Over a year ago I got an Arduino Uno and a CAN-BUS Shield to try and make some kind of datalogger for my car. I was also interested in using the OpenXC library with it (which might need a port if there isn’t one already, since it uses the Digilent chipKIT Max32 development board). While OpenXC allows interfacing with Android stuff for phones, I’m more interested in a self-contained datalogging type deal.

Well, with less than a couple hundred miles on the rebuilt engine, it was time to really break-in the new VG33. I took it to an autocross. Things were going well until I shut it off after my second run. It didn’t want to restart after that. It appears that the culprit was low battery voltage, as the ECU was resetting and the fuel pump never even came on during cranking.

Continuing from part 1, this is the start of installation and results of the LED conversion. I ordered a small bunch of LEDs to get a feel for what brightness I’m looking at since the website I ordered from has somewhat confusing ‘relative intensity’, ‘brightness’, and ‘lumens’ listed for each bulb. Not to mention the prices seemed to fluctuate independently of any of those values so it wasn’t as simple as ‘find the most expensive ones’.

My 280Z isn’t what you could call “modern” in the electrical department. Originally, it came with an externally regulated alternator, fusible links, incandescent bulbs, and very few relays. The design inhereted a few things from Lucas eletronics, which is not a good thing. Regardless, it was fairly normal for the time. I’m glad there are no vacuum operated things, like some makes. The most electrically obtuse part of the design is the lack of relays.

Update Dec. 13, 2014:

These scripts are out of date. NFS has the WP-CLI installed allowing for much, much easier upgrades, backups, etc. See the repository for information.

Originally posted on Sept. 10th, 2014:

If you use NearlyFreeSpeech.net as your web host, you may have found it difficult to automate WordPress updates. I’ve made a script that does this for you. It also calls my backup and permissions fixing scripts, which I include here as well.

Beware of some notes and assumptions though:

• Assumes WordPress is installed in /home/public/ (not a subdir of it)
• Scripts are assumed to be in /home/private/
• Does not check or recover from errors

After installing Windows 7 in place of OS X on my MacBook Pro for work, there are only a few things I miss. But man, they were really nice. Unix shell Time Machine The first one I’ll just say if you haven’t used a Unix-like shell of some type (Bash, zsh, whatever) then it’s hard to explain. Just that you can do everything a GUI can do (save for graphics work), but much, much faster.

So, am I the first? The first to put a VG33 in an S30? I have doubts but I’ve never heard of it before. After a bit of late night work and an unplanned oil event and a small unplanned fuel dump after removing and replacing the engine to fix the oil leak, it’s back in, running, and more importantly: not leaking. Here’s a late night in-progress shot:  All the work was worth it, I had to get it running for a scheduled photoshoot:

For the past week our internet service has been slowed to a crawl. Like, dial-up speeds: 0.8/0,1 Mbps (so 100 kB/s down, 12 kB/s up). I tried restarting our 8 year old modem, our brand new router. I eventually gave up and called Comcast and had a cable guy come out and check the signal level. He says it’s fine, but our modem is the culprit. So, I figure he’s right and besides, it’s an ancient modem anyway.

So I’m attempting to jump on the Scrypt based ASIC coin mining bandwagon. I got a GAWMiner Fury to try out. It came with a free ZenMiner, which is a Raspberry Pi with a custom image that runs mining software automatically, and connects to a 3rd party website to allow remote control and monitoring.

It came with everything needed to power up and get started. The included instructions just mention how to get started using the ZenMiner, so it’s pretty skimpy compared to most other packaged products. Being an ASIC cryptocurrency miner, it’s already a specialty device so you likely know what you are doing. Still, the ZenMiner is geared to newcomers so they can easily start mining. In that respect I think it still needs work as the ZenOS web interface is pretty but limited.

I acquired some Speedhut gauges a while back for a deal, and I just got a free 240Z wheel, so I decided to do all three. In this part I just remove and fit the Speedhut gauges in the old speedo and tachometer housings. In the next part I wire them up. A few people did this on HybridZ various different ways. I was too cheap to go out and get any other supplies, so I made it work with what I had.

The gauges I got are:

Speedometer: 4" Revolution GPS Speedo with integrated fuel gauge, turn signal LEDs, and high-beam LED

Tachometer: 4" Revolution 8,000RPM with programmable shift LEDs.

Both have red dials, and red illumination. The fuel gauge is there since I’ll be replacing the one in the 3 small dash gauges eventually, but don’t want to lose having a gas gauge.