Weeknotes #92

One week after testing positive for COVID-19, C and I have now tested negative for at least two days. I occasionally have a coughing fit but have otherwise recovered.

In the middle of the night, we suddenly heard a rapid pitter-patter coming from outside our bedroom window. Venturing out, we discovered the gutter directly above was rapidly dripping rainwater onto the sill.

I’ve attempted to plug the leak with silicone but various YouTube videos indicate that the real fix is to replace the faulty gutter union. However, given that investigating the guttering required E to hold onto my belt as I balanced on a yoga chair on a third storey balcony, it might be time to call out a professional.

C continues to enjoy a daily dose of vehicle videos on YouTube, some of which I don’t want him to see. However, I can’t find out how to block a video or channel from search with a regular YouTube account. Instead, this appears to be a feature exclusive to YouTube Kids, a separate app for accessing YouTube with extra parental controls.

As I attempted to do all of this on a Chromecast with Google TV, I first had to log out of my Google Workspace account (which silently lacks the ability to add child accounts), sign in with a “regular” Gmail account, set up a child account through something called Google Family Link and finally discover that you can’t sign in to YouTube Kids on a Chromecast with Google TV so you can’t block any content.

I’ve been making steady progress through The Last of Us Part II. It really is very good.

I was caught out by the lack of GZip and Brotli compression when switching from Sprockets to Propshaft: Sprockets will generate compressed versions of your assets (e.g. application-decafbad.js.gz and application-decafbad.js.br) which will automatically be served by ActionDispatch::Static. However, Propshaft will not do this so your application will serve uncompressed versions by default if you’re not compressing them with a CDN or other web server.

Thankfully, Rack includes a Rack::Deflater middleware which will handle GZip compression and Rack::Brotli is available as a gem.

You can enable both by adding the following to your Rails application’s config/application.rb:

config.middleware.insert_before ActionDispatch::Static, Rack::Deflater
config.middleware.insert_before ActionDispatch::Static, Rack::Brotli::Deflater

Continuing the inconsequential quest to tidy my desk that started by ordering a monitor arm, I installed a Fully cable management tray and solution kit to partially tame the tangle of wires and power strips dangling from the underside.

I started playing a new build of Chris Patuzzo’s “Worship the Sun” and once again recorded myself with OBS. The latest build now has sound but I had to jump through some hoops to capture this in my recordings as macOS doesn’t support capturing system audio without third-party software:

1. Install the BlackHole virtual audio driver from Homebrew:

   $ brew install blackhole-2ch
   

2. Add a “Multi-Output Device” in the macOS Audio MIDI Setup application, combining both “BlackHole 2ch” and my external headphones, ensuring the headphones are the “master device”.

3. Right-clicking that new “Multi-Output Device” and using it for sound output.

4. Adding an “Audio Input Capture” to OBS and choosing the “BlackHole 2ch” device.

5. Adding a Compressor audio filter to the “Audio Input Capture” with the recommended sidechain compression/ducking settings so that the game audio dips in volume as I speak into my microphone.

None of this has improved my puzzle solving ability.