March 2012 – Fooyah

March 30 2012June 22 2018

NAS Drive

For my birthday I bought a 2TB NAS unit. I spent ages looking at different types and was going to get a LG NAS until I saw an Iomega unit in PC World in BlueWater Shopping centre with quite a good price reduction. I did some internet searching that evening and went back the next day to buy the Iomega unit.

I got the Iomega StorCentre ix200 Cloud Edition there are some good things about it and some things that to be honest I don’t understand and can’t be bothered to invest the time to understand.

I use the NAS to store movies, iTunes libraries and eventually I will categorise all our photos on it. I can stream content to the PS3 and iPhones and laptop which is useful. I can also access it via the web should I feel like it! Here’s a list of functions I won’t be using:

Flickr upload folder – automatically uploads to Flickr
Bit Torrent download automatically
Time Machine
Print Server
Cloud backup
Facebook folder (see this about Facebook)
You Tube upload

I have the two 1TB drives configured as RAID0 at the moment which, as far as I understand it, means they copy each other for data redundancy. If I ever need the extra space I’ll turn that off as I also back up photos and video files to DVD. Can you have too much redundancy?

March 30 2012

Kent Sunset

The last sunset of the current spell of lovely weather.

March 29 2012March 29 2012

48 Degrees

My newest favourite number is 48 or more accurately arccos (2/3). Other favourite numbers are 5,17, and 309. Although 48 is ten more that the Revolting Cocks song 38, the reason for 48 degrees is explained (mathematically) below, but essentially 48 degrees is the solution to the problem:

A smooth hemisphere with radius, r, is resting in a fixed position on a horizontal plane with its flat face in contact with the plane. A particle of mass, m, is slightly disturbed from rest at the highest point of the hemisphere. Find the angle to the vertical that the particle leaves the surface of the sphere.

Also this is independent of radius, particle mass and local gravity! Nice.

March 26 2012

Toys of the Son Part 13

Today’s items of choice. A fire ladder truck, a Lego digger and a bouncy ball.

March 23 2012March 23 2012

Talk Talk Part 4

My lovely router (a D-Link) started to drop connections and act a little bit funny. I put this down to overheating as I had lost the little rubber feet upon which it was meant to stand. This may or may not have been the cause for its miss-behaviour but that was my diagnosis. So I needed another router and reluctantly I went to the back cupboard and got the free router I received from Talk Talk when I signed up with them. It looks pretty grotty and has a huge Talk Talk logo on the front panel.
So I un-plugged the old lovely router and held my breath. Would the new one work? I plugged it in and turned it on, an on-switch is a luxury. Lights flashed and there wasn’t a whirring sound, the connection light blinked and flashed and went green.
I plugged in, logged in to the router and had a look at the settings. It didn’t look like I could change the SSID! Arrghhh. I don’t want my wireless network to be called Talk-Talk8654. I left it.
Later I loaded the router admin page on the iPhone and suddenly there was a settings page for me to play with. I think there was a refresh issue with the PC browser that meant the settings didn’t show. I have now changed the SSID and am a happy bunny.
I know Talk Talk are slammed in public relations but I have to say I have had an excellent service from them! Please remember that anecdote isn’t evidence!

March 23 2012March 25 2012

Birthday Gifts

It was my 40th birthday a few days ago and as Jase likes to tell me I am now in my 5th decade on this glorious Earth! So here’s a list of things I got, just because I can:

Fingerprint jewellery – 2 dog tags with the fingerprints of #1 and #2 shaped on them
2TB NAS
Star Wars complete collection on Blu-Ray
Dr Who modern series 1-4 box set
AC/DC Backtracks
Akira Steelbook edition Blu-Ray
Vodka (see picture)

March 21 2012March 21 2012

Spitting on my Hand

When I first moved away from home and to university I ended up spitting on my hand and arm a lot. It took me quite a while (about a month) to figure out what was going on!

At my ancestral home the basin in the bathroom has two taps. Nothing unusual there but the problem was that the cold tap was on the left and the hot tap was on the right of the basin. Now, I’ll pause while you go and check your taps.

I’m left handed and so brush my teeth with my left hand. Not unusual again. My left-handedness is a bit tempremental as I eat whichever way around suits the food on the plate and I play most sports with my right hand. Anyway, I would brush my teeth and then spit while I was rinsing the toothbrush – left hand holding the toothbrush under the cold tap on the left of the basin leaving the sink bit clear into which to spit.

In 1991 I head off to college halls and move away from home for the first time. I stayed in Falmouth-Keogh Halls of Residence in the glorious Southside building. It is no more, they snuffed it! The taps on the basin in my room were, what I now understand, to be the correct way around. The cold tap in on the right and the hot tap is on the left. I do not know where this convention came from but I find it interesting.

When I brushed my teeth for my first month at college I ended up spitting on my hand. I would put the toothbrush to rinse in my left hand under the cold tap on the right of the basin and automatically spit into the basin at the same time as I had been conditioned to do so after living at the ancestral home for 11 years. This created a dilemma and I had to re-learn the timings of what to do and when whilst I was brushing my teeth. It took a while and in the 21 years since I headed to sunny South Kensington I have coped very well with taps the wrong way around, the correct (?) way around and also mixer taps!

March 21 2012March 11 2014

Gran Tursimo 5 Cars

The recent seasonal events on Gran Turismo 5 have made me need a selection of good cars at different PP (performance points). Gran Turismo applies Performance Points to each car so that you can race cars of similar performance and know that you are evenly matched. I have selected, not very carefully, the following cars for the indicated PP. I have learned that it is best to have as much power as possible and to increase the ballast to counteract the power increase.

For the 400PP races my car of choice is a BMW Mini of all things! But it works well and thrashes the opponents.

A 500PP race gets me heading to my Lancia Delta HF Integrale Evoluzione ’91 for a non-race car. If I need a race car then I seek out my RE Amemiya AsparaDrink RX7 ’06.

A 600PP race and it’s the McClaren F1 ’94. Soemtimes I might use the Ford GT LM Race Car SPec II, you know, just for kicks!

For a 700PP race I turn to my beloved Mazda 787B. It’s a gorgeous car and was one of my favourites in a previous incarnation of Gran Turismo.