All posts by qrdl

aka joadavis
hardware problem

Church Meeting Broadcast Notes

I’ve been asked to help set up a broadcasting session for a weekly church meeting (a sacrament meeting but without the sacrament part, just talks and prayer). This is just a temporary measure during these COVID-19 times. I know there are a lot of other churches out there that do regular weekly broadcasts, and even record them. But our policy is to avoid that in favor of in-person meetings… usually.

For this project, there are three requirements
– live broadcast only (not recorded)
– easy to use (avoid login accounts)
– limited and controlled distribution (not trying to broadcast to the world, just for our local congregation)

My own requirement is that the setup should be simple enough that I can explain it to someone else and they can replicate it so I can go on vacation.

NOTE: If you don’t need all the details and just want a summary, skip to the end.

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construction toys

Link post: New Monkie Kid sets

OK, I really had no idea this was coming when I posted https://www.ispeaksoftware.com/three-builds-based-on-sun-wukong-the-monkey-king/ Who knew that the collectible Monkey King minifig was just a test case for a whole new LEGO theme of Monkie Kid?

https://www.brothers-brick.com/2020/05/15/lego-monkie-kid-revealed-with-8-sets-and-a-tv-show-based-on-chinese-monkey-king-legend-news/

Behind the scenes of LEGO Monkie Kid [News]

Gotta say, I’m kinda impressed by the over the top designs of some of these. They do draw on LEGO’s experience with the Ninjago line. My complaint about LEGO pricing remains, though – no normal kid can afford to collect that toy line. 8 sets with the cheapest at $35? 3 of the sets over $100? (170 + 150 + 120 + 90 + 70 + 60 + 50 + 35) = $745 What kid has that kind of disposable income? You could buy two video game consoles and a game for that! I find it very offensive to my wallet.

hardware problem, software engineering

From DVD to .iso in openSUSE in bash

Just a quick note on something I found that was super useful. My new laptop doesn’t have a DVD drive, so I needed to rip an .iso file on one laptop to copy to the other. After some googling, I found https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/385648

The short version is:

<assuming your DVD drive is at /dev/sr0>
> isoinfo -i /dev/sr0 -d
<that gives a bunch of info, look for "Logical block size" and "Volume size">
...
Logical block size is: 2048
Volume size is: 1880567
...
> dd if=/dev/sr0 of=./some-img.iso bs=2k count=1880567

I think there is also a way to get progress out of it using status=progress but I haven’t tried that yet.

construction toys, review

Three builds based on Sūn Wùkōng (the Monkey King)

I first learned about Sūn Wùkōng (孙悟空) through Dragonball Z. The character of Goku is loosely based on him, and I even have a t-shirt with Goku and the characters for Sūn Wùkōng in the background. Recently, I’ve found and built 3 versions in 3 different brick systems. One of which is my first set of “LOZ mini” bricks from their Brick Headz line, so I’ll include a review of the differences in bricks as well.

First, a quick group shot.

3 versions of Monkey
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OpenStack, software engineering

Apache Cassandra, bad assumptions, and unit test shortfalls

This is a story about a problem that took a long time to solve. As in, no one noticed it was a problem for a couple years then it took another year to solve. It involves using the time series database Cassandra, some bad assumptions made by the initial programmers who were more used to relational databases, and a reliance on unit tests that test for a short period of time but miss long term problems. And there is a bonus, somewhat related story at the end.

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software engineering

Basics of Echo Cancellation

There is some cool math and lots of advanced stuff going on in echo cancellation, but for this post I’ll just talk about some basic concepts and what you can do to make it work better if you ever need it.

Back when I worked on a telepresence product I got to play at being an audio engineer. Not that I was really great at it, but I got to work with some engineers who were really, really great at it, which made it fun and educational. So I want to write down a few things to share that I learned that may even be useful to remote workers trying to get the best out of their video conference sessions.

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remote work

Links: More remote working

A couple more links to share related to remote work that came up today.

First up, a youtube video from a friend and coworker – Mightly Mini Monday As I work with him, I can attest he does wear that hoodie a lot. 🙂

Next, a different coworker posted a link to this Gitlab Unfiltered video. It’s a pretty good discussion, as long as you keep it in context that not every company, even in tech, can go full remote. The point that culture should be a first concern over tools is an important one.

Update: I’ll keep adding more related links to this post.

Dos and Dont’s from entrepreneur.com

Remote Work Report from Gitlab (I only skimmed this, but linking so I can go back and read the rest) conducted Jan and Feb 2020 (before COVID-19 changed everything).

Zoom Fatigue article from BBC (Two thoughts: The problems they cited were ones we overcame with HP Halo telepresence. And I don’t think I agree with the idea of not using your camera. Some people will interpret that as an excuse to never use their camera and loose out on all those benefits. In a larger meeting I do usually leave my camera off but that is so I can multitask. Smaller meetings I try to be more connected and participating, and an active camera is part of that.)

Trello has been blogging lots of remote work things. This one about 6 communication mistakes seems accurate enough to post.

(Update July 2020) Post from Slashdot led me to https://hbr.org/2020/07/microsoft-analyzed-data-on-its-newly-remote-workforce

oped, remote work

Mini rant – Do not use the mic on your laptop!

1 Comment

With Coronavirus forcing isolation, we are seeing a huge uptick in the number of remote interviews and broadcasts from home on TV. But please, people, do not use the cheap mic on your laptop and expect to have a good interview! I’ve seen many of these interviews where the boomy echo of the room is picked up by a mic attached to a laptop with an acoustically reflective screen and a built in fan. It’s like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. The latest I saw (not to get political) was from a Trump campaign social media expert criticizing the Biden campaign for taking so long to do online broadcasts, but Biden at least had enough setup to use real mics instead of a laptop mic as that guy was doing. 🙁

I need to do a longer post about acoustic and video setups at home and why some things are just never going to give a good experience.

remote work

More links for the family of Remote Workers

We have had a few discussions at work about what to do when your family is at home while you need to work remotely. I wanted to capture a few links and ideas that have come up related to keeping the family engaged when they are out of school. This is a follow up post to https://www.ispeaksoftware.com/remote-work-with-family-members-who-arent-at-work/

Remote Work with Family Members who Aren’t at Work
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oped, remote work, software engineering

Remote Work with Family Members who Aren’t at Work

I have kids. I love them all, but they can be distracting at times. Normal work days 2/3rds to 5/6ths of them are in school and the house is pretty quiet, with a few bumps from the preschoolers. But during summer, or holiday breaks, or global pandemics, there are times when my house is full of family members who aren’t at work like I am. So how do I handle it?

My first set of points about this:

1. Set some expectations that your are “at work” and can’t respond to every little request all day.

1a. Having a door on your office or room you work helps with that. I know that is a challenge for those working from home only temporarily, but look for other ways to formalize some distance. It helps with the “I’m at work” state to have a physical indication.

2. Take breaks to interact with the family, like at lunch or afternoon walks.

3. Some music or controlled noise helps drown out background distractions.

4. Keep a list (at least mentally) of the things you wish you could do with them during the day so you can find other times to help with art projects or math problems.

It takes a bit of reinforcement and some consistency, so don’t give up if the first day has a lot of interruptions.

Also, everyone should agree that ‘working from home’ is not a substitute for good child care. You won’t be doing your job honestly if you claim to be working but spend all your day doing stuff for the family.  Flexibility to watch your kids for a bit while your spouse runs to the store or an appointment is great, but don’t abuse it and expect to be successful.

I’m sure we will see lots of posts about this in the next few weeks, and here is a good one to keep from going crazy.