For Windows 7, this turned out to be pretty easy to do via PowerShell. I just had to look for a native image resizing library since the lock screen for some odd reason, only supports JPEGs up to 256KB in size. Probably one of those legacy items left over from NT, like the file system permissions dialogs, and the built-in environment variables editor… I ended up using WIA’s ImageProcess COM library which worked surprisingly well.

I noticed during the (many) meetings I attend that disconnecting and reconnecting my laptop from the dock reorganizes all my windows to the laptop’s display. This got annoying to have to drag and resize everything when returning to my desk, which has a 3 monitor setup. So, I wrote this small Win32 application to allow you to save the positioning and size of all windows and then restore them at a later time.

A somewhat local place had a surprise dyno day so I went to try and tune my car a bit. Was somewhat successful, reaching 405 HP and 420 Ft-lbs. before giving up. I was hoping for 450 HP, as my turbo and injectors should be able to support it easily, but oh well. I couldn’t get past ~14psi or so. But I kept experiencing some spark blow-out and had a rear main leak, so I decided to cut it short.

I hadn’t updated my Raspberry Pi (a B+ model for my rpi-drd project) in about a year. Pacman -Syu kept complaining about being unable to find files on any of the mirrors. So I, without thinking, ran reflector on an x86 host and copied it over. Oops. Now it definitely can’t find packages. The archlinuxarm.org website gave me the hostname I needed, but not the entire URL. Put this in your mirrorlist (as the sole entry) to restore functionality:

Surprise, surprise, my old favorite Gentoo Linux is now running on a Tesla Model S. Hope he doesn’t emerge world while driving.

This was the hardest part. If you wire the wrong things together you can brick your Pi. I took some time to decide on which pins to use, and after assembly and testing everything worked. I’ll explain which pins I picked, but note that this information will not work with other hardware configurations.[I originally had a Model B Pi, but due to needing the second hardware PWM (which is hidden on the B), switched to the B+.

I have DCS World, and whenever I get a new module I like to try and “just fly the thing” with minimal cockpit familiarity. I always expect hilarity to ensue but it’s really not that exciting. Like with the Ka-50 I just crashed with in-air starts, and could never get it off the ground with a cold start (until I read the operating manual). But helicopters are hard, so that’s not a surprise.

Got a new oxygen sensor installed, tuned it a bit, and went to an autocross in my 280Z a couple weeks ago. I was third in my class! Out of three, though. So last. Still, the real victory is that my car made it there, ran, started and restarted fine, and then made it back home. I also got to try my slicks out for the first time, and man, they make the car much more predictable.

I added an update to msqur today. Just a small update to the landing page since it was kind of blank. Moved the settings icon to the view page instead of every page. Also fixed the readme and license files for formatting. I get a lot of hits from Russia on that site. Actually, I get a lot of hits from Russia on all my sites. I imagine most of them are bots probing for weaknesses.

It’s been a while since I’ve worked on my Z. I’ve been working on rebuilding my wife’s 300ZX, which is progressing slowly. My Z had a dead oxygen sensor and was not tuned correctly. It also had a fuel leak. But last week I fixed both of those issues and now it runs like a champ. I then leaned out the fuel table by about 25% (I had richened it up when the sensor died to be safe).