Other interests...
Everyone1 needs a hobby; something to stave off the boredom. Here, for example, is a perfect cure for boredom — my internal network of devices and data storage:
BlackBeast
Named for its large, black, gaming case, this is a Novatech bare-bones PC that I assembled at the end of 2010. Given that I rarely see its AMD six-core 64-bit CPU exceed about 5% utilisation I'm vulnerable to the suggestion that I may have over-specified the system. A little bit. Possibly.2 On the other hand, it doesn't tend to exceed 25C either. Given the propensity of the Windows operating "system" to sprawl over everything I've fitted 8GB of DDR3 RAM for it to play with. About 1.2GB of this seems to get soaked up effortlessly before I load and run a single useful application.3
I've also stuffed three 1TB SATA data drives, and a 150GB Velociraptor boot drive into it. Plus a Sapphire Radeon HD5670 passively-cooled graphics card, which purports to be about the most powerful available without a cooling fan. And a very decent Creative X-fi audio card (for its optical digital I/O).
Gateway
This was my second 'IBM-compatible' PC after the little Shuttle system. It has an early dual-core processor — the Pentium D — and has been switched back and forth between Windows XP and Ubuntu, both dual-boot and "pure". It's currently a spare Windows XP system which has from time to time proved invaluable when other systems have been, shall we say, sickly for whatever reason.
HP MPC
This is the 64-bit dual core AMD 5000+ machine with 2GB of RAM, 256MB of dedicated graphics and a fast SATA hard drive. I bought it (reduced) in the Millbrook branch of Comet in March 2008. It started life as a dinky little HP slimline Media PC (but was sadly crippled by the foolish decision to ship it with a disgusting piece of dreadful software called Vista). For the last couple of years, therefore, it's been quietly chugging away running Ubuntu Server edition 10.4 serving all my internal web pages.
So it would have continued to do, had Len not neatly demonstrated to me just how little CPU use is consumed by a web server serving just one chap living peacefully on his own. I intend, therefore, to give it a heart transplant (with a shiny new 1TB drive) and re-invigorate it with a dash of Ubuntu 11.4 and the smart new Unity desktop. I've already had a bit of a play with this and whenever the next round tuit happens along I shall perform the surgery. Of course, if I wait just another month or so, the so-called Oneiric Ocelot will be with us... It seems quite fitting, somehow, to put a dwarf-sized leopard on to a dwarf-sized desktop PC.
Asus Eee PC
I spotted and inspected this solid-state dinky little toy (not to be confused with a Dinky Toy, of course) with its 800MHz Intel Celeron and 512MB of RAM (and a 2GB solid state disk drive) back in mid-February 2008, and caved in to temptation a couple of weeks later. Of course, beyond proving I could use it to access files on my Apache webserver over in Texas, I actually made almost no use of it at all as both the screen and the keyboard were just a bit too small for my liking. It came loaded with Xandros, which was a tiny Linux desktop designed to mimic the look and feel of Windows XP. Indeed, you could even squeeze a genuine XP onto it with enough patience. However, beyond lending it to a couple of chums for extended periods of time, it did a lot of dust collecting.
Not any more! It's now enjoying a second childhood running Ubuntu Server edition 10.4 and hooked up to a ridiculously physically small 1TB USB hard drive. Not only is it doing all the web page serving internally here in Technology Towers, it's also simultaneously running a Firefly music server (for the Roku Soundbridge network music player in the upstairs reading room), an Ampache music streamer for any desktop PC hereabouts that wants to access my library of MP3 music files, and a Gallery application that I shall slowly populate with my photos and other digital artwork. All this in a silent PC that rarely exceeds 20% CPU and doesn't seem to feel the need to do any paging. Of course, it's not a fast machine, but it's certainly now earning its keep.
Buffalo Terastation NAS
My data backup systems over the years have been pretty ad-hoc. Early in my retirement I made a deliberate start on cleaning up my act by equipping myself with a LinkSys "Slug" and a couple of 320GB external USB hard drives. (Picture here.) However, Christa's worsening health by that point quite rightly took complete priority over everything else.
Over four years later, with my post-Christa life finally somewhat more settled, I've looked afresh at data storage and backup. Hence the Buffalo Terastation, and its two pairs of 1TB SATA drives in RAID1 configurations. I initially used a pair of such drives in BlackBeast as mirrored dynamic drives, but never again. Only Windows, I suspect, is daft enough to allow you to format a pair of disk drives in such a way that Windows itself can then disavow any knowledge of how to use them. Amazing.
In June 2011 I fitted a Gigabit switch to speed up my internal network. I'd been content to use a 100Mbps system, but this started to seem inadequate for some of the backing up. As it happens, only my Blackbeast Windows 7 PC and the Buffalo NAS can chat at this speed. Mind you, I don't expect to see an order of magnitude speed-up in their data exchanges. I've no doubt I'll simply uncover the next system performance bottleneck. (See above, re 'boredom'.)
Roku SoundBridge
I bought this on a whim one day several months before I retired as I wandered past what used to be called "Hampshire Hi-Fi". What I didn't realise at the time was the relatively unpolished state of the open source server that was then still being developed for it. It did work fine with iTunes on the iMac that I'd also bought (more or less) on a whim after retiring, but iTunes on a Windows PC was a whole different horror show. So, like the Asus Eee PC, the Roku spent a couple of years getting dusty. Now, of course, it's doing a grand job receiving music files streamed from the Asus and feeding them to my reading room audio system.
Asus Eee Pad
The latest toy is a delightful little wireless Tablet PC running Android 3.2. Since the last mobile phone I bought4 was in November 2007, for Christa to use in the hospice, I've not had any previous exposure to Android. But, on a 10" touchscreen, it's a delight.