February 2025

I wonder if it is possible to extrapolate a fingerprint from DNA.

I'm watching Doctor Who episode "World Enough and Time" and I am having difficulty understanding what "fast" and "slow" mean when talking about time.

It also took me a while to figure out which end of the ship is closest to the black hole.

What I learned :

- Floor 0 is called the "top" floor.
- Floor 1056 is called the "bottom" floor.

- Time goes "slower" the closest you are to a black hole.

- Time goes "faster" at the "bottom" and "slower" at the "top" of the ship.

This means that the "top" of the ship (floor 0) is closest to the black hole.

... That was hard for me. I had to spend some time on tardis.fandom.com.

I just put online the script I use to generate the snow on my websites :

http://code.philippe97.ca/neige/

The structure, divisions and strapping of the new house we're building have been done last week.

This week was the HVAC and plumbing. Me and my dad went to the worksite Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and today.

We're going to have geothermic heating and air conditioning. The wells were drilled months ago and next week the rest of the system inside should be installed.

Work on the metal roof has also just begun. The scaffolding is in place and a small part of the roof was covered with sheet metal. They also have to remove the snow while they work.

Most of the HVAC ducts will be hidden inside the ceilings. We originally made the structure of the house so there would be no bulkheads, but unfortunately, we will still need some bulkheads where beams are in the way.

For the central vacuum, me and my dad originally planned to install the pipes ourselves, but we soon noticed that the work was too much for us. We will pay the company to install it. The flexible hoses will retract into the walls when not in use.

I'm already planning what to put where on the second floor (my floor).

I have a bedroom, bathroom, living room and office. All on the second floor.

My living room is open to the living room on the floor below. My mom has her office next to mine. We will insulate the wall separating our offices for sound.

I'm not so sure all of my stuff will fit in the available space.

I plan to wire the whole place with Cat6e. I already have the rackmount, 24-port Cat6 patch panel, 24-port managed network switch, router and UPS. I have a special place in the furnace/electrical/plumbing room for that rackmount. We bought the 1000ft box of Cat6e a few months ago to add some wires in our current house.

When they were pouring the foundation of our future home, they almost lost a shovel in the concrete.

The guy was on top, threw his shovel into the concrete form, started talking to someone else and forgot about it while it was sinking.

His boss made him notice and he picked up the shovel before it disappeared into the concrete.

I wonder how many shovels there are in the various foundations of other houses.

The ventilation guys are almost done in our new house. Another day should be enough to finish and clean up.

There are 15 butterfly valves in the ducts. Each one will have a motor controlled at a central location.

This will let us adjust the temperature in each room separately.

Unfortunately, the motors will be hidden in the ceilings and not be accessible in case of a problem. We would have to cut holes in the drywall to access them.

Next steps are the electrical and the central vacuum.

I have some requests for the electrical.

In my bedroom, I want a second switch right next to my bed so I can turn the light on or off in my bed.

I want the lights in the ceiling of my living room to be controlled from three locations : next to my bedroom door, next to my office door and downstairs.

I also want an outlet behind my flat screen TV.


I am also planning where to put my network outlets. I want at least four in my office.

I will be adding an Cat6/coax outlet to feed my grandfather's old TV. The coax will go into my VCR and then into the TV.

The composite output of the VCR will go to a USB-to-Cat6 pair of modules that will then be connected into my iMac. This will allow me to record VHS tapes.

That old TV will be on one of the walls of my living room.

Me and my dad went to the new house to fix a couple of holes in the floor.

It takes 45 minutes to get there.

We reach the house. We had the drill, the sawzall and the ladder, but we forgot the screws.

So instead, we moved the cable powering a small space heater in the basement.

When they built the door between the bottom of the staircase and the basement, they made the cable pass over the top plate.

To move the space heater, we had to :

- Turn off the breaker.
- Open the space heater with the drill (we forgot the screwdriver too).
- Detach the cable.
- Move the cable to a better path.
- Reattach the cable.
- Turn on the breaker.

Then I wondered if we could buy screws from the small convenience store five minutes away.

We could.

So we went back to the house and fixed the two holes in the floor with some of the scrap wood left by the workers.

Yesterday, I made a script to loop on all of my movies and lower the bitrates.

Anything over 1 Mb/s got lowered to 300 kb/s.

The resolution was also lowered to 360p.

This makes the videos use less bandwidth to be watched.

I left it running all night. My server was like a turbine.

I saved the originals of course.

This morning, my dad went to the new house to meet with the central vacuum guy and the electrician.

I wasn't there because I was working. As I am every morning from 8 to 12 Mon-Fri.

The piping for the central vacuum and its five outlets were all done today.

We will install the actual vacuum in the utility room ourselves.

I will return to mark where I want my switches and outlets.

The electrician says it will take him a week to do the whole house.

When he is done, I'm pulling my Cat6e network and my antique phone-based intercom system.

I plan to have at least one network outlet in every room (except for the bathrooms and kitchen).

Every TV will have two outlets : one for the HDMI-over-Cat6 and the other for LAN.

We plan to get two smart TVs that have a switch to turn off the microphone and a web browser to watch the videos on my websites.

Samsung TVs have that switch from what I have researched, but we have not yet decided on what TV to buy.

I downloaded the episodes from YouTube and put them on my website.

http://tv.philippe97.ca/Holmes%20Inspection/

I was all excited today.

I wanted to start my network at the new house.

We filled the car with everything we needed. It was very windy.

We finally reached the road leading to the house, but the snow was too deep and we got stuck.

We had to call the snow remover to remove snow and pull us out.

We went back home.

We will try again tomorrow.

We have two weeks before the drywall is installed. I wanted to start early.

I plan to start in the rooms the electrician has finished and follow him through the house.

The electricians are still working on the wiring.

My dad answered the questions they had.

We installed the rackmount in the utility room.

You can see all the wires in front of the panel, with my rackmount on the right.

We have to finish before March 3rd. This is when they start the drywall.

We have to install the network, antique phone intercom, doorbells, smoke detectors, infrared sensors and phone lines.

I pulled and terminated a run of Cat6e by myself. (my dad was busy talking to the plumbers and electrician). I did one outlet.

It took me two hours.

The next 15 minutes, me and my dad pulled a second cable that we did not terminate. We plan to continue tomorrow.

Me and my dad installed 10 cables in three hours.

My dad had a good idea : pull all the cables to see if we need to buy some more.

Later, I can terminate and test every one.

We will continue pulling wire tomorrow.

Me and my dad installed every cable. 17 in total. All labeled.

We have 10 feet left in our 1000 feet box. (but we used some already at our current house).

I also attached all the cables to the structure so they don't move if someone pulls on them.

We may have to buy more cable. I want an extra 4 outlets. But all the "essential" cables are done.

I still have to terminate and test every cable. (we just ran them between the patch panel and the outlets).

It took us two and a half hours today.

In two and a half hours, I terminated 11 cables (2 to 12). They all test OK.

When I pulled the cables, I labeled them at both ends.

I will terminate cables 13 to 17 tomorrow. My dad should be buying some more Cat6e on Monday for the extra 6 outlets we want :

- kitchen (1)
- library (2)
- my living room (a second one)
- my mom's office (a second one)
- the "shed" (big garage with a small door) outside (1)

I put online pictures of the construction of our new house.

http://www.philippe97.ca/new-house/

I did all 17 cables. (13 to 17 today). It took me about an hour to do them. They all test OK.

My dad will be buying some more Cat6e tomorrow and we will add an extra 5.

I like the Cat6e that does not have the plastic "cross" separating the pairs. Its pairs are twisted more tightly than the one with the "cross".

When I use my cutter on a cable that has the "cross", it also cuts into the wires because they are pushed outwards. The Cat6e I like does not have that problem.

I put a plastic sheet over the rackmount so the dust from the workers does not get into the plugs and connections.

It took me and my dad two hours to pull three cables :

- one in the kitchen
- a second one in my living room
- a second one in my mom's office

We will continue tomorrow with the two I want in the library.

Me and my dad pulled the last two cables. I terminated them.

Every one of the 22 cables is now in place.

I punched 352 wires in total (22 * 8 * 2).

I still have to install the metal plates to the studs. I will do that tomorrow.

We have to finish everything else before the drywall guys on Monday.

We have left :

- doorbells
- antique phone intercom system
- landline phone system
- motion detectors
- smoke detectors
- fish a coax for me
- redo the cables for the central vacuum

Me and my dad installed every outlet for the network.

We started with the outlet for the TV above the downstairs fireplace. That was a good choice because minutes later they were covering the wall with concrete board.

They cut that board with a grinder. It makes a lot of dust.

I am so glad we installed every cable yesterday, because today they filled every hole in the garage with spray foam to seal the rest of the house from car fumes. Making it impossible to fish new cables through these holes.

Below you can see the outlet in my office on the second floor (and the outlet on the other side of the wall).

Me and my dad pulled nine telephone cables and a coax cable in three hours.

The coax is for my CRT TV and the telephone cables are for :

- doorbells (3)
- antique phone intercom system (4)
- landline phones (2)

We have left :

- smoke detectors
- motion detectors
- speaker wire for the home theatre
- solder the in-wall junctions for the central vacuum
- an extra phone line for my mom's fax (optional, we could also use a VoIP thingy with the Cat6e I already pulled).

Everything needs to be done before the drywall guys on Monday. Our contractor says they start working at 5am. They probably don't have a life.

I did not take any pictures.

We have to order everything we need before March 4th and our current house is already full.

The basement is full and our living room is also full. We barely have enough room left for the laundry.

And more packages are coming in.

The stuff is for our next house. I forget what it is.

My old boots were over a decade old and breaking. I've been tough on them lately.

I bought a new pair at Yellow today.

I will be trying them tomorrow at the new house.