Koshari

This is dish I wanted to try for some time. I knew about it by chance after reading about the favourite dish from a football player and then by chance, having it by lunch one day at work. It was very tasty, looked healthy and not very complicated. So finally, this weekend I tried it.

I followed this video but not to the dot as I missed/forgot some ingredients. Still, the result was quite good. I only did the tomate sauce

Ingredients:

  • 1 can of chickpeas (I didnt use because I had too much food)
  • 3/4 glass of green/brown lentils
  • 1 can of good pasata
  • 6-7 minced garlic cloves
  • 3/5 glass of rice (I used basmati)
  • 1 glass of pasta
  • 7 small onions, sliced (not diced)
  • Pepper, salt, ground coriander, chilli flakes
  • Olive oil
  • 1 glass of sunflour oil for deepfrying.

Process:

  • In a bowl, put the sliced onions with a bit of salt, pepper, ground coriander and chilli flakes. Toss it to be sure everything is well mixed. The idea is to make the onions to sweat a bit.

  • Cook the lentils in a deep saucepan. Add two parts of boiling water for 1 part of lentils. 1 tsp of coriander and salt + pepper.
  • Dont over cook it, something “aldente”
  • Keep the water of the lentils to cook the pasta. Let aside the lentils.

  • Cook the pasta with the lentils water. Again, till “aldente”. Set aside.
  • Save the water for the last step.

  • Heat up a a frying pan. Once hot, add some oil and the minced garlic. BE CAREFUL dont burn them!
  • Add the tomate pasata to the garlic. Add some salt/pepper. Taste.
  • Let it cook at medium heath until thickened. Set aside

  • In the deep saucepan used for the lentils, heat up the sunflour oil
  • Once it is hot, add a handfull of onios.
  • NOTE: Leave a hand of onions without frying for next step
  • Let if try for over 10 minutes or until brown (but not burned!)
  • Remove the onions and let them dry with kitchen paper to absorve the oil. Separate them so they dont stick each other.
  • Repeat the process with another batch of onions untill all are done.

  • In the same saucepan as the onions. Remove some oil, try to clean any debris.
  • Once is hot again, add the leftover onios. Fry until golden.
  • Reduce to low-middle heat.
  • Add the rice, mix very well so it doesnt stick to the bottom
  • Add a couple of tbs of tomate sauce
  • Add the pasta water. Top up if needed.
  • Once the rice is done. Add the lentils and pasta. Mix all carefull
  • For serving, add the rice/lentil/pasta base
  • Add some tbs of tomate on top
  • Add some crispy onions on top.

In the middle of the process:

Final:

It didnt taste like the one I remember but it was quite good.

For next time, I need to make the Dakkah, Garlic Vinegar sauce.

Git merge vs rebase, diff, patch, stash

This week I have had a bit of a struggle with git when trying to develop a change and I was getting constant conflicts when trying to get my branch up to date with main.

https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/merging-vs-rebasing: A refresh for merge vs rebase. When I first started with git, the environment was pro rebase. But after that job, all places were pro merge. Somehow I visualize better a rebase. I will start using rebase to see if I really understand.

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/git-diff-and-patch/: That’s how I finally managed to push my change into master. I had a diff generated by my gitlab PR and applied it into master.

https://opensource.com/article/21/4/git-stash: Something I already commented about but hardly used.

https://opensource.com/article/21/3/git-cherry-pick: Never used it but I was reading about this week as I thought was my only way out from the merge conflict nightmare I was in.

AusNOG 2023

Nice NOG meeting:

Vendor Support API: Interesting how Telstra uses Juniper TAC API to handle power supplies replacement. I was surprised that they are able to get the RMA and just try to replace it. If they dont need it, they send it back… That saves time to Telstra for sure. The problem I can see here is when you need to open ticket for inbound/outbound deliveries in the datacenters, that dont have any API at all. If datacenters and big courier companies had API as 1st class citizends, incredible things could happens. Still just being able to have zero-touch replacement for power supplies is a start.

No Packet Behind – AWS: I think until pass the first 30 minutes, there is nothing new that hasnt been published in other NOG meeting between 2022 and 2023. At least the mention the name of the latest fabric, Final Cat. As well, they mention issues with IPv6 deployment.

There are other interesting talks but without video so the pdf only doesnt really give me much (like the AWS live premium talk)

RFKill

Somehow my linux laptop sometimes disables WIFI when I upgrade it. It doesnt really bother me as I can enable it by an icon in the UI but one day my UI lost the panel with that icon after another upgrade. So I had to learn how to enable the wifi. Via this page, I learned about the different status and then checking the options of rkfill command got my WIFI enabled back again.

# rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: yes
	Hard blocked: no
1: hci0: Bluetooth
	Soft blocked: yes
	Hard blocked: no
# 
# rfkill unblock wifi
# 
# rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: no
1: hci0: Bluetooth
	Soft blocked: yes
	Hard blocked: no
#

At some point, I would like to test bluetooth in my laptop.

Wistron

I have never heard of Wistron until I reached this page. Maybe it is because:

Wistron typically only sells to hyper-scalers

I guess the hyperscalers put their own NOS on top? Anyway, quite interesting the model with 16 ports for Optical SN (that is 4x400G per port).

MITRE ATT&CK

From another security maillist, Mitre is mentioned a lot but till this week I didnt really dig a bit about. So copy/paste:

MITRE ATT&CK® is a globally-accessible knowledge base of adversary tactics and techniques based on real-world observations. The ATT&CK knowledge base is used as a foundation for the development of specific threat models and methodologies in the private sector, in government, and in the cybersecurity product and service community.

In similar subject, at some point, I would like to see how vulnerable my VPS is. Still not sure if would be usable or how to use Mittre to do that. At least to get some audit/basics done and improve my “security” knowledge a bit. As usual… time.

Google Spanner

From an email list, I read something about Gmail migration to Spanner. I was a bit surprised because I use gmail and didnt know anything about it. That email sent me to this page. That migration had to be a monster one! More details here. From the first page, I had a bit more info about Falcon. In summary, that is part of a bigger picture about building the “AI-driven” future infrastructure.

FP8-LM

From the AlphaSignal email list, that most of the times go over my lame knowledge, I found this piece of info, quite interesting:

FP8-LM: Training FP8 Large Language Models

Goal: Optimize LLM training with FP8 low-bit data formats.
Issue: High cost of LLM computational resources.
Solution: FP8 automatic mixed-precision framework for LLMs.
Results: Reduced memory by 42%, increased speed by 64%.
Insight: FP8 maintains accuracy, optimizes training efficiency.

Repo. Paper

This is something I want to really understand at one point. FP (Floating-Point) instructions can be from several sizes (8, 16, 32, 64). So the bigger, the better precision. I guess for some scientific tasks that is important. But looks like for AI, with FP8 could be good enough.

Limits Computer Performance

Reading across this blog, I came to this statement:

What limits computer performance today is predictability, and the two big ones are instruction/branch predictability, and data locality.

That is from this interview. I dont kown Jim Keller but it is a long and interesting conversation. I liked it when he says he was the laziest person at Tesla!

And actually I found a tab from his company