Category: Uncategorized

To slow down public deployment of large language models (e.g. ChatGPT) – to not cause the likely even more disruption than social networks did to our societies…

If you stepped into the same issue (cannot transfer ownership as of Workspaces account), no worries. The migration can still happen, and even Google Sheets documents with embedded forms can be migrated.

What you need is to share the file, and then make a copy. In case of Google Sheets document with embedded form, it would create a copy of the embedded form as well.

It is also possible to share a folder, but things get tricky with that. Although you can sometimes move files out of the folder to your own drive, the original owner still remains the owner of the document. So a copy has to be created to become owner.

One of the nice home improvements I always wanted to have was a smart doorbell. While looking at the options, I realized that choices I could accept were quite limited.

• ideally poe powered solution – not feasible as of having to lay a cable to the front of the door while not doing substantial repairs in the area (plan for future)
• something with batteries and wifi – not ideal of having to change the batteries from time to time and adding more bulk
• solution using existing power line of the chime and cloud storage – don’t like cloud storage / associated subscriptions too much
• using existing power line of the chime and UniFi Protect stack – the downside is UniFi hardware needed, the upside is their hardware is pretty awesome, would fill my rackmount and no subscription fees

There are multiple options for how to get into UniFi Protect, I decided to go with UniFi Dream Machine Pro to get a router with many security features. Basically means putting the ISP router in bridge mode and letting the UniFi router do the network routing + surveillance management (UniFi Protect part). A clear downside is poor support for 10Gbps networking, there are very few 10Gbps ports on the router / switches. Also the software is not ideal to say the least. But feature wise, it is pretty awesome.

Now for the installation of G4 Doorbell with a chime in Europe.

First thing to mention is that the product was not available in the UniFi store of Europe (sold out), had to order from the US to get it anytime soon.

Second thing would be that the chime (the box that actually makes the sound) has to be compatible with the power requirements of the G4 Doorbell – also preferably non-digital unless listed as compatible, and mine is not digital nor listed as compatible 🙂 . The specified power requirements are 16V to 24V of AC power, 20VA – although it also does state to consume most 12VA.

Fortunately, my existing chime probably from the 1970s (Friedlan 107 aka Honeywell D107) fits the spec by supporting 8V-16V AC power and wires are thick enough though not in the best shape – refreshed their isolation with some heat-shrinking tubes. Funny enough I discovered the chime was installed in some unsupported mode with batteries + transformer, probably batteries just closing the loop at this stage (more than 12 years of our use). After removing the batteries and wiring for transformer only, the chime still working, concluded it should work out.

Reading stuff found about G4 Doorbell in Europe, found many claims and some video evidence by Linus Media Group that the transformer supplied by G4 Doorbell in Europe package – 20VA, would not be enough for the doorbell + chime, 16V and 30VA are advised. This should be taken with a grain of salt seeing that the spec says 20VA and 12VA max usage, probably with a reserve of 8VA for the chime. However since I ordered from the US and my existing transformer was only supplying 12V, a new transformer was necessary anyway for me.

The following 2 articles explain possible setups for the G4 Doorbell in Europe:

https://lazyadmin.nl/home-network/unifi-protect-g4-doorbell-review/

• was not applicable in my case it implies being able to connect wires between transformer and chime, which I could not do

https://blog.idave.it/2020-12-28-a-european-solution-for-the-unifi-g4-doorbell/

• soldering needed, did not want to go there

So what I did is find a transformer (really not easy in Europe) that fulfills the claimed need for 30VA to be sure it would work, from Estonia of all places. So the setup is – transformer in basement, 220V connected, 16.5V 30VA out to 2 wires.

One of the wires goes directly to the doorbell.

The other one goes to the chime, where it is connected to a wire leaving the chime and then connected to the doorbell.

And the setup is working nicely, recommended 🙂

In 2014 I apparently wrote on what would be a nice sound track for my funeral ceremony. Well, with my German-like liking and tolerance for surprises, the best option is still the one I really noticed in Watchmen, Sound of Silence by the apparently otherwise incompatible Simon & Garfunkel

Though to add one more I heard in Legion and Westworld tv series 🙂

Or the coolest revelation in terms of lyrics (bit dramatic though for my taste)

I saw Linus showing his first gaming rig
and heck he is young (or more likely I am old) 🙂
since the only source of information I could get the specs from, was internet museums 😀

special thanks to my dad who brought this puppy home, without that I would most likely not get into computers and IT at all
the system looked approximately like this, except there was no 3.5″ floppy drive and the monitor was as shown to the right

D1326A HEWLETT-PACKARD-VECTRA

• released 1987, retired 1990
• 12 MHz Intel 80286 CPU
• came standard with 640KB RAM (who would ever need more, right?)
• 5.25 inch floppy, 20 MB hard disc, VGA card
• no mouse

HP D1181A Monochrome Video Graphics Display (14″) (points below from original advertising)

• plug-compatible with the industry-standard VGA
• designed for use with the HP Video Graphics Adapter (D1180A)
• choice of screen colors, including amber, green and soft-white
• resolutions varying from 320 x 200 to 640 x 480 and can display up to 64 shades of gray
• ideal for text, graphics and image applications

and hold on for the release price, it was apparently 3595 USD… beat that.
mighty MS DOS operating system, blue screens like Norton or Volkov commander, MS Basic
those were times…

• one of the first things I did after getting it was to format the hard disk drive by accident
•     (attempt to clean the disk for more space)
• and on reboot infamous “no system disk or disk error” 🙂
• weeks spent not knowing how to revive it, thanks goes to Gatis working in Fortek for giving me a boot floppy
•     also for introducing me to Fidonet, Sound Blaster and archive of games out of my imagination
• (he had a system to read/write from VHS tapes, which could store like 2GB of information)
• (which was freaking incredible for those times)
• months spent booting from a floppy not knowing how to make the HDD bootable and what autoexec.bat is for
•     (thanks to this I learned a lot about DOS commands)
• after, killed the 20MB drive once by dropping it from not very high.
• again, months booting from a floppy
• and revived it by dropping it again also accidentally
• bringing home windows 3.1 (including the swap file :D) on some 40 5″ floppies (thank you Edgar)
• since there was no installation available
• unforgettable game titles like
•     * prince of persia
•     * diggers
•     * paratrooper
• * the incredible machine
• fighting to free ram by memory managers to run the games 🙂