Add Thursday, a really nice day

content/blog/wk2day4.md

@@ -0,0 +1,115 @@
+---
+title: "Week 2, Thursday: OBS and FreeIX"
+date: 2024-08-08T20:21:19+02:00
+Tags: []
+Categories: []
+draft: false
+---
+
+But my story doesn't start when I get up! It starts before I went to bed yesterday.
+
+# Yesterday Evening
+
+{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/flowvibe.png" alt="Credit: DJ Flowvibe, YouTube" >}}
+
+I'm trying to figure out a way to have nice bread for breakfast (eh, brunch?) but without having to
+wake up at ungodly hours to make it. One of the things one can consider is _prebaking_ the bread.
+Have you seen those baguettes that look kind of weird and half-baked? I am going to try that!
+
+Yesterday afternoon I made a batch of white-bread dough, from a good scoop of _Dougie_ (who is doing
+fine, thanks for asking!) and a random trial recipe: 275ml milk, 1 egg, 550g of flour, and 150g of
+Dougie-levain, 10g of milk, kneeded in the machine for 15 minutes and put in the proofing oven for
+90min to ... wait 90min? At about 1am yesterday I ascend from my lair to remember: oh crap, I was
+going to make bread!
+
+What's a baker to do? I did what was right, and decided to forfeit some sleep: I punched the dough,
+which was like 4x its normal size, back to 1x its size, formed two boules of roughly 500g each, and
+patiently waited for the second rise (35min), after which I put them in the oven to bake for 40min
+on 150C. This made them come out almost the same color, but some 20% larger than they came in. They
+have been _prebaked_! So I felt like I could go to bed a happy little baker.
+
+# Morning
+
+{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/kushsessions-03.png" alt="Credit: Kushsessions, YouTube" >}}
+
+Marina was up earlier than I got up today. She had taken to replacing the plunger in the downstairs
+toilet, after having practiced on the one in the guestroom in the attic. I, having gone to bed at --
+once again -- 02:30 last night, sleep in until about 11:00. No cramps this morning, and my left foot
+feels like it's about to return to the land of the living.
+
+I get up, make myself a cup of espresso, and start my morning ritual, feeling a little bit, but not
+very much, guilty that Quinn got up at 05:00 to get to work by 06:30 and therefore has been hard at
+work for an uncomfortably long time.
+
+# Afternoon
+
+I impatiently wait for Marina to finish the toilet plunger maintenance. She's running late, has had
+breakfast (I have not), and I'm a bit hangry. I lob one of the _prebaked_ loaves of bread into the
+oven for a _postbake_, at 225C fo 15min. It comes out magnificent, and the scoring with Marina's
+gift - a new razorblade scoring knife - has done wonders. The bread smells good enough for her to
+abort the mission and come have lunch with me. Mission accomplished!
+
+After lunch, I take to cleaning the kitchen. Now that I'm a stay-at-home-dad, I think it's only fair
+that I take part in the housekeeping! I give the whole kitchen a good scrub, including the
+non-obvious bits like the cupboard doors and and the blue (glass based, so awfully
+finger-print-aware) backsplash. It feels good and I have a sense of immediate satisfaction: whatever
+else happens today, I did this project. It is clean.
+
+But, I've kind of been holding off on a project for a loooong time. Now that I have this fancy Mic
+boom, and previously bought an Elgato Facecam and Streamdeck, it's finally time to configure them.
+For the greater part of the afternoon, I am in my happy zone: futzing around with the audio mixer in
+[[OBS Studio]https://obsproject.com/()]. For me the most fulfilling is to tweak the settings of the
+microphone, desktop audio, and monitor/output for audio called [[VB Cable](https://vb-audio.com/Cable/)]
+and for video called [[OBS Virtual Cam](https://obsproject.com/kb/virtual-camera-guide)], just right! 
+
+I ask Quinn if he can have a call with me to help me tweak the final bits of audio and video, which
+works both on Peertube -- I can stream! -- as well as pre-recorded videos for publication, but also
+real-time with Jitsi, Zoom and Meet. All tested, certified and work! Unfortunately the _VB Cable_
+and _OBS Virtual Camera_ only work on Chrome-based browsers. That's OK though, for the video calls I
+use Google Meet mostly, anyway.
+
+# Evening
+
+I am somewhat succesful, with a mic that can suppress the output from a desktop app (in my case, a
+Youtube video playing in Firefox), including a bunch of scenes with layouts and camera angles, all
+programmed into the Stream Deck (see pic below). I'm chuffed, to bits, and I record a victory video
+showing off the configs and controls and (really beautiful, it really feels as if I'm in a
+professional studio) audio and video that OBS provides:
+
+{{< video src="/media/vdo/2024-08-08_20-30-06_20.35.18.mp4" type="video/mp4" preload="auto" >}}
+
+At 22:00 I have a call with my buddy Alessandro from [[Naquadria](https://www.naquadria.it/)]. I
+met him in Athens a few months ago and we really connected on account of my desire to connect local
+IXPs together to make them more valuable to one another. I've written about this on my [[IPng
+Blog](https://ipng.ch/s/articles/2024/04/27/freeix-remote/)], and Alessandro really wanted to
+participate with his [[Piacenza IX](https://www.pcix.it/)] connecting it to my [[Free
+IX: Switzerland](https://free-ix.ch)] in Zurich as well as the Greek variant [[Free IX:
+Greece](https://free-ix.gr)] in Athens and Amsterdam. Naquadria got a connection to Interxion Zurich
+where they will connect to IPng and its network of local IXPs in Zurich. It's going to be great fun!
+This call was with Alessandro and his tech lead Leonardo. I really enjoyed the call- a combination
+of local peering politics, a phiantropic desire to good by the _little guys_ on the internet
+exchange scene, and pure technology on VPP, Linux, Arista, FreeBSD and other things
+
+I left the call with Alessandro and Leo on absolute high. We're going to try to complete the FreeIX
+Italy + Zurich interconnect project before the ITNOG meeting on October 8th in Piacenza. I'm game!
+
+After the meeting -- which ended at 23:45, I quickly write up my journal entry for the day, finish
+my glass of wine (Spanish, sorry!) and turn in. I think I'll sleep well tonight.
+
+## Pictures of the Day
+
+{{< gallery-category >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-07/IMG_0562.JPG" caption="The italian wine which I did not drink today (but yesterday, if that makes sense!)" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-08/IMG_0563.JPG" caption="At 01:30 I formed and set the boules into the oven for a second rise." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-08/IMG_0564.JPG" caption="At 02:15 the loaves have been baked for 40min at 150C, this makes them prebaked, and ready for a second final bake at 225C later. You can freeze them like this for months!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-08/IMG_0565.JPG" caption="After baking one of the two loaves for 15min at 225V, it looks delicious -- and it turns out it also tastes that way" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-08/IMG_0566.JPG" caption="A picture of the finished loaf of white bread, simply crum with reasonable holes. I think I could get used to pre-baking loaves of bread and finishing them days/weeks after!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-08/IMG_0568.JPG" caption="After lunch I spent an hour or so cleaning the kitchen. It is spotless when I'm done. Ironically -- and Marina tells me this often -- the spotlessness lasts for only a few hours. Once we cook and have dinner in it, it's already un-spotless again the same day..." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-08/IMG_0569.JPG" caption="The streamdeck with a first set of buttons and dials. The red labels are 'with camera', the other ones without. The dials control volume, ringlights, and so on. It's really a nice system." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-08/IMG_0570.JPG" caption="I finish the OBS setup, including mic and desktop sound suppression, and streamdeck integration, and it works like a fucking boss." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-08/selfie.png" caption="I also installed a side-facing webcam which I can blend in to my video calls and recordings at the push of a (streamdeck) button. Nifty!" >}}
+{{< /gallery-category >}}
+
+{{< gallery-modal >}}
+{{< gallery-script >}}
+