Blog Articles by nicka

a random blog about coding, cosplay and whatever else I may find interesting. not updated with any sort of frequency.

Installing FreeBSD 14 on Raspberry Pi 4B with ZFS root

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I wanted to setup a Raspberry Pi 4B as an lightweight internal server to handle DHCP and DNS.  The existing server was already FreeBSD so when I found support for the Pi, it seemed a natural choice.  I love ZFS and use it wherever I can, so if I can also get it running on the Pi, that will make moving the jails and running backups just that much easier.  

Daisuke/Davis Shoes
Digimon Adventure 02

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Years ago when I first made my cosplay for Daisuke Motomiya from 02, I knew absolutely nothing about how to make shoes.  The end result was... passible - if you didn't look too close, but I was never happy with them. Having made my first pair of boots (for Neku from TWEWY - Part 1, Part 2), I now know maybe 5-10% of what goes into making a pair of shoes - just enough to be dangerous and just the right time to give it another go.

Neku Sakuraba's Boots - Part 1
The World Ends With You

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I first played The World Ends With You back in 2008 and it instantly became my favorite video game.  I loved everything about it - the gameplay, the setting of Shibuya, the graffiti art style, the music and of course the anti-social protag Neku Sakuraba.  As I got more into making cosplay over the years, Neku's always been on my list but I never wanted to make it unless I thought I could tackle his shoes properly.

There's no 10 ways about it, Subnets are Genius
The power of binary in action!

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I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of people who have ever had to enter in a "subnet mask" into their network settings have no idea what it means, much less the amazingly powerful and beautifully simple solution to the problem it solves.  In this post, we'll peel back the mystery, talk a little binary and basic computer operations, and hopefully do it in a way that even a non-technical person could understand.

Xiaolang Li Battle Costume
Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card

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So yeah, was a little bit excited for some new Cardcaptor Sakura after all these years.  This time, Xiaolang gets some of Tomoyo's handywork in a new battle costume.  Lots of nods to his outfit in the original series.  Having recently made the outfit from the original series and a hoodie, of course needed to make the Clear Card series outfit.

Gabumon Kigurumi
Digimon Adventure

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Catching up on some old pictures, these are from 2017.  After making a Patamon Kigu for my wife, I figured I should make something for myself.  I really liked the idea of having Gabumon as a two-piece design, since he kinda a dinosaur that wears a fur coat.

Went with fleece for everything, but I guess I could always remake the top as fur if I wanted to.  But this is a kigu, so I think fleece is more appropriate.

Scanning Drivers License Barcodes on Webforms in Javascript

This weekend I wrote a Javascript AAMVA Driver License/Identification Card Parser for use with USB 2D Barcode Scanners.  The result was an interesting reading through specs for the PDF 417 and DMV websites, but I did get a rough proof of concept together to at least show it works.  I spent a fair amount of time searching the interwebs for something out there to do this, but most all the libraries I did find were more about scanning/decoding the image of the barcode itself (like with a webcam).  I didn't need any of that as I was using a hardware …