Jekyll2024-01-29T11:52:54+01:00https://c0t0d0s0.org/feed.xmlc0t0d0s0.orgA new haven for the content of c0t0d0s0.orgSolaris 11.4 support available until at least 20372024-01-25T11:00:00+01:002024-01-25T11:00:00+01:00https://c0t0d0s0.org/solaris/2024/01/25/solaris2037<p>There is an important note in footnote 7 on page 40 of the <a href="https://www.oracle.com/us/assets/lifetime-support-hardware-301321.pdf">“Oracle and Sun System Software
and Operating Systems - Oracle Lifetime Support Policy”</a>: “As a result, Support dates are evaluated for
update annually, and will be provided through at least the dates above.”. Well, Oracle has just extended the extended support for Solaris 11.4 from 2034 to 2037.</p>Joerg MoellenkampThere is an important note in footnote 7 on page 40 of the “Oracle and Sun System Software and Operating Systems - Oracle Lifetime Support Policy”: “As a result, Support dates are evaluated for update annually, and will be provided through at least the dates above.”. Well, Oracle has just extended the extended support for Solaris 11.4 from 2034 to 2037.Motivation2024-01-20T10:00:00+01:002024-01-20T10:00:00+01:00https://c0t0d0s0.org/cycling/2024/01/20/motivation<p>It’s well before 06:00 AM. I’m sitting on my indoor bike. Somewhat motivated by the last visit to my scale a day before. Thinking that a longer distance ride may be something nice. Riding through an simulated France. And indeed … it’s a nice long ride while listing to music and podcasts. The counter stops at 75 km a little bit less two and a half hours later. You visit the scale again. Pleased about the number on the display, well knowing that it’s a lot of water that is missing. But the difference matters to me, not the absolute number. And I weighted myself a day before under the same conditions.</p>
<p>Looking into the Garmin Connect Portal, just to find this:</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/blog_motivation.png" alt="A screenshot of Garmin Connect reporting unproductive" /></p>
<p>Unproductive? UNPRODUCTIVE? What the …? What do you mean with unproductive? At least produced 75km? I know what the system wants to tell me, but couldn’t you have named it differently? Unproductive? Honestly, dear Garmin, we really need to talk about how you motivate people.</p>Joerg MoellenkampIt’s well before 06:00 AM. I’m sitting on my indoor bike. Somewhat motivated by the last visit to my scale a day before. Thinking that a longer distance ride may be something nice. Riding through an simulated France. And indeed … it’s a nice long ride while listing to music and podcasts. The counter stops at 75 km a little bit less two and a half hours later. You visit the scale again. Pleased about the number on the display, well knowing that it’s a lot of water that is missing. But the difference matters to me, not the absolute number. And I weighted myself a day before under the same conditions.Beware of assumed simplicity2024-01-13T06:00:00+01:002024-01-13T06:00:00+01:00https://c0t0d0s0.org/it/2024/01/13/cables<p>I’m currently sitting at my desk looking to an heap of cables. Display cables. You don’t think too much about display cables. At least i did not think too much about them. This is a blog entry about something seemingly simple. And how incorrect assumptions can lead you in a completely wrong direction. For example, that display cables are simple components.</p>
<p>That said, after fixing a problem with them, I’m now sitting in front of the now working setup. I just found out that Moderat (a collaboration of the bands Modeselector and Apparat) had recorded <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb7DxVuR0DU">a concert</a> last year for the Passenger series on Arte. Arte is one case, where the mandatory fee for public broadcasting is doing good work with the money you are giving them. This concert was recorded in the nave of the Grand Palais in Paris when construction work was going on in this structure for the Olympic Games 2024. A really great stage, befitting the music. “Bad Kingdom” is one of my favorite songs … “This is not what you wanted. Not what you had in mind”. A song to be played loud while driving, however most car sound systems are utterly inadequate for this, including the one in my car. Still, I heard this music on thousands of kilometers in the last two years.</p>
<p>It was during the last days, that I thought about writing about a recent “facepalm”-class fail of mine, because the internet is full of blog entries, where someone was able to solve a very hard problem very successfully by applying deep knowledge of the topic. Blog entries about a facepalm situation, a situation where you took a detour because of lack of knowledge, because you were the problem between chair and keyboard, those are rare.</p>
<h1 id="tldr">TL;DR</h1>
<p>When you want to connect a DisplayPort output to an HDMI input of your display, this may not work. You may need an active DisplayPort2HDMI cable. This convoluted article is about the unnecessarily convoluted road of learning this, how i found out about this.</p>
<h1 id="they-are-not-simple">They are not simple</h1>
<p>Display cables were probably simple when we used a composite signal, perhaps even with the VGA connector. But an 8K HDMI cable is a connection between two digital devices (your GPU and devices) working at 48 GBps. Four unidirectional links at 12 Gbit/s.</p>
<p>It’s a little embarrassing because I’m working nearly daily with cabling like AOC SAS cabling, Infiniband cabling for a long time, 100 GBit/s Ethernet Cabling, Octopus cables (breakout splitter cables diving an QSFP into four SFP) and so on. I had projects with kilometers of cables. And I nearly failed on a mere display cable this week.</p>
<p>Perhaps this article is a good example to show, why server people can’t necessarily fix your desktop computer. Both topics have commonalitiesm, but somewhat reside in disjunct spheres of knowledge and experience. Okay, power cables may be similar and the occasional twisted pair cable as well. I have perhaps an advantage when using the mindset of problem solving I acquired in my job, but you have to learn a lot of new knowledge on the way. This is the situation where you are just able to google faster, because you have a more directed approach.</p>
<p>That said, I’m very diligent when planning cabling in my job. It’s small part, but when you forget a cable, you often have a problem. Most customer doesn’t have a QSFP28 DAC cable lying around. So, I’m diligent on this topic, so don’t really know why dropped the ball here with my personal system. May be related to the point, that cables like HDMI, DisplayPort or DVI doesn’t really exist in my daily work.</p>
<h1 id="buying-an-kvm-switch">Buying an KVM Switch</h1>
<p>No matter how deep you are in server computing, you have occasional run-ins with the desktop side of computing. There is a good reason, why I’m using Apple systems for many, many years. I just don’t want to fix my computers and Apple systems are most closely to be minimally annoying systems. Yes, you live in a somewhat expensive walled garden, but the point, that I don’t have to think about my personal computing stuff that much is worth the expense for me. If I really want to get my hands dirty, I have a testbed running Linux for this. When I destroy them, I’m just recreating them. But I don’t depend on them.</p>
<p>However last week I had to modify my desktop setup because of the recent purchase of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">waddledee</code>, my personal desktop, a Mac Mini. My desk is quite deep and it’s a little bit uncomfortable to switch the inputs of the displays at the displays. And I must do this twice because of two displays. However due to the way I work (for example I have a large library of documents, whitepapers and so on) in my Devonthink (a Mac application I’m using to manage all kind of information) installation, which now resides on my Mac Mini (all public documents), I switch between by personal and company computer multiple times a day. It’s some kind of external memory extension for my brain.</p>
<p>When I used my personal Macbook it was easier to swap, due to the integrated display. I could just keep the displays connected to my company notebook. I opened the notebook, looked for the document, closed it again and proceed with my work. However, since using <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">waddledee</code> I had to switch the displays, because that desktop system has obviously no display. Initially I did this by moving the Thunderbolt cable to my docking station - where the monitors and keyboard and touchpad is attached - between the systems. I don’t know how my plug/unplug cycles the ports and cables survive, but I didn’t consider the situation as sustainable.</p>
<p>Last week I purchased a Dual-Monitor KVM switch, so the Mac Mini <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">waddledee</code> and my company notebook (usual Mac name “foo of bar”) could share the same monitors, same keyboard and same touchpad. I’m using an AV Access 4KSW21-DM. It works quite well.</p>
<p>However, getting this running was not as straightforward as I thought: It was quite easy to connect <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">waddledee</code>. I used two USB-C to HDMI cables and plugged them into the KVM switch, an additional USB-C to USB Type B cable for the K and M in KVM. This works by using Displayport Alternate Mode, which is used to transfer a video signal on USB-C . <sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup>. And it worked right out of the box.</p>
<p>I wired my company notebook to the same KVM switch. Similarly, to the connections to the Mac Mini. “Similarly” because I had to use different types of cables. And this almost worked as well. The “almost” is the reason for this blog entry. Now I could already test the switching of the KVM switch.</p>
<p>The KVM switch, switches two HDMI ports, an USB 1.1, three USB 3.0 and audio inputs/outputs from two input computers. This works nicely. As I have wired the touchpad permanently to the KVM switch, the touchpad moves with the displays to the respective computers. This really worked well. This was what I wanted.</p>
<h1 id="black-screen">Black screen</h1>
<p>There was just one problem: One monitor stayed black. Not what I had in mind.</p>
<p>An explanation beforehand: My displays are not directly connected to the company notebook. As I wrote a while ago, I’m using a docking station, a Calbit TS3 plus. This docking station is under my desk, so the desk itself is as clutter free as possible. At least in theory. In theory I would just need a Thunderbolt cable to my notebook.</p>
<p>“In theory” because my Keychron Q-class keyboard is a wired one and the only way to switch the Apple Touch automatically from one system to another is connecting it via an USB to Lightning cable, because the Touchpad is automatically used by the system with a wired USB connection. Using Bluetooth, you must connect them shortly via Lightning anyway to transfer ownership of this device from one system to the other, because in lieu of another mechanism, it attaches itself to the system it has an USB connection, even if you remove the USB connection. So, I’m back at two cables, three when you count the cable for the Streamdeck. It’s a vast improvement of the old wiring chaos.</p>
<p>It’s the only docking station. My Mac Mini is now in an under-desk mount so I don’t need an docking station there, because the system doesn’t add to the cable chaos on top of the desk except for touchpad and keyboard, which I need anyway, thus everything is connected to the Mac Mini directly.</p>
<p>So just the company notebook is connected to this docking station. The TS3 Plus has one USB-C port for video and a DisplayPort port. This DisplayPort outlet is the reason, why I wrote about “similar” cabling. Keyboard and Touchpad were also connected to this docking station. My KVM switch has only HDMI ports. So, I needed converter cables again. For USB-C (which is in essence Displayport) to HDMI I had one additional cable in my cable drawer besides my desk. And this display was detected by the computer instantly as soon as I connected the cable to the KVM switch.</p>
<p>For the DisplayPort it was more difficult. I had to connect a DisplayPort port on the Docking station to an HDMI-Port on the KVM switch. I thought “No problem …”. I knew of such cables because I’ve used them in the past. A friend’s computer is still using them. Up to now my display was connected directly with the DisplayPort port on the Docking station via a DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort cable. For the DP to HDMI conversion, I hadn’t such a cable in my cable drawer. No problem, I ordered a DisplayPort to HDMI cable. Next day it arrived. What a joy!</p>
<p>But that joy transformed into “WTF?” rather quickly. The screen stayed black; the display wasn’t even detected by the notebook. Only the one that connected via USB-C to HDMI was showing up in the system. I tried the DisplayPort cable again directly between dockings station or monitor. Just to check if the “known to work” configuration still “happens to work”. And it worked perfectly.</p>
<p>Okay, perhaps the HDMI port on the KVM switch doesn’t work. It was a new component, so I didn’t know at this moment if this port really works. Took a spare HDMI-to-HDMI cable from the notebook (the MacBook Pro M1 based system has a HDMI port on board) and connected it to the KVM switch. Worked perfectly.</p>
<p>Well. Next thought was: Okay, take this new DisplayPort to HDMI cable and reverse the direction. I thought this was the easiest way to check if the cable is working at all as I had no other DisplayPort output at hand. However, it didn’t work. Damned. My first assumption was: Okay, perhaps a defective cable. Well, it was new, but defective on arrival isn’t unheard of and so I went to a local computer shop to get another cable. It didn’t work either. In both directions.</p>
<p>Ooookay. Then I did what i should have done probably first. When Google suggested “caldigit displayport to hdmi not working” after entering the first two words, I knew that there is a more general problem and neither cable nor the HDMI switch was defective. And indeed: There is even a support note about <a href="https://archive.caldigit.com/KB/index.asp?KBID=222">this situation</a>.</p>
<p>There were multiple mentions and solutions on the Calbit homepage about this very problem. I just didn’t read it, because when I chose my Docking Station I didn’t plan to connect the DisplayPort to HDMI, because I had a DisplayPort port on my monitor. It didn’t matter to me. I didn’t check the situation when changing the configuration. I made assumptions.</p>
<p>I really should have searched for it earlier. The Caldigit TS3 plus simply doesn’t support all kinds of DisplayPort to HDMI cables. There are active and passive cable, and the TS3 plus (as well as the non-plus variant) only supports active cables.</p>
<p><em>Lesson learned 1: I’m checking support matrices for everything I do in my job, especially when changing or extending a system. It’s a good habit to get rid of assumptions of simplicity for your desktop computer as well and do the same for your desktop whenever you change something.</em></p>
<p>It was a classic “Kaum macht mans richtig, schon funktioniert es (As soon you do it correctly, it will just work)”. I just needed an active DisplayPort to HDMI converter. It arrived yesterday and everything started to work like a charm.</p>
<h1 id="why">Why?</h1>
<p>Okay, I sat a little bit dumbfounded about this and wanted to know why I ran into these problems. At the end, I have seen 10 Euro cables DisplayPort to HDMI cables working flawlessly on other systems. I never had the need of such a cable before, but friends and family had. DisplayPort and HDMI on and by itself are incompatible and the means to make them compatible are not mandatory. It’s starts with different voltage levels, but the differences much more far reaching.</p>
<p>It’s not a given that a DisplayPort to HDMI cable will work between your display ports and your display. The port on the GPU side must support “DisplayPort Dual-Mode (DP++)”. Passive cables can only work in conjunction with ports supporting DP++. Otherwise, the screen will stay black. If your port doesn’t speak DisplayPort++, the other side will just receive DisplayPort signaling it can’t understand. The screen stays black. My current assumption of the situation is: The Calbit TS3 plus doesn’t support DP++ on the DisplayPort, I didn’t find a reference explicitly stating this, but it’s the logical conclusion.</p>
<p>I always saying, “Don’t think about Zebras when hearing hoofs”. But I thought about the Zebra “Defective Cable”, before i thought about “Why doesn’t the port work with my cable?”. That said, I’m just not sure what’s more zebra: A defective cable or a DisplayPort that doesn’t support DisplayPort++. Because devices not supporting DisplayPort++ are rare, really rare. So the assumption that this passive cables will work is an understandable one, still it’s incorrect. At the end I think, it’s more a Zebra vs. Zebra version.</p>
<p>But why did reversing the cable also led to a black monitor. This was pure lack of knowledge. Well, you can use passive cables to connect a DisplayPort port on your system to an HDMI display, but you can’t connect an HDMI port on your system with a DisplayPort on your display without active conversion in the cable. It only works in the first direction. DisplayPort++ enables the port to do HDMI signaling over the DisplayPort physical layer, so you just must change the voltage levels. So even in passive cables, there is circuitry. It’s just not that “active” as in the active cables.</p>
<p>So: DisplayPort may have the capability to send HDMI signaling, but HDMI has no capability to send DisplayPort signaling. Thus, this conversion with passive cables just works in one direction. In the other direction, the screen stays black. You need an active conversion for this direction.</p>
<p><em>Lesson Learned 2: Get rid of your assumption of simplicity, when thinking about test cases and check beforehand if the test case could work at all with a non-defective part. You could easily test for something that can’t work at all and was never meant to work and so you draw wrong conclusions from it.</em></p>
<h1 id="long-hdmi-cables">Long HDMI cables</h1>
<p>Perhaps another interesting information: I attached my television set to the HDMI port of <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">waddledee</code> to use the Mac Mini for Zwift and as a substitute for my Apple TV. It’s rather short distance of maybe 5 meters as the remote flies, but it much longer in a visually pleasing way. I’ve learned that there are optical HDMI cables. Some of the signals are transported via optical links on those cables. More expensive than a simple 15-meter HDMI cable, but they really work well. 15 meters without any problems even at 4k. No blackouts, no problems. Before spending too much money on a high-end HDMI cable that may or may not work on such a distance due to sheer quality and shielding, I would go for an active optical HDMI cable.</p>
<hr />
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>I could tell a funny story about asking the people in my local computer store about such a cable. They were looking at me as if I was totally insane or just had no idea what I was asking for. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Joerg MoellenkampI’m currently sitting at my desk looking to an heap of cables. Display cables. You don’t think too much about display cables. At least i did not think too much about them. This is a blog entry about something seemingly simple. And how incorrect assumptions can lead you in a completely wrong direction. For example, that display cables are simple components.Probably just an overengineered small keyboard2023-12-31T06:00:00+01:002023-12-31T06:00:00+01:00https://c0t0d0s0.org/it/2023/12/31/streamdeck<p><em>(This is a test blog entry (based on a text I started a while ago) for the new Jekyll workflow)</em></p>
<p>Sometimes you see a device which results in a “Must-have” reflex. I saw such a device in 2022 on a desk. However, I had a slight problem: I wanted to have this device, I just didn’t the foggiest idea “why” I should buy it, I just wanted one. More importantly, it didn’t have one important feature: It doesn’t work standalone. You needed a computer running to use it. With the ability to work standalone, I would have had an use case earlier by using it for smart home controls.</p>
<p>However, one problem got worse over time: I started to switch of video and audio off and on quite frequently in Zoom. My new keyboard (the Keychron one) is quite loud, and when I was typing something on my system (e.g. in the chat) everyone in the session knew it. However, when I started to mute frequently, I frequently spoke into the mute … “Jörg, you are muted” was quite frequently. And I was quite fed up with finding the right window and switching back to video and audio. A better user experience was needed.</p>
<p>In search for a solution, I remembered my “must have” reflex from some time ago. And damned … I finally had a “Why” for this device.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/blog_streamdeck.jpg" alt="Streamdeck plus with knobs controlling Hue lights" /></p>
<p>The device is a Elgato Streamdeck +. A kind of keyboard with displays in the “keycaps”(which are significantly larger than the keycaps of a keyboard) … more or less. At the end you have something akin to an application specific keyboard with something meaningful instead of “F1” to “F12”. In addition to that, the “plus” version of the Streamdeck has some knobs and an additional touch sensitive display.</p>
<p>Currently I’m using it for two tasks. It controls all Hue lamps in my apartment, including dimming with the knobs. But more importantly: I’m using it to control Zoom with it. Now I have a shortcut button to bring the Zoom windows into focus and to toggle the camera and the mic with one key, e.g. with a camera and a phone on it. Quite useful.</p>
<p>There are just two issues:</p>
<ul>
<li>Read the manual of the plugin. I didn’t saw an important part, when configuring it. The Zoom plugin assumes that your menu items to toggle audio or video are named in a certain manner to trigger the functionality. The configured default are the English menu items. If you don’t use the English language version of Zoom, the plugin can’t control Zoom because, the menu items are named differently. You can configure it in the plugin. And to get the Streamdeck/Zoom integration to work, you have to configure it.</li>
<li>With the Zoom plugin you can’t control reactions. So you can’t put a “thumbs up” or “check mark” on a button. And so far, i don’t have a work around for it.</li>
</ul>
<p>Apart from those problems, the Streamdeck worked quite nice and without problems so far. Especially the Hue integration. (Update: Next step is to migrate the Streamdeck to my new desktop.)</p>
<p>Yes, i know it’s probably just a totally overengineered small keyboard, I could have solved it with keyboard hot keys, but this way I had a reason to satisfy the “must have” reflex I had roughly one and a half year ago.</p>
<p>PS: The next purchase after this was a decent desk mat … as it was impossible to clean the desk in a way that didn’t leave a look like “cleaned in the last century” on the desk. As if I didn’t learn my lesson with black tiles.</p>Joerg Moellenkamp(This is a test blog entry (based on a text I started a while ago) for the new Jekyll workflow)20232023-12-28T06:00:00+01:002023-12-28T06:00:00+01:00https://c0t0d0s0.org/jahresrueckblick/2023/12/28/2023<p>Peter Gabriel hat dieses Jahr wieder ein Album herausgebracht. Ich hatte eigentlich schon die Hoffnung verloren, das “I/O” je herauskommen würde. Denn Herr Gabriel verriet schon kurz nach dem letzten Album, wie der Nachfolger heißen würde, hat es dann aber lange Jahre nicht veröffentlicht.</p>
<p>Ich habe länger gebraucht, um mit dem Album warm zu werden. Den Zugang zu “Up” habe ich deutlich schneller gefunden. Allerdings enthielt dies Album mit “Signal to Noise” auch sehr besondere Songs. “Up” war 2002. Mein bewusster “Erstkontakt” mit dem Gesamtwerk von Gabriel war 1992 mit der Veröffentlichung von “Us”. Natürlich kannte ich die Videos zu “Sledgehammer” (yay, nackte tanzende Hühner) und “Big time” schon vorher. Aber bis dahin war das für mich mehr oder minder Hintergrundbeschallung. “Us” … Das sind jetzt 31 Jahre. Egal, Herr Gabriel hat also 21 Jahre für sein neues Album gebraucht. In dieser Zeit sind gefühlt ganze Musikstile aus einer obskuren Ecke gekommen und in einer genauso obskuren Ecke wieder von der Bühne getreten.</p>
<p>Die Frage, ob er mit 73 Jahren noch mal 21 Jahr für sein nächstes Album hat, ist vielleicht nicht ganz unberechtigt. Auch ob ich ein Album eines 94-jährigen hören möchte. Schon I/O klingt an einigen Stellen doch ein wenig nach “Alter Mann am Klavier”, was mir vielleicht ein wenig den Zugang erschwert hat und das Album eines Vierundneunzigjährigen wäre wahrscheinlich vollständig “Alter Mann am Klavier”. Zu mindestens wäre das meine Erwartung. Genauso berechtigt wäre die Frage, ob man selbst noch 21 Jahre hat, um auf dieses zu warten. Denn wenn mir eines in diesem Jahr klar gemacht worden ist, dass nichts selbstverständlich ist. Schon gar nicht Zeit.</p>
<p>Auf jeden Fall ist “I/O” nicht nur Klavier, sondern an vielen Stellen einfach großartig. Wenn man Peter Gabriel allgemein nicht mag, wird man durch dieses Album wohl auch nicht überzeugt werden, wenn man seine Musik mag oder einfach gute Musik hören möchte, ist es einen Versuch wert.</p>
<h1 id="waddledee">Waddledee</h1>
<p>Ich habe momentan Urlaub. Und beschäftige mich mit zwei Dingen. In einem Riesenhaufen gescannter, kategorisierter Quittungen noch nach irgendeinem übersehenen Posten zu suchen, der endlich diesen Gedanken “Ich habe was vergessen …” abschaltet, bevor ich die Einreichung der Elster zum Transport übereigne.</p>
<p>Ja, und <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">waddledee</code> einrichten. <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">waddledee</code>? Ich habe bisher oft “Ghost in the shell” Charaktere als Hostnamen verwendet. Aber die ganzen Namen sind momentan in den ganzen VMs eines Nebenprojekts von mir verbraten. Lord of the Rings-Verweise gibt es bei Hostnamen zuhauf und seit langer Zeit. Mein Erstkontakt mit Internet fand 1992 auf einer <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">aragorn</code> statt.</p>
<p>Bei Canbox habe ich damals die Namen aus Matrix verwendet, der Mailservercluster bestand damals aus <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">morpheus</code> und <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">trinity</code>. Was gewissermassen auch ein planerischer Irrtum gewesen ist, da das System eigentlich nicht als Cluster geplant war, sonst hätte ich wahrscheinlich <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">neo</code> und <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">trinity</code> gewählt. Aber ich schweife ab.</p>
<p>Was ist also ein Waddledee? Es ist eine Figur in einigen Kirby-Spielen, die man als Player 2 spielt (früher waren es die Gegner von Kirby). Klein und man verzeihe mir das Wort fast so niedlich wie Kirby.</p>
<p>Der neue Rechner hat zwei Aufgaben. Es ist mein neuer Apple Desktop, der mein Macbook Pro - das mittlerweile auch echt in die Jahre gekommen ist und vermutlich nächstes Jahr aus dem Support fliegt - für viele, aber nicht alle Aufgaben ersetzen soll. Ich bin nicht mehr so viel unterwegs wie früher. Deswegen probiere ich das mal mit einem Desktop aus. Es wird mein neuer zentraler Arbeitsplatz für Devonthink werden, damit ich nicht ständig mein Leben in Quittungen, Dokumenten und Notizen mit mir rumtrage.</p>
<p>Dieser Text entsteht gerade auf diesem Rechner. Ich habe gleich als erstes Github und Textmate installiert und einer meiner Pläne ist meine Jekyll Instanz für dies Blog auch auf den Rechner umzuziehen.</p>
<p>Ich will Zwift zum Radfahren drauf laufen lassen, muss aber noch sehen, ob ich das via meiner Apple TV weiterhin auf meinen Fernseher streame oder ob ich nach 10 Jahren endlich mal das HDMI-Kabel benutze, das ich in der Wand verlegt habe. Ich muss es dazu aber noch irgendwie auf meinen Schreibtisch verlängern und sehen, ob ich darüber überhaupt ein 4K-Signale bekomme. Vielleicht auch AppleTV-Ersatz selbst, denn ich benutze momentan noch eine non-4k AppleTV um meinen LG-Fernseher vom Internet fernzuhalten.</p>
<p>Dazu kommen: Hosting der Timemachine Daten für eigene und fremde Notebooks. Fileserver. SSH. All solche Sachen. Jede Menge Hilfsaufgaben eben, die für das kleine Gerät im Raum stehen.</p>
<p>Wen es interessiert: Es ist ein Mac Mini mit M2 Pro CPU und 16 GB und 512 GB Storage. Und weil ein Mac Mini einfach klein ist, aber mir und meinen Rechnern hier bei allerlei Dingen, die eines Servers bedürfen, helfen, erschien mir <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">waddledee</code> einfach passend. Mag auch damit zusammenhängen, dass ich seit meinem Geburtstag dieses Jahrs stolzer Besitzer einer Switch bin und nach einer Weile herausgefunden habe, das mir Kirby-Spiele mehr beim Hirnausschalten helfen, als die Abenteuer von Link. Und Waddledees sind nun mal Bestandteil der Nintendowelt und somit auch irgendwie Teil der Switch wie ich finde. Irgendeinen Namen muss der Rechner ja haben und noch einen “xyz von Joerg Moellenkamp” und ich finde hier gar nichts wieder. Ansonsten kam mir dieser Name einfach als erstes in den Sinn.</p>
<p><code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">waddledee</code> erlaubt es mir erst mal abzuwarten, was nächstes Jahr so auf der Apple-Notebookfront passiert. Ich glaube ein Jahr steckt vielleicht noch in meinem alten Gerät. Dieses Jahr will ich noch nutzen. Ich vermute, Ende 2024 reden wir dann auch schon über M4 oder so … oder es ist wenigstens absehbar, was kommen wird. Um zu gucken, ob sich ein weiteres Warten darauf lohnen könnte.</p>
<p>Apropos Switch: Ich habe in der Zwischenzeit einige Spiele darauf gespielt. Ich finde “Old Man’s Journey” auf der Switch einfach großartig. Eher weniger ein Videospiel, eher eine interaktive Geschichte, ein interaktives Bilderbuch über die Geschichte eines alten Mannes und dessen Weg im Leben, über Liebe und Verlust. Wirklich schön gemacht, wenn auch etwas emotional. Es war das zweite Spiel, das ich mir für die Switch gekauft habe, Ende Mai, Anfang Juni. Es hat Spaß gemacht, es zu spielen, auch wenn es viel zu kurz war.</p>
<p>Okay, Ich habe mich jetzt in Unwichtigkeiten verloren … Jahresrückblick … in den letzten beiden Jahren habe ich hier in mein Blog einen Jahresrückblick geschrieben. Ich habe mich entschlossen, die Reihe nicht abbrechen zu lassen, aber dieses Jahr wird es ein Rückblick werden, der eigentlich nicht so wirklich zurückblickt. Es ist nicht so, das nichts passiert wäre, es ist viel passiert, zu viel eigentlich für ein Jahr. Dieses Jahr wird mich noch lange beschäftigen. Es ist ein Jahr das ich nicht vergessen werde.</p>
<h1 id="weihnachten">Weihnachten</h1>
<p>Vielleicht am Anfang etwas über die letzten Tage. Ich habe mich dieses Weihnachten viel damit beschäftigt, meinen Eltern zu helfen, den Besuch all meiner Geschwister vorzubereiten. Ich hatte keine wie auch immer geartete Weihnachtslaune, also habe ich mich in Arbeit gestürzt. Ich wollte möglichst wenig an Weihnachten, an die Feiertage, an das vergangene Jahr denken.</p>
<p>Kuchen gebacken, die Früchte darin sind wieder nach unten durchgesackt. Mehlen bringt es irgendwie nicht. Ich habe überlegt, ob man die Früchte vielleicht einfach mit Nadeln aufspießt, in den Teig legt und am Ende die Spieß rauszieht. Aber dann würde mein Kuchen wie Pinhead aussehen.</p>
<p>Aber mal ernsthaft: Ich bin letztes Jahr zu den wirklich großartigen Backformen von Northern Ware geinfluenced worden. Ich benutze sie nicht oft, aber ich bin nach einem ersten teilweisen Rückschlag echt gut geworden, dieser Form unfallfrei den Kuchen abzutrotzen. Aber die Kuchen sehen ganz großartig aus! Einige andere Formen dieses Herstellers sehen noch weit mehr danach aus, als würde beim Herauslösen des Backwerks automatisch eine Musik für den Endgegner leise im Hintergrund spielen. Aber eben optisch einfach großartig. Ich würde sagen, meine Backform ist beim herauslösen “Intermediate”-Level. (wobei: Die größte Krümelkalypse dieses Jahres war sowieso eine einfache Tortenbodenform, die ihren Inhalt nur mit grober, schabender Gewalt wieder hergegeben hat. Keine Ahnung warum)</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/blog_turbinenkuchen.jpg" alt="Kuchen, der in seiner Form irgendwie an eine Turbine erinnert" /></p>
<p>Das Schneiden der Tortenböden für eine Nusstorte mit einem Zwirn für den ersten Weihnachtstag hat mich an Filme erinnert, in denen der Mörder sein Opfer mit der Garotte hinweg gemeuchelt hat. Ich habe anscheinend in meinem Leben zu viele Meuchelfilme gesehen. Eher die älteren Filme, denn in neueren Filmen geht es ja irgendwie auch nur noch darum, möglichst großkalibrig das Innere nach außen (und an die dahinterliegende Wand) zu kehren.</p>
<p>Ich bin danach daran schier verzweifelt, Krokant an die Seite einer Sahnetorte zu bekommen. Einer meiner Brüder hat ein Gerät zum Sandstrahlen. Ich habe mich während dieser Aktion häufiger gefragt, ob es auch Krokantstrahlen gibt. Letztlich wurde es aber eine ungelenke Wurftechnik, die zu einem einigermaßen akzeptablen Ergebnis am Rande der Torte, aber auch erstaunlich viel Krokant führte, der sich allüberall auf der Arbeitsplatte verteilt hat. Und zu einer dilettantischen Bäckeremulation am Rande des Krokantwahnsinns.</p>
<p>Ich habe Rouladen gemacht, die durch pures Glück und viel Zufall genau auf den Punkt waren. Das Dilemma von Rouladen ist das Abwägen von minimaler Zähigkeit gegen völlige Desintegration in der Sauce. Diesmal habe ich mir anders als vor vielen Jahren, das genaue Rezept aufgeschrieben. Das letzte Jahr hat mir gezeigt, wie schnell sich Dinge ändern können und mir war es plötzlich sehr wichtig, das Rouladenrezept meiner Mutter zu haben. Was merkwürdig ist, da ich selbst ja kein Fleisch mehr esse. Das gleiche gilt für den gepimpten Rotkohl meines Vaters. Den macht er nicht von Grund auf, sondern wertet fertigen Rotkohl erheblich auf. Und dann schmeckt der Rotkohl einfach großartig.</p>
<p>In dem Zusammenhang: Ein ostfriesisches Kochbuch, das sich mein Vater gekauft hat, gibt gerade Hoffnung, dass wir das Wissen um das Rullekes-Rezept (Neujahrskuchen, im Grunde ein sehr dünner aufgerollter großer Keks) meiner Oma irgendwann vielleicht doch noch so irgendwie wiedererlangen können. Ein erster Versuch über Weihnachten war so nah wie nie an den Backkünsten meiner Oma. Vielleicht fehlt dann wirklich nur ein alter Löffel meiner Oma oder die selbst geschnitzte Rollhilfe meines Opas als geschmackgebende Komponente. Und nebenbei angemerkt: Eine ganze Schüssel voll Teig von diesen Kuchen in einem Waffeleisen zu backen, hat eine erhebliche meditative Wirkung. Eisen aufklappen, Eisen leicht mit Fett einpinseln, Teig rein, zuklappen, runterdrücken, 2.5 Minuten warten, aufklappen, Rullekes rausnehmen, mit ausgesuchten Flüchen ob der Hitze im Backgut zu einer Tüte drehen (ich halte es für durchaus wahrscheinlich, dass sich auf einigen Rullekes aufgrund der Flüche spontan ein Pentagram gebildet hat), wieder von vorne anfangen. Dutzende Male. Kein Raum für Stress. Kein Raum für Eile.</p>
<p>Leider konnte meine Oma uns damals nicht mehr ihr eigenes Rezept übergeben. Es war in den Tiefen der schwindenden Erinnerung infolge ihres Alter versunken (sie wurde 94, etwas für das ich unendlich dankbar bin). Und zu heben haben wir es nicht mehr vermocht. Wobei meine Oma da nie sonderlich hilfreich war, weil ihre Antwort auf die Zutaten oft nur aus „bietje davon, bietje davon” (wer den Dialekt von hier oben nicht versteht “bisschen davon, bisschen davon”, aber das dürftet Ihr euch schon gedacht haben) bestand. Ich habe zwar mal aus den USA ein Messlöffelsets mit 1/8 bis 1 Cup mitgebracht und verschenkt. Etwas Ähnliches habe ich für das “Bietje” nicht gefunden, wahrscheinlich auch, weil es so viele Bietjes wie Großmütter in Ostfriesland gibt und es auch kein Urbietje gibt, das in irgendeinem Rathaus im Nordwesten von Deutschland liegt.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/blog_neujahrskuchen.jpg" alt="Bild von ostfriesischen Neujahrskuchen" /></p>
<h1 id="radfahren">Radfahren</h1>
<p>Apropos Essen, aus einer Vielzahl von Gründen habe ich einige der Kilos, die ich 2018-2019 verloren habe, wiedergewonnen. Wiedergewonnen … klingt so, als wäre es was Gutes. Ist es nicht. Ich befinde mich aber seit September wieder auf dem Weg nach unten. Ein neu gekauftes Indoor Bike (Garmin Neobike) hat sich als sehr hilfreich erwiesen. Wenn man nach dem Aufstehen im Grunde genommen schon auf dem Rad sein kann, ohne nachzudenken, ob man alles mithat, die Radhose richtig rum (Das Polster außen sieht doof aus, habe ich am Anfang meiner Vielradfahrzeit auf die harte Art gelernt und da man unter den Bib Shorts (eine kurze Radhose mit Trägern und lang gezogenem Hinterteil, damit meines nicht rausguckt) nichts trägt, ist ein Ändern dieses Umstands mit erheblichen Herausforderungen verbunden) angezogen und nicht wieder irgendein Anbauteil vergessen hat zu laden, hilft das gewaltig.</p>
<p>Das Bike ist aber bei weitem nicht so „silent“, wie man es auf Basis der Werbung glauben möchte. Es ist ein reines Indoor-Bike. Man kann es für nichts anderes gebrauchen, als im Haus zu fahren. Es ist einfach da. Es erlaubt keine Ausrede. Steht mahnend im Wohnzimmer vor dem Fernseher. Im Weg. Nicht als Sitzwäscheständer missbraucht. Erinnernd, dass es ein Werkzeug eines Ziels ist, das ich schon erreicht hatte, leichtfertig aber wieder aufgegeben habe.</p>
<p>8 kg sind mittlerweile wieder runter. Mein Verhältnis zum Radfahren ist mittlerweile von den Extremen „gar nicht“ (was mit zum Gewichtszuwachs geführt hat) oder „80-110 km täglich“ weg und hat sich auf ein bis anderthalb Stunden, selten zwei Stunden pro Tag eingependelt. Das sind üblicherweise 30, auf der “Tempus Fugit”-Runde in Zwift (die sich durch nahezu völlige Abwesenheit von Anstiegen auszeichnet) 50-60 km.</p>
<p>Ich habe die 5000 km, die ich mir vorgenommen habe für dieses Jahr geschafft. Es werden wohl knapp über 6200-6300 km werden. So ganz genau weiß ich das nicht. Aus irgendeinem Grund verzeichnet Strava seit diesem Jahr 3 Radfahrten im Jahr 2015, ich werde sie vermutlich nächstes Jahr mal an ihren richtigen Ort verschieben. Ich vermute, sie sind deplatziert, weil ich diese händisch importieren musste. Ziel für nächstes Jahr sind 10000 km. Ich denke, das ist dann auch okay. (Update: Ich habe die fehlimportierten Fahrten ins richtige Jahr verschoben)</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/blog_veloviewer2023_4.png" alt="Veloviewer" /></p>
<h1 id="rückblickend">Rückblickend</h1>
<p>Rückblick … stimmt … ich wollte ja eigentlich einen Rückblick schreiben, einen kurzen Rückblick. Irgendwie drücke ich mich anscheinend davor. Warum kurz? Weil vieles unschreibbar ist, was mich bewegt. Wie ich schrieb, es ist im letzten Jahr nicht wenig passiert.</p>
<p>Und dabei waren echte WTF-Momente: Anfang des Jahres hatte ich einen Schwelbrand in meinem Wagen, der mir durch eine trockene Stelle am Blech des Kofferraums am ansonsten nassen Auto aufgefallen ist. Ich war in dem Moment echt ein wenig schockiert. Hat man mir auch angemerkt. Probleme mit meiner Pelletheizung haben sich am Ende als eine ins Pelletlager gefallene Lesehilfe herausgestellt, die ich aus der Spindel herausoperieren musste. Ich weiß nicht, wie lange sie da drin war, ich weiß nur wie lange sie maximal da drin gewesen sein könnte. Weil es die Lesehilfe meines Vaters war und ich mich noch erinnern konnte, wann ich diese bestellt habe. Da die Spindel in gefühlt etwa 2 Tonnen Pellets steckte, fühlte sich das so an wie eine laparoskopische Entfernung der Mandeln vom falschen Ende aus. Aufgefallen durch einen Zufall. Und das waren die eher unwichtigeren Dinge des letzten Jahres.</p>
<p>Ich habe an einem Tag eine ganz und gar schreckliche Nachricht bekommen und eine ganz und gar wunderbare und musste mich der Frage stellen, warum meine Reaktion auf letztere Nachricht selbst für Norddeutsche sehr norddeutsch war. Ging einfach nicht anders.</p>
<p>Ja, ich bin 50 geworden dieses Jahr. Weniger gedanklich disruptiv, als ich dachte. Aber es ist irgendwie auch einfach untergegangen. Aus einer eigentlich geplanten größeren Veranstaltung wurde ein immer kleinerer Rahmen. Von „große Party mit Freunden und Kollegen“ zu „kleiner Rahmen im Garten“ bei mir.</p>
<p>Warum? Im Jahr Vier nach dem Entstehen von Corona ist mir bei großen Menschenmengen immer noch sehr unwohl, auch wenn ich durch die mittlerweile sechste Impfung auf XBB.1.5 geupdated worden bin. Man mag sich über die Zahl sechs amüsieren, aber ich habe zweimal eine Impfung gezielt dafür eingesetzt, Menschen, die mir wichtig waren und immer noch sind, insofern abzuschirmen, als das meine Antikörpermenge so hoch war, dass es mithin unwahrscheinlich war, das ich diesen Menschen irgendetwas mitbringe.</p>
<p>Ich weiß auch, dass es mich am Ende auch erreichen wird. Aber ich muss dem nicht auch noch entgegen gehen, als wäre Corona etwas Wünschenswertes, oder Irrelevantes, etwas in seiner Art Unvermeidliches.</p>
<p>Am Ende war mein fünfzigster Geburtstag ein Tag der kam und wieder ging. Man hat manchmal den Eindruck, als würden manche Leute glauben, es würde mit 50 ein Licht in der Hand anfangen zu blinken. Ich kann jetzt aus eigener Anschauung sagen, dem ist nicht so. Und ja, diese Filmreferenz ist wahrscheinlich auch gut geeignet, mein Alter einzuordnen.</p>
<p>Ich bin wieder zurück in Lüneburg. Nach etwas über einem Jahr war mein Intermezzo in Harburg beendet. Es gab gute Gründe für Harburg, aber am Ende auch gute Gründe und Planungen, die gegen Harburg gesprochen haben. Die Jury diskutiert noch, ob es eine gute Entscheidung war, nachdem ein Teil dessen, was gegen Harburg sprach, nunmehr keine Gültigkeit mehr hat. Bleibt abzuwarten, aber die Jury scheint momentan eher auf der positiv gestimmten Seite zu sein.</p>
<p>Über das, was in diesem Jahr positiv war, kann ich nichts schreiben, darf ich nichts schreiben. Schon weil dies hier mein privates Blog ist, schreibe ich hier nie über Projekte, die ich im Laufe des Jahres gemacht habe. Höchstens über Erkenntnisse und Einsichten. Das werde ich auch weiter hier so halten. Nur kurz: Ich habe meinen Teil beigetragen zu Projekten, auf die ich ein wenig stolz bin. Insbesondere ein Projekt …</p>
<p>Über das, was mich in diesem Jahr traurig gemacht hat, mir Sorgen gemacht hat, dazu führte, dass ich ziemlich hart mit mir selbst ins Gericht gegangen bin, möchte ich nichts schreiben. So richtig private Dinge habe ich hier - wenn überhaupt - im Blog nur recht verklausuliert geschrieben. Meistens geht es ja nicht nur um einen allein, es sind immer mehrere, viele, wenige Menschen beteiligt, aber immer mehr Menschen als man selbst. Auch das möchte ich weiterhin so halten. Über das zu schreiben, was im letzten Jahr für mich wichtig war, würde bedeuten, auf die Verklausulierung zu verzichten, und das möchte ich nicht. Nur kurz: Ich verlasse 2023 nicht als glücklicher Mensch. Ganz und gar nicht. Und die Verantwortung, die man dafür trägt, macht das nicht gerade besser.</p>
<p>Über das, was im nächsten Jahr passieren könnte, mag ich nichts schreiben. Das wäre Herausfordern des Karmas, des Schicksals. Wenn man über schlechte Dinge schreibt, passieren sie. Wenn man über gute Dinge schreibt, passieren sie nicht. Ich könnte leider über Entwicklungen schreiben, die Potential in beide Richtungen haben. Aber auch Entwicklungen, bei denen die Richtung des Bewegungsvektor im Raum der Dinge, die einem im Leben passieren, schon absehbar ist, aber nicht dessen Betrag und wann. Ist wahrscheinlich immer so im Leben. Nicht darüber zu schreiben ist schlichtweg einfacher Haushaltsaberglaube, ein eher unterschwelliger Ausdruck der Kontrollillusion. Also halte ich mich hier auch zurück. Stoff für den Jahresrückblick 2024. Oder hoffentlich auch nicht.</p>
<h1 id="wünsche-und-ausblick">Wünsche und Ausblick</h1>
<p>Wenn man nicht über das Gute, das Schlechte oder das Zukünftige im Leben schreiben kann will oder möchte, sollte man sich vielleicht kurzfassen. Ich habe eh schon zu viel über Backen, Kochen und Krokantstrahlen geschrieben. Ich wünsche Euch allen auf jeden Fall ein gutes 2024. Ich wünsche mir für jeden von Euch, dass Eure Wünsche in Erfüllung gehen. Ich gucke hier gerade aus meinem Dachfenster, sehe die Sonne, höre den nachlassenden Wind. Wäre schön, wenn das für viele von Euch eine Allegorie auf 2024 wäre.</p>
<p>Spätestens Ende 2024 werde ich hier wieder etwas schreiben. Die beiden Elbtower-Äquivalente in meinem Blog hoffe ich irgendwann in meinem nächsten Urlaub abzureißen oder fertigzustellen. Das begleitet mich schon zu lange. Aber wenn man den ganzen Tag Wortgebäude für Wortgebäude auftürmen muss, dann sind die Finger irgendwann müde und der Teil des Geistes, der des Schreibens mächtig ist, leer. Zumal andere Teile des Geistes momentan eh so laut diskutieren, dass sich der schreibende Teil am liebsten ein Kissen um den Kopf wickeln möchte, um ein wenig Ruhe zu finden. Und das ist keine gute Voraussetzung, um einen Text zu schreiben, für denen einem noch viele Gedanken und Fragmente im Kopf schwirren, aber abends keine übergreifende Idee, diese auch in einem Text miteinander zu verbinden. Mein Kopf war ohnehin voll dieses Jahr, nur in meinem letzten Urlaub habe ich etwas Platz zum Schreiben gefunden. Schreiben, um vom ständigen Laufen meiner Gedankenmaschine abzulenken.</p>
<h1 id="postskriptum">Postskriptum</h1>
<p><a href="https://open.spotify.com/intl-de/track/0YJ4T76Es9if0QRloXo7v9?si=76b26846df82425e">“Four Kind of Horses”</a> vom I/O Album finde ich großartig. Vielleicht eher aus der WTF-Ecke ist die <a href="https://open.spotify.com/intl-de/track/0fkRxas02SwQR9CLIHTcQP?si=5754241fc3224e33">Coverversion von Ihsahn und Einar Solberg von “Manhattan Skyline”</a>, eigentlich ja von a-ha. Wenn man die Musik von Ihsahn sonst kennt, eine merkwürdige Kombination. Aber Herr Solberg als Ersatz für Herrn Harket … funktioniert erstaunlich gut. Und als Abschluss von der Playlist, während ich diesen Text geschrieben habe, zwei weitere Links: <a href="https://open.spotify.com/intl-de/track/121pJQwhgiX5UPYZFhmG3y?si=6d36c3cd9d5d4d54">“It looks bad” von KÅRP</a>. Für mich ein Zufallsfund in diesem Jahr. Und <a href="https://open.spotify.com/intl-de/track/3MOUt4k7KUP8qVheHT8RG0?si=fb48b08a7b0b474e">“The Distance”</a> von Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs … ja … heißen wirklich so.</p>
<p>Und ja, wenn Du diese Zeile siehst, wurde die Webseite von einem jekyll auf <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">waddledee</code> erzeugt. Und ja, diese Zeile ist eine Debugnachricht ;)</p>Joerg MoellenkampPeter Gabriel hat dieses Jahr wieder ein Album herausgebracht. Ich hatte eigentlich schon die Hoffnung verloren, das “I/O” je herauskommen würde. Denn Herr Gabriel verriet schon kurz nach dem letzten Album, wie der Nachfolger heißen würde, hat es dann aber lange Jahre nicht veröffentlicht.A few days ago … 50001 km2023-11-05T18:00:00+01:002023-11-05T18:00:00+01:00https://c0t0d0s0.org/cycling/2023/11/05/50000<p>A few days ago. This is the number of kilometers i ran or cycled since 2019.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/50000.png" alt="Openstreetmap view" /></p>
<p>I tried to exactly hit 50000 … didn’t work. Hope that i will reach 6000 km this year.</p>Joerg MoellenkampA few days ago. This is the number of kilometers i ran or cycled since 2019.From cycling to computer systems performance – Part 12023-11-03T18:00:00+01:002023-11-03T18:00:00+01:00https://c0t0d0s0.org/lessonslearned/onceuponatimeaserver/cycling/2023/11/03/cycling-performance_part1<p>This is my first longer blog entry after getting back to a more frequent blogging schedule. It will be a two part blog entry. It may start with cycling, however it’s more about measuring, about interpreting data and how you thought model of the situation can lead you to wrong interpretations. But that is mostly in the second part.</p>
<h1 id="a-foreword">A foreword</h1>
<p>I got that explorer tile (I will explain later what this is). I just went there again a few days later to collect some of the explorer tiles west of the explorer tile that is central in this part and thus collect the missing tile then. If you are interested about some thoughts on collecting data for performance problems, you may should jump to the section “What has all this to do with performance problems?”</p>
<p>For quite a time i searched for a good example for something that I’m discussing quite frequently with customers and friends: How does measuring influences your way to perceive reality and thus react to it.</p>
<p>It took me a while before i recognized that I’m sitting on a large heap of data to demonstrate some of the effects I’m seeing as well when troubleshooting computer performance problem. And why shouldn’t they appear there as well. It’s at the end about measuring things. For these observations it doesn’t matter if it’s about GPS coordinates or writes per seconds on a disk.</p>
<h1 id="cycling">Cycling</h1>
<p>As you may know I’m motivating myself to ride large distances by a little gamification (besides the gratification effect when you are standing on the scale and hope you have shaved off some weight). In my case it’s collecting the explore tiles on Statshunter or Veloviewer.</p>
<p>Explore tiles are the squares in a square grid when your divide the earth surface in equal sides squares. You collect one by driving or walking into this tile. There are roughly 238 million all over the world. This summer I made a longer ride to Amelinghausen, a larger village some kilometers away from Lüneburg. It’s in the middle of the Lüneburg Heath and perhaps most known for electing a heath queen once a year, one of them was Jenny Elvers, a celebrity rather not at the top of the alphabet today, and honestly not back in her days. But that’s only my opinion. But you couldn’t evade reporting about her for a while. For me this village is more a nuisance because it’s on the way to the A7 when I’m heading to the south and I must drive 50 kph through this village.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/models_stathunterview.jpg" alt="Openstreetmap view" /></p>
<p>That said, I “collect” those tiles and sometimes I even plan my tours to snatch a tile. This is the reason why my tours look on Strava sometimes like I’m lost.<sup id="fnref:3" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> I’m not lost in such moments. It’s just the the problem that some streets getting from great tarmac easy to ride with a road bike to roughest terrain within a kilometer or two, not suitable to pass with a road bike and sometimes even not with a gravel bike. And so, you have cycle back and try another street to snatch another explorer tile, even when the map looked reasonable.</p>
<p>No, those as planned detours to fetch such a tile. Some of them really need planning because not all of them are easily reachable. Usually, I’m planing those routes with Komoot or Strava the evening before, export them to my bike computer and just ride them a day later. And the bike tour I’m talking about in this blog entry was such a preplanned tour.</p>
<p>It’s sometimes a little bit hard to find a way to a tile where you don’t have to push your bike. And there is probably a large block of tiles southwest of Lueneburg that I will probably never collect. There are large training grounds for the military there … and I don’t want to ride there obviously as my bicycle isn’t resistant to unexploded ordinance.</p>
<p>What follows now is totally overanalyzing the data. I know this ;) But digging deep into a problem to find out what really happens is not only something i like to do in my job. Other people are doing crosswords or Sudoku to keep their brains running. I’m put my teeth in problems like this and try to get some insight out of it.</p>
<p>I should say that I’m quite a data-centric rider. My performance on a bike normally wouldn’t warrant this level of data recording, but out of health reason i adhere to a somewhat strict torque and power limit when cycling. So, i have to measure the data and the devices records them. Why should i throw this data away? The reason is nothing that hinders me otherwise, i should just not put 800 Watts into the pedals. That said, I’m a long-distance rider in a flat area, no need for such power levels anyway.</p>
<h1 id="through-a-garden">Through a garden</h1>
<p>That said, in the summer I came back from a longer tour. I uploaded my GPS track into Strava (or to be exact my Garmin Edge 830 bike computer did this for me automatically as soon as i tell the computer to stop recording) and then checked Veloviewer for new tiles i was able to collect. And I was a little bit puzzled. I found out by looking at the map that I didn’t collect a tile that I should have collected according to my pre-ride planning.</p>
<p>And indeed, on higher zooms level: It looked like was on the border and so technically I didn’t enter it with the current algorithm used by Veloviewer and Statscounter. <sup id="fnref:border" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:border" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup></p>
<p>I zoomed in and thought : “WTF?”</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/models_osmview.jpg" alt="Openstreetmap view" /></p>
<p>The blue part is a tile that i was able to collect. The yellow part is the tile, which i wasn’t able to collect. I whould have collected it, because the street would have led me into the uncollected tile.</p>
<p>I was pretty sure; I didn’t ride through the garden of those people and the intersection is clearly in the non-acquired tile. Despite my often repeated dogma „If you hears hoofs, don’t think about zebras“, I thought about a lot of zebras, thought about errors in the map, for example that the intersection is not at the right place in the map. Or that my measuring equipment (aka GPS) isn’t measuring correctly. I found slight errors in maps in the past by cycling and I know about the imperfections of getting a location via GPS.</p>
<p>But the intersection was at the same coordinates on Openstreetmap (which is the map data used by many sports related websites) as on Google Maps. And why should my Garmin Edge would correctly place me on the correct side of the street but then place me in the garden of some unsuspecting people in the Lüneburg Heath? Didn’t really made sense.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/models_gmview.jpg" alt="GM view" /></p>
<p>Did i just rode through the vegetable garden of someone and didn’t recognize it. This would for sure be a new step ahead in being an annoying cyclist in comparison of being part of a MAMIL group ride. <sup id="fnref:mamil" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:mamil" class="footnote" rel="footnote">3</a></sup></p>
<h1 id="models">Models</h1>
<p>It took me a moment and a big facepalm to find out what’s was really the problem. I made the wrong assumption that the model I’m looking at equals the reality. Models of the reality - and maps are models - are not the reality. They always simplify the reality to some degree to make them fit for use.</p>
<p>For cycling and running you don’t need a map with extreme precision. To navigate you don’t need an exact model of the streets, houses, gardens, and property boundaries. You don’t even need it that precise for self-driving cars, i think. Because at the end you don’t let the car steer itself like you would fly an aircraft with instrument flight rules. You should have something like an LIDAR to know what actually your surroundings are and the system should base it’s decision on this currently measured model of reality and not the one on the map, where won’t find other cars or the newly constructed bike lane.</p>
<p>You need that level of model of the reality when you want to argue with your neighbor who owns a tree. When you want to construct a street. But for navigation on streets, you can use a simplified model.</p>
<p>The issue was clear when I switched to satellite view. By looking at the map, my incorrect assumption was clear: That one street intersected relatively sharp into the other. Like on the map. But that’s nonsense when you think about it. Many streets, especially when they are not joining at a 90-degree angle have wider junctions to ease turning. That’s obvious and it’s worth quite a facepalm not to have thought directly about this. The street didn’t forced me into the tile. Only the street on the map did so.</p>
<p>The junction was rounded and thus while I was seemingly driving though the garden of someone in the model “map” I was still on the street in the reality. And on the satellite view, which is still a simplification of the world (for example it’s the 2D transformation of a 3D world), it was perfectly clear. It made sense that I didn’t enter the tile, when the map model suggested that I would be forced by the street into the next tile.</p>
<p>It was possible to miss the tile without entering the private property of someone. Something that looked impossible when looking on the map. This is the track superimposed on a Google Maps satellite view:</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/models_satview.jpg" alt="Sat view" /></p>
<h1 id="by-a-few-centimeters">By a few centimeters</h1>
<p>Okay, so at least I knew at that moment the recorded track didn’t put me in the garden of an innocent stranger. But then there is another question: By what margin did I miss the tile. It got strange here. I don’t exactly know where the borders of the tiles in Veloviewer or Statshunter are. That’s the problem. I don’t know what the algorithm of both websites considers as “entering a tile”. Totally crossing it? Intersecting with it? Crossing it and them something? Like for example at least 0.01 degrees? I really don’t know.</p>
<p>I found out that, in some tools - if you export the non-entered tiles (for example as a map overlay for your Garmin bicycle computer) - the eastward border of the missed tile is at 10,17334 East. However, the most westward point in the tracking data of my bicycle ride was 10,173338 East. So, I indeed entered the tile. By a margin of 0.000002 degrees.</p>
<p>How much is this in a more practical unit of measure: Since my education I never used spherical trigonometry (to be honest: I didn’t used trigonometry at all since then). I’ve used a lot of statistical methods in my career. So i cheated: I just put them into a fake track in my gps editor (to ensure that calculation errors are the same), both points on the same latitude and asked for the length of this track. Well, the distance between both points is humongous. It’s 13.3 cm.</p>
<p>The algorithms at all the websites I know (there are more than Veloviewer and Stathunter) denied me the tile.</p>
<h1 id="further-simplifications">Further simplifications.</h1>
<p>I may have even been further in the tile. I’m pretty sure that I’ve entered the tile. There is another model at work here that simplifies the reality. My Garmin Edge is sampling my tours in 1 second intervals to track them. With a sampling interval of 0.5 seconds the device could have tracked me at a different point on my route, perhaps “decisive” additional 1 cm to the left …</p>
<p>Or if I started the GPS device half a second later or earlier back in Luneburg the sampling would have taken place in the other tile. The GPS track inside the device is at the end not the real tour. It’s an extremely close approximation of the tour based on coordinates it has received.</p>
<p>The GPS track is just a set of over 12000 points. It’s a digital sampling of the analog signal that that my cycle tour at the end was.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that I didn’t drove a perfectly straight lines between all the points especially when turning. Real bicycle tours have curves, especially when you climb up a relatively steep ascent <sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">4</a></sup> . They are not a collection of straight lines.</p>
<p>When you go back to the satellite view with it’s higher zoom level you see this straight line. But this is not the way you ride.</p>
<p>And when you want to go down this rabbit hole: The device doesn’t sample my tour through the world, it doesn’t sample the way of the bicycle trough the world. The Garmin Edge as my measuring device just samples its own way through the world and it’s much smaller than my bike or me.</p>
<p>However, it is a good approximation and a sensible simplification of reality, as for all practical purposes and within the limits of the precision of the measuring device there is no useful difference if you are measuring the location of my body or the measuring device.</p>
<p>But when you really think about: My shoulders are wider than 13.3 cm to both sides. So at least my shoulder must have entered the missing tile, even if the GPS device measured a longitude perfectly sitting on the border of the tile.</p>
<p>So, by all practical purposes I entered the tile. But it isn’t the data and/or interpreted as entering the tile. And thus, it didn’t happen. I could modify the gps track and moving the data point by 13.3 cm … or two or 10 meters.. But that’s a slippery road. When you start to change data of your recordings, what prevents you to do larger modifications.</p>
<h1 id="what-has-all-this-to-do-with-computer-performance-problems">What has all this to do with computer performance problems?</h1>
<p>Of course, you may ask “What the heck has this all to do with hunting down performance problems on computers?”.</p>
<p>On one side, cycling empties my brain enough to find new thoughts. I found more than one root cause for a performance problem while sitting on a bike. I guarantee, you will get at the point in performance troubleshooting where you are just mentally stuck. Anything that gets your brain away from the problem will help you in the situation to unstick your thoughts. But then I could just write about “Hey, buy a bike, go cycling when you are mentally stuck. It helps”.</p>
<p>But it’s more. Most of the effect you have seen above are valid as well when measuring the performance metrics of your system. I think there are universally valid when you are measuring something.</p>
<p>One should be aware of all the limitations of the tools you are using to measure. I think one of the “limitations” is that the state of your system will always change in faster than your measuring interval is. You should get reports out of your toolset that have a meaningful time interval they are covering. Meaningful in the sense that they sufficiently describe your system, because perfection in describing your system is unattainable. And thats where certain considerations matter.</p>
<h1 id="the-way-you-measure-matters">The way you measure matters</h1>
<p>Quite often questions about a performance problem starts by looking remotely onto the problem by looking at reports or data of the system. For example, a friend is sending me some data like “have you seen something like that?”. Or a customer of the company I’m working for wants to have an opinion. In such cases i depend on reports and collection of *stat-command outputs.</p>
<p>I sometimes get database workload reports with a coverage of a day of so in a single report. However this would be like setting my bicycle computer to a mode where it just records one GPS coordinate per hour. Because: The effects on measuring intervals are interesting and significant. I’m pretty sure you know this already.</p>
<p>I want to show these effects with some example tracks from this ride. They represent the effect quite nicely. They are all about absolutely the same bike ride, they are just processed differently after the ride for this blog entry. They stem from the same dataset.</p>
<p>At first an explanation: I’ve set my Garmin cycling computer to store all measured data once a second. I set it that way right after the blog dcrainmaker suggested in his review of the Garmin Edge 830 when I was out for shopping a bicycle computer. It stores data like my power output measured by a pedal power meter, heart rate by a Garmin watch, coordinates by GPS obviously, speed is calculated through the GPS differences when my wheel rotation sensor is out of batteries otherwise by a sensor measuring wheel revolutions. So, you create a lot of data when riding. There are other modes like some kind of smart recording interval that seems to decide on its own when it’s worth to store a data point. But I don’t use it.</p>
<p>At first i would like to show you the raw data. All measurements in regard of the coordinates. The first map is the full tour with over 12.000 track points. You can nicely see every detour. Every street I’m using. If you zoom into the track, you can even see which side of the road I have used.
<img src="/assets/images/blog_fullset.jpg" alt="Openstreetmap view" /></p>
<p>For the second one I’ve reduced the track the start and the end of the ride plus a measurement each full hour of the day. (6:30 AM, 7:00AM, 8:AM and so on) to simulate such a measurement.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/blog_1h_fullhour.jpg" alt="Openstreetmap view" /></p>
<p>The third one is reduced to the start and the end plus a measurement every full hour elapsed after start (06:30,7:30<sup id="fnref:5" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:5" class="footnote" rel="footnote">5</a></sup>,8:30 and so on)</p>
<p><img src="/assets/images/blog_1h_elapsed.jpg" alt="Openstreetmap view" /></p>
<p>So, with the reduced dataset you see the general direction of the bike tour, but based on the data you could not find out that I was in Amelinghausen, you wouldn’t know that I stopped at a bus stop in Wetzen to lube the chain and I wasn’t near the location of my “explorer tile problem” described above.</p>
<p>Just to give you another example about the effects how you are measureing . If you measure the ride with one measurement every 1h elapsed the ride was 39.1 km, if you measure at each full hour of the day, the distance between all the points is 45,4 km, if you measure in 1 second intervals it’s 64.1 km.</p>
<h1 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h1>
<p>The decision how often and when you measure is quite significant for the dataset you get and thus for the analysis you do. Based on this is may even change the model about the workload of the system you have in your head. . But this blog entry is already long enough. The next part will be more about systems performance and less about cycling. It will be about averages, it will be about if you are missing something.</p>
<hr />
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:3" role="doc-endnote">
<p>I recently removed public access to my activities on Strava. So you have to believe me, that I looked like I was lost. <a href="#fnref:3" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:border" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Well, you could argue: Can you be “on a border”? How thick is a border? If a border is a line, it’s one dimensional, it has no width, so as a three dimensional being you can never be completely on a border, it always intersects you. I think you need to be a point to be on a border. And a line has no height. So, when you assume a border is a line on the ground, the border doesn’t intersect you, you are touching the border. Isn’t a border more a two-dimensional construct perpendicular to the earth crust with a certain part above the earth crust and another part below the earth crust with no width. I forgot what’s the point of this line of thought, can’t figure it out at the moment. I will stop this thought, before someone drives a stake perpendicular though my body to intersect with my heart or brain. Back to the topic. <a href="#fnref:border" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:mamil" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Never did a group ride, I prefer to cycle alone. I like to take photos while riding. I hate the competitiveness that seems to automatically appear when you ride in a group. But i have to admit that i was wearing Lycra in public for a while. Guilty as charged. Just not in neon colors but in black. <a href="#fnref:mamil" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Okay, steep for Northern Germany. I saw some ascents in the Saarland or Rhineland Palatinate which really deserve the name steep <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:5" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Actually a little bit later, because at 7:30 AM sharp I was sitting at a bus stop in Wetzen lubing the chain as it sounded in a very,very annoying and horrible way. <a href="#fnref:5" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Joerg MoellenkampThis is my first longer blog entry after getting back to a more frequent blogging schedule. It will be a two part blog entry. It may start with cycling, however it’s more about measuring, about interpreting data and how you thought model of the situation can lead you to wrong interpretations. But that is mostly in the second part.Problems of a vegan2023-11-02T06:00:00+01:002023-11-02T06:00:00+01:00https://c0t0d0s0.org/life/2023/11/02/vegan<p>I’m vegan for a while. I’m not a health vegan, because it’s perfectly possible to eat totally unhealthy as a vegan. I’m the living proof. I’m not really doing it for animal cruelty reason. I’ve have eaten by far too much animal parts in my life as i started with eating vegan at 47 or so. The ship of absolution has sailed, already sunk and is now a diver’s paradise. I just went vegan because i wanted to do it. It was somehow a byproduct of the time where i did a lot of sport. I stopped to eat meat because I stopped to like it at a point because most meat seems to be of an increasingly mediocre quality.</p>
<p>It started with something called flexitarian (eating vegan or vegetarian when something appealing to eat was available), went over vegetarian to vegan.</p>
<p>If you want a reason why I went vegan, it’s perhaps the climate. However, I’m at over 500 flights in my life now. If the animal cruelty situation is a diver’s paradise, I don’t know what this is? Perhaps traces of rust at the bottom of the sea. That said, I stopped flying around and taking trains even before Corona hit the world of business travel. I think that has much more effect on my carbon budget than eating vegan stuff for the next 100 years. If I think about it … I don’t really know why I’m vegan. It just went this way. Strange.</p>
<p>I know that vegans have a very bad reputation: And there are valid reasons for this. I observed such behaviour. But I have a very clear opinion on this. Being vegan doesn’t make you a better person, primarily it makes you a pain in the b*tt to cook for when visiting friends. This is the reason, why I opt for vegetarian food in such situations. Vegan is a diet decision, not a religion. And cooking vegan is a road full of failure especially in regards of sauces. It’s my decision and that’s the reason why I’m still purchasing meat for birthday parties or use eggs in cakes for family and friends.</p>
<p>That said, to be honest I’m not a total vegan. From time-to-time I’m cheating. Very seldom. But not never. I like chocolate too much. I like real ice too much to go this way. And the last one got a problem. And this is what i really hate about being vegan.</p>
<p>I’ve learned that being vegan has some self-accelerating properties nobody really talks of. For example, there is a reason why I’m always asking, “Is this really oat milk?”. I’ve learned it the hard way in early spring last year when i have eaten the world best ice (with a dog on the ice cups that looks like the dog of my parents and is exactly called this way). I barely got back to Lüneburg afterwards. I spare you the details. The ice was great. Easily beat anything before. However: It was worth the hassle afterwards. I would probably do it again. For this ice I would really think hard about it.</p>
<p>I got some kind of lactose sensitive … or i was it always and getting vegan and drinking no cow milk for a while just served my residual tolerance of lactose the final hit. Don’t know. The relation of my digestion to cow milk was always a little bit strange. But that was a real gut punch. To the outside my question may look like the typical militant vegan question just wanting to show of “hey look, I’m vegan. I’m better than you all. everybody listening”. Well, no, i had to ask for the sake of the cleanliness of my trousers and to be able to take a walk around the Alster instead of running around. or riding with a bike for a long distance. I paid almost dearly for not checking this at a coffee house in Lueneburg.</p>
<p>Apropos lactose-sensitive: What I absolutely despise in this regard: Lactose free milk. I. simply. hate. it. Will always hate it. I don’t like this sweet taste. Interestingly a little bit of milk in cakes or so is not a problem. It’s about larger quantities like in a very large Latte or in a very large ice.</p>
<p>That said: Vegan is not so much a problem today, as when my sister started with it many years ago. You get quite acceptable ready-made alternatives. Some of them are horrible. I once bought vegan egg substitute for baking. Used it once. Never again. I have now other ways to get a halfway cake like consistency into a cake without eggs. That said, the usual fast-food dispensaries have good veggie and vegan alternatives.</p>
<p>However, you shouldn’t think too much about the ingredients to much. I’ve learned words like “Sojatexturat” (textured vegetable protein) on this way. You should not think too much about it. I’ve don’t have some diet related problems any longer since I went this way, but I have now a different set of problems.</p>Joerg MoellenkampI’m vegan for a while. I’m not a health vegan, because it’s perfectly possible to eat totally unhealthy as a vegan. I’m the living proof. I’m not really doing it for animal cruelty reason. I’ve have eaten by far too much animal parts in my life as i started with eating vegan at 47 or so. The ship of absolution has sailed, already sunk and is now a diver’s paradise. I just went vegan because i wanted to do it. It was somehow a byproduct of the time where i did a lot of sport. I stopped to eat meat because I stopped to like it at a point because most meat seems to be of an increasingly mediocre quality.Thoughts about PoE security cameras (and outdoor ethernet cables in general)2023-10-31T18:00:00+01:002023-10-31T18:00:00+01:00https://c0t0d0s0.org/security/it/2023/10/31/poe<p>I’m currently trying to buy a security camera, because i have the suspicion that people are using my property as a shortcut. I had just one thought: There are a lot of security cameras which get their power by Power over Ethernet and use Ethernet for their connectivity.</p>
<p>At first this looked like a good idea, because I’m using PoE for my Unifi access points anyway. However, an outdoor security camera would have an Ethernet cable on the - guess it - outside. At least partially. Given how small access point are, I’m not convinced that having outdoor Ethernet cables is a good idea.<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> Normally networking cable would be protected from outsiders by the walls of the house.</p>
<p>To make it clear: I don’t think that someone would attack my network by fetching pliers and inserting a rogue access point. Nevertheless i try to err at the side of caution. And well … before i read that car thieves use relay attacks to open and start your car with the key fob lying on your night stand just by holding one device to your outside wall closest to the key fob and another one to the car, i wouldn’t have really believed that it’s that easy. I really think caution is warranted in this regards.</p>
<p>In addition often I look at problems or observations at home and what I could learn from them for my job. And this train of thought resulted out of such an observation.</p>
<p>Okay, I could just use WLAN security cameras with the usual mechanisms to protect the WLAN from unwanted members. But PoE would be nice. I have some spare PoE ports and wouldn’t need an additional power supply. With wired Ethernet the obvious solution for this problem would be 802.1x authentication, but as far I have studied the market, not all cameras offer 802.1x. Which is quite a failure in my opinion …</p>
<p>Another solution would be to ensure that all the cable on the outside is in the view of the camera, so at least you would know who manipulated the Ethernet Cable. The camera would monitor the cable it uses for its connection. Doesn’t really solve the problem, it’s still cut and I would have to check each time I would see someone close to the cable. I could mount the camera high enough, so cutting the cable and inserting something to it is not really feasible. But that would be more “security by possibly falling to death”</p>
<p>Another idea of mine was if there are any switches that keep the link down after losing link, so when someone cuts a connection, the link stays down until you have manually reactivated it. But I don’t know one. And it would be a problem, as it would be easy to deactivate the cameras just by removing the cable for a moment.</p>
<p>Of course I could hot-glue an RJ45 into the device … but this will for sure take revenge later on. And the cable is still unprotected.</p>
<p>Having a VLAN (without any access to other VLANS) just for the camera would be a must anyway - even with WLAN - so someone could not go into your network and snoop around. However, a possible attacker would have his first foot in the network and would just have to find an attackable device that is in both networks, the camera network and the home network.</p>
<p>Perhaps I should just buy a chain and a lock for my “shortcut” problem.</p>
<p>But this problem doesn’t go away with this solution: One of my plans for next year is to have an electrical car and of course an outside wallbox for charging this electric vehicle. Many of them have a network connection, many of them with a wired connection. The same problem. I really must make a note to myself that I must check candidate wallboxes for 802.1x.</p>
<p>The same is valid for outdoor access points. I’m thinking about one for a while and Ubiquiti has some nice ones. Just found in their community, that there is a feature request for 802.1x authentication to the switches for their access points open for a really long, long time. So far not implemented as far as I could find out in the community forum. There is actually a <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">wpa_supplicant</code> and a <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">wpa_cli</code> in the firmware of the access points. So, you could probably hack something like this with a script. But to be honest, I didn’t bought Unifi to hack something.</p>
<div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>APDachgeschoss-BZ.6.5.62# /usr/sbin/wpa_cli
wpa_cli v2.10-devel
Copyright (c) 2004-2019, Jouni Malinen <j@w1.fi> and contributors
(...)
Could not connect to wpa_supplicant: (nil) - re-trying
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>But honestly … after all this discussion, how many people have network equipment at home capable of VLANs, capable of 802.1x, capable of RADIUS? How many small companies use such technology? Perhaps even with sites with an area where public access by customers is normal.</p>
<p>Perhaps, you have an idea … would like a discussion about it in my <a href="https://norden.social/@c0t0d0s0/111331238555366787">Mastodon profile</a></p>
<hr />
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Even the off-the-shelf ones … i assume custom build they could be much smaller if you forgo the RJ45 connectors. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Joerg MoellenkampI’m currently trying to buy a security camera, because i have the suspicion that people are using my property as a shortcut. I had just one thought: There are a lot of security cameras which get their power by Power over Ethernet and use Ethernet for their connectivity.Koblenz … again ???2023-10-30T12:00:00+01:002023-10-30T12:00:00+01:00https://c0t0d0s0.org/travel/2023/10/30/koblenz<p>I’m back from Koblenz. My brother asked me to help to fetch something from this town and as was on a weekend and i’m on vacation the obvious answer was to ask “When?”. “When?” was on Saturday. Koblenz again. Out of whatever reason this city appears again and again in my life, while i never south of Oldenburg since I’m an adult.</p>
<p>I had my first IT training in Koblenz 30 or 29 years ago. Novell Netware 3.11. I have still a book about it on my shelf. I remember that I’ve killed a network card there because of a dumb error. I had to visit a hospital in Koblenz on a business trip a few years ago and got an important information there which led to some significant lifestyle changes. My current bike is from a company in Koblenz. I had one of my more successful performance tuning gigs in Koblenz.<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> And there are a number of other examples. And again Koblenz on Saturday. I don’t know why of all cities (and there are many) in Germany, Koblenz reappears with this regularity. Every 5 to 7 years Koblenz appears and disappears. Strange.</p>
<p>Interestingly cities along the Rhine are somewhat important for me. Bonn for example is a city still deeply in my heart. One of my brothers was born in a city not far from the Rhine. And a few things more.</p>
<p>That said, to my knowledge Koblenz still don’t have a Starbucks City Mug<sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup> … it’s missing in my collection. So i left the inner city of Koblenz aside and just went straight back to Lüneburg afterwards.</p>
<hr />
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>There are many companies in Koblenz, so this discloses nothing. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
<p>There are rumours that Lüneburg will get a Starbucks. Don’t know how much truth is in this. I don’t want the drinks, i want the mug … but it seems that more and more location don’t get their own mug with new series. <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Joerg MoellenkampI’m back from Koblenz. My brother asked me to help to fetch something from this town and as was on a weekend and i’m on vacation the obvious answer was to ask “When?”. “When?” was on Saturday. Koblenz again. Out of whatever reason this city appears again and again in my life, while i never south of Oldenburg since I’m an adult.