Total meal replacement with Soylent and other alternatives

Looking for a complete replacement of all my meals using Soylent or other similar products.

Most of these companies allow you to buy their products cheaper if you "subscribe", which means they periodically send you more of the same product. Since you can cancel whenever you want, including (presumably) right after buying for the first time, the prices in this post include that subscription discount.

A "meal" for the purposes of this post is one fifth of the reference intake (RI), this is, around 20% of the necessary calories, macros, vitamins, and minerals that you need each day.

Soylent

Doesn't ship to Europe.

Joylent, now Jimmy Joy

Their only product is called Plenny Shake v3.0. 

Price is €1.43 per meal, that is €214.8 per month.

Huel

Their cheapest product is called Huel Essential. 

Price is €1.29 per meal, that is €193.5 per month. If you buy over €100 worth of products, you get a 10% discount: that's €1.17 per meal, or €175.65 per month. Unbeatable. (Cheapest option in this post: you can stop reading here!)

They also have another product called Huel Powder, which seems their main offering. Price is €1.91 per meal which is €286.5 per month.

So what's the difference? Judge for yourself:

I suppose you could add protein powder to your meals, but then it would be more expensive and more calorific.

Other alternatives

These are more expensive.

• Bertrand (which sounds French but is actually German) sells "pouches" which contain half a kilogram and are good for one day worth of meals. The cheapest one costs €12.66, which means you would pay €379.8 per month.
• Jake Shake: each shake costs €2.60, but those shakes are not "meals" since they contain one third of the reference intake instead of one fifth. I find that to be way more reasonable than eating five times a day, but what do I know. You would pay €234 per month.
• KetoOne which is sold out and looks to me like it's never going to restock.
• ManaPowder MK8 is sold for €1.54 per meal which is €231 per month.
• Queal Steady sold for €1.62 per meal which is €243 per month.

DIY

Here we enter the twilight zone of DIY recipes. There is a website called Complete Foods, formerly "DIY Soylent", where users can post their own recipes.

This one would be an example: NerdShake.

What's the issue here? All the popular recipes are almost 10 years old (seems like everybody left the site when the Soylent fad passed), so most ingredients linked are unavailable. You can find other ingredients to substitute them with, but your replacements won't have the same exact nutritional profile and you will die of scurvy.

Detecting who's capturing graveyards in Alterac Valley

In the current Alterac Valley meta, capturing graveyards goes against the interests of the group. Therefore it is of some value to be able to tell who's doing it. In this post I describe the process I followed to create an addon that sends an alert when someone is capping graveyards.

Spell detection

When a flag is being captured in Alterac Valley (or Arathi Basin for that matter) spell#24390 is cast by the player. That spell is marked as hidden but by modifying Spell.dbc we can make the client show it and expose it to the Lua API.

Although the event COMBAT_LOG_EVENT_UNFILTERED shows the spell being cast, it doesn't show the target of the cast, since it's not a unit but a gameobject. This makes it impossible to tell if it's a graveyard or a base that's being captured, so this option is not optimal, since you would be sending alerts when someone started capturing a tower.

I thought of using GetMinimapZoneText to detect if I was in the proximity of a graveyard before sending the alert, but the names of the subzones are inconsistent, and even then most (all?) towers are in close proximity of graveyards.

Therefore I decided this approach wasn't going to work well enough.

Scoreboard scanning

Another option is to wait for the CHAT_MSG_MONSTER_YELL events that are sent once a graveyard has been captured. Those would have to be parsed so the addon would only work for those who play the game in English.

• The Stormpike Aid Station is under attack! If left unchecked, the Horde will capture it!
• The Stormpike Aid Station was taken by the Horde!

The first message is sent whenever a graveyard is about to be captured (i.e. the timer starts to run), while the second message is sent when the graveyard is finally captured and when a graveyard is defended.

We continuously save the data that is shown on the scoreboard by iterating over every player using GetBattlefieldScore and then saving the number of graveyards captured and defended that is returned by GetBattlefieldStatData. Then, every time we receive a CHAT_MSG_MONSTER_YELL event, we compare the current data to the stored data, so we can see whose graveyard capture stats have increased: that's the player who's captured or defended a graveyard.

This worked too well: the addon would alert you and everybody around you of someone capping a graveyard which is far away and no one cares about. Also, by the time a graveyard is capped, it already is too late.

Back to spell detection

Looking at the list of API functions, I stumbled upon GetPlayerMapPosition. Once we receive the COMBAT_LOG_EVENT_UNFILTERED event, we can retrieve the UnitId of the player, pass it to GetPlayerMapPosition, calculate the Pythagorean distance of the player to the list of graveyards that are retrieved by GetMapLandmarkInfo, and only trigger the alert if the player is close to a graveyard.

We only receive COMBAT_LOG_EVENT_UNFILTERED events of units we can see, but since the alerts would be sent in /say, we won't care if someone starts capping a graveyard on the other side of the map.

Since it is possible to continuously start and cancel the cast of the spell that captures the graveyard, some message throttling system would have to be implemented.

I found this to be an acceptable solution.

Recovering entire folders using ddrescue

I had to recover the contents of a hard disk using ddrescue because the hardware was faulty. The normal course of action involves using ddrescue on the entire disk or partition to make an image but that was not an option here because the hard disk was simply too big - the resulting image wouldn't fit in any of my other disks, not even after compression.

According to the documentation it was also possible to use ddrescue on individual files, but not on entire folders. But that was precisely what I had: a huge hierarchy of folders and files that I wanted to keep.

Let's consider that we have two folders, /source with the damaged filesystem, and /target where we will store whatever we can salvage.

Let's move to the source drive first:

cd /source

First we create the directory structure that will hold the files in the target disk:

find -type d -print -exec mkdir -p '/target/{}' \;

Then, we start moving the files:

find -type f -print -exec mv '{}' '/target/{}' \;

Files that can be read will be copied to the target disk and then deleted from the source disk. Files that are damaged will throw I/O errors and will stay in the source disk. Then we can use the "find" command with no parameters to see which those are. Recovering files with ddrescue can be particularly slow, so this is a good moment for you to remove the files you don't care too much about.

And then we start rescuing the damaged files:

find -type f -print -exec ddrescue --log-events=/target/ddrescue.log '{}' '/target/{}' \;

Good luck recovering your stuff.

Using WireGuard to forward ports from behind a CG-NAT

I am using WireGuard, which I have installed on my VPS, to be able to forward ("open") some ports that I need to run SoulSeek, even when my ISP has put me behind a CG-NAT. I imagine that these instructions (after some adjustments) can be used for other VPN solutions and other applications that need you to forward some ports to run properly such as BitTorrent clients and such.

This tutorial assumes that you already have WireGuard installed and running. If not, you can use any other tutorial or script to install WireGuard.

The easy way would be to install the WireGuard client on Windows and then load your configuration file, but that would mean that all your traffic gets routed through your VPN, which is something that I want to avoid.

WireGuard

First we need to install the WireGuard client and make some changes to the client configuration file so, by default, no traffic goes through the VPN. Every connection has what we call a "metric" which is something like the priority of that connection. We have to tell WireGuard to change the metric of the VPN interface to a high value so this interface is never used by default.

This post explains it well: Split Tunneling in WireGuard on Windows (archive)

iptables

We need to use iptables to forward all incoming connections to the WAN interface of our VPS to the VPN interface. We use the following command once for every port that we need to forward:

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -d <WAN IP> --dport 51211  -j DNAT --to <VPN client IP>

In this case, WAN IP is the public IP address of our VPS, while the VPN client IP is the IP address that our client gets when it logs into WireGuard. You can see it in the Interface -> Address option of your WireGuard .conf file.

Since iptables rules are reset on reboot we need to figure a way of making the rules persistent. I use iptables-persistent; configuring it is beyond the scope of this article.

SoulSeek (or any other application)

We have to tell the application that we want it to bind to the VPN client address instead of the default address. Most network-oriented applications allow you to specify what IP address you want to bind to, but some don't, and SoulSeek is one of those that don't. But there's a solution: ForceBindIP.

We need to find what the GUID of our VPN tunnel is. Using the Registry Editor, we have to go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces and find that interface. In the case of WireGuard you will recognise it because of the NameServer values. Copy the GUID and turn it into uppercase to bypass a bug in ForceBindIP. Then you can launch SoulSeek by creating a shortcut like this:

Target: C:\Software\ForceBindIP\ForceBindIP64.exe {DD63324A-14EB-D556-77E6-C4120A4D65A4} "C:\Program Files (x86)\SoulseekQt\SoulseekQt.exe"

Start in: "C:\Program Files (x86)\SoulseekQt"

You have to use either ForceBindIP.exe or ForceBindIP64.exe depending on whether the application is 32-bit or 64-bit.

Once the application launches and you have configured the ports that you forwarded before (and restarted the application if necessary), you can try one of those online services that check for open ports. Use your VPS IP address and the port(s) you forwarded and they should display as open.

Take into account that the fact that the port shows as open doesn't mean that the application has managed to bind to the IP address of our VPN client, since most applications accept connections on every interface, including the VPN interface. How to check which IP address the application is using will depend on the application. In the case of SoulSeek, we can try Nicotine+ from another computer, which allows us to see the IP address of other users. You can also check if you can browse your own shares and download stuff.

Bookmarks

 My list of bookmarks, rescued from my old blog.

• Reset NTFS ACLs (another source)
• rundll32 Shell32,Control_RunDLL input.dll,,{C07337D3-DB2C-4D0B-9A93-B722A6C106E2} — disable all keyboard layout switching shortcuts.
• powercfg.exe /SETACVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_VIDEO VIDEOCONLOCK 60
  powercfg.exe /SETACTIVE SCHEME_CURRENT — change the amount of time it takes for the screen to power off after you lock your computer.
• mountvol E: /s
• bcdboot D:\Windows -s E: — fix a broken BCD (D is the system disk, E is the ESP).
• rsync -arvzP --bwlimit=1000 example.com:~/folder/ . — synchronise two folders.
• In C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16:
• cscript OSPP.VBS /dstatus
  cscript OSPP.VBS /unpkey:XXXXX (remove the one that’s wrong)
  cscript OSPP.VBS /inpkey:XXXXX-XXXXX-... (install a new one)
  cscript OSPP.VBS /sethst:kms.example.com
  cscript OSPP.VBS /act — activate a copy of Office 2019. Only works with volume licences (VL).
• -noforcemaccel -noforcemparms -noforcemspd — launch parameters to be used with GoldSrc games so they don’t enable mouse acceleration/enhanced pointer position.
• Game overlays don’t work while RivaTuner Statistics Server is running

Warmane: scripts sent by Sentinel

During login and while you play, Sentinel sends some Lua code to your client using the addon message channel. It's not clear to me how this code is executed once it arrives to the client or why is it being sent using addon messages. Some of these scripts add UI features while others try to catch cheaters. 

I am publishing this as a technical curiosity more than anything else. Excuse the format, I know how much blogspot sucks for posting snippets.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

if(OriginalClearTarget==nil)then

    OriginalClearTarget=ClearTarget

    ClearTarget=function()

        if(issecure())then

            OriginalClearTarget()

        else

            RegisteredFrames={GetFramesRegisteredForEvent("MACRO_ACTION_FORBIDDEN")}

            RegisteredFramesCount=getn(RegisteredFrames)

            for i=1,RegisteredFramesCount do

                RegisteredFrames[i]:GetScript("OnEvent")(RegisteredFrames[i],"MACRO_ACTION_FORBIDDEN","ClearTarget()")

            end

        end

    end

end

Relays the event MACRO_ACTION_FORBIDDEN to all subscribed frames whenever the protected function ClearTarget() is used by tainted code.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

local LogoutFrame=CreateFrame("Frame")
LogoutFrame:RegisterEvent("PLAYER_LOGOUT")
LogoutFrame:SetScript("OnEvent",function()
    SendAddonMessage('(redacted)','(redacted)','WHISPER','(redacted)')
end)

Sends back a message whenever the player logs out or reloads the interface. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

if not (UnitPopupButtons["PVP_REPORT_AFK"]) then
    return
end
local soloqueueFrame=CreateFrame("Frame")
soloqueueFrame:RegisterEvent("UPDATE_BATTLEFIELD_STATUS")
soloqueueFrame:SetScript("OnEvent",function()
    local a,b,c,d,e=GetBattlefieldStatus(1)
    if (e==0xFF) then
        SOLOQUEUE_AVOID_TEAMMATE="Avoid as Teammate"
        UnitPopupButtons["PVP_REPORT_AFK"].text=SOLOQUEUE_AVOID_TEAMMATE
    else
        UnitPopupButtons["PVP_REPORT_AFK"].text=PVP_REPORT_AFK
    end
end)
soloqueueFrame:GetScript('OnEvent')()

This is the code that adds the "Avoid as Teammate" option in soloq games.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

local XPRate,XPRates,dropDown=7,{0.5,1,3,5,7},CreateFrame("Frame","XPRM",MainMenuExpBar,"UIDropDownMenuTemplate")
UIDropDownMenu_Initialize(dropDown,XPRMDD,"MENU")
MainMenuExpBar:SetScript("OnMouseDown",function(self,button)
    if button=="RightButton" then
        ToggleDropDownMenu(1,nil,dropDown,"cursor",3,-3)
    end
end)
UIDropDownMenu_Initialize(dropDown,function(self,level,menuList)
    local info=UIDropDownMenu_CreateInfo()
    local title=info
    title.text=EXPERIENCE_COLON
    title.isTitle=1
    UIDropDownMenu_AddButton(title,level)
    info=UIDropDownMenu_CreateInfo()
    info.func=self.SetValue
    for i=1,#XPRates do
        local currate=XPRates[i]
        info.text,info.arg1,info.checked="x"..currate,currate,currate == XPRate
        UIDropDownMenu_AddButton(info,level)
    end
end)
function dropDown:SetValue(xp)
    XPRate=xp
    SendAddonMessage('(redacted)',xp,'WHISPER','(redacted)')
    CloseDropDownMenus()
end

This is the dropdown that allows you to choose an experience multiplier by right-clicking the experience bar.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MERCENARYMODE_ENABLED=false

function ToggleMercenaryMode(a,t)

    MERCENARYMODE_ENABLED=t

    SendAddonMessage('(redacted)',t and 1 or 0,'WHISPER','(redacted)')

    CloseDropDownMenus()

end

local function b(a,c,a)

    if c==2 then

    local d=UIDropDownMenu_CreateInfo()

    d.text="On"

    d.checked=MERCENARYMODE_ENABLED

    d.func=ToggleMercenaryMode

    d.arg1=true

    UIDropDownMenu_AddButton(d,c)

    local d=UIDropDownMenu_CreateInfo()

    d.text="Off"

    d.checked=not MERCENARYMODE_ENABLED

    d.func=ToggleMercenaryMode

    d.arg1=false

    UIDropDownMenu_AddButton(d,c)

    return

end

MiniMapBattlefieldDropDown_Initialize()

    local e=0

    for f=1,MAX_BATTLEFIELD_QUEUES do

        s,a,a,a,a,t,r=GetBattlefieldStatus(f)

        if s=="queued" and t==0 and r~=1 then

            e=1

        end

    end

    

    if e==1 then

        local d=UIDropDownMenu_CreateInfo()

        d.isTitle=1

        d.notCheckable=1

        UIDropDownMenu_AddButton(d)

        local d=UIDropDownMenu_CreateInfo()

        d.isTitle=1

        d.notCheckable=1

        d.tooltipWhileDisabled=1

        d.tooltipOnButton=1

        d.tooltipTitle="Mercenary mode allows you to enter Battlegrounds as a member of the opposite faction for improved queue times."

        d.text="Queue Options"

        UIDropDownMenu_AddButton(d)

        local d=UIDropDownMenu_CreateInfo()

        d.text="Mercenary Mode"

        d.notCheckable=1

        d.hasArrow=1

        UIDropDownMenu_AddButton(d)

    end

end

local function g()

    UIDropDownMenu_Initialize(MiniMapBattlefieldDropDown,b,"MENU")

end

g()

local h=CreateFrame("Frame")

h:RegisterEvent("PLAYER_ENTERING_WORLD")

h:SetScript("OnEvent",OnEvent)

This is the code that allows you to toggle mercenary mode in the battleground button dropdown.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

if(issecurevariable("ClearTarget")) then
    SendAddonMessage('(redacted)','(redacted 1)','WHISPER','(redacted)')
else
    SendAddonMessage('(redacted)','(redacted 2)','WHISPER','(redacted)')
end

This one is sent periodically. It will send different addon messages depending on whether you interfered with the modifications done by the first script or not.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

if(something)then

    local function IsLowercase(input)

        -- returns 97 if all chars in input are lowercase else 65

        return input:lower()==input and ('a'):byte() or ('A'):byte()

        end

    local function Unscramble(str,inputKey)

        return (str:gsub('%a',function(input)

            local caseKey=IsLowercase(input)

            return string.char(((input:byte()-caseKey+inputKey)%(28+10-12))+caseKey)

        end))

    end

    local CVarName="(redacted)"

    local MyInputKey=7

    local GetCVar_fun="(redacted)"

    local strlen_fun="(redacted)"

    local SendAddonMessage_fun="(redacted)"

    local Channel=Unscramble("(redacted)",-(MyInputKey*3))

    CVarName=Unscramble(CVarName,(MyInputKey+3))

    SendAddonMessage('(redacted)',_G[Unscramble(strlen_fun,12)](_G[Unscramble(GetCVar_fun,(MyInputKey))](CVarName)),'WHISPER','(redacted)')

end

This checks if there is a cvar called "SCRIPT_HANDLER_LOAD" and if so it sends its length back to the server as an addon message.  

There's a very similar one that checks for the existence of a function called "unlock". If detected an addon message is sent also.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

if(FirstFrame)then
    FirstFrame:UnregisterAllEvents()
    FirstFrame:SetScript("OnUpdate",nil)
    FirstFrame.(redacted)=0
    FirstFrame.(redacted)=0
    FirstFrame=nil
end
if(OriginalClearTarget)then
    ClearTarget=OriginalClearTarget
    OriginalClearTarget=nil
end

Not sure about this one at all. Seems to undo some of the previous things, although I see no reference to FirstFrame in any of the other scripts (perhaps an older script that is no longer in use?).

On IRCCloud

I've known irccloud (or ircclown as some call it) for some time; we've had an on-again, off-again relationship for years. My biggest gripe with it is that, if you don't pay, it disconnects you after a few hours of inactivity (inactivity being described as not having an irccloud tab open: you don't have to talk if you don't want to). Also it doesn't let you connect to more than two servers, and you can't use server passwords, but who needs anything else than passwordless efnet, right?

Keeping the connection alive

I tried writing a script myself. The idea was that every x minutes the script would log in, idle for a few seconds, then disconnect. That should be enough. Well, I tried, and it didn't work. I kept getting disconnected. Obviously I had to work on it a little bit more, but then I found this: https://github.com/osm/icka/

It's neat: it works. You just put it in your crontab and forget about it.

*/30 * * * * ./icka/icka -email 'thisis@myemail.com' -password 'whyyoulittle'

I learnt more about the irccloud protocol than I would've wanted to - it works over websocket and it's not obfuscated or anything. It's quite straightforward. Looking at it made me wonder how easy or hard it would be to write an irc bot that connects through irccloud. Something to try someday.

Styling

Being a web application, we can apply any styles that we want. In my case, I've made a few changes.

As you know, you can use some browser extensions like Stylus to add CSS code to any website, but myself I like to do it using uBlock Origin. Why? Because I already have a uBlock Origin list for my own purposes, which I share with all my computers, so my CSS changes (and blocked elements) are synchronised automatically. Neat.

These are all filters you can add to the "My filters" tab in the uBlock Origin configuration page.

• Bring back the < and > symbols to nick names:
  irccloud.com##.messageRow .authorWrap > .g:style(display: inline !important; position: unset !important; left: 0 !important; top: 0 !important)
  
• Hide automatically generated avatars (the ones with a letter), leaving only the user-set ones:
  irccloud.com##.messageRow .avatar.letterAvatar
• Change the monospace font from Hack (the default) to anything else:
  irccloud.com##body.font-mono #timeContainer, body.font-mono .buffercontainer, body.font-mono .buffercontainer button.link, body.font-mono .fontChooser__sample, body.font-mono .inputcell textarea, body.font-mono .messageLayout__preview, body.font-mono div.shim:style(font-family: "Consolas" !important)
• Eliminate the white lines in between irc art without having to use compact mode, which packs all chat lines too tight. (This makes colour blocks a bit too tall - some may not like it and there probably are better options):
  irccloud.com##.messageRow .irccolor:style(padding-bottom: 8px)
  irccloud.com##.messageRow:style(line-height: 17px !important)

Scripting

Theoretically you should be able to automate some things using userscripts. I haven't tried, but I'm leaving the idea here in case someone wants to pick it up. This option is reasonable for itsy-bitsy automations. If you want to write a full-fledged bot, I think you'd be better off using the irccloud protocol, as I suggested above.

Password-protected servers

If you need to connect to a password-protected server, you have to pay. But you should be able to write a script that proxifies all incoming connections and sends the PASS command at the appropriate time. Once again, this is a theory as I haven't actually tried, but I don't see why it shouldn't work.

Other options

You also have the option of using The Lounge. It's something I've considered, but they have no mobile apps. I asked on their irc channel and they told me that I don't need an app because the site itself is a PWA. I couldn't help but scoff at the situation.

irccloud also allows you to upload small files and a link is posted automatically to the channel you're in. It's the kind of thing you didn't know you needed until you had it.

And hey, if irccloud doesn't win you over, you can always go back to irssi on tmux.