00:00SPEAKER- How do you store your USB cables?
00:02SPEAKER- Here and there.
00:03SPEAKER- Do you have like, do you like coil them up?
00:05SPEAKERDo you have like Velcro ties?
00:07SPEAKERDo you keep them segregated by type?
00:10SPEAKERLike what's your strategy?
00:11SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I thought we were talking like a junk drawer
00:13SPEAKERor you know, like where do they all go kind of thing,
00:15SPEAKERbut you're talking that in what form are they stored?
00:17SPEAKERLike how do you configure them for storage?
00:20SPEAKER- First one, then the other is what I'm asking, I guess.
00:22SPEAKER- I have developed a little technique
00:25SPEAKERthat basically just sort of turns the,
00:26SPEAKERlike the cables are stored circularly.
00:29SPEAKER- Yeah.
00:29SPEAKER- Let's say it would be a little easier
00:30SPEAKERif I could just hold up a-
00:31SPEAKER- The crossover loop, I do that.
00:33SPEAKER- Oh yeah, okay, yeah.
00:34SPEAKERSo yeah, you just coil them in a round circle
00:36SPEAKERand then like each end, you sort of like braid around-
00:38SPEAKER- You tuck it in, yeah, yeah.
00:40SPEAKER- I find that to hold pretty snugly
00:42SPEAKERand also crucially, you're not putting any like weird-
00:44SPEAKER- You're not doing like a coil around
00:46SPEAKERlike you would if it was a rope or something, yeah.
00:48SPEAKER- Yeah, so I was gonna say no like 180 degree stress
00:50SPEAKERon the, like no hard bends on the cable.
00:52SPEAKER- Well, also the like doing the figure eight,
00:54SPEAKERlike doing it like I would do like a boat rope,
00:57SPEAKERyou know, with the back and forth, back and forth
00:59SPEAKERand then you wrap around.
01:00SPEAKER- Yeah.
01:01SPEAKER- Also leaves the ends usually poking out in weird ways
01:03SPEAKER'cause they're like, it's not good.
01:05SPEAKER- Yeah.
01:06SPEAKER- So I do that, I do the coil around
01:09SPEAKERand then I have a Dopp kit that somebody sent me
01:11SPEAKERas a tchotchke thing at some point that just holds,
01:15SPEAKERit's like my go bag for USB cables.
01:18SPEAKER- I'm sorry, a what kit?
01:20SPEAKER- You know, a Dopp kit.
01:20SPEAKERI don't know what Dopp stands for,
01:21SPEAKERit's what my dad always called them.
01:23SPEAKER- The Dopp kit, D-O-P?
01:25SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like you put your toiletries in it.
01:27SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, oh yeah.
01:28SPEAKER- Yeah, what are those?
01:29SPEAKER- A Diddy bag?
01:31SPEAKER- What, it's called a Diddy bag?
01:33SPEAKER- I thought I've, is that,
01:34SPEAKERI thought I've heard somebody in my life
01:35SPEAKERcall it that before.
01:37SPEAKER- Huh.
01:38SPEAKER- Well, hang on, I'm, yeah, yeah, yes, okay, yes,
01:40SPEAKERyou can call it a Diddy bag.
01:42SPEAKER- Okay, I always call it a Dopp kit.
01:44SPEAKERI think it's D-O-P kit, but I don't know why.
01:46SPEAKER- Okay.
01:47SPEAKER- Yeah, D-O-P-P, it's a toiletry bag
01:50SPEAKERcalled a toiletry kit, Dopp kit, bathroom bag, Diddy bag,
01:53SPEAKERsponge bag, toilet bag, personal hygiene kit,
01:55SPEAKERtravel kit, or wash kit.
01:57SPEAKER- Why are there so many names for things?
01:59SPEAKER- Because, like, look, our country is a alphabet soup.
02:03SPEAKER- Mm-hmm, a melange, you might say, go on.
02:06SPEAKER- Right, we stole names for things from all over the world,
02:08SPEAKERand as a result, let's see, the Dopp kit is a term
02:12SPEAKERreferring to toiletry kits for men and World War II soldiers
02:15SPEAKERbefore later becoming a common term for toiletry kits.
02:18SPEAKERIt's coined by leather worker Charles Dopplet,
02:21SPEAKERwho patented the idea of Dopp's in 1919
02:24SPEAKERand got a contract with the army during World War II.
02:26SPEAKERThere you go.
02:27SPEAKER- Apparently thought he was deserving
02:28SPEAKERof naming the thing after himself.
02:30SPEAKER- I mean, look, you invent a bag for your toothpaste
02:33SPEAKERand you get to name it after whatever you want,
02:35SPEAKERbut I put my USB stuff in there
02:38SPEAKERand, like, also my portable batteries
02:40SPEAKERand have a spare watch charger.
02:43SPEAKERBut I don't, like, I've reached a point now
02:45SPEAKERwhere the old USB cables are becoming a little scarce.
02:49SPEAKERLike a mini.
02:50SPEAKER- Oh, whoa.
02:51SPEAKER- I only have like two minis left probably at this point.
02:53SPEAKER- I was expecting you to say they were becoming too plentiful
02:56SPEAKERor too much clutter or something,
02:58SPEAKERbut yes, that is the reverse problem.
03:00SPEAKERWhen you get rid of too much,
03:00SPEAKERall of a sudden you don't have the old thing
03:02SPEAKERyou need anymore.
03:02SPEAKER- Yeah, so a few years ago I was like,
03:04SPEAKERoh, look, I have 50 of these mini USB cables.
03:07SPEAKERI don't, I'm never gonna use these again.
03:09SPEAKERAnd I chucked them in the recycling bin,
03:11SPEAKERwhich maybe is still in the garage if I'm being honest,
03:13SPEAKERbut probably I took to electronics recycling.
03:15SPEAKER- This is becoming a cautionary tale
03:17SPEAKERbecause I am exactly who you were
03:19SPEAKERbefore that purging process.
03:20SPEAKERLike I started to say, I'm very impressed
03:22SPEAKERyou can fit all of your USB cables
03:24SPEAKERinto one Dopp kit or Diddy bag.
03:27SPEAKERWell, I've got a gigantic drawer of them,
03:30SPEAKERbut this kind of makes me want to be like
03:32SPEAKERmaybe a little more cautious about,
03:34SPEAKERI am getting rid of some stuff, but like, you know,
03:36SPEAKERmaybe keeping like five micro USB cables
03:39SPEAKERis not the worst thing.
03:40SPEAKER- So I have this, I have like two sets of Ikea drawer,
03:44SPEAKERlike those kind of crappy Ikea metal drawers,
03:46SPEAKERthe ones that are like four feet tall.
03:47SPEAKERAnd I use them as the place that my mixer
03:50SPEAKERand my audio stuff and all that lives away
03:52SPEAKERfrom the rest of the loud computer gear.
03:54SPEAKERAnd that has a bunch of drawers in it
03:57SPEAKERand that has like a couple of spare XLR cables
03:59SPEAKERand extra power cables and extra HDMI and display port
04:02SPEAKERand extra quarter inch analog and MIDI cables.
04:07SPEAKERAnd like all, like I have,
04:09SPEAKERI'm pretty sure there's a FireWire 800 in there somewhere.
04:12SPEAKERIt's all the weird shit that you might need.
04:15SPEAKERPlus like there's a drawer that has dongles.
04:17SPEAKERSo there's like a USB-C to FireWire dongle in there
04:21SPEAKERand USB-C to ethernet, USB-C, like little USB-C hubs
04:25SPEAKERand all this other stuff.
04:27SPEAKERAnd then I have like a drawer with mice.
04:31SPEAKERI needed a mouse the other day 'cause I needed,
04:33SPEAKERit turned out if you use mouse without borders
04:35SPEAKERon a machine that doesn't have a mouse connected to it,
04:37SPEAKERit makes terrible mouse trails all across the screen
04:39SPEAKERwhen you use the mouse.
04:40SPEAKERThat's fine. - That's the odd bug.
04:42SPEAKER- I mean, if you plug in a mouse, you know what happens?
04:45SPEAKERThe trails go away. - No more trails?
04:46SPEAKER- Yeah, so I plugged in an old mouse.
04:49SPEAKERBut like, I've been using this,
04:50SPEAKERlike mice don't break very much.
04:53SPEAKERAnd I need like one spare mouse.
04:55SPEAKERI don't need three spare mice.
04:56SPEAKER- That's, I was gonna say, you've got me beat on spare mice
04:59SPEAKERby a fair margin, it sounds like.
05:01SPEAKER- Well, I have more, like I also have more computers
05:04SPEAKERin the circulator 'cause like my daughter uses a mouse now
05:07SPEAKERand my wife uses a mouse and you know,
05:10SPEAKERso I gotta keep the family in fed mice.
05:12SPEAKERBut I don't know, man.
05:14SPEAKERI just, I wish I hadn't thrown out all those micro USB
05:16SPEAKERcables, you should hoard them more, is what I'm saying.
05:18SPEAKER- Oh, well now that I've got your permission.
05:21SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm just gonna come over to your house
05:23SPEAKERwhen I need a micro USB cable, that's all I'm saying.
05:25SPEAKER- All right, you know what, happy to serve.
05:26SPEAKER(upbeat music)
05:44SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)
05:55SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made of Tech Pod, I'm Will.
05:58SPEAKER- I'm Brad, hello.
05:59SPEAKER- Thought about putting a little flanger on there
06:01SPEAKERjust to give it a little wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.
06:03SPEAKER- Okay, okay. - But I decided not to.
06:05SPEAKER- I didn't wanna bring this up earlier,
06:06SPEAKERbut now you've said it again on the podcast.
06:08SPEAKER- Yeah.
06:09SPEAKER- You said flanger before we started?
06:11SPEAKER- Yeah.
06:12SPEAKER- Is it not flanger?
06:14SPEAKERLook, there are words that you only read
06:17SPEAKERand you've never heard anybody say.
06:19SPEAKER- Okay.
06:20SPEAKER- This is one of those words.
06:22SPEAKERAll I know is that it's spelled F-L-A-N-G-E-R.
06:27SPEAKER- Yeah, it sure is.
06:28SPEAKER- That's what it sounds like.
06:29SPEAKER- It sure does.
06:30SPEAKER- I'm gonna turn it off before people turn off their radios.
06:33SPEAKER- I mean, it doesn't sound entirely offensive.
06:35SPEAKERThere's something kind of pleasant about it.
06:37SPEAKERYou wouldn't wanna listen to it for too long, but.
06:39SPEAKER- It sounds like '60s aliens.
06:41SPEAKER- Yeah, like sure.
06:42SPEAKER- I feel like a lot of VFX in the '60s
06:45SPEAKERor audio effects in the '60s came about
06:47SPEAKERbecause people took like guitar pedals
06:49SPEAKERthat people were hacking together in their garages.
06:51SPEAKER- Exactly.
06:52SPEAKER- And then ran the voice mic through them, but.
06:54SPEAKER- People got their hands on vacuum tubes
06:55SPEAKERand started making analog circuits
06:57SPEAKERand then started finding out what was possible.
06:59SPEAKER- Yeah, all sorts of exciting, weird stuff happened.
07:01SPEAKER- Is what you might say.
07:02SPEAKERHow good, there's a slight digression here.
07:04SPEAKERHow good, how adept are you are?
07:07SPEAKER- Brad, make words good.
07:08SPEAKER- Okay, I started to put a note in the thing
07:10SPEAKERto edit that out,
07:11SPEAKERinstead you've made a joke about it so I'll just try again.
07:14SPEAKERHow adept are you at reading the pronunciation guide
07:16SPEAKERon Wikipedia?
07:17SPEAKER- Bad.
07:18SPEAKER- Okay.
07:19SPEAKER- Real bad.
07:20SPEAKER- Can you sight read it, I guess not?
07:21SPEAKER- No, I have to hit the button on Google that says,
07:23SPEAKER"Hey, here's how the robot says you should pronounce this."
07:25SPEAKER- Okay, 'cause I'm staring at the pronunciation
07:27SPEAKERfor flanger, flang, flanger, flanging.
07:30SPEAKER- Oh God, okay.
07:31SPEAKER- Uh, flang, I'm gonna say that could go either way.
07:35SPEAKERI'm actually not sure how to read that symbol.
07:38SPEAKER- Yeah, no, this is incomprehensible.
07:39SPEAKERThis is a thing that's, oh wait.
07:42SPEAKEROh no, that's an example, not the way you say it.
07:44SPEAKERYeah, I don't know how to say that.
07:46SPEAKERI don't think, I don't, it's like,
07:48SPEAKERthere's a F and an L, I know that's fl,
07:50SPEAKERand then there's some stuff,
07:51SPEAKERand then there's an N-D, which is nd.
07:54SPEAKERAnd then there's a three, like a sigma maybe,
07:57SPEAKERand an I, and an N with a weird tail, I don't know.
08:01SPEAKER- Okay.
08:02SPEAKER- That's a note from me, dog.
08:03SPEAKER- Everything I'm seeing says soft G sound.
08:05SPEAKER- So flanger.
08:07SPEAKER- Flanger, flanger, flanger?
08:09SPEAKERLong A, soft G?
08:11SPEAKER- Brad, what are we talking about in the podcast this week?
08:13SPEAKER- I don't know.
08:14SPEAKERYou tell me, man.
08:15SPEAKER- Pronunciation of flanger.
08:16SPEAKERWe're gonna do two hours on this.
08:18SPEAKER- That's right, that's right.
08:19SPEAKERRanking, ranking of, ranking of flanger pronunciations.
08:21SPEAKER- Ranking of phonemes, go.
08:24SPEAKERThere's 48 in the English language.
08:26SPEAKERThat's not right, there's more than that.
08:27SPEAKER- I think somebody already beat us
08:28SPEAKERto the ranking of letters in the alphabet.
08:30SPEAKER- Look, there was a time when I was pretty good
08:32SPEAKERat the pronunciation guide thing,
08:33SPEAKER'cause when we were doing the foo stuff,
08:34SPEAKERwe had to, we were doing lip flap, lip sync,
08:38SPEAKERand we tried to do actual lip mouth and tongue movements
08:41SPEAKERto make it look right.
08:43SPEAKERAnd it turned out to be a phenomenally complicated thing,
08:45SPEAKERand we just got it close enough and we're like,
08:46SPEAKEReh, this looks pretty good, and then moved on.
08:48SPEAKER- I'm sure, I'm sure it's endlessly complicated.
08:50SPEAKERAm I crazy though?
08:52SPEAKEROr I mean, I can read dictionary pronunciations
08:54SPEAKERpretty much just fine,
08:55SPEAKERbut doesn't Wikipedia use a different system?
08:57SPEAKER- It uses something more complicated
08:59SPEAKERthan the thing that we learned in elementary school, yeah.
09:01SPEAKER- Okay, yes, they use the IPA transcription system.
09:05SPEAKER- How many IBUs is that IPA?
09:07SPEAKER- I don't know.
09:08SPEAKERWhat is an IBU?
09:10SPEAKER- International Bitters Units.
09:11SPEAKER- Wait, is that for real? - It's for beer, yeah.
09:14SPEAKER- International Bitter, wow, okay, I've seen,
09:16SPEAKERI always just wrote that off
09:17SPEAKERas some extreme beer nerd thing.
09:19SPEAKERI mean, I like beer just fine,
09:20SPEAKERbut I figured that was something
09:22SPEAKERI just didn't care that much about.
09:23SPEAKERYeah, you're right, International Bitters Units.
09:25SPEAKER- Yeah, so it gives you an idea
09:27SPEAKERof how hoppy your beer is going to be.
09:29SPEAKERIt's like the, what's the thing that the hot sauce nerds use?
09:33SPEAKER- Oh, Scoville? - Scoville?
09:35SPEAKER- It's like that, but real.
09:36SPEAKER- Scoville's for beer?
09:38SPEAKER- Yeah, Scoville, there's a real
09:39SPEAKERScoville inflation problem right now.
09:41SPEAKER- Oh, is there really?
09:41SPEAKER- It's my feeling.
09:42SPEAKER- Is that not a standardized unit?
09:44SPEAKER- No, I don't think so.
09:45SPEAKERI think once you get over a certain amount of hot,
09:46SPEAKERit doesn't matter.
09:47SPEAKERThat's my, like once you start having visions
09:50SPEAKERwhen the food hits your tongue,
09:52SPEAKERit's not gonna make any difference.
09:53SPEAKERCome at me, nerds.
09:55SPEAKERSo that's where I'm at.
09:57SPEAKERThis week, speaking of nerds.
09:59SPEAKER- This week.
10:00SPEAKER- We have a potpourri of projects.
10:05SPEAKER- A project potpourri.
10:06SPEAKER- A project potpourri.
10:07SPEAKERAnd it doesn't smell like lavender or grandmothers.
10:10SPEAKERIt's a mixture of fixing things
10:13SPEAKERand doing things, things we have learned
10:16SPEAKERthe hard way over time and cool audio business.
10:23SPEAKERAnd finally, we're gonna learn about containers
10:27SPEAKER'cause like you and I were both big fans of jails
10:30SPEAKERback in the BSD days and I have never taken the time
10:34SPEAKERto get good at Docker since I switched over to Linux
10:37SPEAKERfor server purposes.
10:38SPEAKERSo we're gonna talk about containers a little bit.
10:40SPEAKER- Yeah.
10:41SPEAKER- Where do you wanna start?
10:41SPEAKERYou wanna start with...
10:42SPEAKER- Let's start with fixing your monitor
10:44SPEAKERbecause that was the, I got the setup for that
10:46SPEAKERtwo, three weeks ago on the patron episodes
10:48SPEAKERand I want to hear the exciting conclusion.
10:50SPEAKERAnd for people who didn't hear that patron episode,
10:52SPEAKERI think this is a fascinating topic.
10:53SPEAKERAnd also before we get to my stuff, I will say,
10:55SPEAKERI've got a little bit of time off coming up here
10:57SPEAKERfrom Nextlander.
10:57SPEAKERSo that's why I've got,
11:00SPEAKERI've got mostly a list of respective projects here
11:03SPEAKERthat I am going to work on in the coming days.
11:05SPEAKERWhereas you have got some stuff you have done already.
11:07SPEAKER- There you go.
11:08SPEAKEROkay.
11:09SPEAKERSo, okay.
11:10SPEAKERSo I have this ultra wide,
11:11SPEAKERit's one of the first LG ultra wides.
11:13SPEAKERI wrote about it on tested like 10 or 12 years ago.
11:15SPEAKER- Wow.
11:16SPEAKERAnd you're still using it?
11:17SPEAKER- Yeah.
11:18SPEAKERWell, it's like my third monitor for the second PC
11:21SPEAKERon my desk.
11:22SPEAKER- Well, I'm just, I'm trying to put this
11:23SPEAKERin historical context.
11:24SPEAKERLike in anything that you wrote about on tested
11:27SPEAKERhas got to be showing some age at this point.
11:29SPEAKER- It's at least 12 years old.
11:32SPEAKER- So one day it was, okay.
11:35SPEAKEROther side note, it's also in portrait orientation.
11:38SPEAKERSo it's a 34 inch ultra wide 21 by nine
11:41SPEAKERin portrait orientation.
11:42SPEAKERIt's very fast.
11:43SPEAKERI like it.
11:44SPEAKERIt makes me happy.
11:44SPEAKERWindows 11 finally knows how to handle that, right?
11:46SPEAKERWindows 10 always had problems with it.
11:48SPEAKERIt would try to make things like a side by side,
11:50SPEAKERwhich is not good when you use the window snapping.
11:53SPEAKER- Sure.
11:54SPEAKER- So one day I turned,
11:55SPEAKERI turned on the computer that's attached to it
11:56SPEAKERand it just didn't turn on.
11:57SPEAKERDidn't make it like normally it makes a little nice,
11:59SPEAKERa nice little chime because bomb.
12:01SPEAKERAnd then it turns on and it just didn't turn on.
12:04SPEAKERIt was after a power failure,
12:06SPEAKERor maybe I had knocked the power cord loose
12:08SPEAKERfrom the power strip that's up under my desk.
12:10SPEAKERAnd when I Googled it,
12:12SPEAKERit turned out it was a fairly common problem
12:14SPEAKERin LG ultra wides.
12:16SPEAKERAnd then I didn't have time to deal with it
12:18SPEAKERwhen it was breaking, when this happened.
12:20SPEAKERSo instead I just set up remote desktop on that computer
12:25SPEAKERand started remote desktoping into that computer
12:27SPEAKERwhen I needed it and didn't worry about it.
12:29SPEAKERSo nine months later,
12:31SPEAKERI finally had time to futz with it.
12:34SPEAKERAnd I found this-
12:34SPEAKER- Hang on, sorry, sorry.
12:35SPEAKERDid it just stay where it was for that nine months?
12:38SPEAKERJust inert?
12:39SPEAKER- I kind of wanted it up so it's flat against the wall.
12:41SPEAKERSo it's out of the way, but yes.
12:42SPEAKERFor the most part, it just stayed there.
12:44SPEAKERA big black slab of shame because I'll be honest,
12:48SPEAKERit required, because it's ultra wide and portrait,
12:50SPEAKERit kind of, it's a little scary taking it off the arm
12:56SPEAKERbecause the arm is super under a lot of load.
12:58SPEAKERAnd when I lift it off,
12:59SPEAKERI'm afraid I'm going to break my jaw every time.
13:01SPEAKER- Yikes, yikes.
13:03SPEAKER- So I don't move it without need, right?
13:07SPEAKEROkay, so I got time.
13:09SPEAKERI was like, I'm going to take this thing apart
13:10SPEAKERand see what's up with it.
13:11SPEAKERI looked at some websites and I found this WordPress blog
13:15SPEAKERthat basically said, hey, if you short out,
13:19SPEAKERand this is where it gets a little hinky.
13:21SPEAKERIt says, if you short out pins one and pins four
13:26SPEAKERon this EEPROM on the board, it'll kind of reset the,
13:30SPEAKERlet me take a step back.
13:31SPEAKERThe thing that's broken on it is there's an EEPROM,
13:33SPEAKERwhich is a programmable flash ROM
13:35SPEAKERthat you have to like hard program,
13:36SPEAKERnot like you can't like program it
13:38SPEAKERwith software on the firmware normally.
13:42SPEAKERBut what happens is when the EEPROM gets a check sum
13:47SPEAKERon the EEPROM that's not good,
13:50SPEAKEReven if the contents of the EEPROM are still okay,
13:53SPEAKERit puts the machine into a loop.
13:55SPEAKERSo the CPU for the monitor,
13:56SPEAKER'cause everything has a CPU now,
13:58SPEAKERthe CPU for the monitor just keeps rebooting
14:00SPEAKERand rebooting and rebooting and never successfully boots.
14:02SPEAKER- Is that, do you know,
14:03SPEAKERis that an intentional fail-safe mechanism?
14:05SPEAKERLike it's like, okay, the EEPROM may be bad.
14:07SPEAKERWe shouldn't boot 'cause something else might break
14:09SPEAKERor is it just, it doesn't know what to do with it?
14:11SPEAKER- They just fucked up.
14:12SPEAKERThe general take on the internet is
14:14SPEAKERthey should have fixed this
14:15SPEAKER'cause later models don't do this.
14:16SPEAKERIt's only like the first two years of LG monitors.
14:19SPEAKERAnd the way you can get in that fail-safe mode,
14:22SPEAKERin that bad bit mode is by turning off
14:29SPEAKERthe power unexpectedly.
14:30SPEAKERSo if you turn it off with the switch
14:32SPEAKERor shut it down with the button, no problem.
14:35SPEAKERBut if the power dies, the power goes out,
14:37SPEAKERthe monitor can not come back to life after that.
14:39SPEAKER- Wow, that is an enormous bug.
14:41SPEAKER- It is, it's not, and it's not 100% of the time.
14:44SPEAKERIt's just sometimes.
14:45SPEAKER- Man, that's terrible.
14:47SPEAKER- Like if you live in Florida,
14:48SPEAKERyou have a lot more problem with these monitors
14:50SPEAKERthan if you live in California
14:50SPEAKERwhere our power's relatively stable.
14:52SPEAKER- Right.
14:53SPEAKER- So this blog post was like,
14:57SPEAKERhey, if you short out these two,
14:58SPEAKERget your multimeter out and put it in resistor mode
15:02SPEAKERand just short out these two things
15:03SPEAKERand you're gonna send some juice through it
15:05SPEAKERand it'll probably flip the bit, you'll be fine.
15:07SPEAKERSo I was like, well, that seems easy, I'll try that.
15:09SPEAKERI popped it open, like there's a bazillion chips
15:12SPEAKERon the board, it's on a different place on every monitor,
15:15SPEAKERthe bad EPROM, but it's always labeled the same.
15:17SPEAKER- Okay.
15:18SPEAKER- So I flipped through there and I found the thing
15:22SPEAKERand I spent like an hour and a half
15:23SPEAKERlaying on the floor of the living room
15:25SPEAKERwith power going into the monitor, shorting out this chip.
15:30SPEAKERIt made the bomb sound once
15:32SPEAKERand then it didn't come back after that.
15:34SPEAKER- I'm sorry, the what sound?
15:36SPEAKER- The boom when it turns on.
15:37SPEAKER- Oh, oh, oh, oh.
15:38SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like a nice little chime.
15:39SPEAKER- I'm sorry, I thought you meant literally the word bomb
15:41SPEAKERas an explosive.
15:43SPEAKER- No, no, no, no, like when the monitor powers up
15:46SPEAKERand wakes up and the CPU finds up, it goes bing.
15:48SPEAKER- Yes.
15:49SPEAKER- And you're like, oh, my monitor's on, that's nice.
15:50SPEAKERSo--
15:52SPEAKER- You didn't fry anything as far as you know.
15:54SPEAKER- Well, at this point it's unclear
15:55SPEAKER'cause it's still not working, right?
15:56SPEAKER- Sure.
15:58SPEAKER- So I give up after laying on the floor,
16:01SPEAKERmy eyes were tired, my back was tired, the whole thing.
16:02SPEAKERSo I close it back up, put it back on the scary mount.
16:06SPEAKERI look at the next step and then I realized
16:09SPEAKERthat there's like 4,000 comments on this WordPress blog
16:13SPEAKERand I start reading the comments and the comments are like,
16:14SPEAKERhey, if you can't fix it with the shorting out thing,
16:17SPEAKERit seems like the people who have success with that
16:21SPEAKERare shorting it not exactly in the way that they say
16:25SPEAKER'cause the connectors, the pins are really tiny.
16:28SPEAKERIt's an eight pin EPROM, four on each side
16:32SPEAKERand it's hard to tell what you're actually shorting
16:35SPEAKERbecause they're so small unless you have like magnifiers.
16:39SPEAKERSo this guy came in and was like, I just, here's a fixed,
16:41SPEAKERI hacked this firmware, I fixed the firmware for the monitor
16:44SPEAKERso it doesn't do the thing anymore, so it doesn't loop,
16:46SPEAKERit doesn't get stuck in the loop if the check bit is failed,
16:49SPEAKERis flipped and you can just download it here
16:52SPEAKERon this ROM site and if you buy this ROM programmer
16:57SPEAKERwith a clip that's designed to like piggyback
17:00SPEAKERon top of this SOPA, you don't even have to desolder
17:02SPEAKERthe EPROM from the board or you could go to eBay
17:05SPEAKERand pay 10 bucks for like a ROM
17:07SPEAKERthat somebody flashed that's fixed basically.
17:10SPEAKER- Sounds good, now real quick, is his fix,
17:12SPEAKERwas he just restoring a valid checksum to it,
17:15SPEAKERmeaning that this could happen again
17:16SPEAKERif the power went out again
17:17SPEAKERor was this like permanently fixed like he rewrote something
17:20SPEAKERthat will make this not happen again?
17:22SPEAKER- So like in the choose your own adventure
17:24SPEAKERof how to fix this 12 year old monitor,
17:26SPEAKERthat's the choice you have to make
17:27SPEAKER'cause because the EPROM isn't actually corrupt,
17:30SPEAKERit's just the checksum bit that's flipped,
17:32SPEAKERyou can just download the, so you can get
17:35SPEAKERthis CH341A programmer is what it's called
17:39SPEAKERwith the SOPA clip and you can just download
17:41SPEAKERthe existing ROM from the chip
17:44SPEAKERand then mark the ROM writable
17:47SPEAKERand reflash the existing ROM and it'll reset the checksum
17:50SPEAKERand then it'll just work.
17:51SPEAKER- Right, but again, is that, or well, maybe you're--
17:54SPEAKER- Then you're gonna be susceptible
17:55SPEAKERto the same power outage problem again in the future.
17:57SPEAKERI downloaded a extra, a fixed ROM and put that on.
18:02SPEAKERNow, is it actually fixed?
18:03SPEAKERI don't know, I didn't turn the monitor on and off
18:04SPEAKERa bunch of times to see if it's gonna break again,
18:07SPEAKERbut if I get another few years out of it, I'll be fine.
18:10SPEAKERSo you get the CH341A programmer thing,
18:14SPEAKERwhich is a USB dongle that has,
18:17SPEAKERit has like a cool lever actuated mount
18:22SPEAKERfor this style of EPROM,
18:23SPEAKERlike the down through pin, eight pin jobbers.
18:26SPEAKER- Okay, sorry, I had to go Google this thing
18:28SPEAKER'cause I need a visual and yeah, wow, that thing's cool.
18:30SPEAKER- It's like a friction fit for it with a lever on the side.
18:33SPEAKER- Yeah, and it's also like 10 bucks, it looks like,
18:35SPEAKERvery cheap.
18:36SPEAKER- Yeah, so this is where I ended up.
18:38SPEAKERThe thing to fix it was 10 bucks
18:40SPEAKERor I could buy the chip for 10 bucks
18:41SPEAKERand do a bunch of really fiddly soldering
18:43SPEAKERand I was like, I'm just gonna buy the thing
18:44SPEAKERto fix it for 10 bucks and clip it on.
18:46SPEAKERSo the other part of it is it comes with this
18:48SPEAKERlike plastic clamp that has four connectors on each side
18:52SPEAKERand you just line that up with the pins
18:54SPEAKERand then release it and it kind of sticks on to the EPROM
18:58SPEAKERand you can just reprogram it right there.
19:00SPEAKER- Man, that's cool.
19:01SPEAKER- Now, I'm pretty sure this is the first time
19:04SPEAKERI've ever flashed a ROM like this.
19:06SPEAKERI don't think I ever did a real hardware BIOS flash
19:09SPEAKERin the old days, although I have seen people do that
19:11SPEAKERat like the screwdriver shop 'cause it used to be
19:13SPEAKERif you needed a BIOS update for your old ass computer,
19:16SPEAKERyou would pull the ROM chip out of the computer
19:18SPEAKERor take the whole computer in and go down
19:20SPEAKERto your like screwdriver shop and they would hook up
19:23SPEAKERa device probably with a serial cable, I think,
19:26SPEAKERto a ROM flasher and you put the ROM in their ROM flasher
19:30SPEAKERand they'd do the thing and then you'd take it home
19:31SPEAKERand plug it in and see if it works.
19:32SPEAKER- Oh, interesting, I didn't know that was the thing
19:33SPEAKERthat kind of small shops like that did, that's cool.
19:35SPEAKERLike I know I've talked about before,
19:37SPEAKERI had the hot swap of BIOS that I screwed up
19:39SPEAKERa flash on one time, just because my roommate happened
19:42SPEAKERto have the exact same model of motherboard.
19:44SPEAKER- Remains incredible to me.
19:45SPEAKER- And was out of town at the time.
19:47SPEAKER- Oh no, you did it with, oh, Brad.
19:51SPEAKER- Maybe I've never mentioned that part before.
19:53SPEAKER- Non-consensual.
19:54SPEAKER- He was on a business trip and I can't remember
19:57SPEAKERif I helped him. - You've got up
19:57SPEAKERsome dark business is what I'm hearing.
19:59SPEAKER- I can't remember if I had helped him build that machine
20:01SPEAKERor maybe I had just given him the recommendation
20:03SPEAKERof like, oh yeah, this board is working great for me,
20:04SPEAKERyou should buy one, but at any rate,
20:06SPEAKERhe had the exact same board and CPU that I did
20:08SPEAKERand he was gone and I was like, well,
20:12SPEAKERand I can't remember what it was I screwed up the BIOS with,
20:13SPEAKERit was like some, it might've been some custom BIOS
20:16SPEAKERthat allowed extra overclocking or something like that.
20:19SPEAKER- Oh my God. - But anyway,
20:20SPEAKERthe flash went bad, so I went and booted his machine,
20:23SPEAKERpulled his BIOS out while the machine was running,
20:25SPEAKERstuck mine in and did a BIOS, like a stock BIOS flash to it
20:30SPEAKERand it worked just fine and both machines continued
20:33SPEAKERputtering along forever after, anyway, please go.
20:35SPEAKER- Okay. - So anyway.
20:37SPEAKER- But the point is I didn't realize
20:38SPEAKERthat like screwdriver shops would offer.
20:42SPEAKER- Yeah, the place I used to go would do that for you
20:44SPEAKERif you needed it, it was a common thing.
20:46SPEAKER- That's cool.
20:47SPEAKER- So the reflash, part of the problem with the CH-341A thing
20:53SPEAKERis that the flash tools for it,
20:55SPEAKERlike it doesn't come with the software you need to flash it
20:58SPEAKERand there's options, like you can boot Linux
21:00SPEAKERand just like that flash ROM is just built in
21:03SPEAKERand it knows how to talk to this particular chip,
21:05SPEAKERwhich was probably in retrospect
21:07SPEAKERwould have been the easier thing to do.
21:08SPEAKERI tried a bunch of kind of janky CH-341A programmer
21:13SPEAKERapplications until I, and I kept,
21:17SPEAKERthe problem I had was that they would say they were writing,
21:19SPEAKERit would act like it was successful, it would check Summit
21:22SPEAKERand it would be like, yeah, we're good
21:23SPEAKERand then it wouldn't have written anything.
21:26SPEAKERAnd it turns out LG write protects the chip,
21:31SPEAKERwhich makes sense, but if you're writing,
21:35SPEAKERif your program writer doesn't know
21:37SPEAKERto unwrite protect the chip when it's doing the write,
21:39SPEAKERthen it wouldn't, the write wouldn't stick.
21:43SPEAKERSo once I downloaded an EPROM writer
21:45SPEAKERthat knew how to do that, I was good to go.
21:49SPEAKER- And it was just easy peasy from there?
21:51SPEAKER- I unclipped the thing, put it back together,
21:53SPEAKERscrewed all the, plugged all the cables back in.
21:56SPEAKERThe nice thing about doing the EPROM flash
21:57SPEAKERis you didn't have to have the power onto the monitor
21:59SPEAKERwhen you were doing this 'cause the SOP clip
22:02SPEAKERand the CH341A would pass through the power
22:06SPEAKERit needed to reprogram the ROM.
22:07SPEAKERSo it was like a lot less scary as a whole
22:10SPEAKERthan dumping too much voltage through this little EPROM
22:12SPEAKERto try to jumpstart it back to life.
22:16SPEAKER- Now, did you end up trying to turn the monitor on
22:19SPEAKERbefore you reassembled it?
22:20SPEAKER- Oh, of course, yeah.
22:22SPEAKERSo actually the disassembly on this monitor
22:24SPEAKERwas not too, too bad.
22:26SPEAKERThere was one screw holding the back plastic on
22:28SPEAKERand then a whole buttload of clips.
22:30SPEAKER- Oh, I hate clips.
22:31SPEAKER- Well, and I, what I will say
22:33SPEAKERis their clips are pretty good.
22:34SPEAKERSo they're far enough in that they're like,
22:37SPEAKERyou could get a guitar pick under the edge
22:38SPEAKERand kind of just jimmy it around a little bit at a time.
22:41SPEAKERAnd it didn't break any of the clips taking it off.
22:43SPEAKERIt's not the tiny, super delicate clips.
22:46SPEAKERIt was designed to be opened.
22:48SPEAKERBut then you did have to open up
22:49SPEAKERthe internal electrical shield box
22:53SPEAKERand flip that over and get the,
22:55SPEAKERit was like opening LCDs is a little bit less scary
22:59SPEAKERthan opening CRTs 'cause there aren't like capacitors.
23:02SPEAKERI mean, I guess there are probably capacitors
23:04SPEAKERin the power supply for this thing.
23:05SPEAKERIf it had an internal power supply, that would kill you.
23:08SPEAKERThis monitor has an external power supply.
23:10SPEAKERSo it was a little less scary
23:11SPEAKER'cause it's just getting like 20, 19 volts or something.
23:14SPEAKERAnd I can't remember.
23:15SPEAKER- Yes.
23:15SPEAKER- If I ran everything in my benevolent dictatorship,
23:20SPEAKERvote for me.
23:21SPEAKER- Yes.
23:22SPEAKER- One of the things I would unilaterally declare
23:25SPEAKERinternal power supplies only.
23:26SPEAKER- Well, no, no.
23:28SPEAKERI mean, there are cases for external power supplies.
23:30SPEAKERI mean, it's kind of annoying to have an extra box in line
23:33SPEAKERthat you have to put somewhere.
23:33SPEAKERBut these monitors I've got
23:35SPEAKERhave got external power supplies for example.
23:37SPEAKERSometimes you just want the device to be small.
23:40SPEAKER- I like the old Dell where the power supply was just in.
23:46SPEAKERYou just jammed a three prong up in the back of the monitor.
23:49SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, there are cases for both.
23:51SPEAKERThe thing I was gonna say is I would ban clips.
23:53SPEAKERAll devices must be disassemblable.
23:56SPEAKER- By screw.
23:57SPEAKER- By screw.
23:58SPEAKER- Then what if you wanted to have a really flat TV
24:00SPEAKERand you didn't wanna have any screw holes on the back?
24:03SPEAKER- Look, screws can be pretty short.
24:05SPEAKER- That's true.
24:06SPEAKERThat's true.
24:07SPEAKERSo anyway, so yeah, it's been working for like two weeks now
24:10SPEAKERand-
24:11SPEAKER- Yeah, how did it feel like the first time it worked
24:13SPEAKERwhen you press the button and heard the belong and-
24:16SPEAKER- The funny thing is I had to reset all my settings.
24:19SPEAKERSo the last part of this is you have,
24:21SPEAKERwhen you boot it up the first time,
24:22SPEAKERyou have to do something that's gonna rewrite settings
24:26SPEAKERto wherever the settings are stored
24:28SPEAKERon a different piece of flash someplace.
24:30SPEAKERI don't exactly understand why that was,
24:32SPEAKERbut the first time I did it, I had to do it again
24:33SPEAKERbecause I didn't do that and it didn't boot the second time.
24:37SPEAKERBut once you do that, it's totally fine.
24:38SPEAKERI think that must, maybe it's the settings checksum.
24:42SPEAKERI don't know exactly what the situation is.
24:46SPEAKERA lot of this is kind of the monkeys repeating what we do
24:50SPEAKERand what the other monkeys do,
24:52SPEAKERand then it works for them too, but yeah.
24:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, what would you have done
24:57SPEAKERif you hadn't stumbled on that comment thread?
25:00SPEAKER- I literally, it's the first time I've ever gone
25:03SPEAKERto a blog like this and the comments were useful
25:05SPEAKER'cause it was all people who had different monitors
25:07SPEAKERsharing the ROMs, the place where they found the firmware
25:09SPEAKERand stuff like that.
25:11SPEAKERAnd then there was a series of,
25:16SPEAKERlike there's a ROM hacking, a firmware ROM hacking site.
25:22SPEAKERLet me see if I can find it real quick.
25:25SPEAKER- Sounds like a dangerous rabbit hole.
25:27SPEAKER- Look, it's not a good idea to do this,
25:30SPEAKERbut they had a bunch of bootleg firmwares for monitors,
25:34SPEAKERwhich it's not like, you know, it's not like real piracy.
25:37SPEAKER- Dude, wait, hang on.
25:38SPEAKERI need to go check on this then
25:39SPEAKERbecause there are still things about this.
25:42SPEAKERI mean, I have two of these identical ASUS monitors.
25:44SPEAKERThere are still a couple of things about these monitors
25:46SPEAKERthat drive me completely insane to the point
25:47SPEAKERthat if somebody hacked firmware to disabled,
25:52SPEAKERit would think about trying it.
25:54SPEAKER- Yeah, so if you have an LG monitor
25:57SPEAKERthat's having this problem,
25:58SPEAKERsearch for LG 31MU97 not powering on
26:01SPEAKERhow to repair this piece of shit.
26:03SPEAKERAnd that'll do that.
26:04SPEAKER- Wait, is that the name of the blog post?
26:06SPEAKER- That's the name of the blog post.
26:07SPEAKER- That's great, that's great.
26:08SPEAKER- And then the comments down there take you to...
26:14SPEAKER- I'm sorry, can you just for everyone's benefit,
26:17SPEAKERwhat is it, LG?
26:18SPEAKER- 31MU97 not powering on
26:21SPEAKERhow to fix this piece of shit, I believe.
26:23SPEAKER- 31MU97?
26:25SPEAKER- MU97, yeah.
26:30SPEAKER- There it is, found it, integer13.wordpress.com.
26:34SPEAKER- Yep, that's the one.
26:35SPEAKER- Not powering on how to repair this piece of shit.
26:38SPEAKERI just, I wanna go check that monitor firmware page
26:42SPEAKERand see if there's anything I could benefit from.
26:44SPEAKER- Well, I was just saying, then you can check for,
26:48SPEAKERsearch for CH34A, 341A in the comments
26:54SPEAKERand you'll find a bunch of stuff.
26:56SPEAKERBe real careful, make sure you virus scan
26:59SPEAKERany programming tool that you use
27:01SPEAKERbecause they're a little, like the programmers were,
27:05SPEAKERI found four that were really laden with viruses
27:07SPEAKERbefore I got to the one that I wanted
27:09SPEAKERand I'm afraid to recommend them because of that
27:11SPEAKERbecause like the one that I ended up using
27:14SPEAKERis the same one that was loaded with the viruses
27:17SPEAKERjust from a different site.
27:18SPEAKER- Really?
27:19SPEAKER- Yeah, if you're familiar with Linux at all,
27:22SPEAKERmy advice would be to run the Linux subsystem
27:24SPEAKERand just use the flash ROM
27:25SPEAKER'cause I wish I had done that.
27:26SPEAKERIt would have been much easier.
27:27SPEAKER- Yeah, actually I will say,
27:29SPEAKERI don't think WSL lets you access USB devices.
27:33SPEAKER- Oh, so then you probably have to actually boot on,
27:35SPEAKERlike do a Ubuntu boot CD or something.
27:37SPEAKERBoot from a live USB or yeah, live Linux image.
27:41SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm looking for the site
27:43SPEAKERwith the flash ROMs right now.
27:45SPEAKER- Yeah, that sounds dangerous, I don't know.
27:47SPEAKER- I mean, you can absolutely torch your thing
27:49SPEAKERbut the nice thing is you can read the existing ROM first
27:51SPEAKERso you can always write it back, right?
27:53SPEAKER- Sure, that sounds logical.
27:56SPEAKER- It's not a one-way trip unless your BIOS firmware
28:01SPEAKERor whatever torches something on the board.
28:03SPEAKERAnyway, I don't see the firmware.
28:08SPEAKER- That's fine.
28:09SPEAKERBefore we move on, I will say if somebody offered me a way
28:11SPEAKERto disable the auto input select on these monitors,
28:14SPEAKERI would fall to the ground and kiss their feet.
28:17SPEAKER- Yeah, have you looked at the service menu?
28:20SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff in there,
28:21SPEAKERVCP codes and stuff that I-
28:23SPEAKER- Kind of scary.
28:24SPEAKER- Am not brave enough to mess with
28:26SPEAKER'cause they're all unlabeled.
28:27SPEAKERAnyway, that's very cool that you were able to fix this.
28:29SPEAKER- Yeah, I was really stoked, it's a kind of hard,
28:33SPEAKERthe hardest core thing I've fixed in a long time, so.
28:37SPEAKER- I'll take this opportunity to mention real fast,
28:39SPEAKERthere is some construction occurring
28:41SPEAKERdirectly beneath my feet as we speak
28:43SPEAKERthat has just ramped up.
28:44SPEAKERI don't know if you can hear it
28:45SPEAKERbut if that's coming through on the recording, I apologize.
28:48SPEAKER- So what do you got cooking?
28:50SPEAKERWhat's on your plans?
28:51SPEAKER- Real quick, let me ask one follow-up on the monitor.
28:55SPEAKER- Okay.
28:56SPEAKER- To your knowledge, did LG ever offer
28:58SPEAKERany kind of like blanket, no questions asked,
29:00SPEAKERmake good on this or did they just sweep it under the rug
29:03SPEAKERand be like, oh, sorry.
29:04SPEAKER- If it happened under the warranty,
29:06SPEAKERthey would replace it under a warranty.
29:08SPEAKER- That sucks, unless it's like a very long warranty,
29:10SPEAKERthat extremely sucks 'cause-
29:12SPEAKER- It was not a very long warranty.
29:13SPEAKER- This is a pretty catastrophic problem to have.
29:16SPEAKER- It felt real bad on a monitor that was this expensive
29:19SPEAKER'cause at the time at 34 inch ultra wide was a fairly,
29:24SPEAKERit was like a 1440p vertical resolution,
29:26SPEAKERit's a pretty expensive monitor at the time.
29:28SPEAKERNow it's like, it would have cost me 200 bucks to replace it
29:31SPEAKERbut still though, I mean, that's just like,
29:34SPEAKERif that happened to me,
29:35SPEAKERthat is like I'm never buying another LG monitor
29:37SPEAKERor maybe LG product again.
29:39SPEAKER- I bought one of these and they sent us one for review
29:42SPEAKERand I'm not sure which one this is.
29:43SPEAKERSo this might've been an early release one even,
29:47SPEAKERbut it was a widespread enough problem that it was worrisome.
29:50SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
29:52SPEAKEROh yeah, okay, I could run down some of the stuff I've got.
29:54SPEAKERDo you wanna ping pong back and forth here?
29:56SPEAKER- Yeah, we can go back and forth if you want.
29:57SPEAKER- I am talking through a brand new piece of audio gear
30:00SPEAKERthan anybody who watched our next lander stream
30:03SPEAKERon this past Thursday where me and I finished "Fallout"
30:06SPEAKERand a test.
30:07SPEAKER- Which "Fallout", "Fallout 1"?
30:08SPEAKER- "Fallout 1".
30:09SPEAKER- Wow, did you ever played it before?
30:11SPEAKER- No, no, and this tells you how long it took me
30:14SPEAKERto get through "Fallout 1" on stream
30:15SPEAKERbecause I started playing it
30:16SPEAKERaround the time the TV show came out.
30:18SPEAKERI just finished it this week.
30:20SPEAKERI mean, there have been a lot of breaks in between
30:23SPEAKERfor various reasons.
30:23SPEAKER- It's a pretty big game though, right?
30:24SPEAKER- I probably put 25, 30 hours into it.
30:27SPEAKER- That seems right.
30:28SPEAKERI never played those.
30:29SPEAKERI wasn't into top-down RPGs when I was a kid.
30:32SPEAKER- It is so janky, I cannot believe it.
30:34SPEAKERApparently they developed it under some duress
30:37SPEAKERor had to ship it quickly or something,
30:38SPEAKERbut it is unbelievably buggy.
30:41SPEAKER- I feel like those games of that era
30:44SPEAKERare often pretty buggy.
30:46SPEAKER- It's pretty jank.
30:46SPEAKER- And a lot of them just came out
30:48SPEAKERand then never were touched again too.
30:49SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems to be the case.
30:51SPEAKERAnd there are, I'm trying to think how to describe this.
30:54SPEAKERThere's gotta be like a game developer term for this.
30:56SPEAKERI mean, I guess it's a hack, basically.
30:57SPEAKERThere are other issues about it that are not bugs as such,
31:00SPEAKERbut are more things like,
31:01SPEAKERapparently they didn't have a lot of time
31:03SPEAKERto work on the companion characters.
31:05SPEAKER- Okay.
31:06SPEAKER- So the companion characters are basically
31:07SPEAKERjust repurposed NPCs that don't work quite correctly,
31:11SPEAKERfor example.
31:12SPEAKER- That makes sense.
31:13SPEAKERThat fits.
31:14SPEAKER- For example, you have to pickpocket your companions
31:16SPEAKERin order to give them equipment
31:18SPEAKERbecause they didn't come up with a good formal way
31:20SPEAKERto give your people stuff without,
31:23SPEAKERyou can also use the barter interface,
31:24SPEAKERbut then they require you to pay them.
31:26SPEAKER- Wow.
31:27SPEAKER- Like they want money, even though they're in your party.
31:29SPEAKERIt's kind of hilarious.
31:32SPEAKER- Is "Fallout 2" significantly more polished?
31:35SPEAKERIs that what happened?
31:36SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm not gonna, okay.
31:38SPEAKERI mean, like realistically,
31:40SPEAKERI'm not going to stream all of "Fallout 2" ever.
31:42SPEAKERIt's just too much "Fallout" to stream.
31:44SPEAKER- Yeah.
31:45SPEAKER- But it's gonna be a while before I even check it out.
31:47SPEAKERI might try it just to see what it's like,
31:49SPEAKERbut yes, my understanding is that "Fallout 2"
31:51SPEAKERis substantially more of a functional game.
31:54SPEAKER- Well, 'cause like, this is way off topic, sorry,
31:57SPEAKERbut I remember when "Fallout 3" was announced by Bethesda
31:59SPEAKERafter they had bought that rights to that IP,
32:02SPEAKERthere was a huge uproar from nerds who were like,
32:06SPEAKER"They're gonna ruin "Fallout."
32:07SPEAKERThey're making it a completely different kind of game.
32:09SPEAKERThis is the perfect, it's the ultimate,
32:11SPEAKERand it turns out it was janky.
32:12SPEAKERSo that really-
32:13SPEAKER- Yeah, yep.
32:14SPEAKER- Yeah, well, there we go.
32:15SPEAKER- They kept that commonality.
32:16SPEAKERI mean, I'll say actually, it was cool playing this game
32:18SPEAKERand finding out how much of what I consider to be
32:21SPEAKERcore elements of "Fallout" came from original "Fallout"
32:23SPEAKERand not Bethesda.
32:24SPEAKER- I can see that, yeah.
32:26SPEAKER- Some of it's like look and feel things,
32:27SPEAKERjust like sound effects and stuff,
32:28SPEAKERbut some of it is core mechanics and core design elements
32:33SPEAKERthat are like, oh, I would just assume that Bethesda
32:36SPEAKERtacked that on when they took over.
32:37SPEAKERI didn't realize that goes all the way back to the beginning.
32:39SPEAKER- Were there big giant monsters,
32:41SPEAKERlike super mutants and stuff in that one,
32:42SPEAKERor was every much human-sized?
32:44SPEAKER- Yep, nope.
32:44SPEAKERYou fight super mutants, you fight deathclaws.
32:46SPEAKER- Nice.
32:47SPEAKERThat's awesome. - Kind of a little spread.
32:49SPEAKERRadscorps.
32:50SPEAKER- But onto the topic, though.
32:52SPEAKER- Yes, yeah, I bring that up.
32:54SPEAKERYeah, I bring that up because,
32:55SPEAKERso what we did at the beginning of that stream
32:57SPEAKERwas I knew I needed help getting this thing dialed in.
33:01SPEAKERSorry, let me back up and say what the thing is.
33:04SPEAKERI bought a DBX 286S, largely on the recommendation
33:08SPEAKERof some people on the Discord.
33:10SPEAKER- Hey, look, if you want a 286, I can get you one right now.
33:12SPEAKERI know a guy.
33:13SPEAKERWe'll have to wait until April, though.
33:15SPEAKER- I totally do, actually.
33:17SPEAKERIf I had room for a 286, I would gladly take it on.
33:20SPEAKERThis is a, I guess, depending on who you ask,
33:23SPEAKERit's a channel strip, it's a preprocessor.
33:25SPEAKERThere are different names for this.
33:26SPEAKERIt's a little rack-mounted piece of gear
33:29SPEAKERthat you run your microphone through
33:30SPEAKERthat does a bunch of sexy processing on your voice
33:33SPEAKERbefore it comes back out.
33:34SPEAKER- And the upshot is,
33:35SPEAKERso I remember when we were in the whiskey basement,
33:38SPEAKERBenny was like, "Hey, I need a bunch of money
33:40SPEAKERto buy this compressor."
33:42SPEAKERAnd the reason he wanted it was
33:44SPEAKERso that when people yelled into the microphone,
33:46SPEAKERwe wouldn't clip anymore.
33:47SPEAKER- That is exactly why I bought this thing.
33:48SPEAKER- Which turns out, in normal business-type talking,
33:53SPEAKERdoesn't happen all that much.
33:55SPEAKERBut in the kind of work that we do,
33:57SPEAKERthere's a fair amount of yelling.
33:58SPEAKER- Yep, there sure is.
33:59SPEAKERThere's also a fair amount of, I don't know,
34:01SPEAKERthere's a mechanical sound downstairs that's quite loud.
34:04SPEAKERI hope it's not picking up.
34:05SPEAKER- It's not coming through the call, but.
34:07SPEAKER- This thing also has a noise gate on it.
34:09SPEAKERSo anything that is quiet, like ambient sounds in the room,
34:13SPEAKERhopefully will get gated out.
34:15SPEAKER- That's nice. - As well.
34:17SPEAKERBut yeah, clipping.
34:18SPEAKERClipping is where you are too loud for,
34:20SPEAKERI can't explain it electrically in terms of gain.
34:23SPEAKER- It's when you go outside of the dynamic range
34:24SPEAKERof the microphone and the gain that you set up, yeah.
34:26SPEAKER- It's when you're like, effectively you're louder
34:28SPEAKERthan what your recording chain can handle,
34:31SPEAKERand it cuts the top of the waveform off
34:34SPEAKERand just sounds terrible, scratchy kind of.
34:37SPEAKER- It's funny, 'cause some people are really,
34:39SPEAKERreally sensitive to it,
34:40SPEAKERand some people don't notice it at all.
34:41SPEAKERIt's a perception thing.
34:43SPEAKERLike everything else in the human experience, it turns out.
34:45SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway, we don't have to go
34:48SPEAKERthrough the entire chain here.
34:49SPEAKERYou can pull up that next minor stream
34:51SPEAKERbecause we spent an hour,
34:52SPEAKERI pointed a camera at the front of it.
34:54SPEAKER- Oh, that's funny.
34:55SPEAKER- And we just spent an hour going stage by stage,
34:57SPEAKERdialing each one in.
34:58SPEAKERSo it's actually like probably a decent little primer
35:00SPEAKERon what things like this do.
35:03SPEAKERFor people who know, it's got a compressor,
35:05SPEAKERit's got a de-esser, an enhancer,
35:07SPEAKERand an expander/noise gates.
35:09SPEAKER- What does the enhancer make the podcast better?
35:13SPEAKER- Do you want me to enhance up right now?
35:14SPEAKER- Yeah, enhance us.
35:16SPEAKER- How about I enhance the low end here?
35:18SPEAKERI'm bum, bum, bum, bum, I'm talking, I'm talking.
35:20SPEAKER- Enhance at 30%, it sounds exactly the same
35:22SPEAKERas it did before, dude.
35:23SPEAKER- Am I getting more bassy?
35:25SPEAKERAm I getting more bassy now?
35:26SPEAKER- Wow, you sound real weird.
35:27SPEAKER- Am I getting bassy?
35:28SPEAKER- Yeah, you should turn it back, that's not good.
35:31SPEAKER- Wow, really?
35:31SPEAKERLike in a bad way?
35:33SPEAKER- It sounded real muddy.
35:34SPEAKER- Oh, okay, yeah.
35:35SPEAKERAnd similarly, I could,
35:36SPEAKERwell, I can't see these knobs super well,
35:38SPEAKERI should probably not throw a farm for corn.
35:40SPEAKER- Don't turn to the knob, be careful with the knobs.
35:43SPEAKER- The enhancer can bring your base or treble up effectively.
35:48SPEAKER- I was just saying, where does this connect in your,
35:50SPEAKERare you plugging this,
35:51SPEAKERlike is your microphone plugged into this?
35:53SPEAKER- Yes, the microphone goes into this,
35:54SPEAKERand then a line out of this goes into my Motu,
35:56SPEAKERwhich is the USB audio interface
35:58SPEAKERthat actually goes into the computer.
35:59SPEAKER- And you have a preamp plugged in
36:01SPEAKERbetween the mic and this?
36:02SPEAKER- No, so there's a preamp in the DBX.
36:04SPEAKERI did have a preamp, I was using a Triton FET head.
36:08SPEAKERMost people I think use a cloud lifter in this situation,
36:10SPEAKERbut the FET head is- - Yeah, I have a cloud lifter
36:11SPEAKERfor that.
36:12SPEAKER- The cloud lifter is a little inline box,
36:14SPEAKERwhereas the FET head plugs straight into the back
36:16SPEAKERof the mic, so it was mostly just a space saving
36:18SPEAKERconsideration, and they do basically the same thing,
36:20SPEAKERbut the DBX has a preamp in it,
36:23SPEAKERso I don't have to use that thing anymore.
36:25SPEAKER- That's nice.
36:27SPEAKER- Yeah, so anyway, you know,
36:29SPEAKERdialing this thing in is gonna be an ongoing thing.
36:31SPEAKERLike we took that initial pass at making it sound good,
36:33SPEAKERbut I think what I really need to do is record myself
36:36SPEAKERand just like narrate what I'm doing, you know?
36:38SPEAKERAnd it's like, now I am turning the enhancer up to three
36:40SPEAKERkind of stuff like that, you know?
36:42SPEAKERAnd like hear myself in real time describing what I'm doing
36:45SPEAKERand hearing what the effects are,
36:46SPEAKERand then just go back and review that
36:48SPEAKERand kind of decide where it sounds the best.
36:51SPEAKER- So when I set up my digital mixer a few years ago,
36:54SPEAKERI had a script that I read, and I would say,
36:57SPEAKER"Hey, I'm adjusting this down."
37:00SPEAKERAnd then I would read the script and I could compare one
37:03SPEAKERto the other really easily after that.
37:04SPEAKER- Yes, that's exactly what I want to do.
37:06SPEAKER- It took a day.
37:07SPEAKER- Yeah, yep, yep, I'm expecting it to take a while.
37:11SPEAKERWhich hey, it turns out when you have got time
37:13SPEAKERwhere you don't need to record podcasts for a while,
37:14SPEAKERyou can spend a bunch of time dialing in your podcast thing.
37:17SPEAKER- Yep.
37:19SPEAKER- It's also rack mountable, or it is rack gear.
37:21SPEAKERIt is a full-on 1U full width piece of rack gear.
37:27SPEAKERI don't know if there, are there terms
37:30SPEAKERfor the depth of rack stuff?
37:31SPEAKER'Cause it's probably only like...
37:33SPEAKER- No, they're always, racks are a certain amount of,
37:36SPEAKERI mean, I guess there's shallow racks for audio stuff.
37:38SPEAKER- There are shallow racks, I believe.
37:41SPEAKERThis is, the depth of this is only like five, six inches,
37:43SPEAKERbut it is a full width thing.
37:45SPEAKER- That's how, like my audio, my mixer is rack mountable
37:48SPEAKERand it's like four or five inches deep
37:51SPEAKERand then just the normal width.
37:52SPEAKER- Yeah, so I'm actually on the cusp.
37:54SPEAKERBut also this thing doesn't have an on/off switch.
37:57SPEAKERIt's just plugging into the wall when it comes on.
37:59SPEAKERAnd I kind of don't want to leave it on all the time.
38:00SPEAKERSo I'm about to click an order on,
38:03SPEAKERyou can get these little like 1 and 2U under mounts,
38:08SPEAKERlike desk under mount rack shell things.
38:11SPEAKERSo I'm going to get one of those.
38:13SPEAKERI'm just going to get a 1U one of those
38:14SPEAKERand I can mount this thing under my desk on that.
38:17SPEAKER- It's funny, I was looking at those the other day
38:20SPEAKER'cause there's a spot over on the right side of my desk
38:22SPEAKERwhere I could do that and have my audio stuff
38:25SPEAKERjust hanging under the desk.
38:26SPEAKER- Totally, 'cause you know how I am
38:28SPEAKERabout having a tidy desk.
38:29SPEAKERSo everything gets mounted underneath.
38:32SPEAKER- So I worry about the power cables
38:33SPEAKER'cause the power cables crossing XLRs and audios is bad.
38:36SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I actually am seeing what it looks like
38:39SPEAKERmaybe a tiny bit of interference on my recording right now,
38:42SPEAKERbut I don't think anybody's going to hear it.
38:43SPEAKER- Look man, you got to get those balanced plugs,
38:45SPEAKERpay the extra $3, get those balanced quarter inches.
38:49SPEAKER- And I'm going to mount it under here
38:52SPEAKERand I'm going to slap it on a smart plug
38:54SPEAKERso I can tie that into Home Assistant
38:56SPEAKERso I can turn this thing on and off from my stream deck.
38:58SPEAKER- There you go.
38:59SPEAKER- Yeah.
39:00SPEAKER- Speaking of smart plugs, I feel like we talked about this
39:04SPEAKERand this is the problem with talking and doing a podcast
39:07SPEAKERand talking about the same things off the podcast
39:09SPEAKERis that sometimes I can't remember if we talked about it
39:11SPEAKERwhen we were doing a podcast
39:12SPEAKERor if we just talked about when we were talking about stuff.
39:14SPEAKER- I know you shared a screen with me at some point
39:17SPEAKERand showed me some of these gauges and I commented on them
39:19SPEAKERand that might've been on a recording at some point,
39:21SPEAKERbut I think you can probably add some more depth here.
39:23SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm just going to just hit it real quick.
39:25SPEAKERI got a bunch of TP-Link smart plugs
39:28SPEAKERthat are like, it's like 20 bucks for a four pack.
39:31SPEAKERThey're five bucks each.
39:32SPEAKER- That is super weird.
39:33SPEAKERI've literally got a 20 pack of TP-Link Casa smart plugs
39:36SPEAKERthat are 20 bucks in my cart.
39:38SPEAKER- Yeah, and so they do power monitoring as well as on/off.
39:43SPEAKERThe ones I bought were the HomeKit ones,
39:45SPEAKERwhich are the ones that do power monitoring.
39:47SPEAKERI think some of the others do as well.
39:48SPEAKERSome of the older ones do not.
39:50SPEAKERAnd I've been using them to track how much power
39:53SPEAKERlike my server and home lab stuff is using.
39:56SPEAKER- Are those, I'm sorry, can I,
39:58SPEAKERjust because I have been researching this
40:00SPEAKERand people might want to know,
40:01SPEAKERare those the Casa EP25s by any chance?
40:04SPEAKER- I believe that's right.
40:06SPEAKERLet me look.
40:06SPEAKER- The EP25s, and again,
40:08SPEAKERI was just going through this this morning.
40:09SPEAKERThose are the ones that do like energy monitoring
40:12SPEAKERand I believe the EP10s do not.
40:16SPEAKERThose are just the simple on/off ones.
40:18SPEAKERYeah, the EP25 is HomeKit supported,
40:21SPEAKERdoes energy monitoring, et cetera.
40:23SPEAKER- So the ones I got are, the ones I have are 2022 model.
40:27SPEAKER- Yeah, EP25P4, which the P4 just means it's a four pack.
40:31SPEAKER- Yep.
40:32SPEAKER- You can also do energy monitoring
40:33SPEAKERon their smart power strips, I think as well,
40:36SPEAKERwhich is like the KP303 is a surge protector
40:39SPEAKERwith three individually controlled outlets
40:41SPEAKERand some USB ports.
40:43SPEAKERThe USB ports I don't think are controllable
40:46SPEAKERfor what it's worth.
40:47SPEAKERBut anyway, so I set these up.
40:48SPEAKERI set up a dashboard in Home Assistant,
40:51SPEAKERwhich I hadn't really done before
40:53SPEAKERwith the plugs that are the relevant plugs.
40:56SPEAKERAnd it's been super, super useful
41:00SPEAKERto know how much power I'm using on the day-to-day.
41:04SPEAKER- Yeah, okay.
41:04SPEAKER- Yeah.
41:05SPEAKER- I will say, I think we did touch on this recently
41:07SPEAKER'cause I remember telling you that my server
41:09SPEAKERis something like 75, 80 watts
41:11SPEAKERand yours is like seven or 10 or something.
41:13SPEAKER- Yeah, but that's also, I have two servers.
41:15SPEAKERSo I have the NAS server, which is a low power CPU
41:18SPEAKERand a bunch of hard drives and then I have the other one.
41:21SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's my whole machine
41:23SPEAKERwith the hard drives and everything.
41:24SPEAKER- Yeah, it's interesting.
41:25SPEAKERThe power management stuff in Home Assistant,
41:26SPEAKERjust in general, like I hooked my PG&E up to it
41:30SPEAKERso I can see how much power I'm using moment to moment
41:32SPEAKERfrom PG&E.
41:33SPEAKER- Oh.
41:35SPEAKER- It's 36 kilowatt hours right now,
41:37SPEAKERwhich I think the car must be charging.
41:39SPEAKERBut anyway, yeah, it's been,
41:43SPEAKERit's nice to have a sense of how things are going
41:46SPEAKERin terms of power usage on the moment to moment.
41:48SPEAKER- What do you mean by PG&E thing?
41:50SPEAKERCan you actually monitor your usage in real time?
41:53SPEAKER- Yeah, so you can hook your PG&E backend
41:55SPEAKERup to your Home Assistant now just by logging in.
41:58SPEAKER- Oh, wait, is that something on a cloud server?
42:01SPEAKER- It's a service.
42:02SPEAKER- You're hitting an API to get there?
42:04SPEAKERIt's not something, it's not the box on your house
42:06SPEAKERis what I mean, right?
42:07SPEAKER- So you can do that too, but you have to put a clamp
42:09SPEAKERaround where the power comes into your house
42:13SPEAKERor you have a smart panel.
42:14SPEAKERLike a lot of times when you do solar and battery installs,
42:17SPEAKERyou'll have a smart panel that can route
42:18SPEAKERand flip stuff on and off as needed.
42:22SPEAKERAnd I say flip stuff on and off,
42:24SPEAKERI don't mean individual circuits.
42:25SPEAKERI mean, if you, like you could set up a panel
42:29SPEAKERthat connects your batteries and your solar
42:30SPEAKERso that if the power goes out,
42:32SPEAKERit cuts off the outbound power
42:33SPEAKERso that you're not electrifying line workers.
42:38SPEAKERBut yeah, so you could also just do that
42:40SPEAKERwithout the clamp now 'cause PG&E provides API access
42:43SPEAKERto your current use of gas and power
42:46SPEAKERif you have smart meters.
42:47SPEAKER- Okay, that's cool.
42:48SPEAKER- Yeah, it's pretty good.
42:50SPEAKERIt kind of makes me wonder if I should get the
42:52SPEAKERenergy monitoring plugs, but I don't think I need that.
42:55SPEAKERThis is just for toggling things on and off, so.
42:58SPEAKER- Well, the energy monitoring plugs are, it's-
43:01SPEAKER- They're not that much more.
43:02SPEAKERIt's like maybe two, $3 more per plug, it looks like.
43:06SPEAKER- The EP25s were, the four pack of EP25s,
43:10SPEAKERoh, it's 29 bucks instead of 20 bucks, yeah.
43:12SPEAKER- It's 30 bucks for the energy monitoring ones
43:15SPEAKERand 20 for the non.
43:16SPEAKER- I think I got them on, these go on sale fairly regularly.
43:21SPEAKERWell, right now they're 40% off, but I think I got them on,
43:25SPEAKERlooks like I bought them on November of two years ago,
43:28SPEAKERwhich makes me think it was probably a Black Friday thing.
43:34SPEAKER- Speaking of home assistants.
43:36SPEAKER- Yes.
43:37SPEAKER- This kind of ties into my next project,
43:39SPEAKERbut I've been thinking about wiping my home assistant config
43:42SPEAKERand completely redoing everything from the ground up.
43:44SPEAKERIs that a terrible idea?
43:47SPEAKER- Yes.
43:49SPEAKER- Am I gonna have to, how much am I gonna have to onboard
43:51SPEAKERback onto my wifi again?
43:53SPEAKEREverything should still connect, right?
43:54SPEAKERDoesn't that typically live on the device?
43:57SPEAKER- Let's see, so your wifi will be the same,
43:59SPEAKERit'll still work.
44:01SPEAKERYour devices will still be connected,
44:03SPEAKERbut you'll have to re, I mean, okay,
44:06SPEAKERI guess the question is how many of your devices
44:08SPEAKERuse like standard interfaces, right?
44:11SPEAKERLike Zigbee or Matter and Thread and all that stuff.
44:15SPEAKERAnd how many are using some internet of shit thing
44:18SPEAKERand how many are connecting directly over your wifi,
44:20SPEAKERover your IP address, they're all wifi.
44:22SPEAKER- Everything is wifi.
44:24SPEAKER- So if that's the case, then all you'll have to do
44:27SPEAKERis reconnect your, the individual integrations
44:32SPEAKERand then redetect everything.
44:33SPEAKERAnd if you have to do some sort of pairing thing with them,
44:36SPEAKERyou'll have to do that.
44:37SPEAKER- Okay, interesting, I may or may not do that.
44:39SPEAKERI'm not sure, I've got some deeper on the system,
44:41SPEAKERthese stuff that I'm gonna do.
44:43SPEAKERI mentioned real quick when I was researching this stuff,
44:45SPEAKERI saw some people who are full on going to the lengths
44:48SPEAKERof getting a second access point
44:50SPEAKERfor their internet of things stuff now.
44:52SPEAKER- I mean, there's pros and cons to that, right?
44:55SPEAKER'Cause the problem if you do that with home assistant,
45:00SPEAKERthen you won't be able to do like your media,
45:02SPEAKERlike you want your media players to be on the same network
45:05SPEAKERas your phone and all your other things, right?
45:07SPEAKERSo you can use the software remotes
45:09SPEAKER'cause I use like the Apple TV remote
45:10SPEAKERthat's built into the phone constantly.
45:13SPEAKERI use Siri to talk to the Apple TV all the time.
45:15SPEAKER- Right.
45:17SPEAKER- But then if I do that,
45:18SPEAKERthen I won't be able to pipe media using home assistant
45:20SPEAKERto the Apple TV or to the home pods or any of that stuff.
45:23SPEAKERSo it's a little fraught, honestly,
45:28SPEAKERlike you can do VLANs where you put all the bulbs
45:30SPEAKERand all that stuff on one VLAN,
45:31SPEAKERbut then your home assistant has to be configured
45:33SPEAKERto live across both VLANs
45:35SPEAKERif you wanna use it for media stuff is the kind of TLDR.
45:37SPEAKER- Yeah, but that does, I mean, what are the upsides there?
45:39SPEAKERThat does solve any kind of like time sharing problems,
45:41SPEAKERright, where you've got 800 smart plugs sharing time
45:45SPEAKERon the radio with actual devices you care about?
45:47SPEAKER- Yeah, but if you have a modern access point,
45:49SPEAKERthen this time slicing doesn't matter
45:51SPEAKER'cause there's multiple radios
45:52SPEAKERand it just means you won't get full throughput,
45:53SPEAKERwhich you're probably not gonna use on wifi anyway.
45:55SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair.
45:56SPEAKER- Okay, probably not worth it.
45:58SPEAKER- I don't think it's worth the overhead or the extra power.
46:00SPEAKER- Yeah.
46:01SPEAKER- The thing I do think, like honestly,
46:04SPEAKERthe thing that's gonna bite me
46:05SPEAKERis I'm gonna run out of IP addresses
46:07SPEAKERand I'm gonna have to expand my subnet internally
46:09SPEAKERbecause there's a lot of light bulbs, it turns out.
46:12SPEAKER- It's just a configuration change.
46:15SPEAKER- You say that, but yeah.
46:17SPEAKER- Okay, a lot of configuration changes.
46:19SPEAKER- It's a lot of configuration changes, yeah.
46:21SPEAKERAnyway. - To be fair.
46:22SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it should be changing the DHCP server,
46:25SPEAKERbut I'm sure it's gonna be more complicated than that
46:27SPEAKER'cause I bet there's a bunch of stuff
46:28SPEAKERthat I set up static 10 years ago and I've forgotten about.
46:30SPEAKER- Yep, no, that will happen.
46:32SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway.
46:33SPEAKER- Configuration creep.
46:35SPEAKER- Well, it's a problem.
46:36SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway, the reason I bring up Home Assistant there
46:38SPEAKERand maybe redoing that is that I am going
46:40SPEAKERto finally try to containerize over this break.
46:44SPEAKER- So, okay, I'm generally a fan of containerization.
46:48SPEAKERI think that Home Assistant is the one place
46:50SPEAKERthat I don't like it, but I also have a fair number
46:53SPEAKERof matter and Zigbee devices floating around still.
46:55SPEAKER- Okay.
46:56SPEAKER- And getting access to the radios inside the containers
46:59SPEAKERis always fraught.
47:00SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I've done a fair amount of that already.
47:02SPEAKERI have passed devices through to containers.
47:05SPEAKERI do a form of containerizing
47:07SPEAKERand maybe I should back up here.
47:08SPEAKERWe're talking about things like Docker,
47:10SPEAKERthings like ways to encapsulate services
47:15SPEAKERlike Home Assistant or Plex that you run
47:17SPEAKERin a self-contained little box
47:20SPEAKERrather than installing them directly onto your device.
47:23SPEAKER- Yep.
47:24SPEAKER- I do a form of that already.
47:26SPEAKERWe've talked about it many times,
47:27SPEAKERlike you mentioned the jails on TrueNAS and the BSC world.
47:31SPEAKER- Yeah, I love the jail, love the BSC jail.
47:33SPEAKER- I use kind of a Linux equivalent of that,
47:35SPEAKERbut each container is its own full dedicated Linux install.
47:39SPEAKER- That's too much.
47:40SPEAKER- Running the full like init stack
47:41SPEAKERand everything of a Linux machine,
47:42SPEAKERwhich is, you know, that doesn't actually take
47:45SPEAKERthat many resources, but it is kind of a lot.
47:47SPEAKER- It's too much.
47:48SPEAKERThe problem isn't the resources, it's the overhead.
47:51SPEAKER- It's well, it's mainly it's the configuration.
47:52SPEAKERLike you have to go in and manually configure everything
47:55SPEAKERon each system container.
47:57SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the overhead.
47:59SPEAKERI mean the human overhead, not the computer overhead.
48:02SPEAKER- As opposed to just getting a Docker image
48:04SPEAKERand just spinning up the container
48:05SPEAKERas its own separate application and yes.
48:08SPEAKERI mean, there are things to deal with there as well.
48:11SPEAKERThat's not exactly like a fully automated process either,
48:15SPEAKERbut...
48:16SPEAKER- The problem with running Home Assistant
48:18SPEAKERinside a Docker container is that
48:19SPEAKERthen you're Docker-ing Docker
48:21SPEAKER'cause Home Assistant is essentially
48:22SPEAKERa bunch of Docker containers.
48:24SPEAKER- Is it? - Yeah.
48:25SPEAKER- Under the hood? - Uh-huh.
48:26SPEAKER- Really?
48:27SPEAKER- All of the integrations are Docker containers.
48:29SPEAKER- Really? - Yeah.
48:30SPEAKERThat's why, that's why...
48:33SPEAKERPaul has told us this when he was on the podcast.
48:34SPEAKERSo he talked about it
48:35SPEAKER'cause that's how they solve the plugin problem.
48:37SPEAKER- Oh wow, I must have forgotten that.
48:38SPEAKER- Yeah, that's why they don't have...
48:40SPEAKERThat's why everybody doesn't have to update their plugins
48:43SPEAKERevery time they update Home Assistant core
48:45SPEAKERto use new backend stuff
48:47SPEAKERis 'cause everything's just Docker containers
48:49SPEAKERand it just kind of works itself out.
48:50SPEAKER- I see, that makes sense.
48:51SPEAKERWell, I mean, Home Assistant does offer
48:53SPEAKERits own official Docker image.
48:55SPEAKERSo I assume it's...
48:56SPEAKER- It works. - Functional enough.
48:58SPEAKER- Yeah, I think it's just...
49:01SPEAKERIt depends on how you use home, like I use Home Assistant
49:04SPEAKERas the home for everything that's always on in my house.
49:07SPEAKERSo like my WireGuard install runs on the Home Assistant
49:11SPEAKERas a Home Assistant plugin, right?
49:15SPEAKERSo I wouldn't want that to be inside
49:17SPEAKERtwo layers of containerization, I think.
49:19SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, we'll see how it works.
49:21SPEAKERBut I am no stranger
49:22SPEAKERto having to pass hardware into containers.
49:24SPEAKERLike I've had to pass the quick sync device in
49:26SPEAKERto make Jellyfin do hardware in your transcode.
49:31SPEAKERI had to pass a fuse device in,
49:33SPEAKERwhich was a virtual file system
49:35SPEAKERto get our clone to work in a container anyway.
49:37SPEAKER- So what are you gonna put in the containers?
49:39SPEAKER- I mean, I have like every server service
49:41SPEAKERthat I've got running anywhere, Home Assistant,
49:43SPEAKERPlex and Jellyfin, OwnTone, which is that music,
49:46SPEAKERthat AirPlay music server.
49:48SPEAKERMaybe the UniFi controller, if I care enough.
49:52SPEAKER- I run my UniFi controller in a container.
49:55SPEAKERI run a couple of other things, but it's nothing...
49:58SPEAKERIt's all, I run the Linux game server manager
50:01SPEAKERis running in Docker.
50:03SPEAKERI set up Portainer a few weeks ago for the first time,
50:07SPEAKERwhich is like a web front end
50:09SPEAKERfor managing your Docker containers.
50:12SPEAKERIt's very good, I highly recommend it.
50:16SPEAKER- This is kind of a big topic.
50:17SPEAKERWe probably are gonna do a full episode about containers
50:19SPEAKERwhen I get fully up to speed on that stuff.
50:21SPEAKER- I hope so, yeah.
50:22SPEAKER- This is probably better saved for then,
50:23SPEAKERbut I've got here in the notes, Docker versus Podman.
50:27SPEAKER- Yeah.
50:28SPEAKER- I dabbled with this stuff a few weeks ago
50:29SPEAKERand actually spent a lot more time with Podman
50:31SPEAKERthan I did with Docker.
50:32SPEAKER- This is, what's the difference between Podman and Docker?
50:37SPEAKER- Effectively two different systems
50:38SPEAKERthat do more or less the same thing,
50:40SPEAKERbut there are a lot of nuances there.
50:41SPEAKERPodman came out of Red Hat.
50:43SPEAKER- Okay.
50:44SPEAKER- Like if we really wanna get into it,
50:45SPEAKERI mean, this is probably better saved for that other episode.
50:47SPEAKER- Okay, okay.
50:48SPEAKER- Podman does not run a daemon in the background.
50:49SPEAKERIt doesn't have a, Docker has a program running at all times
50:54SPEAKERto monitor all your containers and manage stuff.
50:56SPEAKERAnd there are ups and downs to that.
50:59SPEAKERIs that ever actually gonna be relevant for a home user?
51:01SPEAKERProbably not, but Podman is daemonless or serverless.
51:05SPEAKERThere is no-
51:06SPEAKER- Gotcha.
51:06SPEAKER- There is no thing running in the background constantly to,
51:08SPEAKERthey use the same containers to be clear.
51:10SPEAKER- Oh, so you can run a Docker container inside Podman.
51:13SPEAKEROkay, 'cause I was gonna say the benefit of Docker
51:15SPEAKERis that there's Docker containers for freaking everything.
51:17SPEAKER- No, no, no, in fact,
51:18SPEAKERthey are even command line syntax compatible.
51:20SPEAKERLike Podman literally, in fact,
51:22SPEAKERthey say like Red Hat says flat out,
51:24SPEAKERyou can just alias the Podman executable to Docker
51:28SPEAKERand just go about your business.
51:29SPEAKERLike they're, it's like a drop-in replacement basically,
51:32SPEAKERbut there are a lot of nuances in the configuration
51:35SPEAKERthat are different and stuff, but-
51:36SPEAKER- Gotcha.
51:37SPEAKERYeah, the port chainer thing is much more surface level.
51:39SPEAKERIt just gives you a way to download and like, you can say,
51:42SPEAKERhey, go download this Docker make file, build file,
51:46SPEAKERwhatever from the Docker repo.
51:49SPEAKERAnd it does it and sets it all up for you.
51:50SPEAKERSo it's really the proof, which I like.
51:52SPEAKER- And anyway, I've got a couple of VMs,
51:54SPEAKERone with Docker and one with Podman that I have,
51:57SPEAKERI started dabbling with, like I said a few weeks ago,
51:59SPEAKERbut I'll dive in and mess with both of them
52:01SPEAKERin a sandbox environment and see which one I like better.
52:04SPEAKERAnd then I have to start worrying about all the port
52:07SPEAKERmappings and stuff because of the way containers
52:09SPEAKERdo networking versus the system containers I've been using,
52:13SPEAKERwhich is very different.
52:14SPEAKER- The containers, the way the containers do networking
52:16SPEAKERis the weird thing.
52:16SPEAKER'Cause I liked the FreeBSD jail methodology,
52:20SPEAKERwhich basically gives each container,
52:22SPEAKEReach jail got its own IP address and showed up
52:25SPEAKERas a virtual server.
52:26SPEAKER- Yeah, on your land,
52:27SPEAKEReach container is its own full computer effectively.
52:30SPEAKER- It was really easy.
52:31SPEAKERAnd also like browsers and computers understand
52:36SPEAKERdifferent IP addresses better than different ports.
52:40SPEAKER- Yes, yes, on the Docker side,
52:43SPEAKERinstead you're using the one IP address of the server
52:45SPEAKEReverything's running on and just mapping different ports
52:48SPEAKERfor different services, which is kind of a lot to handle.
52:51SPEAKERI also, should we just move on to my next thing that I'm?
52:54SPEAKER- Well, I was gonna say the other thing I'm running locally
52:56SPEAKERis Perforce for the game that I'm working on.
53:03SPEAKER- Oh.
53:04SPEAKER- Not a real, like a toy game that I'm working on privately.
53:06SPEAKER- Oh, that's cool.
53:08SPEAKER- And so I don't have to pay anybody in the cloud
53:10SPEAKERto run that, it just runs on the server in my garage,
53:12SPEAKERwhich is really nice.
53:13SPEAKER- I mean, I was actually looking into what it would take
53:16SPEAKERto self host your sort of blue sky,
53:18SPEAKERwhat do they call it, the PDS portable?
53:20SPEAKER- Oh yeah, yeah, their server stuff.
53:22SPEAKER- Or personal data server, whatever they call it.
53:23SPEAKER- Yeah, you shouldn't self host that.
53:25SPEAKER- I don't think I'm going to, I looked at their instructions
53:27SPEAKERand I was like, I don't wanna mess with this.
53:29SPEAKER- Having self hosted a Mastodon server at one point,
53:31SPEAKERit's not a good idea, you should pay somebody to do that
53:33SPEAKERif you wanna do that.
53:34SPEAKER- Yes, yes, anyway, the reason I had mentioned,
53:36SPEAKERshould we move on to my next thing
53:37SPEAKERis 'cause it kind of ties directly in here.
53:40SPEAKERBlack Friday is coming up.
53:42SPEAKER- Yeah, that's when everybody buys the things.
53:44SPEAKER- That's right, well, the things I hadn't considered buying
53:47SPEAKERon Black Friday were services rather than goods.
53:50SPEAKER- I buy Adobe every Black Friday.
53:52SPEAKER- Yeah, like stuff like that,
53:53SPEAKERit just never really occurred to me.
53:55SPEAKERI think I am ready to have a virtual private server.
53:59SPEAKER- Ooh.
53:59SPEAKER- I think a DigitalOcean, Linode, Linode,
54:04SPEAKERhowever they say it, that kind of thing.
54:05SPEAKER- Yeah.
54:06SPEAKER- A little, you know, basically a little cloud instance,
54:09SPEAKERa little VM in the cloud that somebody hosts for you
54:11SPEAKERthat's just kind of a full on generic Linux machine
54:14SPEAKERyou can do whatever you want with.
54:15SPEAKER- Well, so I used to run,
54:16SPEAKERthis is what I run the Mastodon instance on for a long time,
54:20SPEAKERbut when it was just private
54:21SPEAKERbefore we made it for the whole tech pod.
54:23SPEAKERBy the way, there's a tech pod Mastodon instance.
54:25SPEAKERIt's mastodon.content.town, I think, or Mastodon.
54:29SPEAKERAnyway.
54:29SPEAKER- I believe that's right.
54:30SPEAKER- Yeah.
54:35SPEAKERThe Linodes are, like for five bucks a month,
54:37SPEAKERyou get like a little, it's like two gigs of RAM
54:41SPEAKERor something, slice of a server with one core,
54:44SPEAKERtwo cores or something.
54:44SPEAKERIt's great for running lightweight stuff.
54:47SPEAKER- Yeah, so those are the types of specs
54:49SPEAKERI've been looking into.
54:50SPEAKERAnd again, I'm gonna wait and see what the pricing does
54:52SPEAKERfor Black Friday 'cause stock pricing
54:54SPEAKERis maybe a little stiffer than I would like to pay
54:56SPEAKERfor some of that stuff.
54:58SPEAKERIt seems like a lot of what you're looking at these days,
55:01SPEAKERyeah, like you said,
55:02SPEAKERit is usually like one to two gigabytes of RAM.
55:04SPEAKERA lot of on the CPU side,
55:05SPEAKERa lot of what you're looking at is shared CPU resources.
55:08SPEAKER- Which is fine.
55:09SPEAKER- Like a virtual CPU.
55:11SPEAKERBasically, like your instance is basically just a VM
55:13SPEAKERon a server with a bunch of other people's VMs
55:15SPEAKERand they're kind of all sharing available CPU resources.
55:18SPEAKERBut if you're not doing anything super heavy,
55:20SPEAKERthat's probably fine.
55:21SPEAKER- So I think I set this up, set mine up originally
55:24SPEAKERfor a Photon server,
55:26SPEAKERwhich is a kind of Unity game networking server for Foo,
55:30SPEAKERwhich basically just works like a repeater.
55:32SPEAKERSo you basically connect all of your hosts
55:34SPEAKERto that IP address.
55:35SPEAKERAnd then it just repeats everything
55:38SPEAKERthat each one sends to all the others.
55:41SPEAKERIt's real easy networking,
55:43SPEAKERassuming you set up the stuff that gets sent right.
55:46SPEAKER- Yeah, the, it wasn't great for that.
55:50SPEAKERLike that's pretty lightweight server wise
55:53SPEAKERcompared to like, say like a Valheim server
55:56SPEAKERthat runs like the entire state of the game on the server
55:58SPEAKERand then doles out the important stuff
55:59SPEAKERto the relevant clients.
56:02SPEAKERThe running like a VPN, I ran a VPN, I ran.
56:07SPEAKER- You mean like an outgoing VPN?
56:09SPEAKER- Like an outgoing VPN.
56:11SPEAKER- Yeah, I thought about doing that.
56:11SPEAKER- I ran a proxy that could come back into my house
56:14SPEAKERso I didn't have to have open ports on my network.
56:16SPEAKER- That is the main thing I want to get this for.
56:18SPEAKER- That stuff was good.
56:19SPEAKER- Yes, that is about 90% of why I want to get this
56:22SPEAKERis I want it to be a proxy into my house so that.
56:25SPEAKER- So that you can like host a server for the public
56:27SPEAKERand not have it available for everyone to know.
56:29SPEAKER- That's exactly it.
56:30SPEAKERI want to point that my domain,
56:31SPEAKERI'm not sure which domain,
56:32SPEAKERbut I'll point a domain at the VPS, not at my home anymore.
56:35SPEAKERAnd then, so my public IP is not super obvious.
56:39SPEAKER- Yeah, that makes sense.
56:41SPEAKER- I guess I haven't looked into this too much.
56:43SPEAKERSounds like this is how people would do this a lot.
56:45SPEAKERLike I would basically just tunnel the VPS to my house
56:48SPEAKERover something like WireGuard.
56:51SPEAKER- Yeah, you'd probably set up a permanent tunnel
56:52SPEAKERbetween the two, right?
56:53SPEAKER- Yes, and then how this ties back
56:55SPEAKERinto all the container stuff is I am probably finally,
56:58SPEAKERand this is a lot to take on for the next week and a half.
57:01SPEAKERI don't know that I'm gonna get through all of this
57:02SPEAKERfor a while, but I'm finally gonna set up a reverse proxy,
57:06SPEAKERwhich helps with all the kind of port mapping stuff
57:09SPEAKERwe were talking about with containers.
57:10SPEAKER- Oh, right.
57:12SPEAKER- Which basically will let you,
57:13SPEAKERinstead of dealing with a bunch of port numbers
57:15SPEAKERon an IP address, you can say like flex.brad.com
57:20SPEAKERand have that.
57:21SPEAKER- Why do you own brad.com?
57:22SPEAKER- I wish, I really wish.
57:24SPEAKERActually, what I'm really kicking myself,
57:26SPEAKERI was talking to some people in the Discord
57:27SPEAKERabout somebody registered bradshoemaker.com
57:30SPEAKERback in like late 2012.
57:32SPEAKER- Oh, no.
57:33SPEAKER- Like I easily could have gotten that.
57:35SPEAKER- Oh, Brad.
57:35SPEAKER- To be fair, I don't think I owned any domains in 2012.
57:38SPEAKERLike I was just not in that pipeline, but I really,
57:41SPEAKERnow that Blue Sky is a thing
57:42SPEAKERand people are starting to use personal domains
57:44SPEAKERfor their usernames, I really wish I had that.com.
57:47SPEAKER- Speaking of, I set up a Blue Sky for TechPod.
57:50SPEAKERYou can follow it at techpod.content.town on Blue Sky.
57:53SPEAKER- Yeah, it's getting pretty fun over there.
57:56SPEAKERI think we may revisit that topic soon too,
57:58SPEAKERonce this influx of users dies down.
58:02SPEAKERI'm making the transition.
58:03SPEAKERI'm pretty much almost fully switched over at this point.
58:07SPEAKERAnd there's a lot to learn there with like custom feeds
58:09SPEAKERand stuff that people are doing with it
58:10SPEAKERthat has the, with its unique feature sets
58:13SPEAKERthat we might dig into at some point.
58:14SPEAKER- I was gonna say there's two parts of it, right?
58:16SPEAKEROne is, the interesting thing is that it's programmatic.
58:19SPEAKERThe algorithm is, you can choose your own algorithm
58:22SPEAKERbasically, right?
58:23SPEAKERWhich is really cool.
58:24SPEAKERYou can even roll your own algorithm if you want,
58:26SPEAKERbut also there's some cool backend stuff
58:28SPEAKERabout how the servers work and how they make it portable
58:32SPEAKERso that you can move your Blue Sky self
58:34SPEAKERfrom one server to the other and stuff like that, anyway.
58:36SPEAKER- And crucially, they are finally now gaining
58:39SPEAKERwhat seems like the critical mass of users they needed
58:41SPEAKERfor it to actually be worth using as a service.
58:43SPEAKER- So like a million users a day for the last few days.
58:46SPEAKERIt's crazy.
58:46SPEAKER- I can't imagine how they feel right now.
58:48SPEAKERThey must be pretty excited.
58:49SPEAKER- It's a tiny team too.
58:50SPEAKERIt's like 20 or 30 people or something.
58:52SPEAKERAnyway.
58:52SPEAKER- Anyway, yeah.
58:53SPEAKERSo the reverse proxy would help me, you know, like, again,
58:56SPEAKERit kind of helps you map your services to easy addresses.
58:59SPEAKER- Yeah.
59:00SPEAKER- Not as easy as brad.com, but it's a good example, you know?
59:02SPEAKER- Yeah.
59:03SPEAKER- But that is a lot to figure out.
59:04SPEAKERAnd even the question of like-
59:06SPEAKER- You're gonna need to upgrade your router, dude.
59:08SPEAKER- Maybe, eh, should be fun.
59:10SPEAKERLike, I've already got an existing WireGuard set up here,
59:13SPEAKERso it would really not be hard to adapt that to this.
59:16SPEAKER- Okay.
59:17SPEAKER- And just tunnel.
59:18SPEAKERI run WireGuard on a Raspberry Pi 4 right now
59:20SPEAKER'cause my router, you're right,
59:21SPEAKERmy router is not fast enough to do any kind of
59:23SPEAKERdecent throughput for WireGuard.
59:26SPEAKERAlso Ubiquiti has broken half of the feature set
59:29SPEAKERon this router at this point.
59:31SPEAKERBut I should be able to point the VPS at this Pi.
59:34SPEAKER- It's time for Open Sense, Brad.
59:36SPEAKER- It absolutely is.
59:37SPEAKERI mean, that is a whole other topic.
59:40SPEAKERThe only reason I have not bought
59:41SPEAKERone of those Alder Lake N100 boxes is to make my new router.
59:44SPEAKERAnd this is probably a good long ways off,
59:46SPEAKERbut I keep hoping that with everything Intel has going on
59:49SPEAKERwith like Lunar Lake and the massive advances
59:53SPEAKERthey are having in their mobile processors
59:54SPEAKERand how good those are turning out lately.
59:57SPEAKER- Yeah, I-
59:57SPEAKER- I'm kinda trying to hold out for the next generation
1:00:00SPEAKERof their sort of fanless embedded x86.
1:00:02SPEAKER- I'm really excited to see what Lunar Lake NUCs look like.
1:00:06SPEAKER- Yeah, that's exactly it.
1:00:07SPEAKERLike, 'cause even these 12th Gen,
1:00:10SPEAKERthese Alder Lake ones are pretty killer.
1:00:13SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:00:14SPEAKER- I cannot imagine how good the next generation
1:00:15SPEAKERof those is gonna be.
1:00:16SPEAKERBut that could be a couple of years off, so we'll see.
1:00:19SPEAKERBut there's even questions about like,
1:00:21SPEAKERdo I run the reverse proxy on the VPS
1:00:23SPEAKERor do I run that on hardware in my house?
1:00:27SPEAKERLike, I'm not sure yet what the best,
1:00:30SPEAKERmost efficient way to handle that is, but we'll see.
1:00:32SPEAKER- I don't know.
1:00:35SPEAKER- I have one more small thing that I did.
1:00:36SPEAKER- Okay.
1:00:37SPEAKER- I, my stream machine,
1:00:40SPEAKERI found out why my second PC wasn't updating
1:00:44SPEAKERfrom Windows 22H2.
1:00:46SPEAKER- Oh.
1:00:47SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:00:48SPEAKER- 22H2, not 23?
1:00:48SPEAKER- 22H2, no.
1:00:49SPEAKERI was stuck on 22H2 and I was like,
1:00:51SPEAKERthis is gonna be a problem
1:00:52SPEAKER'cause it's reaching end of support for 22H2 soon.
1:00:55SPEAKERAnd it was because at some point I had updated the BIOS
1:00:59SPEAKERand the TPM got flipped off.
1:01:00SPEAKER- Oh.
1:01:01SPEAKER- So Windows was seeing it,
1:01:03SPEAKERWindows 11 was seeing it as not compatible with Windows 11,
1:01:06SPEAKERso it wouldn't do any further upgrades.
1:01:08SPEAKERSo I flipped the TPM on and then it wouldn't boot anymore.
1:01:12SPEAKER- Nice.
1:01:13SPEAKER- In a way that was seemingly unrecoverable and I spent.
1:01:16SPEAKER- Now that's a trusted platform.
1:01:17SPEAKER- I was, let me tell you, I was fairly irate.
1:01:21SPEAKERSo I pulled the SSD out and I put it in my USB
1:01:25SPEAKERto NVMe adapter and I copied the files off of it
1:01:28SPEAKERthat I was sure I needed 'cause it has a backup,
1:01:30SPEAKERbut you know, it's always nice to be safe.
1:01:32SPEAKERAnd then I nuked the SSD and just installed Windows 24H,
1:01:36SPEAKERI turned on the TPM, nuked the SSD, installed 24H4,
1:01:40SPEAKERwhich took like 10 minutes, which was pretty nice,
1:01:42SPEAKERit was fast.
1:01:43SPEAKERAnd I managed, so one of the,
1:01:49SPEAKERthis is a machine that I basically just use
1:01:50SPEAKERfor streaming stuff at this point.
1:01:53SPEAKERSo it has OBS and software for my mixer and a Twitch bot
1:01:59SPEAKERand a couple other things on it, nothing major.
1:02:03SPEAKERAnd one of the parts about using OBS,
1:02:06SPEAKERif you have like overlays and things that have graphics
1:02:08SPEAKERand stuff like that on it, is it's really, really,
1:02:12SPEAKERreally important that you save all of those files
1:02:14SPEAKERthat are referenced by OBS in one folder.
1:02:17SPEAKERAnd if you do that, then, 'cause like if you save a profile
1:02:21SPEAKERor save a scene collection in OBS,
1:02:23SPEAKERthose are the two ways you can kind of save your settings
1:02:25SPEAKERis profiles and scene collections are like a set of,
1:02:29SPEAKERa set of scenes basically.
1:02:31SPEAKERIt doesn't actually collect all the files
1:02:34SPEAKERthat are referenced in those scenes.
1:02:36SPEAKERSo what you do is you save all of,
1:02:37SPEAKERyou put all of the things that are in the scenes
1:02:39SPEAKERin a folder called OBS stuff,
1:02:41SPEAKERput that in your profile folder in Windows or Linux
1:02:44SPEAKERor Mac or wherever, and then you grab that folder,
1:02:48SPEAKERand then when you load the XML for the scene collection
1:02:51SPEAKERand the profile back in, it'll be like,
1:02:52SPEAKERhey, we're missing a lot of assets.
1:02:54SPEAKERAnd you point OBS at the folder that has all the crap in it
1:02:56SPEAKERand it just starts working again.
1:03:00SPEAKERNow, theoretically when we had Jim on three years ago
1:03:04SPEAKERto talk about OBS on the FOSS pod, he was like,
1:03:05SPEAKERyeah, we're working on a profile migration thing
1:03:07SPEAKERthat'll just copy all your assets and stuff to make it,
1:03:10SPEAKERand it still hasn't happened, so.
1:03:12SPEAKER- Ah, fair, it's open source.
1:03:14SPEAKER- I mean, priorities, I get it.
1:03:16SPEAKER- Donate to OBS maybe if you want that to happen faster.
1:03:18SPEAKER- Yeah, absolutely.
1:03:20SPEAKERBut the upshot is by putting everything in that one folder,
1:03:23SPEAKERI was able to make that transition
1:03:25SPEAKERabout a 10 minute process instead of having
1:03:27SPEAKERto like recreate a bunch of crap.
1:03:30SPEAKER- Now, are you doing portable OBS as well?
1:03:32SPEAKER- No, I don't do portable OBS 'cause it's janky
1:03:34SPEAKERin ways that are challenging.
1:03:36SPEAKER- Oh, come on.
1:03:37SPEAKER- Well, 'cause here's the problem is if you put,
1:03:39SPEAKEReven with portable OBS, if you put all of the files
1:03:43SPEAKERthat you need in that portable OBS folder,
1:03:45SPEAKERit references their hard location on the hard drive
1:03:47SPEAKERrather than like in relation to the root
1:03:50SPEAKERof the portable install drive.
1:03:51SPEAKERSo it doesn't give you the benefit
1:03:53SPEAKERof having a portable install.
1:03:54SPEAKER- Oh yeah, no, that's just for scene configuration stuff
1:03:58SPEAKERmore than-
1:03:59SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:04:00SPEAKER- An encoder backend stuff.
1:04:01SPEAKERIt makes it easy to migrate all of your settings,
1:04:03SPEAKERnot so much the assets.
1:04:04SPEAKER- Well, but all of the settings are just saved
1:04:06SPEAKERin your local app data/OBS studio or something, right?
1:04:10SPEAKER- Sure, sure.
1:04:11SPEAKER- Anyway, but yeah, that was up and working in no time.
1:04:14SPEAKERI managed to get VoiceMeeter out of my pipeline
1:04:17SPEAKERfor video stuff, which is exciting.
1:04:19SPEAKERAnd the only thing that was weird was I had to install VLC
1:04:24SPEAKERso that OBS would see VLC playlists as an option.
1:04:27SPEAKER- Interesting.
1:04:28SPEAKER- And I used those for like pre-stream reels
1:04:30SPEAKERand stuff like that with the old clips and stuff like that.
1:04:32SPEAKER- I wonder if OBS must be hitting some libraries
1:04:35SPEAKERin the VLC install.
1:04:37SPEAKER- I assume that VLC, once I installed VLC, it worked.
1:04:42SPEAKERI wonder if, I think VLC has one of the toggle options
1:04:45SPEAKERto like install the VLC playlist plugin in OBS
1:04:48SPEAKERand it does that for you.
1:04:49SPEAKER- Interesting, that's cool.
1:04:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I was really pleased with how fast that came back.
1:04:54SPEAKERThe only hard thing was I had to recreate
1:04:56SPEAKERmy stream deck settings, stream deck settings.
1:04:59SPEAKERAnd I said, well, I forgot to save them.
1:05:03SPEAKER- Okay, that's okay, that's 'cause I may have lauded,
1:05:06SPEAKERI've had issues with Elgato software that we've talked about
1:05:09SPEAKERbut I have lauded Elgato and their stream deck system before
1:05:14SPEAKERfor this one thing, which is this very nice,
1:05:16SPEAKERelegant profile exports for the stream deck
1:05:19SPEAKERthat makes it quite literally when you reinstall
1:05:21SPEAKERthe stream deck software on a new machine,
1:05:22SPEAKERit associates the extension of those profile exports,
1:05:28SPEAKERlike dot stream deck or something.
1:05:29SPEAKERQuite literally double-click the file
1:05:31SPEAKERand it restores your entire stream deck profile.
1:05:33SPEAKERIt's incredible.
1:05:34SPEAKER- Sometimes it's nice to declare stream deck bankruptcy,
1:05:37SPEAKERI'm gonna say.
1:05:38SPEAKERI have a bunch of fresh buttons, everything's new.
1:05:40SPEAKER- Yeah, I get it.
1:05:42SPEAKERI'm still on 23H2, I have not pulled 24 yet,
1:05:46SPEAKERwhich is not like 23 is not exactly out of date yet
1:05:49SPEAKERbut I'm kind of surprised at this point
1:05:50SPEAKERthat they have not pushed 24 to me yet.
1:05:53SPEAKER- You, if you, I mean, it's the normal thing
1:05:55SPEAKERwhere if you have weird hardware,
1:05:56SPEAKERthen they're not gonna give it to you
1:05:58SPEAKERuntil the hardware is supported.
1:05:59SPEAKER- I mean, I've definitely got some weird hardware
1:06:01SPEAKERand I've got this what, 12 year old Mellanox card
1:06:03SPEAKERin this machine, among other things.
1:06:05SPEAKER- Yeah, that'll update your drivers.
1:06:08SPEAKERSometimes updating your drivers for stuff
1:06:09SPEAKERwill trigger the install.
1:06:11SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I'm not in a hurry.
1:06:13SPEAKERLike I feel like Windows updates have gotten pretty boring.
1:06:15SPEAKERI feel like there was nothing on the 24H2 feature list
1:06:18SPEAKERthat I cared about.
1:06:19SPEAKER- Honestly, the nice thing about 24H2
1:06:21SPEAKERis that you can uninstall copilot
1:06:22SPEAKERwithout using a bunch of registry hacks.
1:06:24SPEAKER- Well, that's nice.
1:06:26SPEAKER- Yeah, but that's pretty much it.
1:06:27SPEAKER- Yeah, last thing for me, real quick,
1:06:29SPEAKERwe won't get too deep into this,
1:06:31SPEAKERbut I have this NAS here or the server,
1:06:33SPEAKERwhatever you wanna call it.
1:06:34SPEAKER- You're real brave for admitting this in public,
1:06:36SPEAKERjust FYI, people are gonna roast you.
1:06:38SPEAKER- I know, I know, this is embarrassing.
1:06:41SPEAKERThat machine was on TrueNAS for ages.
1:06:43SPEAKERYou know, we've talked about this ad nauseum.
1:06:45SPEAKER- Yeah, we love TrueNAS.
1:06:47SPEAKER- But TrueNAS has a bunch of nice
1:06:48SPEAKERbuilt in automatic snapshotting,
1:06:49SPEAKERlike backup utility stuff.
1:06:51SPEAKERLike they, you know, they just put it all in the web UI.
1:06:54SPEAKERIt's very friendly and easy to set up
1:06:56SPEAKERlike regular automated backups.
1:06:58SPEAKER- I mean, it's not exactly,
1:06:59SPEAKERwell, I guess if you have multiple drives
1:07:01SPEAKERthat you can do backups with TrueNAS.
1:07:03SPEAKERIt doesn't do it by default.
1:07:04SPEAKER- Or you can do it through external machines.
1:07:06SPEAKERYou can, I think in their case,
1:07:07SPEAKERthey want you to be running TrueNAS
1:07:09SPEAKERon the target machine as well, which is not great.
1:07:11SPEAKER- Yeah, you can do ZFS clone of partitions.
1:07:15SPEAKER- ZFS send, yeah, you can do it yourself.
1:07:19SPEAKER- People are chainsawing outside my house.
1:07:19SPEAKERThis is a loud podcast.
1:07:21SPEAKER- Anyway, long story short,
1:07:22SPEAKERTrueNAS made it pretty easy to just have it say,
1:07:25SPEAKERyou know, snapshot every hour and every day
1:07:26SPEAKERand like, you know, kind of automate
1:07:29SPEAKERthe regular backup process you would like to have
1:07:31SPEAKERon a large store of data.
1:07:33SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:07:34SPEAKER- So you may remember I switched off of TrueNAS
1:07:38SPEAKERand went to just a bare Linux install.
1:07:40SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:07:41SPEAKER- Quite a while ago now.
1:07:42SPEAKER- People are gonna be really upset about this, Brad.
1:07:44SPEAKER- September of 2022 is when I dumped TrueNAS
1:07:48SPEAKERand just went to the regular Linux
1:07:49SPEAKERand did it, started doing everything myself on this machine.
1:07:52SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:07:52SPEAKER- About three months later in November of 2022,
1:07:55SPEAKERI bought a nice four bay external USB hard drive enclosure,
1:07:59SPEAKERlike a nice one.
1:08:00SPEAKER- That's a useful thing to have
1:08:01SPEAKERif you want to back up a big computer, right?
1:08:03SPEAKER- Cyba is S-Y-B-A, I probably mentioned it back then.
1:08:06SPEAKER- We talked about it a long time ago.
1:08:09SPEAKER- I shucked four drives and put them in there.
1:08:11SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the next step of this process.
1:08:14SPEAKERAnd then you're like one step away
1:08:16SPEAKERfrom having pretty good backups
1:08:18SPEAKERready to go all the time, right?
1:08:19SPEAKER- Okay, look, in my defense, that's a pretty big step.
1:08:22SPEAKER- I mean, I'm just saying.
1:08:23SPEAKER- When you no longer have the appliance software
1:08:26SPEAKERdoing all the automation for you
1:08:27SPEAKERand you have to do it yourself, it's a pretty big step.
1:08:31SPEAKERSo then I proceeded to never actually start snapshotting
1:08:33SPEAKERor backing up anything from my NAS.
1:08:36SPEAKER- Oh no, Brad.
1:08:37SPEAKER- This hard drive enclosure
1:08:38SPEAKERhas just been sitting here with hard drives.
1:08:40SPEAKERI mean, I've fiddled with it here and there.
1:08:42SPEAKERProblem is I just never have time to take this project on.
1:08:45SPEAKERLike I made a ZFS pool on this external drive.
1:08:49SPEAKERI've hooked it up, I fiddled around with it a little bit.
1:08:51SPEAKERLike I started moving in that direction,
1:08:54SPEAKERbut I've never actually fully automated everything
1:08:56SPEAKERand then started having my NAS, started taking snapshots.
1:08:59SPEAKERAnd ultimately I want to hook this thing into a Raspberry Pi
1:09:02SPEAKERon the other end of the apartment
1:09:03SPEAKERand start backing up nightly to that.
1:09:05SPEAKER- Oh no, I mean, I think that's a good strategy.
1:09:09SPEAKERYou should do that.
1:09:10SPEAKER- Yeah, in theory, everything I've planned here
1:09:12SPEAKERis fully sound, I just haven't actually done it.
1:09:14SPEAKER- Look, I think that this is the situation that we all,
1:09:19SPEAKERthat happens to everybody on some stuff, right?
1:09:22SPEAKERYou get busy, it's hard to remember
1:09:24SPEAKERthat you were supposed to do something.
1:09:25SPEAKER- Oh yeah, well, I never forgot.
1:09:28SPEAKERIn this case, I never forgot that I needed to do this.
1:09:30SPEAKERI just kind of kept conveniently putting it off
1:09:32SPEAKERand just ignoring the problem.
1:09:34SPEAKER- Look, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt there, okay?
1:09:36SPEAKER- Yeah, anyway, I am going to put some time
1:09:40SPEAKERinto finally starting to back my NAS up again.
1:09:43SPEAKER- Back that NAS up.
1:09:44SPEAKER- Yes, I mean, at least I've got pretty good hard drives
1:09:46SPEAKERin this thing and nothing has failed in the last two years.
1:09:48SPEAKER- So I had an interesting thought
1:09:50SPEAKERas you were talking about this,
1:09:51SPEAKER'cause I was like, we pay for Google apps for our domain.
1:09:54SPEAKERHow much space do we get with that?
1:09:56SPEAKER- Is that, you're talking about Google,
1:09:57SPEAKERlike Google Workspace, the thing that gives you--
1:09:59SPEAKER- Our Google Workspace thing, yeah.
1:10:00SPEAKER- Gives you corporate Gmail and calendar and stuff,
1:10:02SPEAKERnot that much space, I think it's like--
1:10:04SPEAKER- I think we get kind of a lot.
1:10:06SPEAKER- Are you sure?
1:10:06SPEAKER- I remember thinking it was kind of a lot.
1:10:09SPEAKER- I'm looking now to see.
1:10:10SPEAKER- What designs do you have on it?
1:10:12SPEAKER- Well, I was thinking about maybe
1:10:13SPEAKERbacking up my NAS to that.
1:10:15SPEAKER- Oh, I don't think it's that much space.
1:10:17SPEAKER- It's probably cheaper than buying the hard drives
1:10:18SPEAKERevery five years, though.
1:10:19SPEAKER- I don't think it's that much space.
1:10:22SPEAKERI mean, we're talking like tens of gigabytes at best.
1:10:25SPEAKER- You think it's only tens of gigabytes?
1:10:26SPEAKERI thought it was like two terabytes.
1:10:27SPEAKER- Absolutely, absolutely, no way.
1:10:29SPEAKERWe absolutely are not paying money
1:10:30SPEAKERto get terabytes of Google storage, no chance.
1:10:34SPEAKERI bet it's somewhere between like 15 and 30 gig.
1:10:36SPEAKER- I mean, I could save everything
1:10:37SPEAKERthat's not my Blu-ray rips on that, though.
1:10:40SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:10:41SPEAKER- Admin console.
1:10:43SPEAKER- Are you sure you want to--
1:10:44SPEAKER- 90 gigabytes shared.
1:10:45SPEAKER- Oh, 90, okay.
1:10:45SPEAKERSo it's 90 for next lander,
1:10:47SPEAKERbut I assumed it was more there
1:10:48SPEAKERbecause we're paying for more seats.
1:10:50SPEAKER- No, I think you get a fixed amount
1:10:52SPEAKERuntil you move to the higher tier is how it works.
1:10:53SPEAKER- That's probably what it is, okay.
1:10:55SPEAKER- 90 gigs would get us a long way, though.
1:10:56SPEAKER- Yeah, it's not nothing.
1:10:57SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:10:59SPEAKER- But how would you mount it?
1:11:01SPEAKERWhat would you use to transfer to it?
1:11:03SPEAKER- I'd use a G drive or a R clone, whatever.
1:11:06SPEAKER- R clone, yeah, R clone's probably what I would do.
1:11:08SPEAKER- R clone, and I would just do a specific shares, yeah.
1:11:10SPEAKER- Yeah, R clone's a little weird.
1:11:12SPEAKERYou can more or less treat an R clone volume
1:11:14SPEAKERof a Google drive like it's a local drive,
1:11:16SPEAKERbut there are some idiosyncrasies to look out for.
1:11:19SPEAKER- Yeah, well, 'cause the thing about how I use my NAS
1:11:23SPEAKERis I have a bunch of stuff that's ripped media,
1:11:26SPEAKERand if that gets, I back that up,
1:11:28SPEAKERbut it's just backed up
1:11:29SPEAKERto a single external drive occasionally.
1:11:32SPEAKERThe other stuff, there's a couple of personal folders
1:11:35SPEAKERthat have important files.
1:11:36SPEAKERIt's like my shared, it's like a kind of local Dropbox
1:11:40SPEAKERis what I use it as.
1:11:41SPEAKERIt's just like my local dumping grounds folder.
1:11:44SPEAKERAnd then there's a bunch of backups of other computers
1:11:47SPEAKERon the local land.
1:11:48SPEAKERThose don't need to be backed up and like photos,
1:11:54SPEAKERbut they're already backed up in the cloud,
1:11:55SPEAKERso I kind of don't care about putting them up on someplace.
1:11:58SPEAKERSo yeah, I don't know, interesting thought.
1:12:01SPEAKER- Yeah, a lot to tackle here.
1:12:04SPEAKERHow much of this is actually gonna get done?
1:12:06SPEAKERStay tuned.
1:12:07SPEAKER- Well, if you have thoughts about Brad's backup strategy
1:12:09SPEAKERand how he's implemented it over the last two years,
1:12:11SPEAKERplease let us know in the Discord,
1:12:13SPEAKERwhich you can gain access to if you're a listener
1:12:15SPEAKERand you subscribe to the Patreon,
1:12:16SPEAKERwhich is the way we make money with this podcast.
1:12:20SPEAKERYou can go to patreon.com/techbaud.
1:12:22SPEAKERIt is a listener-supported show.
1:12:23SPEAKERSo without you, the listener,
1:12:24SPEAKERwe would not be here making the show every week,
1:12:26SPEAKERand we appreciate you all for supporting us.
1:12:29SPEAKER- We do.
1:12:29SPEAKER- Again, it's patreon.com/techbaud.
1:12:32SPEAKERThe Patreon is five bucks a month.
1:12:34SPEAKERYou get the access to the Discord,
1:12:35SPEAKERwhich is full of beautiful nerds.
1:12:37SPEAKERYou get a monthly Patreon exclusive episode
1:12:39SPEAKERwhere sometimes we talk about things
1:12:40SPEAKERthat we talk about on the main episode.
1:12:43SPEAKERAs in the case of the power meters,
1:12:45SPEAKERI think we did that already.
1:12:47SPEAKER- That might be right.
1:12:48SPEAKER- And I also teased the monitor fix,
1:12:49SPEAKERwhich you get to hear phase one of the monitor fix,
1:12:52SPEAKERwhich is the real scary part
1:12:53SPEAKERthat a lot of people had feelings about the wisdom.
1:12:56SPEAKERBut as I pointed out at that point,
1:12:58SPEAKERit was a completely dead monitor and you take your chances.
1:13:02SPEAKERAnd yeah, and if you want to get shouted on
1:13:04SPEAKERon the podcast every month,
1:13:05SPEAKERyou can sign up for our executive producer tier,
1:13:07SPEAKERwhere we thank those folks every month,
1:13:10SPEAKERincluding Andrew Selosky, Crow, Jordan Lippett,
1:13:15SPEAKERBunny Fiend, Twinkle Twinkie, David Allen, James Kamik,
1:13:18SPEAKERand Pantheon, makers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.
1:13:23SPEAKERI gotta say, a friend of the show, Kishore Hari,
1:13:27SPEAKERposted, he got a new 3D printer the other day,
1:13:30SPEAKERand he posted, I can't believe I'm up and running
1:13:33SPEAKER15 minutes after I took this thing out of the box,
1:13:35SPEAKERmaking his first print.
1:13:36SPEAKER- Wow.
1:13:37SPEAKER- Which like, the first time I built a 3D printer,
1:13:38SPEAKERit took 15 days to get it working.
1:13:40SPEAKER- I remember, was that the MakerBot?
1:13:42SPEAKER- That was the original MakerBot cupcake, I believe, yeah.
1:13:45SPEAKER- Yes, yes, now that you mentioned it,
1:13:47SPEAKERI remember that thing sitting there
1:13:48SPEAKERkind of half assembled for some time.
1:13:51SPEAKER- We broke some stuff and then had to go get
1:13:53SPEAKERsome specialty parts places,
1:13:55SPEAKERand had to have some stuff mailed to us.
1:13:56SPEAKERIt was a process.
1:13:57SPEAKER- Fair, fair, is Kishore an experienced printer?
1:14:00SPEAKER- He is, I'd say he is a journeyman, I think,
1:14:04SPEAKERprobably not to out Kishore, but yeah.
1:14:06SPEAKER- Man, 3D printers have just kinda,
1:14:08SPEAKERthey just kinda got there, huh?
1:14:09SPEAKER- They've gotten pretty good, it seems,
1:14:11SPEAKERso I might have to check out a 3D printer.
1:14:13SPEAKERIt's been too long.
1:14:15SPEAKERThe pain of the last MakerBot has finally faded,
1:14:19SPEAKERand I don't remember what it was like,
1:14:20SPEAKERso let's jump back into the void once more.
1:14:24SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:14:24SPEAKER- But that'll do it for us this week.
1:14:26SPEAKERThanks for listening, everybody.
1:14:27SPEAKERWe hope you have a lovely, lovely week,
1:14:30SPEAKERand we will see you next time on The Tech Pod.
1:14:33SPEAKERBye, everybody.
1:14:33SPEAKER(upbeat music)