Notes on software, security, homelabs, travel, and projects.https://joshspicer.com/https://joshspicer.com/tankgame/https://joshspicer.com/tankgame/Tank Game is a multiplayer tank game using Bluetooth/WiFi peer-to-peer connectivity. Download for free on the App Store!Sat, 24 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/mapcalipers/https://joshspicer.com/mapcalipers/MapCalipers is a flexible mapping toolkit built to help you defeat your friends in Jet Lag: The Game Hide and Seek Transit Game!Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/HabitBridge/https://joshspicer.com/HabitBridge/Meet HabitBridge - a habit tracking app designed for developers, hackers, and anyone else who wants real control over their digital habit tracking.Sat, 24 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/bunny-bunch/https://joshspicer.com/bunny-bunch/Bunny Bunch is a free adaptation of Cubirds by Pandasaurus Games. If you enjoy Bunny Bunch, please consider purchasing the original game! This YouTube video explains the rules...Sat, 15 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/bluetooth-low-energy-home-assistant/https://joshspicer.com/bluetooth-low-energy-home-assistant/I was recently gifted a beautiful LED sign with a significantly less beautiful mobile app to control it. There are no buttons on the device, so ultimately I was left no choice...Sat, 11 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/sewing/https://joshspicer.com/sewing/The ethos of this website is to express creativity and share topics I find generally interesting. Lately, I’ve explored the process of sewing and embroidery.Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/tailscale-lock-mullvad/https://joshspicer.com/tailscale-lock-mullvad/I love Tailscale. It's my first install on any new device and an indispensible tool. This is my first and only example of a non-stellar experience.Wed, 04 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/kk7vua/https://joshspicer.com/kk7vua/I got my amateur radio operator’s license — callsign KK7VUA!Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/eink/https://joshspicer.com/eink/The Inkplate 10 is an awesome, hackable e-ink display. It's a 9.7" display with a resolution of 1200x825. It's also a dev board, with an ESP32, SD card slot, and LiPo battery...Mon, 29 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/heartbox/https://joshspicer.com/heartbox/👋 [Sept 2024] This post was updated with improvements to both the service (now hosted as an Azure Function) and the ESP module programming (using an esphome config). See the...Sun, 28 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/os-configs/https://joshspicer.com/os-configs/Configuration notes for the operating systems and machines I use.Tue, 29 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/client-cert-auth/https://joshspicer.com/client-cert-auth/I recently set up a Cloudflare Tunnel and wanted to find a way to protect that resource. I primary use an Apple Watch app to communicate with this service.Mon, 06 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/lte-failover-pfsense/https://joshspicer.com/lte-failover-pfsense/My Xfinity cable internet connection has been shockingly unreliable since I last moved. That got me thinking about alternative options to keep my home connected.Sat, 11 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/dns-over-https-ios/https://joshspicer.com/dns-over-https-ios/I recently discovered Paul Miller's blog post and repo sharing how to craft iOS configuration profiles that instruct iOS (or macOS/tvOS/watchOS/etc) to use a provided DNS over...Wed, 20 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/docker-configs/https://joshspicer.com/docker-configs/Pi-hole & Cloudflared (DoH)Sun, 12 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/jarvis/https://joshspicer.com/jarvis/🚧 NOTE: Jarvis is currently a work in progressMon, 09 May 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/hack-air-purifier/https://joshspicer.com/hack-air-purifier/A while back, I got one of those "smart" air purifiers to sit in my room while I work-from-home. Like a lot of IoT devices, this fan works only with a proprietary app, requires...Sat, 07 May 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/nas/https://joshspicer.com/nas/For a long time i've wanted to add a NAS to my homelab setup. I found that offerings from Synology seem great, but are quite pricy for the lack of flexibility the device...Fri, 14 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/monthly-playlist-2021/https://joshspicer.com/monthly-playlist-2021/I don't often think of myself as an innately creative person, yet each year I feel a sense of pride (and emotion) looking back at the music i've collected each month. I don't...Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/spotify-now-playing-azure/https://joshspicer.com/spotify-now-playing-azure/The most astute readers of this blog would've noticed that for the past couple months, its homepage has been missing its characteristic Josh is listening to "XXX" on Spotify....Wed, 25 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/ssl-pinning-android/https://joshspicer.com/ssl-pinning-android/This article is a braindump of how I was successful in bypassing SSL pinning on Android 11 in 2021. Please see the acknowledgments at the end for the various guides that helped...Sat, 21 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/aircon-homekit/https://joshspicer.com/aircon-homekit/As a part of homekit-ifying my apartment, i've been wanting to make my window A/C unit a bit smarter. I have a Keystone remote-controlled A/C - below is the journey of...Mon, 05 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/homekit-esp8266/https://joshspicer.com/homekit-esp8266/HomeKit-ifying every last corner of my apartment - for better or worse - has become a "hobby" of mine as of lately. After stumbling upon Andrew Ngai's awesome YouTube video on...Sat, 15 May 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/btrfs-azure/https://joshspicer.com/btrfs-azure/Recently, I spent some time creating a repeatable method of generating a customized Linux disk image. This disk image is then consumed within an Azure VM Scale Set, (and...Thu, 22 Apr 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/reverse-shell-azure/https://joshspicer.com/reverse-shell-azure/Purpose: For any Azure Compute Linux VM where you have permission to execute one-off commands via the Azure CLI, issues a reverse shell command to the VM and sends the shell...Tue, 23 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/monthly-playlist-2020/https://joshspicer.com/monthly-playlist-2020/My third annual monthly playlist series!Sun, 10 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/concerts/https://joshspicer.com/concerts/A running archive of concerts I've attended.Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/adventofcode-2020/https://joshspicer.com/adventofcode-2020/Join me this year as I participate in my first Advent of Code month-long coding challenge!Sun, 06 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/bluetooth-le-homekit/https://joshspicer.com/bluetooth-le-homekit/I recently bought a bluetooth thermometer/hydrometer (Govee H5072) for $15 on Amazon to use in my apartment. After purchasing, I thought of several smart home automations that...Sun, 06 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/touchbar-vscode/https://joshspicer.com/touchbar-vscode/On my Github you'll find my first (not work-related) vscode extension - a simple tool to map your commonly used extension commands to touchbar buttons.Sat, 05 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/widgetkit-dailyword/https://joshspicer.com/widgetkit-dailyword/Daily Word is now on the App Store if you want to add a little language to your homescreen. Its source can be found on GitHub.Mon, 26 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/docker-proxmox/https://joshspicer.com/docker-proxmox/⚠ RancherOS appears to be unmaintained at the moment, so I no longer recommend this as the best approach!Sat, 29 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/openwrt-alert/https://joshspicer.com/openwrt-alert/One feature I really liked from my old Xfinity router were the push notifications it sent when new devices first joined my wireless network. In this post we're recreating that...Sat, 11 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/japan-seconds/https://joshspicer.com/japan-seconds/A one-second-per-day video from a trip through Japan and Thailand.Fri, 10 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/fa-xamarin/https://joshspicer.com/fa-xamarin/Mobile apps need icons! Read on to learn how to add Font Awesome's rich selection to your Forms App!Thu, 02 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/tech-guides/https://joshspicer.com/tech-guides/I follow a lot of guide & writeups online covering a range of topics. Here I will leave an (ever growing) list of guides I found useful!Sun, 21 Jun 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/wireguard-azure/https://joshspicer.com/wireguard-azure/UPDATE: Sept 2021 - I've recently made some edits (thanks to a helpful email and slack message) that should resolve a pesky DNS issue. Please contact me or put up a PR if you...Sat, 30 May 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/iphone-pfsense/https://joshspicer.com/iphone-pfsense/Bridging your iPhone hotspot is useful for an array of reasons. Just move and not have internet from the local ISP yet? Want some redundancy in case the ISP fails? Maybe your...Mon, 25 May 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/quarantine-cam/https://joshspicer.com/quarantine-cam/Like many people these days in the quarantine/COVID-19/social distancing world, i've been living my life through video calling apps like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom. When...Sun, 03 May 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/macos-tweaks/https://joshspicer.com/macos-tweaks/Last updated on May 13, 2021Sun, 19 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/homelab-2/https://joshspicer.com/homelab-2/Over the past few days i've been upgrading my homelab setup. The biggest change - ditching ESXi for open source, KVM hypervisor Proxmox! I wanted to try something with better...Fri, 17 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/pihole/https://joshspicer.com/pihole/"Pi ContrHOLE" is a simple Xamarin Forms Shell app to manage your local Pi-hole instance. The app provides quick toggles and display information that would be useful at a...Wed, 15 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/playlists-azure/https://joshspicer.com/playlists-azure/“Hey Siri - add this song to my monthly playlist!" Not helpful...Sun, 29 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/jure-sanguinis/https://joshspicer.com/jure-sanguinis/Welcome to my Italian citizenship journey! I'm going to be posting here in chronological order as things happen.Thu, 05 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/homelab/https://joshspicer.com/homelab/Introducing my Home Lab! As a software engineer and general tinkerer, I was incredibly excited to get a home server set up to run services, VMs, and other tools. I often find...Wed, 08 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/josh-top-songs-2019/https://joshspicer.com/josh-top-songs-2019/These are my all time top songs as of January 6, 2020!Mon, 06 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/husky-hunt-2019/https://joshspicer.com/husky-hunt-2019/Last November I participated in my third Northeastern Husky Hunt, this time with the aid of our team's homebrew'ed app PawPrints. HuskyHunt is a continuous 24-hour scavenger...Sun, 05 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/monthly-playlist-2019/https://joshspicer.com/monthly-playlist-2019/Every month I pour all my favorite tunes into a playlist with that name (this year, in Turkish because why not). Here's my reflections back on 2019 through Spotify.Sat, 04 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/diploma/https://joshspicer.com/diploma/Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. From Northeastern University.Fri, 20 Dec 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/microsoft-seconds/https://joshspicer.com/microsoft-seconds/A one-second-per-day video from my 2019 Microsoft internship.Wed, 28 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/survivor-scheduler/https://joshspicer.com/survivor-scheduler/Survivor: Northeastern is a club at Northeastern that conducts an on-campus season of CBS's TV show "Survivor". I played in season 3 of this amazing club, and have been helping...Fri, 05 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/wargames/https://joshspicer.com/wargames/I helped start CoSMO, a computer science mentorship club at Northeastern. Below is the workshop I conducted teaching Linux fundamentals through Over The Wire "War Games".Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/python37-ssl-issue/https://joshspicer.com/python37-ssl-issue/Recently I was configuring Python on a fresh Ubuntu server. The environment I was in required me to install Python 3.7 from source. Easy enough, I found Manivannan’s quick bash...Tue, 26 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/applescript/https://joshspicer.com/applescript/Download the latest release of SpotStatus, the result of this blog post, on GitHub. (4/4/20 - v1.3.1 updated for MacOS Catalina).Thu, 07 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/llvm/https://joshspicer.com/llvm/LLVM is super cool and incredibly powerful. For my compilers course this past semester, we had to implement an optimization pass on LLVM IR to remove trivially dead code.Thu, 31 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/lambda-graphql/https://joshspicer.com/lambda-graphql/Its been a while since i've written about Parade. I've been meaning to share my process of getting our GraphQL API onto Lambda for quite some time...now seems as good a time as...Thu, 03 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/ncc-ninja-1/https://joshspicer.com/ncc-ninja-1/I recently discovered NCC Group's "Are you a ninja" challenges. This is the first challenge on the site. I hope to complete them all and make a series out of it.Thu, 03 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/monthly-playlist-2018/https://joshspicer.com/monthly-playlist-2018/For 2018 I decided to create a playlist every month, and force myself to use that as my “go to” playlist (during commutes, throughout flights, etc…) for that span of time. The...Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/edinburgh-seconds/https://joshspicer.com/edinburgh-seconds/A one-second-per-day video from my semester abroad in Edinburgh.Fri, 28 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/hitch-to-paris/https://joshspicer.com/hitch-to-paris/The race began at Potterrow on Edinburgh uni’s campus. Nearly 70 other teams, Alek, and I eagerly awaited the 9am start. We had no money and 48 hours to get ourselves (and a...Mon, 05 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/josh-top-songs/https://joshspicer.com/josh-top-songs/My all-time top songs as of October 22, 2018.Mon, 22 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/hack-upc/https://joshspicer.com/hack-upc/This weekend I participated in a 36-hour hackathon in Barcelona! Big shoutout to HackUPC for the amazing job they did! Check out our devpost submission for more info on "We're...Sun, 21 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/iceland-seconds/https://joshspicer.com/iceland-seconds/A one-second-per-day video from a trip around Iceland.Wed, 10 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/aws-deploy/https://joshspicer.com/aws-deploy/Over the past few months i've really gained a lot of experience working with AWS, whether it be through CCDC, Parade, or other personal projects.Mon, 08 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/spoof-mac/https://joshspicer.com/spoof-mac/I recently took a trip to Seattle from Edinburgh. My near 11 hour flight required I pay for wifi. This script, coupled with knowing a T-mobile number, was helpful...Mon, 08 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/top-songs/https://joshspicer.com/top-songs/[NEW] Specify short term (last 4 weeks) or long term top-song history!Tue, 25 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/dual-sim-hack/https://joshspicer.com/dual-sim-hack/I recently moved to the UK for my semester abroad. While still at home, I knew I wanted to pick up a local SIM card when arriving in Europe. Local SIMs in the UK are pretty...Tue, 18 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/uk/https://joshspicer.com/uk/For the next few months i'll be living in Edinburgh, United Kingdom studying Informatics at the University of Edinburgh! I've got lots of trips planned throughout Europe,...Sat, 01 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/react-native-android/https://joshspicer.com/react-native-android/Edit: Our Android release is out NOW on Google Play! Find it here.Mon, 27 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/parade/https://joshspicer.com/parade/Parade is an events discovery app I co-founded and am actively developing! Check out https://parade.events/ for our progress and for details!Wed, 22 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/parade-linking/https://joshspicer.com/parade-linking/Universal linking was a feature I was really excited to implement in Parade. I thought it would be more difficult, but react-native and Apple make it wicked simple to both...Thu, 02 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/comments-count-bug/https://joshspicer.com/comments-count-bug/I was seeing this error recently while configuring a feature in my React Native application. This bug caused a hard crash on Android (with no logged details), but just a...Sat, 21 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/spotify-now-playing/https://joshspicer.com/spotify-now-playing/UPDATE: In August 2021 I released a revised version of this project that runs on Azure.Sat, 14 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/survivor/https://joshspicer.com/survivor/I've been a fan of the TV show "Survivor" for all my life. This past semester, I had the opportunity to meet an amazing group of Northeastern students and actually become a...Fri, 13 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/parade-push-notifications/https://joshspicer.com/parade-push-notifications/There's lots of guides online about push notification setup for a React Native iOS app...and that's the problem! This guide is the combination of the numerous resources found...Thu, 12 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/android-frida-1/https://joshspicer.com/android-frida-1/Ever since I was introduced to Frida at an OWASP meetup a few months back, i've really been wanting to experiment and learn more about it. This is my walkthrough of utilizing...Sun, 08 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/spotify-public-queue/https://joshspicer.com/spotify-public-queue/I love discovering new music. Whether that be through Spotify's daily playlists, or through suggestions from a friend, I really enjoy discovering, diving into, and experiencing...Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/root-pixel-1/https://joshspicer.com/root-pixel-1/I bought a new Pixel phone on Ebay a couple months ago for testing an Android app i'm developing. To my surprise, the phone I received in the mail was not the unlocked Google...Thu, 28 Jun 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/geo-fellowship/https://joshspicer.com/geo-fellowship/Italy - Dialogue of Civilizations - Summer 2017Thu, 05 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/cryptopals/https://joshspicer.com/cryptopals/I recently discovered the cryptopals crypto challenges by nccgroup. I'll be recording my solutions here.Sun, 18 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/Tabnabbing/https://joshspicer.com/Tabnabbing/I learned about tabnabbing one day at co-op when software we use internally was found vulnerable. This page served as a simple PoC.Mon, 19 Feb 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/dodger-sh/https://joshspicer.com/dodger-sh/I created a small game called dodger.sh one evening to learn bash syntax. You can download and play hereSat, 17 Feb 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/nufs/https://joshspicer.com/nufs/A FUSE file system built for Northeastern's CS 3650 course.Wed, 27 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/colorful-motivation/https://joshspicer.com/colorful-motivation/As of June 2018, Colorful Motivation has 300+ users on the Chrome web store!Sun, 17 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/husky-hunter/https://joshspicer.com/husky-hunter/I love Northeastern's annual "Husky Hunt". I've organized and been captain of a team for the past two years. As my team and I were gearing up for this past year's hunt, we...Sun, 05 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/nush/https://joshspicer.com/nush/A small Unix shell built for Northeastern's CS 3650 course.Sun, 05 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://joshspicer.com/cinnamon/https://joshspicer.com/cinnamon/I have a cat named Cinnamon. She's the best. Here's a daily photo of her. (I'd recommend bookmarking this page...)Thu, 17 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT