Getting WordPress Brute Force Login Attacks Down to Zero
I was always mildly concerned of the brute force logon attempts to my blog. Using plugins, I renamed the login page and disabled the XML-RPC API calls that require login. As a result, I was able to bring attacks down to zero.
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CEC-like Power Features with Non-CEC-Equipment
With a Raspberry Pico, I monitor my Sony amplifier from the 90s and my 2013 Dell monitor, and switch on my NUC-based media center if any of these devices are switched on. This is comparable to the CEC functionality that more modern devices provide via the HDMI port. I also utilize the USB/serial interface of the Pico to check if any of the two devices is still on to include this into my auto-shutdown script logic.
As a result, my media center boots up as soon as I switch on my amplifier or my monitor, and only auto-shuts down if both are off.
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Media Center Auto Shutdown and RTC Wakeup Based on tvheadend Recording Schedule
I created a script that runs via cron job that will power off my media center if it is not in use, but will program the real time clock (RTC) on the motherboard to wake up the system in time to run a scheduled recording, and/or to update the EPG data, and from that derive potential new or changed auto-recordings. To determine if the system is currently not in use, I
- Check if the monitor is off
- Check if any audio is playing, e.g., Spotify or KODI is playing anything
- Check if the wireless keyboard is connected
- Check if tvheadend is currently recording something
Also, the shutdown processing can be blocked by creating a flag file. If that file exists, no shutdown will happen.
The wake-up time is either the next recording time plus some allowance for boot time, or every 24 hours, whatever comes first. This makes sure that at least once a day the EPG is updated and tvheadend can update its auto-recording-schedule.
As a result, I reduce power consumption of the media center considerably.
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My Next Media Center Iteration: Intel NUC8i3BEH
My Raspberry Pi 4 based media center has some issues, which I was able to resolve by switching to an Intel NUC8i3BEH platform. I was able to make the device quiet despite of its fan, and set up everything to have live TV and PVR, a web browser, Spotify and other DRM content in a very usable and performant setup.
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European WordPress Bloggers beware: “Abmahnwelle” due to Google Fonts!
WordPress admins are currently sued for using Google Fonts directly from the Google servers without correctly informing users about the data collection by Google. I give a few hints on how to protect yourself against this. Disclaimer: I’m not a Pro in legal regards, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
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Floating Table of Contents
I wanted to have a floating table of contents for my posts, but could not find any free plugin that allowed me to do so. Using a combination of plugins, I created a floating TOC myself, which is not perfect, but good enough.
Hiking Maps Follow-Up: Large Area Maps
The approach for creating feature-rich hiking maps described in my earlier post was limited in area, since it uses the Overpass API to download OSM data. The Overpass API has a restriction with regard to the amount of data downloadable in one go. In this post I describe a way to download a much larger area if needed, using the PBF files available from Geofrabrik and processing them with Osmosis.
Legal EPG Scraper for ARD TV Stations to Use With tvheadend External XMLTV Grabber
I wrote a Python EPG scraper for the EPG data of the German TV stations broadcast by ARD. It is legal for private use. Here I share the code and my thoughts behind it.
Le Potato Media Center & German IPTV Re-Revisited
The comment by Argus Nymus on my Media Center for German IPTV post made it clear that my approach with playlist filtering via web proxy was way too overengineered. For several reasons I needed to rebuild my media center anyhow, so it was time to simplify my approch, which I describe in some detail here.
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Quick Note: Web-View with PyQt5 and Qt 5.7+ on Raspberry Pi
This is a short note how to use QtWebKit with Qt 5.7+ on Raspberry Pi.
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