podcasting

Introduction

Many people are building their own podcasts at the moment. The intent of this project is not for others to be able to follow my podcast, but to preserve the podcasts that were most influential to me. It would be good to continue to listen to stuff that is currently being released, but have my own local server generate a podcast xml to be able to keep the "cleaned up" versions of audio that I will download.

Audio Processing

Testing out audacity. So far, looks like takes some amount of time to clean up to only the sermon segment of interest. Using copy & paste seems to work very well for picking portions of tracks

After it is clipped, then use the "truncate silence" function. If audio is high enough quality, then can use -50dB. Silence is tricky because it ending consonants can affect algorithm. Using -35dB and 250ms, was too short and caught sentences. Using 500ms was more clean. Guess is that consonants can dip into -35dB, then time-short silence threshold breaks understanding. Would like to do some analysis on how long do most people's words take in ms (eg. ms per syllable, then figure out what is the most efficient).

Note that one can also delete words that are unintended: um, uh, like, etc. but manual editing

Process

This is using the guides from here: dir2cast github   user1

Needed apache2 and php-xml from apt-get.

My final implementation:

 http://default-inspiron-3647/podcasts/dir2cast.php?dir=archive

Conclusion

Only problem is that original theory of hosting on off-internet server would be flouted by podcast app requiring their own curated link (see pca.st links). Thus, motivating me to move away entirely from "free" app that used to be $4.

I listen to podcasts at 1.8x and would like to preserve "trim silence" feature, going to add audacity scripts to "trim silence" before piping into any other podcast app. Thus will be good to process weekly sermons and preserve ones.

Very disappointing that there is no automated tool to generate local URL to pass directly to the app. I could process each file individually and save in google drive, sharing over to podcast app (profile > files)

useful networking locations on the internet

https://forum.level1techs.com/c/networking/78 has some very advanced home projects. Learned much about DNS, networking, from original 10G ethernet in 2015!

Converting Fidelity fund research to Google Sheets

Converts this: 

To this: 

Version 1 of formula:

=mid(A2,1,if(isnumber(find("%",A2)),find("%",A2)-1,""))

Version 2 that filters out blanks better: 

=if(isnumber(find("%",N53)),mid(N53,1,find("%",N53)-1)/100,"")

upgrade to gaming rig

Introduction

When graphics cards become cheaper (and work project ends), then can take pcie 3.0 desktop (HP Pavilion with i7-6700T) to hook up to graphics card. Needs power upgrade

Background

Some work required:

• Need to disassemble old power supply to preserve +12V header, splice/solder into old ATX supply (at least main power connector is in spec)
• Select/purchase affordable GPU. Currently DDR6 shortage causing all graphics cards to be overpriced (2-3x so nothing in budget)
• Procure more memory
• SSD (found old mushkin 240GB drive, but may not be enough)

home fileserver (upgrade 2020-w52)

Introduction

This project is to revamp and reuse a lot of the hardware just laying around in home. Currently storage is not an issue, so enjoying just needing about 1TB storage, but drive is a little old.

Background

Previously using an old laptop z580 from 2012. Not bad, but slowing down significantly when browsers are open. Running 240GB SSD and 2x4GB RAM. Services required:

• smb (fileshare over 1G, was 100M)
• synergy (sharing mouse)
• 20.04 LTS (time to upgrade)

Moving to "new" Dell Inspiron 3647, running on i3-4170. It has a lot of what I want:

• 220W psu
• 3 years newer and desktop (55W TDP)
• 2 SATA
• PCIe2.0 x16 x1

Upgrades:

• add power connector (splice)
• SATA
• currently looking at Sedna adapter that has heavily throttled (400/200 MBps R/W) but convenient at $30 https://www.newegg.com/sedna-model-se-pcie-ssd-sata6g-pci-express-to-sata-card/p/17Z-0001-00054
• iocrest has standard 2 SATA, but needs to add power connector (450/350) at $20 https://www.microcenter.com/product/383009/2-port_SATA_60Gb-s_PCIe_Controller_Card
• fill in x16

Work Performed

• moved 240GB SSD from old server to new, verified that it sits on 6G link
• secondary 1TB drive on 3G link, but HDD so slow
• checked via 'dmesg | grep -i sata | grep 'link up''
• shopping for hardware... and assessing if really necessary to have multiple 1TB drives available (better for reliability, but... so far not burned yet)

sfp+ ethernet

Introduction

This is getting 10GbE working on a relatively old computer

2020-W52-1

Setup

Asus 10G SFP+ NIC (XG-C100F)

Dell Inspiron 3647 (i3-4170) running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Steps

1. download repository: https://github.com/Aquantia/AQtion
2. follow instructions per README
1. installed dkms per https://community.clearlinux.org/t/how-can-install-asus-10gb-ethernet-driver/4362/4
3. install ethtool
4. read out data

user@user-510-p136:~/AQtion-master$ ethtool enp1s0

Settings for enp1s0:

Supported ports: [ FIBRE ]

Supported link modes:   100baseT/Full 

                        1000baseT/Full 

                        10000baseT/Full 

                        2500baseT/Full 

                        5000baseT/Full 

Supported pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only

Supports auto-negotiation: Yes

Supported FEC modes: Not reported

Advertised link modes:  100baseT/Full 

                        1000baseT/Full 

                        10000baseT/Full 

                        2500baseT/Full 

                        5000baseT/Full 

Advertised pause frame use: No

Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes

Advertised FEC modes: Not reported

Speed: Unknown!

Duplex: Unknown! (255)

Port: FIBRE

PHYAD: 0

Transceiver: internal

Auto-negotiation: on

Cannot get wake-on-lan settings: Operation not permitted

Current message level: 0x00000005 (5)

       drv link

Link detected: no

        5. update settings per https://phoenixnap.com/kb/ethtool-command-change-speed-duplex-ethernet-card-linux

user@user-510-p136:~$ sudo ethtool -s enp1s0 speed 10000 duplex full autoneg off

Notes:

1. originally instructed to download drivers from Asus website https://www.asus.com/Networking-IoT-Servers/Wired-Networking/All-series/XG-C100F/HelpDesk_Download/

but found that original drivers could never finish due to this error:

~/aquantia/Linux-200/aq_compat.h:101:12: error: ‘struct sk_buff’ has no member named ‘xmit_more’

  101 |  return skb->xmit_more;

2. originally thought that I was missing 10GbaseT, but it was just because I expected it to be in numerical sort, vs alphabetical sort. See highlight

Embedding Videos into Powerpoint

 From this article, we know that .pptx is pretty finicky:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/video-and-audio-file-formats-supported-in-powerpoint-d8b12450-26db-4c7b-a5c1-593d3418fb59

I prefer to keep things simple and not depend on having access to quicktime. Thus, .wmv it is.

This person found a way to trigger ffmpeg to output wmv:

https://walterebert.com/blog/creating-wmv-videos-with-ffmpeg/

>> ffmpeg -i intput.mp4 -b:v 2M -vcodec msmpeg4 -acodec wmav2 output.wmv

(don't know what all the flags do)

Seems to work reliably for what I need