Ever since two of our kids started school at different schools with different schedules, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to still effectively work.

Here’s what I’m trying to follow:

My goal is to have an 8-hour workday. I divide this to four 2-hour blocks.

Daily Planning

In daily planning, I try to be specific with what I want to accomplish on each block. Once that’s clear, I try to do tasks that takes less than 5-minute to do if I have the energy (most of the time I don’t and procrastinate 😛).

Operations Work

The initial 2-hour block mostly involves handling operational tasks for Human Made. During this period, I address change requests, support tickets, and emails. This works well because I’m usually the only person available around this hour. I can respond faster to our APAC customers.

It’s also good for me as it puts my head in to work mode.

Sprint Work / Meetings

In the following 2-hour blocks, the tasks are mixed bag. Sometimes more support work if there’s an active incident happening, sometimes I’m able to focus on sprint work.

Working in the evening enables me to participate in meetings with my team. This timing works well as those in the EMEA region are in their mid-day, and those in the Americas are just starting their day.

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This schedule is not something I can consistently follow. Some days, completing even a single task is a struggle, while on other days, I effortlessly breeze through my to-do list. It’s a give-and-take scenario. When I’m struggling, I spend more time to work to still deliver, and during good periods, I spend more time at home. It’s a recurring cycle.

I think plans isn’t meant to be followed to the dot but rather to provide guidance and structure. Having things pre-decided makes it easy to get back on track when I feel lost.

I’ve been wanting to write and publish for a while, but I’ve been overly critical about what’s worth sharing or not.

I often consider things that, in hindsight, prove to be unnecessary, such as:

It has to provide value

I learned that sharing my personal experiences in itself have value. It brings up visibility on my interest that might resonate with other people too.

It has to be worth other’s people time

We’re clearly bad judges of our own creations. We should just put them out there and let the world decide. – Derek Sivers

I could not possibly know what’s worth other people’s time. It’s an imaginary audience in my head that put unnecessary pressure on me. Publish and let people decide.

It has to be structured, easy to read

At this point, it doesn’t matter how my posts are structured. The goal is be comfortable on publishing and sharing stuff. The goal is to keep on sharing. It could be a single sentence or a well-thought of piece. It doesn’t matter.

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In general, writing does not have to be for other people. However, the thought that someone else might read it forces me to structure my writing enough that it makes sense. If I were writing solely for myself, I would write things that would not make sense even to me a few weeks, months, years from now.

Writing for other people is just an excuse to force myself to extract clarity out of what’s inside my head.

One of the hobbies I picked up this year was to be an Internet Service Provider (ISP) wannabe using Fiber to the Home (FTTH).

I was just so fascinated with FTTH technology and how accessible acquiring the equipment needed to implement it. It’s expensive, but not out-of-reach expensive. Imagine the jump of technology from CAT6 (4 pairs of copper wires) limited to 100 meters, to a single strand of fiber than can support over 100 km length at faster speed! It’s super fascinating for me. 

I kept researching how it works. Knowing myself, I will only learn if I put skin in the game.

In the process, I learned a ton of new acronyms:

OLT: Optical Line Terminal

This is the most expensive part of this hobby. OLT is like the network switch for fiber. It allows transmission to multiple ONU (more on this later).

I chose the cheapest OLT I could find, specifically looking for a local supplier so I can quickly get a replacement if ever it malfunction.

I got a HiOSO HA7302CST. It’s an EPON OLT that has 2 PON ports that can connect up to 128 ONUs.

PON: Passive Optical Network

PON is what the technology is called. It’s passive, meaning it does not require electrical components to split or combine the signal. It literally uses light to transmit data.

There are 2 common types of implementation. EPON and GPON. EPON has symmetrical speed, GPON have faster downstream speed. GPON is what PLDT, Globe use as it has more capacity per fiber line. EPON is generally cheaper.

ODN: Optical Distribution Network

ODN is how the fiber are physically laid out.

We have a couple of properties in the same village. What I did is I installed a 1:8 NAP on each property to provide internet service to the house itself and it’s nearby neighbors.

NAP: Network Access Point

NAP are the boxes where the signal from PON is split. It can be split on different ratios with different signal loss depending on how large the split is.

Splitter Type	Insertion Loss (dB)
1:2	4.0
1:4	7.4
1:8	10.5
1:16	13.5

I opted to use 1:8, since I’m not seeing myself acquiring a lot of subscribers.

ONU: Optical Network Unit

ONU are the modem that converts the signal from fiber and make it available through Ethernet and WiFi.

I learned that Huawei EchoLife HG8145V5 is very popular modem in Facebook Marketplace because it’s what the major telecom uses. Unused modems from disconnected/terminated subscribers are being sold in the second-hand market.

It’s possible to reuse it outside the telecom’s network because there’s an exploit for Huawei modems that allows root access to the device and convert it from GPON to EPON ONU. This was fascinating too!

SC-UPC / SC-APC: Subscriber Connector

There are two types of subscriber connectors. SC-UPC (Blue) and SC-APC (Green). The difference is how their end is polished (angled vs not angled). It can be interchangeably used, but it will incur a notable signal loss.

I learned how to terminate it myself. So much easier than terminating a CAT6 cable.

Loss Budgeting

From the OLT, you start with the PON module signal which in my case is 7-9 dBm depending on the module. The loss must not to be more than -27 dBm when it reaches the ONU.

For every split and every termination, there will be signal loss incurred.

A computation is required to get an estimate of the final signal strength. I learned that it’s called loss budgeting — making sure that the signal does not go below the threshold from OLT to ONU.

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I’m now an ISP for a couple of houses in village. It’s mostly family and friends. No plans on expanding, just wanted to scratch an itch and learn about the thing. Fun stuff!

My Mom asked for a CCTV at their place. There were disputes were a CCTV would have been beneficial to quickly sort out the issue.

I initially setup the “easy” kind of CCTV. An IoT WiFi-based camera, but it turned out not to be reliable. It saves its data on a MicroSD, and it easily burn out after a couple of months, wireless connection gets disconnected intermittently, and the camera itself is unpredictable and hangs from time to time.

I switched to PoE-based solution which is far better that what I initially installed.

Network Video Recorder

With PoE Camera, it does not have it’s own storage. The data has to be stored somewhere, which is the NVR (Network Video Recorder)

I have an existing server for Crystaldrin Network which serves various purposes including a NAS (Network Attached Storage). I was looking for something I could virtualize and use the same storage already available.

I explored a couple of software solutions and I decided on Synology’s Surveillance Station. The good things is, it’s Linux-based, and there’s a community that allows it to run in a virtualized environment: https://xpenology.com/forum/

I chose to emulate DVA3119 since I had a unused Nvidia GTX 1060 3gb lying around which would allow me to use deep learning features such as facial recognition and object detection.

I have it running on my Proxmox server with the GPU passed-through to guest virtual machine.

The GPU gets successfully detected by the virtual machine after booting it up.

Object Detection

This is where things got exciting for me. I think the usefulness of a CCTV comes with the ease on how easy it is to find what you’re looking for.

Surveillance Station’s interface itself is very intuitive. It also have a mobile app so it can be accessed remotely.

What’s more is they added features that can detect objects (e.g. plate number, people, vehicles). With this info, you can filter by time and date and/or people and/or plate numbers.

Backup Power

To make it more enterprise-y, it has to be somehow resilient to power interruption. Since the camera are powered over ethernet, I only have to have a backup power for the PoE switch.

I used SNADI 1kw with a 12V 100Ah LifePO4 battery. Based on my computation, it should run around 6 hours without power from Meralco.

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This was a fun project. I get a lot of satisfaction finding uses for old hardware. This project is definitely one of those.

For more than a decade now, I’ve been using WordPress. Using is a keyword here. I’ve been using it without contributing back. 

WordPress has reached 20 years this year, primarily due to the thousands of volunteers who contribute to its continuous development and maintenance, keeping it alive.

Looking back, it was working on WordPress-based projects that opened a lot of opportunities for me. The projects and jobs I got from it put me in a position where I could provide a comfortable life for my family.

I could say that if it weren’t for WordPress, I would not be where I am at now.

Applied as a speaker for WordCamp Cebu 2023

I had the intention to give back for a long time but I did not know where to start. When I saw that WordCamp Cebu was looking out for speakers, I applied. 

My topic was not even about promoting myself, or any of my work or expertise. It was about how I personally use WordPress and why I think it’s the right choice for a CMS as it guarantees that you own and control what you produce.

As a speaker, I had the chance to meet Drew, the lead organizer of WordCamp Manila, and Dreb, the lead organizer of WordCamp Davao, at the welcome dinner. It was super fun to hang out with them, an experience that becomes increasingly rare as I grow older. It felt like being around with my kind of people.

Attended WordCamp Asia 2023

The following month, WordCamp Asia took place. I connected with more people, and it was surprisingly easy to get along with them. It felt like WordCamps attract a certain kind of people who are open and inclusive by default. 

The after parties were so enjoyable that the people I was with expressed a desire to bring that same fun back to our local community.

We started casually talking on organizing WordCamp Manila. No concrete plans yet, but it planted a seed with everybody about making it happen.

Helped organize WordCamp Manila 2023

After coming back home, I started getting more involved with the local community. I did another talk in a meetup, I volunteered, and I was always present in-person and in our weekly calls.

Last November 11, we finally made WordCamp Manila 2023 happen.

It’s just amazing how one thing always lead to another.

Getting involved made me realize that community work is a key factor in sustaining WordPress’ longevity. With organizing a WordCamp event, even if we inspire just a single person to contribute back, it will help WordPress. And I’m hoping that we did.

What’s next?

I work with very talented people who’s an active contributor to WordPress. I’d like to explore more ways to contribute back, especially to Core and Hosting, which is directly tied to my work at Human Made.

No concrete plans yet, but let’s see what happens.

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I did all this with the pure intention to contribute back, not expecting anything in return. I felt like it’s time for me to give back. However, I still ended up gaining more than I gave – new friends.

WordPress just keeps on giving.