weekends are for leisure

This post is about how and why I pieced together my own motion-detection and encoding system. I wanted to produce smooth HD videos whenever motion was detected. Find the code here.

Note: I plan to add videos and stills to make this more than a wall of text, but wanted to get it out before the holidays.

Raspberry Pi computers are powerful despite being small. Did you know the raspivid program can capture 1080p at 30fps without breaking a sweat? Given that, I figured it should be possible to layer on motion detection without impacting the HD video quality too greatly. But like many things, it’s harder than you might think.

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Queued up some Koufax on my morning walk. It had been a while. Sometimes I forget how effective horns can be. Move Out, Move On.

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Amanda Nguyen is truly inspiring. That’s not something I say lightly.

• She formulated an effective strategy for getting important bills passed unanimously.
• She passed legislation by “taking our egos and shoving [them] somewhere”. Oh and compromise and respect. Yes!
• She fought to fix the broken criminal justice system as it pertains to sexual assault, and rolled that experience into Rise Justice Labs.
• Oh, and she’s training to become an astronaut.
• The ZeroUSA campaign wants to ensure that politicians will be safe in voting for gun violence prevention legislation. Founded by someone who doesn’t want to lose his second sister to gun violence. Damn, that’s heart-breaking.
• “This is a time of frustration, of political tribalism, and of waning faith in our democracy. And I don’t think there’s ever been a more vital moment in our history for people to understand that they hold the power.”
• “I needed to work with people from all walks of life and people I didn’t agree with in order to pass laws.”
• “In order for a healthy democracy to function, it’s citizens need to be able to hash things out. And we, I think, in this moment of extreme toxic political tribalism, have lost that.”

Listen to Amanda in the Chaos is a Ladder episode of Pod Save Amerca. Fast forward to 57:10 in the player below. Well worth 17 minutes of your time.

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Fatherhood has exposed me to some new music. The themes are similar, so who sang it better?

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Came across this poem while reading Nonviolent Communication for a book club at work. Great book, by the way.

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Given that I have a lot less time these days, and that my brain is being taxed by a recent job change, I’ve been on the lookout for shorter, less attention-demanding podcasts. Enter AFK from Changelog. Episodes are less than 30 minutes, and showcase “the human side of creative work”.

Especially check out AFK with Suz Hinton. They touch on burnout, and the importance of asking for help. It’s not a sign of failure.

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I started a new job recently and my on-boarding mentor told me I was bringing lots of value to pull request reviews despite being the new guy. This caused me to pause and reflect on how I approach code reviews, what I might be doing differently from others, why I do it and where my habits came from.

Perhaps the best way to describe my approach is that I think of code reviews as an asynchronous pair coding session:

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Love this song and sentiment. Getting close to this being reality, but not quite there yet.

Also, I can’t wait until more Americans begin to value and demand good character in their leaders again. That’d be nice.

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A recent episode of the Changelog podcast featured an interview with Max Coutté. With the help of some friends and a mentor, he has built his own VR headset. Yes, please! But I should probably wrap up some of my current projects first.

Check out the Relativ project on GitHub.

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I use the Alfa AWUS052NH USB WiFi adapter for the 5Ghz network of my Raspberry Pi wifi router. Thought I’d share my config file so others can quickly get up and running with this adapter.

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