SonicWall hates api.openai.com

Sporadic fetching of https://api.openai.com 😦

We had an issue on our lab machines, in that they could only sporadically reach https://api.openai.com

Not consistently failing – that would be FAR too easy to diagnose. And to make issues even more complicated, this came at a time when we were scheduled to do a bulk analysis of a bunch of content. So we updated /etc/hosts to point api.openai.com to localhost, and did a openssh reverse proxy via an external machine, which had no problems reaching OpenAI at all.

Meanwhile, getting more and more frustrated, we tried taking tcpdump traces, checking for bad certificates, CloudFlare intermediaries, etc.
We finally did the unthinkable, and reached out to SonicWall for support. They seemed as perplexed as we were, and were basically unable to offer resolve the issue, offering some answers such as patching the firewall, suggesting that it may be flakiness with the site..

Finally our IT genius Robert figured out that it was being blocked by a Content Filtering rule (!?!)

Wonder how many other SonicWall customers are being bitten by this.

Part of the migration to Mastodon

So I have been participating in the influx of people to Mastodon – which is a fediverse of servers that make up an experience that is similar to Twitter. (also referred to as “the birdsite”)

If you’re on Mastodon, you can follow me at https://techhub.social/@vocatan

Mastodon

Reading up at https://opensource.com/article/22/11/verified-mastodon-wordpress as to how to use this blog to also be verified.

Imagine a picture…

So I saw this neat project over at https://github.com/brycedrennan/imaginAIry which is a python program that makes stable diffusion more accessible and easy to use for common folk.

I’ve been playing with DALL-E 2 (more on that in another post), but this ImaginAIry tool just blew my mind.

You invoke it as

imagine “prompt”

and it invokes the stable diffusion to create an image that’s never been seen before that matches your prompt.

Seems hard to believe? Here’s some prompts that I gave it, and what it came back with

imagine “a crowd of people at a conference”

{“prompt”: {“software”: “imaginairy”, “prompts”: [[1, “a crowd of people at an AWS conference in black and white drinking coffee”]], “prompt_strength”: 7.5, “init_image”: “None”, “init_image_strength”: 0.6, “seed”: 346942399, “steps”: 15, “height”: 512, “width”: 512, “upscale”: false, “fix_faces”: false, “sampler_type”: “k_dpmpp_2m”}}

the example from the github page was:

imagine “a scenic landscape”

{“prompt”: {“software”: “imaginairy”, “prompts”: [[1, “a scenic landscape”]], “prompt_strength”: 7.5, “init_image”: “None”, “init_image_strength”: 0.6, “seed”: 534058548, “steps”: 15, “height”: 512, “width”: 512, “upscale”: false, “fix_faces”: false, “sampler_type”: “k_dpmpp_2m”}}

{“prompt”: {“software”: “imaginairy”, “prompts”: [[1, “a laughing child”]], “prompt_strength”: 7.5, “init_image”: “None”, “init_image_strength”: 0.6, “seed”: 321235062, “steps”: 15, “height”: 512, “width”: 512, “upscale”: false, “fix_faces”: false, “sampler_type”: “k_dpmpp_2m”}}

{“prompt”: {“software”: “imaginairy”, “prompts”: [[1, “a laughing child”]], “prompt_strength”: 7.5, “init_image”: “None”, “init_image_strength”: 0.6, “seed”: 93074687, “steps”: 15, “height”: 512, “width”: 512, “upscale”: false, “fix_faces”: false, “sampler_type”: “k_dpmpp_2m”}}

Just amazing… and it runs locally on my 2019 16″ MBP…

Magic, Magic, Everywhere

Lacey and I have been playing Magic the Gathering for years – so it was only natural that eventually I would look for designs for deck boxes. 😉

The first one is for Commander Decks – which I think is 100 cards:

I printed a second one for Lacey’s friend – but something went wrong, and the hotend of the printer ended up smacking into the edge of the print at the top, so I wasn’t able to get the final 5 layers that would allow a lid.. Bummer! (After 8 hours of printing!)

I printed a second one, from a neat set of patterns on Thingiverse:

What it’s supposed to look like

My experience printing this was that the lid was a LITTLE bit too big, and didn’t fit snug enough for my taste.

3D Printing brings peace…

I saw this cute design on Thingiverse for an Automatic Zen Garden and thought – I can do that! The picture was very enticing:

What it’s supposed to look like

So I figured up my printer, opting to print the bottom in brown, and the rake in black:

But then came the more challenging part – hooking up an arduino to drive the 28BYJ-48 rotary motors that turn the rake around…

Not wanting to commit a full-size arduino Uno to the task, I started with an Arduino Mini-UNO, only to find out that it can’t drive enough power. (After much googling).

Then, after switching to use a regular sized Uno, I found out that the motors I had bought all appeared to not work — or I was doing something stupid. Back to Amazon the motors went, and I have ordered a new set of motors that come with LEDs that show which signals are being sent to activate the motor.

To Be Continued…

A Barrel full of laughs!

I found this neat project file over at Thingiverse for a barrel to be printed. The instructions said to print 19 barrel segments, which stressed the boundaries of my printer:

After that, trying to hold all the pieces together while adding the ‘bands’ to complete the barrel was …. challenging. My fingers aren’t as nimble as they used to be.

The final result turned out okay – it has my dog’s approval:

Happy Easter!

I found some really neat patterns for Easter Eggs at Thingiverse!

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5316996

Aren’t they cute?! I just had to try and print a few out… Several were sent with Christiane up to Montreal to share with her parents for Easter, but I have 3 still here with me:

Then I also saw a design for a Harry Potter pencil holder. I didn’t want to “commit” and print it full size, so I printed it at 50% size, and maybe that’s why there was some weird stretching around Dobby’s nose:

For the final thing I printed I wanted something bigger than what I’ve printed before, so I went for a skull – courtesy of https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:518109/files Unfortunately, the lower jaw fell off, so I’m waiting for some glue to dry before I post a picture here.

Latest Creations: Iris box, locking triangle box, USB block, and articulated Butterfly

Wow! It was a busy weekend! Found some amazing new STL patterns to print, on my favourite site https://www.thingiverse.com

So let’s take a peek at what the new additions are!

Iris box : from https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1817180

fully open

partially closed

closed!

What I love about this print is that it was a SINGLE PRINT. It was magical how it all came out.

Inspired by this Iris box, I wanted to find other cool-looking containers, and found this one, at Thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:37217

closed, it just looks like an innocent box.

There are small locking ‘pins’ that roll into place.. the box only opens if you hold it in a certain angle!

really cool stuff!

And the next contestant from this weekend’s prints:

USB block – holds USB thumb drives, MicroSD cards, or SD cards.

The final thing I printed was for my mom (aww) – it’s a cute articulated (moving) butterfly!

the first printout turned out to be ‘spaghetti’

the second time printing, I laid some glue down on the print bed first, and it turned out great

Latest creations: Tulip, Labyrinth Trick tube

Upon a request from my friend Naren at work, I looked for a design for a tulip, and found one over at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3361696 which turned out to be trickier than I thought to print!

Whenever you are printing something that has a narrow body, then widens up at the top of the print, you have to print “with support”. This adds extra material that is removed when the print is complete. Unfortunately, for me, I’m not quite as nimble with my fingers as I wish I were.

When the print started, it looked like this:

As it printed, a protective sheath was printed around the stem, which was tricky to remove. The final product looks like this:

---

Tricky Labyrinth box!

I saw this nifty STL file up on Thingiverse for a trick container. It’s a hexagonal tube with room to store stuff inside, but to open it you have to manipulate it and navigate through a ‘maze’ to unlock it.

The design is from https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:201097

I traced the path from locked to unlocked status, and it looks like there’s 24 decision points where you have to turn it one way or another to get out.

So — how hard is it to solve? Well, I cheated and printed a miniature of the innards so that I would have a map to follow:

Busy evenings!

Went a bit crazy this week and printed a lot of things!

• Christmas Minion (#FAIL – his legs fell off) Also, in my own defense, this was the first time I tried to print something at the low quality setting (as I was looking for a prototype, not a final product)

Christmas Minion

• Whistle

3 tone whistle

• SDCard case

It uses an old microSD-SDCard adapter as a lid! Genius!

MicroSD box

• Bolt (just … because)

Nut and Bolt

• SDCard holder. This one is a neat idea. Instead of carrying around ‘naked’ microSD cards, put them into a little case to protect the contact points – it’s also more visible than the black microSD card itself. Comes complete with a potentially copyright-infringing logo. (whoops) Note when zoomed in like this you can see the actual lines that the filament took while being printed. If I were to print at a higher heat or use a different filament such as ABS, it might melt those together and look way nicer.

Micro-MicroSD Card Case

• Logo for a non-profit I volunteer for (x2) : I volunteer at a local school to teach a series of sessions for Computer Science. The organization is called RESET – their website is https://www.resetonline.org and their proper logo is

The official RESET logo from their website

So I used my favorite online STL design site, https://www.tinkercad.com to create a 3D model of this logo, and printed out v1 and v2 of my attempt to recreate it.

• “rugged” Raspberry Pi case

Raspberry Pi Zero / Zero 2 W Snap-On Case Rugged Style

So what did I learn this week by printing all these things?

• modeling something quickly as a fast prototype is fun and easy.. (I already kind of knew this by doing the logo for our company in Tinkercad)
• it’s better to print a first version, get a feel for how it feels and scales, then iterate.
• Always, always, always lay down a layer of glue on the print bed before starting to print. (No spaghetti disasters this week, but I did have a larger box that I was printing for v2 of a larger WaveShare e-Ink containing box that started printing without glue, and I noticed the edges rolling up after the first 3 layers so I caught it before there was much waste.
• I’m still timid about BIG models. The biggest thing I have printed to date is still the “Thor Hammer” head from last week. It’s time for me to try for something bigger. I’m thinking a Christmas ornament – but I have plenty of time before I _really_ need that. 😉

I hope that you’re having fun reading about these adventures!