Philippe's Blog

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I just watched Hackers for the first time today.

What a weird movie.

I now know where jwz's references came from.

"Hack the planet"
"the unnamed account in the Bahamas where the money was to be stashed"

Today, the slab was poured for the large shed and the ground was levelled under the patio so the patio stairs can be measured.

The construction of the large shed started on Monday.

Here is a couple of pictures taken from my office window.

They were supposed to pour the concrete today, but it was delayed to Monday.

Between the utility room and the large shed, we have an underground Carlon pipe. Our Starlink cable and a Cat6e will be run through it.

I plan to have the Starlink antenna attached to the fascia of the shed.

I also want to add an Arduino with Ethernet shield along with some cameras (hence the Cat6e). The Arduino will monitor a sensor that when triggered, it will send a UDP packet to my server, which will then take a picture. I want to take pictures of the cars who pass on our road.

Half of the road is ours and the other is our neighbour's. I hope he will allow us to put a sensor on his property if we give him access to the pictures.

I have already created a C program that receives a UDP packet on port 9797 and sends its contents as an argument to a bash script. That bash script will then use curl to take the picture and put it on a website. (I use xinetd to start the program, which then uses read() on stdin). I use UDP because I don't mind missing a picture. The contents will be either "LO" or "HI". Normally HI, LO when triggered. (I plan to use the internal pull-up resistor and connect the normally open contact of the sensor between ground and the pin).

I just finished installing the third doorbell button and the fourth antique phone.

The doorbell button works great, but the fourth phone does not ring.

We got that one from our neighbour. At some point, it was gutted and a big square hole was cut in its back. The owner hid a normal phone inside.

The AC voltage reaches the phone, but the bells do not ring.

It seams that they have been damaged when the phone was gutted. A test shows no continuity on the coils.

Fortunately, we have a ring box with a stuck magneto and a missing phone. We thought of using the bells and coils from that box and putting it in the fourth antique phone. (Use it as a donor).

I finally have a clean desk. I did not want to put away my tools as I needed them to finish the job. Back in the toolbox they go.

Today was my last day at the old house. The new owners take possession tomorrow.

I took lots of pictures.

Today, I disabled cdn usage by the videos on my websites.

I previously wanted that if one of the videos on my website became popular, the requests for the mp4s would go through a cdn and not my server directly. On the second hit in the past 24h, the cdn would be used.

But I was having problems with the video sometimes taking a few reloads of the page until the cdn finally replied with the video.

The last straw today came when I was trying to watch a Harry Potter movie.

So I just stopped using a cdn altogether.

Videos should work better now.

It turns out the new owner of our old house will be keeping the old kitchen cabinets. This means we had to fix the malfunctioning range hood.

After taking it apart, we found that every but one of the wires between the fan and the controls had broke.

I soldered and wrapped in tape every broken wire.

When cutting the final piece of tape, I re-cut a wire. After some french canadian cursing, I soldered and taped the re-broken wire.

We left a piece out. It would no longer fit with every wire being wrapped in tape.

It only took two and a half hours to fix it. It works great now.

It was installed when my parents bought the house 30 years ago. It started malfunctioning about a year and a half ago. It should last a few more years.

My mom was just trying to print with her laser printer and the breaker shut off !

So we turn it back on. Try to print. And it trips again !

The current is definitely not over 15 amps. It's the arc-fault breaker that's tripping.

As a temporary solution, my dad just put a normal breaker in the panel and we moved the wire from the arc-fault breaker to the normal breaker. (We had bought that breaker for the UV lamp and the water softener; It's a double, we'll use a leg for my mom's office and the other for the UV lamp and water softener)

Next week, we will be talking with the electrician when he will be here to do the finishing touches of the electrical.

A week ago, I took pictures of the front of the house.

Yesterday afternoon, I finally made the doorbells ring the antique phones.

It works great.

Right now, I only have two of three doorbells installed and only two of four antique phones.

I am using relays and the ringing generator I found on eBay.

I plan to have the front doorbell ring the phones twice when it is pressed, but I did not manage to do that yesterday. The phones ring while the doorbell is pressed.

I needed the doorbells to work today because this will be the first home delivery of my pills to our new address.