GEB

Finally managed to finish GEB. I read it for first time when I was in university in Spanish. This time I wanted to read the original version. It is a dense book with topics I didnt grasp at that time. Now, I am a bit more up to date but still find it hard although still very interesting. The last part is quite focus in AI and you notice how far has gone this field in the last 20 years since this book was written. We have AI beating the best players in chess and Go. And even go further to work out 3D shape of proteins. So this goes well with another part of the book related to DNA and replication.

Still one of the main topics of the book it is Godel’s Theorem. It is the typical thing, I think I understand conceptually and then in a different topic, I lost it. Somehow, I want to connect Godel’s to software engineering in respected of bugs. In my head, the more complex the software, the more vulnerable becomes. But not sure how to explain it.

As well, the author has made some very good drawings to connect with the text. Quite original.

To be honest, the musical terms are quite puzzling because I dont understand most of the topics but I am trying to listen to the Musical Offering of JS Bach and try to find “something”.

I hope in another 20y, I can make more sense of it.

Chilli-no-carne

I cooked a vegan dish last night for a friend. It is a mix of something similar I did some time ago but now with mushrooms and red wine.

Ingredients:

  • 300g mushrooms shredded via food processor
  • 1 small potato cut in small slides + olive oil
  • 1 red pepper
  • 1 can of passata (tomate sauce)
  • oregano + salt + pepper + splash red wine vinegar
  • 1 can of mix beans
  • red wine (100ml)
  • 2 small pieces of dark chocolate (85%)

Process:

1- In a saucepan, heat some oil, add the potatoes and red pepper. Fry them. Keep stirring so they dont stick in the bottom.

2- Add the tomate sauce, stir for a couple of minutes, adding the oregano, salt, pepper.

3- Add the mushrooms.

4- Add the can of beans, keep stirring. And add the red wine

5- At no low-medium heat, keep stirring form time to time. Sauce should thicken up and not stick in the bottom. Taste, add salt/pepper if needed.

6- 10-15 minutes later, taste. Check pepper and beans are soft. Add chocolate, it should melt quickly and darken the sauce.

7- Remove from the heat, and serve in bowls!

To be honest, it was tasty, not difficult and quick.

DNS-Secondary-Multiple_Primary

I had a couple of blogs from cloudflare regarding DNS infrastructure. One is regarding DNS secondary and the other about having multiple DNS primary servers in a different provider.

Regarding the Secondary DNS is interesting how they have moved to a kubernetes infrastructure with its issues.

For setting up, different primary servers in a different provider makes sense nowadays with so many options. But there is some research to be done. You dont want the new primary DNS servers relaying in the same cloud provider as your current setup. It is interesting the mention using OctoDNS for zone management and TeamCity for CI/CD.

Patatas-con-ajo

“Patatas con ajo” was a typical side dish I had with a beef steak when I was a kid. I remember that acid/strong flavour of the potatoes. I have tried a couple of time lately and I couldn’t find the flavour. So I check a couple of videos, and this one gave me the clue, vinager! And then I realised that very likely in each household, this recipe has a different name like “patatas a la vinagreta”.

In my case, the potatoes are fried with much less olive oil so they dont get that crispy. Once they are cooked, removed from the pan, and put chopped garlic, parsly and vinager (I used white wine one). Cooked for 30 sec and then add again the potatoes. Be sure everything gets mixed. Then remove from the heat.

I found that childhood taste! And the day after, they were even better!

Mindset

This is the last book I read this week. I bought it after reading other book this Summer about focus. And to be honest, I was quite surprised. The main idea is if you believe your capabilities/skills are born with you or you can develop them. Dr Carol Dweck shows how is life when you think you can develop your skills. And that is useful for anything. As well, you can have a growing mindset for some things and a static mindset for others. My mindset for the book was that it was going to be all about career and hard work. But I was surprised that there were more subjects related to a growing mindset, like education (children), family and relationships. I was to narrow-minded initially to the idea of growing mindset but it makes sense to apply it for everything in life. Learn when you have static mindset and make the effort to grow. Drop by drop, the bucket gets filled, said my Golang instructor. I really liked the examples about teachers who went beyond anything to show their pupils they could learn, and they did. And reminded me to the Dangerous Minds movie. I have told myself millions times that some people are born smart and I am not. But I need to realize that I have been growing since I decided to study and advance in my life. So, keep applying it, keep growing. For study, for work, for sport and relationships…

Tao-Te-Ching

I finished this book this week. My favourite part was the introduction as it gives a brief view of China’s history and the thought schools developed around 100-500 BCE. One of the main figures of that time is Confucius and his school of Confucianism. Other school developed in that time was Taosim. It looks back to an ideal time even before the origins of the first Chinese kingdoms, all based in a basic way of life: survive with the minimum and avoid problems. There are a lot mysticism and no much logic in the statements, but it seems that’s the goal. Follow life, it is not lead by logic (as we would like).

Some of my favourites:

Knowing others is intelligent.

Knowing yourself is enlightment.

—

Conquering others takes force

Conquering yourself is true strenght

—

Knowing what is enough is wealth

Forging ahead shows inner resolve.

—

At the end, the book is small, but it can be tricky to understand. The philosophy is quite different from the Western one I am use to but I liked it. There are always small gems to take with you.

They_Live

Reading in a chat roon, somebody posted this. I thought this is so current, but realized it is from 1988 and from John Carpenter. In my mind he only filmed horror movies but this one looks like it has something else. Will watch it next week.

3phase-PDU

This is a very interesting blog entry from Cloudflare about PDU deployments in DCs and the theory behind. Nowadays nearly everything is cloud oriented. But we forget they still need to be deployed physically. In a old job, going dense in physical setups, requires more power and 3-phase PDUs where a must. The blog is quite good explaining the reasons to move to 3-phase and the challenges to balance the power. When you buy “colo”, you buy space and power, and that is not cheap.

Kubernetes-Docker-ASICs

This week I read that kubernetes is going to stop support for Docker soon. I was quite surprised. I am not an expert so it seems they have legit reasons. But I haven’t read anything from the other side. I think it is going to be painful so I need to try that in my lab and see how to do that migration. It has to be nice to learn that.

In the other end, I read a blog entry about ASICs from Cloudflare. I think without getting too technical it is a good one. And I learn about the different type of ASICs from Juniper. In the last years, I have only used devices powered by Broadcom ASICs. One day, I would like to try that P4/Barefoot Tofino devices. And related to this, I remember this NANOG presentation about ASICs that is really good (and fun!).

Shortbread

This is a very tasty biscuit and very simple to make. Just three ingredients plus a pinch of salt: flour, sugar and butter. I tried a couple of weeks ago for the base of a cake and really liked the buttery flavour. This biscuits are supercheap so not sure how much real butter they have. Last week I tried this recipe and I failed miserably. So I decided to try again but using a video so I can be sure the dough has the expected texture. So I tried this video. And it was quite good!

Ingredients:

250g unsalted butter – room temperature

125g custer suggar

375g plain flour

pinch of salt

Process:

Mix everything in a bowl using your hands until getting a solid ball. Then you can spread with a rolling pin. I like thick, so a bit less than a finger. Then cut them in the shape you prefer. Use a fork to make some holes. Dust a big of sugar on top. Put in the fridge while preheat the oven at 175C. Once it is hot, put inside until slightly golden. Let them cool down in a rack. It is ok if they look soft.

This time they looked nice! Maybe I should have remove them a bit earlier from the oven.

To be honest, the taste wasn’t as buttery as the ones from the shop (the ingredients list wasnt 3…) but I am quite happy with them. Only 3 (basic) ingredients. Pretty quick to bake. And still had a dough ball in the fridge because my try was small. So you can have biscuits quickly next weekend.