While djb is perhaps best known for writing qmail, he also wrote a web server, publicfile. Like his other software, publicfile is simple and robust. I use it to serve this site, among other software.

Characteristically for djb, publicfile is pretty minimal out of the box. Here are a few patches I applied to the source to make my server faster, more flexible, and easier to use.

I try to maintain a reasonably secure webserver.

A webserver is a computer, connected to the public internet, that does things (serves pages, etc.) whenever anyone asks it to. This makes it an easy thing to attack: the first step toward attacking a computer is usually getting it to do your bidding, and a webserver does your bidding every time you click a link.

My system logs show that I get attacked several times a day, like (I imagine) most computers on the Internet. Fortunately, most attacks bounce off — not because I have some magic security-foo, but rather because the software I’m using — specifically publicfile — doesn’t work the way the attackers expect it to.

While I am not so naive or foolish as to say that my server is “secure” — I’m sure it has some exploitable hole, and it runs in a distant facility that probably forgets to lock the doors sometimes — these attacks are of mostly academic interest.

Here’s some data I’ve collected from the past month or so of attacks. I figure this might help someone else detect or prevent an attack in the future.

Back in the Fall, I was invited to contribute to Make Magazine’s Ultimate Guide to 3D Printing. (That’s me on the front page, squinting at the Ultimaker wiki.)

If you’re in the market for a 3D printer, it’s a great place to start! We spent a weekend really putting these printers through their paces.

I love the ARM Cortex-M series of microcontrollers. The sheer computational power they pack into a teensy, low-power package is almost embarrassing.

But, many Cortex-M parts are small — 4x4 millimeters small — and don’t have the pins left over for JTAG. For these parts, ARM introduced a new debug interface, called SWD.

Unfortunately, SWD isn’t well-supported by open-source tools. Support is in progress in most of them — including my personal favorite, OpenOCD — but I’ve had bad luck so far.

Anton Staaf was having the same issue, and decided to do something about it. He tricked the cheap, commonly-available FTDI FT232H chip into speaking the line-level SWD protocol. We’ve teamed up and, a week or so later, have something to show for it.

I may spend a lot of my time working on robots, but I like people. I’ve noticed this in my professional life: I’m happier and more productive working on a small team, rather than solo.

My day job has me working alone a lot of the time, so at the beginning of March, I decided to take matters into my own hands and “find the others.” I knew about Noisebridge in San Francisco, but they didn’t quite seem like my people — when I joined their IRC channel they suggested I jump in front of a train, in fact.

So I was delighted to discover a hackerspace right down the street from me: Ace Monster Toys in Oakland.