2014 — 27 April: Sunday

Family Mounce1 actually had a hula-hoop. But not on this scale :-)

Why is it raining again? The flowers are already out. Put kettle on, muvver. Speaking of whom, I forgot to mention yesterday that another of those six financial institutions has now grudgingly admitted it will use my snailmail address for her correspondence. Still yet to hear so much as a dickie bird from Brenda's gang of tax-collecting thugs...

My decision...

... to keep, as it were, my data eggs in only the bigger baskets has removed any current 'need' for the 7-port USB 3 hub and the four 1TB drives that were hanging off it. This automatically and very pleasingly declutters things around the back of BlackBeast. And has allowed me to reposition it under my desk, where it is shielded from the heat and light I cheerfully anticipate one day will come streaming in through the patio doors should summer ever arrive.

Meet the (new) gang

Devices

So I now have just a 3TB USB 3 external Seagate drive directly hooked up to one rear port (but only switched on when I wish to perform a backup, and thus silent most of the time). Then there's that pair of 3TB drives hooked up (to the pair of e-SATA ports I added a while back). They used to be my two main data and backup drives before I plunged into SSDs. Again, these bits of spinning rust are only switched on when I actually need something from them, and are thus silent most of the time.

Actually inside BlackBeast's case are the relatively recently-acquired 1.6TB (give or take) of SSDs. Silent all of the time, of course. In fact, the only moving part in BlackBeast is now its CPU cooling fan. I admit I can hear that.2

That just leaves the 3TB RAID1 pair (virtually silent in any case, and simply left on 24x7) that live in the ever-so-useful Synology NAS. These feed my music and video files to the Kuro plasma screen and the audio system via the latest Oppo BD player. Data transfers from BlackBeast to the Synology generally run at about 60MB/second. Data fetched from it manage about 110MB/second.

I remain irritated...

... by the undeniable fact that I have had 350MB stolen from me:

350MB missing

However, given the 86% free space on my system drive (not to mention the 97% free space on my main data drive), I suppose I'm prepared to let it go. For now. When I recall my first hard drive (on the Amstrad CP/M system) had a mere 20MB and I carved it up into four 5MB partitions because it was so huge...

Having also remained irritated...

... by the mysterious absence of my DVD of Brian de Palma's Femme Fatale (with the gorgeous Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) from my infallible CaseLogic storage system, I recently gave in and ordered a replacement (used) copy. During the search for it, I found a few more items. Two of those arrived yesterday:

DVDs

This tickled me...

... though it's by no means new. Think of it as a variant on "Hello World" perhaps:

Hi

It also led me here. I may have to draw this to Junior's attention as he now has a pair of Raspberry Pi devices. He and Peter's g/f will visit next weekend, I've just been informed.

I'm pleased...

... to see that Season #6 of Californication is still, as it were, in good shape. Though it's unlikely to get shown by the BBC. This century.

  

Footnotes

1  The 1950s variant, that is.
2  Though to do so I have to crouch down and shove my head within a couple of inches of the top of the PC case. And why would any sane person do that?