Dennis

I am currently a software developer at A Thinking Ape Entertainment Ltd. I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science with the Software Engineering Option. I primarily speak Python and C# these days, but in the past I've also done Objective-C, Java and PHP. Outside of work, I'm a volunteer on the youth ministry team at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, and also on the Canadian Ski Patrol team at Mount Seymour. I'm also an avid transit enthusiast/photographer.

RAM Upgrade on a Synology ds920+

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There are a lot of threads on unofficial RAM upgrades that work or don’t work on the Synology ds920+.

Just for context, the Synology ds920+ comes built in with 4GB RAM soldered in and has one expansion slot. The official maximum is 8GB, and Synology sells an official 4GB RAM stick (model: D4NESO-2666-4G) for this. However, there are many anecdotal reports that adding 8GB and 16GB RAM also work.

By running a handful of applications and Docker containers, I was maxing out the built in 4GB of RAM and spilling into swap space which slowed down the entire NAS to almost a standstill.

However, the NAS seems to be pretty finicky in what RAM it accepts or not. My first attempt was with a Kingston Fury Impact 8GB, but I could not get it stable. The system would lock up after a few minutes, if it booted up at all. I suspected that it was incompatible, although it is possible it was just the stick was bad.

Not wanting to spend more time, I went for Crucial CT16G4SFD8266 16GB upgrade. Crucial. This was recommended on other sites as well. Lo and behold, it worked the first time I put it in, and also the Synology DSM did not have any notifications that the RAM was unsupported.

So if you’re looking for an upgrade for your ds920+, go for the recommended Crucial ones, even if it’s slightly more expensive. It will save you time and headache.

Some of the links above may be Amazon Associate links and I may earn from qualifying purchases.

Side Project: YouTube Live Stream Scheduler – Part 2

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This is the second part of the series where I describe automating the scheduling of each Sunday’s live streams on my church’s YouTube channel.

Part 2 – Creating YouTube live streams programmatically

Authentication with the YouTube Data API from Python

This is the second project for which I’ve had to go through and figure this out, so I wanted to write this down. There are a couple oddities with the YouTube Data API:

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Side Project: YouTube Live Stream Scheduler – Part 1

Posted on by Dennis

One great thing about computers is that they can be programmed to do things that are repetitive and boring. I try to look around in my life to see what things I can get a computer to do for me, so that I don’t have to do it myself.

Today’s case is scheduling weekly YouTube live streams for my church. Every week someone’s got to schedule the live streams for the upcoming weekend. They look like this:

So you might be thinking, this seems pretty trivial, like it’s just a few clicks to schedule this in YouTube. It can’t take more than 10 minutes. And that’s true, but it’s still straightforward and repetitive. Having to figure out which Sunday is coming up, copying and pasting and ensuring the correct dates and times are replaced in the live stream text, and making sure the scheduled dates and times are correct can become tedious work. And it’s the same procedure week after week: the type of processing that computers love to do.

Sure there are other ways to optimize this process, like batching it to create maybe two or more weeks at a time. However, from a viewer’s perspective it can also be confusing when there are a bunch of upcoming live streams that need to be scrolled through. For the purposes of this project, the optimal frequency is to have one set of upcoming live streams visible at any time, and that means having the computer schedule the next set of live streams once every week.

So let’s get the computer to do this. I’m going to split up this blog post into two parts:

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The Mountain Ropes Adventure on Grouse Mountain

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Yesterday on my day off work, taking advantage of the sunny weather I made a day-of booking for the Mountain Ropes Adventure up on Grouse Mountain. My annual pass included one tour for free, so I wanted to take advantage of it before they close down the summer season.

I was impressed with the entire ropes course. I was expecting that, thinking it was catering to kids and tourists, the course would be super easy, but it turned out to be enough of a challenge (at least for someone like me who’s not athletic or super fit), especially the advanced course.

Traversing some netting on the Intermediate course, high above the ground.

Each course had a variety of elements, and each had at least one or two ziplines. The beginner course definitely had two because the second one on the way back would take your picture. The elements definitely challenged the physical side, and less on the mental side (some courses I’ve done in the past required some thinking how to get through the element, sort of like a puzzle, but the elements here were relatively straightforward).

Up the first ladder on the Advanced course

I took about 2 hours to complete the all three courses, and it ended up being a good workout for me by the end of it. I don’t remember exactly but I think the time breakdown was maybe 15 minutes on the green/beginner course, 30 minutes on the blue/intermediate course, and 45 minutes on the black/advanced course. The intermediate and advanced courses have midway exits in case guests need to leave early or find the course they’re on too difficult.

The courses use the Kanopeo Speedrunner safety equipment, which keeps you connected to the lifeline at all times. In other courses I’ve done at other camps, you carry two carabiners and manually switch between the line sections and in that case you can also “accidentally” remove yourself from the lines. However, with the Kanopeo Speedrunner, once you enter the course, you are locked in at all times, so the risk of “forgetting” to latch onto the line is zero.

I would recommend the course; I think for most people there would be enough challenge to have fun. The cost, however, is a bit steep considering in addition to the $39 fee for the Mountain Ropes Adventure, a mountain admission ticket for the lift up currently costs $61 ($51 for BC residents). I’d recommend bringing gloves if you are planning on going through the entire course.

Setting up IPv6 with Telus PureFibre on a Ubiquiti UniFi Dream Machine

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I recently got a Ubiquiti UniFi Dream Machine (UDM) to support gigabit-speed internet at my new apartment. The UniFi line is a significant step up from consumer home routers, providing better customizability and management options for networks.

The following settings are required to get IPv6 working locally using Telus PureFibre internet:

In the Network application, go to Settings -> Internet -> WAN. Expand the Advanced section, then expand the IPv6 Connection subsection. Set the following settings:

  • IPv6 Connection: DHCPv6
  • Prefix Delegation Size: 56

Apply the changes at the bottom.

Then go to the Networks section and open your LAN network. Expand the Advanced section and scroll down to the IPv6 options, and set the following values:

  • IPv6 Interface Type: Prefix Delegation
  • IPv6 RA: Enabled
  • The rest can be the default values.

Apply the changes.

The next time you reconnect to the network, you should see your computer be given an IPv6 address. You can use sites like ipv6-test.com to test your IPv6 connectivity.