1. SJCAM SJ4000 Update Notes

    Here are a few notes for those who are rocking an old SJCAM SJ4000 action cam. I was trying to update the firmware, but the camera refused to take it, no matter how I formatted the sdcard. For what it's worth, I'm using Linux. The trick is that the filename has to be in ALL CAPS. When you unzip the file from SJCAM, the extension is usually .bin. If you change it to .BIN, the camera will update.

    Another note is that I wanted to replace my lens. This is a great guide to replacing it. It's actually very easy to swap it out. However, the real problem is that the replacement lens should have an infrared filter on it. If you don't have that filter, the colors will be all washed out, contain no greens. I'm still trying to source a replacement lens that works, but no luck so far.

  2. Finding Stuff

    It's been a slow few years, but I found my first iPhone so far. I tried to see who it belonged to, but required a face to unlock it. I set it on the porch of the closest house. Seems like a reasonable place to put it. Hopefully it found its owner.

  3. Stuff Breaking While Bicycling

    It's going to happen when you bike - something breaks on you. This year has had a couple of memorable moments.

    First, I lost my crankset. I was about a mile into my ride home when my pedals felt wrong. Wobbly or something like that. I thought maybe it was the forks. After a few minutes, it got worse and suddenly, both pedals were down, and I couldn't pedal at all. It turns out that somehow, I had stripped the non-drive side crank arm spline. The crank arm should have fit into the crank, meshing with the spline. That had worn out, and now the arm just spun around. I stopped, cranked the bolts as tight as I could, and babied the bike back home. About $26 later (plus shipping), I got a new crankset. Nothing special, but enough to keep the biking moving.

    Yesterday, when biking, my rear tire went flat. Stopped and pulled it apart. I had a thorn resistant tube in the back, and it seemed that the valve stem rotted away and leaked. Threw it away and put on a replacement tube. However, while replacing the tube. I noticed some 1/4" holes in the tire itself. I had known that the tire was worn out at least a year an a half ago, but it was still ok. I thought the tread was just worn. However, I could clearly see through the tire. I put it back together, pumped it up, and babied it to the local Sheetz gas station where they have free air. Pumped it up, biked home, and swapped out the tire and tube to another thorn resistant tube I found in my collection.

    Score so far this year:

    • New crankset
    • New back tire and tube
  4. Here We Go

    Well, we're going live... let's see if this works. Update: It didn't. I think my content (the previous sentence) was too short and the rendering didn't wrap right on the main page. Let's see if this looks better.

    Edit: After changing the css, it looks better.

  5. 11ty

    This is a test post to Eleventy. I haven't posted here in Eons, but I recently felt like changing the blog from my own home grown software to something more modern and powerful, even though I can't post directly online.

561 more posts can be found in the archive.