Month: August 2022

Arguing with the science

A week or so ago, I came across an article referencing a book about how climate impact will be inequitable — and, while reading the article, I rather disagreed with some of their assumptions. I later encountered an online discussion about the article — which included, among a few other dissenters, an admonishment not to “argue with the science”. Problem, there, is arguing with the science is the whole point of the scientific method. The point of peer-review publications. And, really, modeling socio-economic impact of climate change (or even modeling climate change itself) isn’t a science like modeling gravity or radioactive decay. These kind of models usually involve a lot of possible outcomes with associated probabilities. And ‘argue with the science’ I will!

Certainly, some of the rich will move out first. You can air condition your house and car into being habitable. Companies can set up valet services for everything. But your chosen location is becoming very limiting – no outdoor concerts, no outdoor sports games. You can make it habitable, but you could also spend some money, live elsewhere, and have oh so many more options. Most likely you’d see an increase in second homes – Arizona for the winter and a place up north for summers. Which might not show up as ‘migration’ depending on which they use as their ‘permanent’ address.

People with fewer resources, though, face obstacles to moving. Just changing jobs is challenging. It’s one thing to transfer offices in a large company or be a remote employee who can live anywhere. But can a cashier at Walmart ask their manager to get transferred from Phoenix to Boston? What about employees of smaller businesses that don’t have a more northern location? Going a few weeks without pay on top of moving expense (that rental deposit is a huge one – I’ve known many people stuck in a crappy apartment because they have to save the deposit to move. Sure you get your previous deposit back, but that takes weeks)? Really makes me question the reality of mass migration of poor people.

Adding Sony SNC-DH220T Camera to Zoneminder

We recently picked up a mini dome IP camera — much better resolution than the old IP cams we got when Anya was born — and it took a little trial-and-error to get it set up in Zoneminder. The first thing we did was update the firmware using Sony’s SNCToolbox, configure the camera as we wanted it, and add a “Viewer” user for zoneminder.

With all that done, the trick is to add an FFMPEG source with the right RTSP address. On the ‘General’ tab, select “Ffmpeg” as the source type:

On the ‘Source’ tab, you need to use the right source path. For video stream one, that is rtsp://zmuser:password@mycamera.example.com/media/video1 — change video1 to video2 for the second video stream, if available. And, obviously, use the account you created on your camera for zoneminder and whatever password. Since it’s something that gets stored in clear text, I make a specific zmuser account with a password we don’t use elsewhere. We’ve used both ‘TCP’ and ‘UDP’ successfully, although there was a lot of streaking with UDP.

Save, give it a minute, and voila … you’ve got a Sony SNC-DH220T camera in Zoneminder!

 

 

Maple Pecan Pie Filling

  • 2 1/2 cups pecan halves
  • 5 Tbsp melted butter, cooled
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 Tbsp all-purpose flour
  • 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup maple syrup

This recipe requires the pie crust to be blind baked — do that first and allow the crust to cool! Preheat oven to 350F.

Lay the pecan halves over the bottom of the pie crust.

Whisk together the butter, brown sugar, flour, vanilla, salt, eggs, and maple syrup. Pour over the pecans.

Put a pie crust shield on to protect the edge of the pie from overcooking. Bake for 45 minutes until the top is browned slightly.

Using Screen to Access Console Port

We needed to console into some Cisco access points — RJ45 to USB to plug into the device console port and the laptop’s USB port? Check! OK … now what? Turns out you can use the screen command as a terminal emulator. The basic syntax is screen <port> <baud rate> — since the documentation said to use 9600 baud and the access point showed up on /dev/ttyUSB0, this means running:

 

screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600

More completely, screen <port> <baud rate>,<7 or 8 bits per byte>,<enable or disable sending flow control>,<enable or disable rcving flow control>,<keep or clear the eight bit in each byte>

screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600,cs8,ixon,ixoff,istrip 
- or - 
screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600,cs7,-ixon,-ixoff,-istrip