Synology NAS and SSD Cache

April 9th, 2016

I’ve been recently experimenting with SSDs (solid state disks), to accelerate my spinning rust in my Synology NAS.

Recently in DSM, a new SSD cache option is available, which allows you to create a read or write cache with 1 or 2 SSD devices respectively.

Here are some results, which I’ve graphed

2016-04-09-21_26_42-microsoft-excel-book5

In my very quick and crude tests, I could see an improvement in Writing to the NAS, which doubles in performance. Read speed is very similar, and the cache was “warmed-up” before testing.

And here’s a video of the new Synology SSD Cache Read Hit Rate graphic, which looks a little graphic equalizer, from the 70-80s, so I’ve dropped a music track in the background! I thought it only right to over-flange (distort!) the track, so you may want to turn down your volume!

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Spot the difference between these two Brother P-Touch tapes

April 6th, 2016

Spot the difference between these two White on Green Glossy Laminuated TZ-735 Brother P-Touch tapes?

The one on the right costs £14.00, and the one on the left costs £3.85, both including delivery.

What I had a chuckle about is the compatible tape is correct stating it’s 0.47 inch, and not 1/2 inch, if you work out what 12mm is in inches!

Both function correctly in the two Brother P-Touch label printers I have tested, but the one on the left is marked as P-Touch compatible, it’s not a genuine Brother product, and manufactured in China. Readily available from eBay, or other online stockists!

I was going to throw my P-Touch label printer in the bin, because the cost of replacement tapes was so expensive!

I’ve just taken delivery, of four of these cartridges, at approx. £10 – 6mm,9mm,12mm and all work as expected, this would have cost four times this amount for the Brother original parts! – Direct from China, including packaging and posting, arrived well packed, signed for delivery and within 7 days excluding weekend.

I’m not sure what is going to happen, when the China bubble bursts!

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Andy’s quest for the perfect cup of coffee! Part 2: Are you a Coffee snob?

March 22nd, 2016

A few years ago, after discussing good coffee with “Angus” at the local Coffee Shop, he described Lindsey & I, as “coffee snobs”, and this was the reason he open a local Coffee Shop, to roast, and produce coffee for local “coffee snobs” on a daily basis, Angus also declared himself as a “coffee snob”, and opened to shop because there was no other coffee shop locally, which did the same. Sadly Angus sold on the business, because his return on investment was too low.

Today my order of coffee beans has arrived from Hasbean.co.uk.

A large and well packed box of coffee beans, delivered by FedEx.

I’ve ordered Has Bean Exclusive: Guachipelin Natural, this is what is in the box of coffee


And Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Gedeb Washed Kurume

I’ll get the grinder ready, and warm up the Chemex!

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Andy’s quest for the perfect cup of coffee! Part 1: How do you like your coffee?

March 18th, 2016

I like strong black coffee, and at University I was too lazy to boil the kettle, and I just used to add cold water to coffee granules, (that was 26 years ago!) I do not prepare coffee that way anymore, and no longer use coffee granules either! I also prefer warm coffee, or cold coffee, not piping hot. For a while I used to drink quadruple espresso, I also prefer a small amount of good tasting coffee, rather than a large cup of coffee.

Here’s one I made earlier

makingcofferforxchemex6

I’ve got the following coffee makers, which I’ve tried

  1. Braun filter coffee maker
  2. Braun espresso machine
  3. French press cafetiere e.g. Bodum.
  4. Stovetop espresso maker (my Dad would often comment, he didn’t want any of that sludge you boil-up on the stove!).
  5. Aerobie Aeropress (purchased in Panama, which was cheaper than purchasing it in the UK!).

These all have their advantages and disadvantages, e.g. they are quick and convenient, and I cannot praise the Aerobie Aeropress, enough – for mobile, espresso coffee when you away from home!

But the drawback I’ve found with them ALL, is the coffee taste, and some bitterness which can be tasted in the resulting coffee.

Let me introduce you to the CHEMEX coffee maker, invented in 1949 by a Chemist, and using a conical flash and filter papers, the modern CHEMEX coffer maker is made from non-porous, borosilicate glass and fastened with a wood collar and tie. It uses a special scientifically designed filter paper, the results are fantastic, Clear, pure, flavourful and without bitterness or sediment every time, you can make your coffee as strong as you like without bitterness. However, this is not a quick method of making a perfect cup of coffee, and has almost a ritual, a bit like perfect tea making or the “Japanese Tea ritual.” – if you one are a coffee drinker – that just pours water over coffee granules out of a kettle, and you like your coffee that way, I don’t think a CHEMEX is for you!

The CHEMEX uses the pour over, slow drip method to deliver a flavourful and without bitterness cup of coffee.

the box the CHEMEX arrives in!

CHEMEX filters, specific for the 3 cup CHEMEX

The 3 cup CHEMEX (it creates approx 450 ml of coffee)

here’s a short video, 45 seconds our of 4 minutes of the complete process

some instructions, with photos of how I do it with a CHEMEX.

filter paper is wetted, rinsed with boiling water to heat the chemex
Grind the coffee beans before use.
my chemistry set for coffee making
perfect cup of coffee in espresso cup
the ground coffee
water
Weigh the coffee beans.

Start Slideshow

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Dead SATA Hard Disk Drives – this one definitely has crashed heads!

March 13th, 2016

This is what they look like inside, if you’ve ever wondered!

I’ve had a stack of many SCSI, IDE, SATA, SAS disks on the shelves for many years, ranging in sizes from 40MB, 9GB, 36GB, 72GB, 146GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB, time to test them all. Out of 50 SATA drives, 6 had failed just because they had been sitting on the shelf doing nothing.

I’ll strip them down, and use the spinning platters, as bird scarcers for my allotment, to keep the pigeons at bay! It takes me 30 seconds to strip them down and remote the platters, and then I’ll shuffle the platters, and string them on my allotment, that’s stops my data being recovered!

This SATA hard drive, the heads have crashed into the platters, and started to score them, see here

This is what a hard drive should look like

Here’s a single platter

A stack of platters for my allotment

here’s a short video of the inside of a hard drive, with the cover removed, with crashed heads.

here’s a short video of the inside of a broken hard drive, with the cover removed.

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Frith’s Gift!

March 11th, 2016


 


 

“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

 

“And whenever they catch you, they will kill you.

 

“But first, they must catch you…

 

“…digger, listener, runner.

 

“Prince with the swift warren.

 

“Be cunning and full of tricks…

 

“…and your people will never be destroyed. ”

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Andy’s quest for Vanilla Pumpkin Seeds as a tasty snack! Well done @grazedotcom – sorry @MunchySeeds !

March 2nd, 2016

Many years ago, I used to be able to obtain vanilla pumpkin seeds, and I would purchase packets and tubs from Munchy Seeds

from my local Health Food shop, I’ve tried normal pumpkin seeds, but in my opinion not as tasty, and not as attractive. I contacted Munchy Seeds and they told me they had discontinued vanilla pumpkin seeds, because they were not popular, so my quest continued….Lindsey found that the successful company GRAZE, snacks by mail company, have started to stock Vanilla Pumpkin Seeds, I’ve personally found that their snacks by mail expensive, but they’ve recently started to diversify, and sell the GRAZE products in Waitrose, Tescos, ASDA, Sainsbury’s etcs , and now have an Online Shop to sell direct!

And they sell Vanilla Pumpkin Seeds,

so it would look like Munchy Seed’s loss, is GRAZE’s gain!

Here is our first box….of 3 x Vanilla Pumpkin Seeds, and Jam Doughnut

And they are all very yummy!

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Woody Woodpecker – Great spotted woodpecker

February 26th, 2016

This is the Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major), which visits my nuts, at two o’clock – regular as clockwork every day. Currently, as I’ve some time on my hands, I resulted to more bird watching, to occupy my time. I’ve actually been waiting for him, to return – because I now have my ‘scope setup – attached to a smart phone. This is approximately 100 metres away, also recorded through double glazing, whilst I’m in my lounge in the chair, with my feet up, and a hot chocolate. I’m still not happy with the overall results, but these are my first attempts.

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022616-1705-woodywoodpe2.jpg

the video is a little better…

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The White Rabbit – Happy Thursday!

February 25th, 2016

“One pill makes you larger,

And one pill makes you small,

And the ones that mother gives you,

Don’t do anything at all,

Go Ask Alice

When she’s 10 feet tall…….”

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Andy’s Paperless Office – Fujitsu ScanSnap IX500

February 11th, 2016

This was an early Christmas (2015) present, and more gadge for the office. But it does have a serious side, because I decided there is far too much paper in my life, and from late 2015 I’ve gone paperless. So it’s also my New Year’s Resolution for 2016.

No paper!

The ScanSnap is fantastic, wireless scanning via WiFi to laptop, Android Phone, iPad, software is brilliant, one of the best software installs and setups, I’ve ever performed with any hardware! – Well done Fujitsu! – It’s a good job, that not all hardware and software is like that, I would be out of a job! Drop all my paper into the top of the scanner, Hit the blue button, or do it remote from my PC, and I end up with a bunch of searchable PDF files.


Local Storage is cheap as chips, Cloud Storage is even cheaper, it’s far quicker for me to pull documents from my “DocStore” than try and find anything in a filing cabinet, if I need a hardcopy, I just print it out. I can also easily give access to my “DocStore” securely via the Internet to Lindsey also, so she can look at all my documents.

So all my documents, are now scanned to an Adobe PDF document, OCR recognition is performed on this document, before it’s saved to create a Searchable Adobe PDF document, this is then saved to a folder structure on my PC, e.g. 2016 > Finance > Credit Cards.

The “DocStore” is then mirrored to two Synology NASes using Cloud Station and these are backed up to Amazon S3 Cloud, and I also use Tresorit secure Cloud Storage.

At present I’ve got approximately 1000 pages in my “DocStore”, which is about 1.4GB, and when I’m finished it closes up nicely.

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