Gav's World

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

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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

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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

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

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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, 29'r 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!

2020-11-28 : New 3D Printer

This is one of these gadgets that I've been wanting for years - pretty much since they first came to market... but I've just never been able to fully justify it. Technically I can't now, but there was a good sale on at Pimoroni for a Vertex Delta 3D Printer that I just couldn't pass up on.

This is an open source hardware platform (with 3D models of all parts should I need to print any - which I've had to already after breaking a bracket that holds the print bed in place), that runs Marlin, open source embedded 3D printer software (no... it's not firmware!). There is also a freely available slicer: Ultimaker Cura which itself is composed of open source libraries etc. which (best of all) even has a native appImage for Linux!

There are thousands of 3D models of all sorts of things on the Thingyverse, and when it comes to having to design a model myself, then FreeCAD is also available for Linux!

Let's see what I can print :-)

2020-11-10 : New Raspberry Pi 400

Now some may think that having more than 10 Raspberry Pi computers is a bit excessive - I don't :-)

So, when a new one was announced, the Raspberry Pi 400, I felt that I really needed to add it to my collection (which takes this up to the 17th Pi that I've bought!).

It's basically a Pi 4 (bit a bit quicker - 1.8GHz compared to 1.5GHz) with a new board layout to allow all connectors to appear on the rear of the unit, and built into an official Raspberry Pi keyboard... just like the good old days of (in my case) the Acorn Electron and Atari ST where this was the case. However, the Pi 400 is way more powerful than any of the 1980s and 1990s computers, ovbisouly!

I'm initially playing with the 64-bit version of Ubuntu Server but since it's a "computer" as opposed to a headless server, I'm going to install Xubuntu desktop on it too.

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