Blog

All blog posts by James A. Chambers — focused on technology, hardware, SBC / Microboards, programming, scripting, gaming, and others!

Life as a “Ledger” Wallet Data Breach Victim

Published: / Last Modified: April 8, 2021 / Leave a Comment / , , , ,
Ledger Security Notice #3 - December 23rd 2020

I have had two Ledger Nano X cryptocurrency wallets for a couple of years now. One of them died during a firmware update which they offered to replace but I didn’t print the label and send it in time. That’s on me and if that was the only problem I had I could have lived with it.

Unfortunately Ledger collects a lot of personal information about you such as your email address, phone number and even your home address! They failed to protect this information and got hacked and all of this data was exposed. Funds were not stolen because of the way hardware wallets work (your private key never leaves the device and is generated by the end user) but apparently everything else except the money was (all your personal data, how much you have, etc)!

I was a confirmed “victim” of this hack and I wanted to write this article to explain what (if anything) has happened since. Spoiler alert: plenty!

Backing Up Valheim Local Worlds and Characters Guide

Published: / Last Modified: April 8, 2021 / Leave a Comment / ,
Valheim Local Character Backup

Valheim is still in early access which means there are definitely still bugs that can cause big headaches. One of these is called the “world eater” bug where your world will be reset to pristine condition (as if you’d never built anything). This can happen both locally and on dedicated servers.

It’s very easy to take a backup of your worlds and characters. This guide will show you how to do that so you can protect yourself from having to repeat previous progress (or all progress) due to bugs!

Backup Valheim Dedicated Server – World Folder Paths / Guide

Published: / Last Modified: April 8, 2021 / Leave a Comment / ,
Valheim Dedicated Server Worlds Folder

Backups during Valheim’s early access period are extremely important. My dedicated server has already experienced the dreaded “world eater” bug. One time was during the very first update and the second time was during a routine restart. What happens is the world will be exactly the same (generated from the same seed) but any modifications/buildings/anything you did will be gone.

This guide will show you where to find the files and how to back them up/restore them!

Raspberry Pi 400 Overclocking / NVMe SSD Setup Guide

Published: / Last Modified: April 5, 2021 / 4 Comments / , , , ,
Raspberry Pi 400 Setup w/ NVMe SSD

The Raspberry Pi 400 is the first offering from the Raspberry Pi lineup that is meant to approach desktop level performance. The official raspberrypi.org site lists the Pi 400 kit as the “Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit“. It comes in the very interesting form factor of a keyboard with all the ports right in the back!

Although the performance on stock clock speeds and with a SD card was really great, especially for a Raspberry Pi, I would not call it desktop class performance. Fortunately we *can* make it desktop class performance with a few tweaks! This guide will show how to overclock the Pi 400 as well as set it up with a NVMe SSD to get the maximum possible performance we can out of it!

Raspberry Pi: Reclaim ~1% CPU Usage when SSD/MSD Booting

Published: / Last Modified: March 20, 2021 / Leave a Comment / , , ,
SSD Ubuntu 'Top' - Fixed

Native support for USB mass storage device booting has made it’s way to all of the Raspberry Pi 4’s firmware release channels! With that exciting development an old issue from the Pi 3 and earlier USB booting days has manifested itself once again in the form of a constant 1-2% CPU draw even with nothing running.

This guide will show you an easy config.txt parameter to eliminate this problem and optimize your mass storage boot setups!

Fixing Valheim Dedicated Server Lag – Modify Send/Receive Limits

Published: / Last Modified: April 8, 2021 / 5 Comments / ,
My Valheim Dedicated Server Castle

Valheim is a really fun game where you are basically a Viking in purgatory trying to get to Valhalla that recently entered early access. It honestly works pretty well (I would say especially compared to recently ‘AAA’ titles like Cyberpunk). There are definitely still some issues though and a very common one is lag on a dedicated server.

This guide will show some methods you can use to help reduce lag on your Valheim dedicated server!

Minecraft Bedrock Dedicated Server Resource Pack / RTX Guide

Published: / Last Modified: December 15, 2020 / 20 Comments / ,
Minecraft Bedrock with Resource Pack / RTX

On December 8th NVIDIA officially released RTX support on Minecraft Bedrock Edition for Windows 10. To use this feature you need to have a resource pack installed.

Fortunately the dedicated server not only supports resource packs, but in this guide I will show you how to set it up so that resource packs are automatically downloaded to your player’s device and activated!

Remove All Traces of Microsoft SCCM w/ PowerShell (By Force)

Published: / Last Modified: December 11, 2020 / Leave a Comment / , , , ,
SCCM - Problem?

Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) seems to usually work pretty well for 95-97% of the computers at the environments I’ve worked in. Unfortunately for the remaining few percentage points of computers that SCCM is *not* working pretty well for when SCCM does break it does so spectacularly with style and pizzazz.

This guide will show you how to use PowerShell to remove all traces from the computer so you can perform a clean reinstall!

2020’s Fastest Raspberry Pi 4 Storage SD / SSD Benchmarks

Published: / Last Modified: March 20, 2021 / 17 Comments / , , , ,
Raspberry Pi Storage Benchmark 2020

We’ve now received over 20,000 benchmarks at https://storage.jamesachambers.com/! These are submitted by regular people from all over the world.

In celebration of that milestone as well as the launch of the 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 take a closer look at which device you should choose for your Raspberry Pi 4 as determined by science and measurement!

Disabling SCCM MDM Coexistence Mode (Unofficial Imperfect Workaround)

Published: / Last Modified: December 10, 2020 / 7 Comments / , , , ,
SCCM MDM Enrollment Registry Key

Microsoft recently added a feature called MDM coexistence into SCCM. Basically this makes SCCM shut off most of it’s functionality when a third party MDM is detected on the machine. You will see errors such as “You don’t have permission to install this software” when coexistence mode is enabled.

This post will outline a way I found to turn SCCM back on (with a caveat).

Telecom Monopoly CenturyLink’s Static IP / Modem / UPS Scam Outlined

Published: / Last Modified: December 4, 2020 / 16 Comments / , ,
CenturyLink Tower of Shame

I’m really sorry to say that I was excited when I found out CenturyLink offered gigabit 1000 up 1000 down fiber to the home in the neighborhood I just moved into. Dreams of things like having enough upload speed to leave the cloud and operate jamesachambers.com independently in my own home seemed like they could finally be a reality. Dreams were quickly shattered when I realized what kind of incompetence and dishonesty I would be dealing with.