Gav's World

2025-03-09 : New Gigabit Network

After moving into my new house in August 2024, and adapting the CAT 6 wiring that was already installed (to the lounge and big bedroom), I've at last routed a cable through to my wee office (I'd previously used Netgear PLP1000 Powerline Extender and then a TP-Link TP-WA1201 AC1200 Access Point configured in client mode.

Neither of which were particularly fast (the Powerline only achieved 70Mbits/s which I attribute to all of my mains filtering on the PC and AV equipment) and reliable (the AC1200 had to be reset every now and then as throughput would drop into single digits).

So now, my whole house (or at least where I have computer equipment) has Gigabit Network installed!

2024-07-21 : New Server SSD Configuration

So, my server started acting up - first sign was that the VMs fell off the network, and then I couldn't access the web GUI of the server, but strangely it was still serving files over NFS (I suspect because the core of TrueNAS was running in RAM).

After investigation, it looked like the carrier card for my 4x mSATA drives (Kalea Informatique, mSATA PCIe Controller Card) was at fault. All 4x mSATA SSDs appeared operational though.

So, purchase of a new SATA card and 4x mSATA to SATA enclosures to house all of the SSDs:

• 10GTek 6 Port PCIe SATA3.0 Expansion Card
• 4x mSATA to 2.5" SATA III Aluminum Enclosure Adapter

2024-04-05 : Website Template Updated : v2.23.3

Enhancements

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New Setup Variables (see <setup-sample.php> for details)

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Bug Fixes

1. Duplicate rss.php in "self" link for RSS feed, similar duiplicate of "atom.php" in "self" link for ATOM feed.

2024-04-04 : Not Another Raspberry Pi!

Yes, another one (which is the now 19th Pi that I've bought - here's the full list!)

The Raspberry Pi 5 is quite easily powerful enough (especially with an NVMe drive) to be used as an Every Day Computer!

2024-02-29 : Faster Server Processor

One evening (after the kids had said that Minecraft was a bit laggy when playing on my server from their Mum's house), I decided to see what was available in the Intel Xeon E3 v5 family of processors in the second hand market (well, it was launched in 2016, so not likely to still be available new), as that's what my server is compatible with.

Well, I found a Quad Core Intel Xeon E3-1280 v5 (3.7GHz, 4.0GHz Turbo) for a very reasonable price to replace the Quad Core Intel Xeon E3-1225 v5 (3.3GHz, 3.7GHz Turbo) that it came with and had been purring away quite happily.

Luckily, from previous upgrades of the kids' PCs, I had a couple of spare graphics cards, as the E3-1280 doesn't have built-in graphics like the E3-1225 does. Anyway, the swap went without a hitch (apart from having to order heat-sink compound as I'd actually ran out!)

Unfortunately, the kids haven't tried Minecraft again yet to see if it made a difference, or if it was simply (as I suspect) network lag.

2024-02-13 : At Last - A Use For My Zero-W

So obviously, when the Raspberry Pi Zero W was released, I bought one and "played" with it for a couple of days. However, it was sitting idle for years when I finally decided to do something with it! So, it's now my MPD Monitor!

2023-10-23 : (Another) New 3D Printer

After a few years with my Vertex Delta 3D Printer, and one too many failed print attempts, I splashed out on a new printer: a Creality K1.

This is a massive step up in performance over the Vertex Delta - it's a CoreXY printer that is incredibly fast and accurate... and more importantly, isn't connected with magnets which can cause the head to crash (and fall off the magnets) if there is a shock during printing. As cool as the Vertex Delta was to watch printing, this was it's biggest problem.

As usual, there is a plethora of printable upgrades that people have already designed for this - so time to start printing!

2021-12-29 : Website Template Updated : v2.23.2

Enhancements

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New Setup Variables (see <setup-sample.php> for details)

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Bug Fixes

1. The permalinks for the news feed only worked if the website was in the document root. Now takes into account the path.

2021-10-23 : Website Template Updated : v2.23.1

Enhancements

None

New Setup Variables (see <setup-sample.php> for details)

None

Bug Fixes

1. Not really a fix, but the W3C has recently deprecated the media "projection" for style sheets. This was in the XHTML header data that's generated from index.php

2021-07-03 : New Mountain Bike

After 3 years of fun on my Saracen Mantra Pro hard-tail, I decided to go to the next level in mountain biking and purchase an Orbea Occam H20 full-suspension, 29er mountain bike.

This bike, with its bigger wheels, rolls over rocks easier; and with the rear shock, is less tiring on the downhills (saves my knees doing all of the work). However, it's slightly harder to get up them in the first place: since it's a bit heavier, got larger wheels and slightly higher gearing than my hard-tail.

Hopefully it'll serve me well for the years to come on the technical trails... and I'll save the Mantra Pro for the easier trails with the family!

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