Welcome to The Pragmatic Addict!

About Me

My real name is Eric Nichols. I’ve been a software developer for a few decades. I am also a husband, father, private pilot, dungeon master & general repair guy for all objects in the house.

Pragmatic definitely describes my approach to just about everything, one might say I’m an addict at it… The goal of this site is to document all the side projects I take on. These can be pretty random but usually involve an overlap of my growing list of hobbies.

Most of my work revolves around Debian and Raspberry Pi. If it's Windows related, it's usually something about ways to get around using that OS.

Blog

(2025-04-15) Create Your Own Certificate Authority
(2025-03-30) qemu Guest-Only Networking
(2025-02-13) Ripping Movies
(2025-02-07) Use all 5 Serial Ports on a Raspberry Pi 4b
(2025-01-03) Build a custom Debian live ISO
(2024-10-15) Run Linux with bad memory
(2024-10-08) Disable ssh-agent from autostarting
(2024-09-17) Floppy Drives on Modern Computers
(2024-08-17) Use Memtest86+ with serial console
(2024-08-17) Debian on a 2010 MacBook Air 13"
(2024-06-16) Playstation 2 Soft Mods
(2024-06-10) Enable Windows Admin Account
(2024-06-03) The Tesla USB Port
(2024-05-23) Wake-on-LAN
(2024-05-21) lighttpd client certificates
(2024-05-12) 80x25 Linux Console
(2024-05-02) Install Windows into one partition.
(2024-04-25) Bind9 - Dynamic DNS
(2024-04-18) Why I don't go to Florida
(2024-04-14) An ode to my trackball
(2024-04-13) Making strcasestr work in C
(2024-04-12) Store static binary data in your C program
(2024-04-11) Useful C define functions
(2024-04-09) Create ISO disc images
(2024-03-21) Fix UEFI after BIOS update
(2024-03-16) Barbell Math (Mobile Web App)
(2024-03-14) Wine Tips
(2024-02-20) USB Scanner access from a non-root
(2024-02-20) Raspberry Pi Real Time Clock (RTC) DS3231
(2024-02-03) Disable Wifi when Wired
(2024-02-03) Home Made DVD External Rack
(2023-06-30) Finding holes in a ship's internet
(2022-10-26) Convert Caps Lock to CTRL key
(2021-10-24) Raspberry Pi as a serial console server
(2021-10-24) Create your own Kodi TV Station
(2020-07-02) Virtualize Windows 10 using QEMU
(2020-05-04) May the Fourth Movie Marathon
(2020-02-01) Command line printing to a raw USB printer
(2020-02-01) Turn a Dymo LabelWriter 400 Turbo into a story teller

Web Hosting Details

I wanted this site to be as stripped down and as simple as possible. Here are a few interesting facts about this site:

Hardware
Raspberry Pi 400 Rev 1.1 (4GB Mem)
WINGONEER X230 RS232 Serial Port & RTC for Raspberry Pi
Software
Raspberry Pi OS (64 bit), Lighttpd
Web Site
Each page is self contained using the Data URI scheme. Each image and even the file downloads are contained in the individual HTML files! In addition to some internal code, the following libraries were used to generate the html files.
Encryption
HTTPS certificates generated with Let’s Encrypt
JavaScript
NONE.
Site Tracking
NONE. No extra connections to trackers.
Cookies
NONE.