Lee Holmes

If you’re reading this post, congratulations on your pending purchase :)

Here’s the process I just went through in November 2026. Be sure to read through the various threads on The Samba to get more background. Thought I’d give a 2026 update, as I just went through this process. Mine was from British Columbia to Washington State.

• Went to the Washington State license office to get a 3-day transit …

Most fragrance advice takes the form of a list: here are ten scents that get compliments. Such lists tell you what to buy and nothing about why those things smell the way they do, what they have in common, or how you might work out what suits you.

This guide takes the other approach. It maps the major archetypes, the structural families most fragrance descends from, and names examples of each. Learn these fourteen and …

In Threat-Driven Software Development, we focus heavily on the nuances of Operational Security and how to secure online services from modern threat actors. There are many books on Application Security, but not on this important operational aspect. How are they different? I think this quote sums it up best:

Application Security is an investment. Operational Security is a commitment.

Here is the full exerpt:

Understanding …

I recently made the mistake of asking folks to thumbs up an email if they wanted me to get back to them on something. Turns out, mail apps make it a royal pain to actually act on that data since it’s always behind a hover. You can’t select all and copy. You can’t use dev tools to inspect the element, since it changes when your mouse goes back to dev tools.

The solution was – largely derived …

If you’re a Blue Teamer trying to write secure services or secure an organization that does, Threat Driven Software Development is the book you’ve been looking for. This was a deep collaboration between Michael Howard, Sherrod DeGrippo, Shawn Hernan and I - and I’m so excited to be able to get this expertise into the world.

What excites me most about this book is that there are many resources on …

As a Canadian living in the US: whenever my family and I go back up to Canada, we always pack our luggage to bring back stuff you just can’t find easily around here. I’ve given a few friends these sage words of wisdom when they visit Canada or when their Alaska cruise takes them through Victoria, so here’s your shopping list:

• Ketchup chips and All-Dressed Chips. You may or may not like them, but …

Once every 80 years, T Coronae Borealis - also known as the “Blaze Star” - goes nova. When it does this, it brightens from roughly magnitude 9 (likely only visible with telescopes) to magnitude 1 or 2 (roughly as bright as the North Star).

NASA has a great explanation of it, as well as how to find it in the night sky. Astronomy.com also has a great and more detailed article.

While we will certainly hear …

If you have a Hiboy S2 Pro scooter, you might have explored whether you can increase its max speed above 20 MPH / 30 KPH. There are resources out there mentioning that you can snip a speed limiter wire, but as far as I can tell they are AI-generated make-believe.

TLDR: You can’t. The top speed is limited by the scooter firmware. But the BTLE protocol that the app uses to communicate with the scooter is very …

Allow me to introduce Pixel Doodle, a fun little Pixel Editor for Gameboy, emulators, and retro handhelds like the Anbernic RG35XX.

Pixel Doodle supports a whopping 32 colors in a 12x14 grid. Start with a blank canvas and doodle away, or push ‘B’ to get a random word of inspiration.

Download Pixel Doodle

Download: [ROM] [Cover Art]

Play Online: Pixel Doodle Online

Implementation Details

Pixel Doodle was …

APL is one of the most curious programming languages you’ll ever run across. For example, take a random problem out of Rosetta Code: “Numbers divisible by their individual digits, but not by the product of their digits.”. Here’s a typical implementation in C:

#include <stdio.h>

int divisible(int n) {
    int p = 1;
    int c, d;

    for (c=n; c; c /= 10) {
        d = c % 10;
        if …