Add Thursday, a really nice day

content/blog/wk2day3.md

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+---
+title: "Week 2, Wednesday: Pins, pins, pins"
+date: 2024-08-07T20:21:19+02:00
+Tags: []
+Categories: []
+draft: false
+---
+
+# Morning
+
+{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/fluidfield.png" alt="Credit: Fluidfield, YouTube" >}}
+
+I may as well stop having a _Morning_ section on my journal. Although I didn't go to bed super late
+yesterday (I think it was about 01:45 or so), I did end up sleeping quite long today. I got up at
+11:30 or so, just in time for lunch :)
+
+# Afternoon
+
+I made a really nice leek soup yesterday, and today it was time to consume it! Although I forgot to
+take pictures, the soup has fried mini veal dumplings and stilton cheese and it's super delicious. I
+ate two bowls, Marina ate one, and then she continued with some leftover beans and potatoes from
+yesterday. After lunch, I went to the basement to continue the creation of the _schwag_ for FrysIX:
+yesterday I made 60pcs of [[IPng](https://ipng.ch)] branded (fridge) magnets, and today I continued
+with 60pcs of 38mm pins. I really enjoy doing this type of work - each unit takes maybe 20 seconds
+or so, which means the exercise takes about 25min end to end - there's something about the
+monotonous placement of the outer shell, the cellophane, the 2" round printed inside, and then the
+back side (either magnet or pin), that is rewarding to me. I always had it: 20y ago when we lived in
+the Netherlands, I would also enjoy printing DCD labels, and sticking them onto the discs and
+printing, cutting and putting paper inlays into jewel cases. Is that weird?
+
+Meanwhile, Marina was upstairs looking for more pin-making-resources. She found 59mm pins (these are
+38mm), and they come in a variety of types, fronts, and back plates, including one that is both a
+magnet as well as a bottle opener. I get an idea -- wouldn't it be fun to have a bunch of pins with
+RFID tags in them? I find the nTAG21x from NXP, and order a few rolls of 20x10mm and 35mm round
+units which have either 144 bytes or 504 bytes of storage. Cool! Will see if I can McGuyver these
+into schwag later.
+
+I'm going to visit NL a little bit in September. I thought it'd be fun to have an IPng logo on the
+car, and seeing as we just got a Cameo v5 delivered (_quelle surprise_!), we took a few pictures
+with an assorted set of colored vinyl and I posted a Twitter and Mastodon poll to see what the
+Internet thinks:
+
+*   [Twitter - https://x.com/IPngNetworks/status/1821179665928560873](https://x.com/IPngNetworks/status/1821179665928560873)
+*   [Mastodon - https://ublog.tech/@IPngNetworks/112921027967806983](https://ublog.tech/@IPngNetworks/112921027967806983)
+
+***Please vote!***
+
+Marina spends an inordinate amount of time on the pins website - it's super flaky and keeps on
+throwing errors. But after a few hours (!) she finally places an order and informs of of the damage.
+It's not too bad! But the RFID experiment will be driving up the price, for sure :)
+
+# Evening
+
+There is no apero today (whoa), but instead Marina offers a nice glass of _Barocco Reale_ from
+_Veccia Torre_. Are you proud of me, or disappointed (I'm asking Max, Niccolo, Marco, Marco and
+Giovanni)? To pair with the wine, Marina made pulled beef (from the stockpile we got at _Aligro_)
+with Pappardelle pasta (my choice!). We topped it off with some freshly grated Grana Padano. It was
+heavenly.
+
+Marina says: "I didn't do jack shit today, so no TV for me: I need a _knutselavond_!". I'm down for
+that, as I am also in need of some _nerd_. My evening is spent downstairs watching _The Last of Us_
+on Jessica's left screen, and computering on the right.
+
+In the evening, on Mastodon @kwf points out that the micromirror is going strong - and I show the traffic of
+the machine at the DDLN colo in AS8298. It's nicely di-urnal, which is a good sign that it's
+serving timezone-local folks. It peaks at 700Mbps or so, and has a daily of 400Mbps. Nice!
+
+With this website, the new [[IPng.ch](https://ipng.ch)] website, and some older ones like the [[2022
+Roadtrip NOSE](https://2022roadtripnose.weirdnet.nl/)] all being built via the _Drone_ CI/CD, the
+2vCPU and 4GB virtual machine that is [[git.ipng.ch](https://git.ipng.ch)] is running out of steam.
+Specifically the checkout of Git LFS objects and websites in the single digit gigabyte range, make
+it really work. So I decide to move off a couple of docker services on that machine, to another one.
+
+**docker0.frggh0.net.ipng.ch** is now the proud owner of:
+*    [[PictShare](https://github.com/HaschekSolutions/pictshare)] from HaschekSolutions. I spend
+     some time (re)skinning this one to IPng colors and logo.
+*    [[Golinks](https://github.com/x-proj/go-links)] which is a fork of
+     [[kellegous/go](https://github.com/kellegous/go)], and it's uptodate.
+*    [[Netbox](https://github.com/netbox-community/netbox-docker)] which I upgrade to v4.0.8 while
+     I'm at it.
+
+And for good measure, I bump Gitea's VM memory to 8GB and 8vCPU, and reboot the instance. I also
+notice that e-mail isn't working, which I track down to a faulty `.env` setting. All works now!
+
+I'm in maintenance mode, so I also take a look at Mastodon (which is uptodate), and Peertube (which
+is not). I make a VM snapshot of the Peertube instance, and upgrade it from v6.0.4 to v6.2.1. This
+requires me to upgrade node from v19 to v20, and install Python3 PIP. Otherwise, the upgrade goes
+well.  Finally, I take a look at Pixelfed, which by my best knowledge, only my buddy Ramon uses.
+It's also in need of an update (from v0.12.1 to v0.12.3), so I make a snapshot of the VM's disk, 
+and then I use [[idanoo](https://github.com/idanoo/pixelfed-upgrade-script.git)]'s excellent work.
+The upgrade goes down without a hitch, whohoo!
+
+I run out of things to upgrade, so I rummage around Ansible groups a bit, and do an APT upgrade on
+the `smtp`, `nginx`, `border`, `apu`, and `hypervisor` clusters. The thing is: if you claim you're a
+fan of self-hosting, at some point you have to ... self-host :) But no damage done, and a few XP
+earned today.
+
+## Pictures of the Day
+
+{{< gallery-category >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-07/IMG_0558.JPG" caption="The magnets were done yesterday, and today the chore is 60pcs of IPng.ch pins!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-07/IMG_0559.JPG" caption="The pins are going well. Coffee: check!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-07/IMG_0560.JPG" caption="We randomly try a few hues of green and blue and purple against the (blue) car, to figure out which color contrasts well with it." >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-07/IMG_0561.JPG" caption="Marina and I are curious which color logo would look best on Tessa. Blue? Grey? Red? or Hotpink? Vote in the Mastodon and Twitter posts in today's journal entry!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-07/IMG_0562.JPG" caption="Marina treats me to some Vecchia Torre wine today - dinner is excellent" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-07/micromirror.png" caption="On Mastodon, we discuss Micromirrors - the one I'm running at IPng is doing well!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-08-07/peertube.png" caption="I upgrade Peertube from 6.0.4 to 6.2.1 and all is well with my videos" >}}
+{{< /gallery-category >}}
+
+{{< gallery-modal >}}
+{{< gallery-script >}}
+

content/blog/wk2day4.md

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+---
+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 >}}
+