights of their servers.  They archive even more then I knew.  More then web, old software and films, they even archive music and have an impressive collection (i found several rare or out of print artists and albums in their archive).

Amiga Offering to Internet Archive


Continue reading “Pilgrimage to the Internet Archive” →

hardware, Internet, Raspberry Pi, Software, technology

my Asterisk PBX is back!

| be3n

Google Voice Killed Asterisk SupportAfter Google killed XMPP support for Google Voice, I no longer had a house phone. I was using my Google Voice number as a home phone and for the gate info our building.  This lead to the whole system being ignored and neglected. By the time the SD card gave up the ghost, even the backups were in poor shape. I rebuilt the whole system fresh from the latest RasPBX dist and it’s working better then ever. Bought a real DID so i could continue to use Google Voice on our handsets at home. It’s great to have my Asterisk back.

Internet, Security, technology, Web, Wi-Fi

Hosted Unifi controller with Let’s Encrypt SSL take 2!

| be3n

Unifi Dashboard with SSL

UPDATE 11-09-21:  Discovered the amazing acme.sh tool!  check it out!

I visited this idea months ago, but for anyone who implemented it, it has been a nightmare.  Each subsequent Unifi controller update broke the https in new and exciting ways.  After remaining a very squeaky wheel with Ubiquity support, they’ve pushed out a version that should permanently resolve the problems. They even made promises of native Let’s Encrypt support.  All this will prove true of false with time, but for now i wanted to share my working procedure for Unifi controller version 5.9.32.

This solution required me to become more familiar with Java’s keytool then i would have otherwise.  Unifi has a hardcoded keytool path and password, don’t change that (thanks Corey F @ubnt). i don’t think alias matter, but they must be consistent.  I used mykey.  We start by generating a key and a code signing request for our domain.  For permissions reasons, we will want to do this as root. . .
cd /var/lib/unifi
keytool -genkeypair -alias mykey -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -keystore keystore -dname "CN=custom.domain.name" -storepass aircontrolenterprise

Now we export the csr file we will give to Let’s Encrypt.
keytool -certreq -alias mykey -keystore keystore -file custom.domain.name.csr -ext san=dns:custom.domain.name -storepass aircontrolenterprise

Now we run the interactive certbot script to prove the domain is actually yours before they hand out a cert.  Follow the instructions you can use DNS or hosting a file to verify.
certbot certonly --manual --csr custom.domain.name.csr

Continue reading “Hosted Unifi controller with Let’s Encrypt SSL take 2!” →