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Quorten Blog 1

First blog for all Quorten's blog-like writings

Lessons learned from a first major home cabling project

quorten

2019-07-02

Categories: home-network  
Tags: home-network  

So, a few weekends ago, I got a 1000 ft spool of Cat6A cable, some Cat6A keystone jacks, some 25 ft metal fish tape, and some other miscellaneous items for an in-wall Gigabit Ethernet home cabling project. Cool! Alas, being a first timer at this kind of thing, there were some errors made the first time through and some lessons to be learned. So, here is my summary of what those lessons are.

  • Use T568B wiring scheme, period. Don’t bother even considering T568A. If you look around at the color coding in all the Ethernet patch cables you have, you’ll notice they’re all T568B. Besides, Internet HOWTOs on building your own patch cable don’t bother even mentioning T568A wiring, they only specify a single wiring scheme, and that one matches the color codes for T568B. Also, chances are that if you look carefully at the hints in the cabling, jacks, and equipment you’ve bought, it’s all optimized to make T568B wiring physically the easiest to wire up. Not to mention that the Ethernet cable companies simply sell much more T568B equipment than they do T568A.

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The story behind `tuxcall` in Linux?

quorten

2019-06-29

Categories: unlipic  
Tags: unlipic  

So, you’re wondering, what exactly is the tuxcall unsupported syscalls in Linux? It was actually that Red Hat implemented a web server in-kernel to beat Microsoft in a contest! Later, when Linux improved its threading support by adding NPTL, and also adding the sendfile system call, this virtually closed the entire gap between the in-kernel web server and a userspace one.

20190629/DuckDuckGo tux api
20190629/DuckDuckGo tux syscall
https://cloudatomiclab.com/antisyscall
20190629/DuckDuckGo tuxcall
20190629/https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/446502/what-did-the-system-call-tuxcall-do
20190629/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPTL

Libre bridges to modern chat and messaging software

quorten

2019-06-28

Categories: misc  
Tags: misc  

So, nowadays, advanced chat features and functions are starting to become more widespread, mainly due to the advent of smartphones. Sure, us tech geeks already had a way to do this long beforfe the smartphone boom, but unfortunately, that way never became popular among widespread society. So now, after the fact, we are trying to clean up and pick up the pieces. The software that became popular among the non-technical consumer sector is largely proprietary software: Skype, Facebook, Google Hangouts, Whatsapp, and the like. Unfortunately, proprietary softwre doesn’t cut it for us techies, so we have to figure out how to interoperate with the proprietary ecosystem.

As it turns out, the proprietary software app developers did not care to develop formal protocol standards. Rather, they each independently created their own proprietary and incompatible protocols. So, after the fact, in lack of documentation, us techies had to go back and reverse engineer these proprietary protocols of the widespread software. For what we’ve found, we’ve assembled our work into some useful software packages to “bridge” into these proprietary networks. “Matrix” sounds like a particularly good solution to this modern problem. Matrix is a protocol, and Riot is the client. One of the older and less featureful solutions was Rocket.chat, which featured a bridge to connect with Slack.

20190628/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slack_%28software%29
20190628/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_%28protocol%29

In the old days, proprietary document formats were the mainstay problem. However, in recent years, that problem has since been toned down and dialed back.

Simplistic gate array simulation discussion

quorten

2019-06-28

Categories: unlipic  
Tags: unlipic  

So, I have my simplistic gate array simulator that I designed mainly with one goal in mind… simplicity, and some semblance of being an accurate yet simplified hardware simulator. Okay, initially, my goal was to only simulate a single type of gate, and then build everything else up from that. That idea was short-sighted because it made it impossible to adjust a simple square wave timer loop. Why? The goal is to start the timer loop by creating a nominal delay in a ring oscillator, then using frequency divider, i.e. counter, circuits to slow it down to the desired frequency. Unfortunately, if you build your timer’s inner loop out of only NAND or NOR logic gates, then it is not possible to create a slower clock signal using a ring oscillator: every stage of your design results in an inversion of the signal at the highest possible frequency.

This issue was rather crippling for my earliest of design iterations and testing. I spent quite a bit of time debugging why my counter circuits were not performing as expected. The problem, of course, was that they were being fed much too fast of a signal to be able to compute the correct values deterministically.

So, we need some non-inverting logic too, solely for the purpose of being able to create correct timing loops. NAND + OR logic is my choice, for the following reasons.

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Reflection on the "dark saber", light, and the fate of the Universe

quorten

2019-06-27

Categories: random  
Tags: random  

One of my old interesting thought ideas was that of a “dark saber,” the logical opposite of a “light saber” as depicted in the Star Wars movies. Rather than having a sword-like contraction that emits light, you have a sword-light contraction that absorbs light like a black hole. What happens when you turn off a light saber? Easy, it just stops emitting light. But what happens when you turn off a dark saber? Well, all that light had to go somewhere, so where will it go when the device is no longer powered? Well, naturally, it would all escape, so then when you turn of the device, you have an explosion of light.

This is interesting when you think about it on a more philosophical level. Our understanding of the Universe as a whole is bounded at the present. When have warm bodies of stars generating light and heat, but ultimately that heat radiates out into space. The Universe is also constantly expanding, so in the far future, the fate of the Universe is that it will become a cold, dark, black place, completely incapable of supporting any like as we know of it here on Earth.

A recollapsing Universe that ends with “the big crunch” would be nice and warm, but sadly it looks not to be a reality.

Our understanding of light is that it only escapes us and spreads out away from us. Once it’s used, that’s the end of it as we know it, for we do not know how to get that light back to Earth once it radiates out into space.

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Reflection on Alan Kay's vision of every child doing computer programming

quorten

2019-06-26

Categories: random  
Tags: random  

I remember reading about Alan Kay in my AP Java computer science textbook. His vision was that every child would do computer programming in object-oriented programming languages like Smalltalk. Nowadays we know much better, that never panned out. Nowadays, every child does the typical consumer computing activities on computers, computer programming not included.

Ah, so what does Wikipedia have to say about this failed visionary insight? Well, well, it has the clever Ray Kurzweil way of backing up the vision with 20/20 hindsight. Yeah, although modern children as of 2019 have never got around to computer programming, they have successfully played around on tablet computers, just in line with Alan Kay’s vision of the Dynabook tablet-like computer device in educational computing. Modern non-technical early education school teachers can easily push the tablets into their classroom, without the need of a specialized computer teacher to drive anything inside the classroom. So these computers are in fact “educational” since they are being used by schools.

Also, Alan Kay has similarly provided updated critique and details on his own visions in light of these new facts.

To be fair, my statement that came out of my Java book could have easily been a misinterpretation of Alan Kay’s original vision.

20190625/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay

Demise of the Apple AirPort series routers

quorten

2019-06-25

Categories: home-network  
Tags: home-network  

So, I’ve been thinking about what kinds of wireless access points I would like to get to improve the home network in a mesh topology. How about an Apple AirPort wireless access point? Those are (1) designed by Apple to be user-friendly and also (2) they are designed to play well when operating in a business network with central IT, so it would be a good bet for me to get one of those to try it out for the needs of one of my particular home network users.

20190624/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPort

Unfortunately, Apple has discontinued their AirPort series of routers in 2018. They’be decided they want to pull out of that area so they can place their full company’s focus on consumer electronics. Now, they sell and recommend the Linksys Velop mesh routing system in their Apple Stores.

That’s too bad. During the heyday of Apple AirPort routers, they were loved by tech geeks for their ability to support advanced configuration while being easy to use. It’s sad to see it go away, but ‘tis the way the world is.

Comparing new Gigabit routers and Wi-Fi access points

quorten

2019-06-22

Categories: home-network  
Tags: home-network  

So, as part of my home network expansion, I need to upgrade my router to a Gigabit Ethernet capable model. Also, I’m libre software compatible wireless access points. For my purposes, they need to be libre, and part of that is so that I can centrally manage then.

So, first of all, my first acquaintance, the Think Penguin mini Wi-Fi router. This is definitely a fun toy to play with, but it may not fit the bill for some of the other users who don’t care so much learning about, tinkering with, and generally playing with technology.

20190621/https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/free-software-wireless-n-mini-vpn-router-tpe-r1100

So, if we must compromise between libre software friendliness and raw performance features, where will we go next? Looks like a Linksys WRT3200ACM router may be a good compromise pick. To be honest, this is a bit bittersweet, as I know, ultimately, my pick will likely only last 5 years before it becomes obsolete and reverts back to the status of a tech geek’s toy. By all means, don’t try to future-proof your network equipment unless you are really sure that (1) the new standards and features in your router are compatible with existig equipment and (2) you are pretty sure that standard will become the way of the future, such as was the case for Gigabit Ethernet.

20190621/DuckDuckGo gigabit router
20190621/https://heavy.com/tech/2018/03/top-10-best-gigabit-routers-of-2018/

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Two different kinds of "Inspec" and New Relic monitoring

quorten

2019-06-21

Categories: random   random-software  
Tags: random   random-software  

Inspec? Is that proprietary or open-source? Let’s check Wikipedia… oh, this is a different Inspec. A very old scientific database. It’s interesting when you think about it… at one point in time, those kinds of publications were extremely important for getting science and engineering knowledge disseminated throughout the community.

20190620/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspec

This is the Inspec I was looking for. Yes, it is open-source, I found the source code on GitHub.

20190620/https://www.chef.io/products/chef-inspec/
20190620/DuckDuckGo chef inspec github
20190620/https://github.com/inspec/inspec

This is an intfrastructure monitoring system by New Relic. It could be pretty nice, although Prometheus may be more of the rage.

20190620/https://newrelic.com/products/infrastructure

Looking for QEMU PC Gameport support

quorten

2019-06-19

Categories: windows  
Tags: windows  

So, does QEMU support the PC Gameport? How do you get the support working? Oh, bummer… a while back, there were some devs with a work-in-progress branch to add support to QEMU, but it never got through to completion. Here is the trail of their last conversation in the subject.

20190618/DuckDuckGo qemu gameport
20190618/https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2005-03/msg00258.html

So, I guess I’ll have to start over implementing it from scratch. It’s not too hard to implement, it’s just getting all the interfaces matched up is tedious.