2014 — 13 May: Tuesday
Later today1 I should get some idea of the success (or otherwise) of that blasted Win8.1 Update 1. However, now that the blessed Microsoft has extended by 30 days the window in which to install it, the heat is on a lower setting.
Meanwhile...
... as ever, there's breakfast to think about, and some waiting-in-for-a-delivery to be done. I've decided to double the number of Synology NAS units here in Technology Towers and increase both the speed (by using a newer, dual-core model [the DS214play]...
... with twice the RAM, USB3, eSATA and other improvements) and capacity (by using a pair of Western Digital Red 4TB drives) to form my second RAID 1 pair at some point today (with luck). I shall be putting to good use the experience gained from very nearly a year with my earlier Synology box. With which I remain delighted. Who knows? I may even start to dip my toe into some of those many facilities beyond just simple storage.
I will be...
... long dead before it is known whether the Grauniad (4 metres) or El Reg (4 feet) was more accurate in their reporting of potential sea-level rise as Western Antarctica loses a glacier or several in years to come.
Amusing politically incorrect debate clip here.
Now why would...
... the UK's "Ministry of Justice" be seeking to opt us out of the EU's plans for a "right to be forgotten" law? Poor Google!
To my delight...
... I have just copied an ancient BBC Radio 3 play2 (that I'd recorded on the Humax Freesat PVR several years ago) on to a USB stick — the trick being not to try to copy it into the root of the USB device, but into a subfolder thereon — changed its filetype from .ts to .mp4, fed it to Poikosoft's audio format converter, and turned it into a bog standard .mp3 file from which point I can now properly meta-tag it and plonk it somewhere more appropriate than my Win8.1 desktop. The two-hour recording took about two minutes to convert into .mp3 form (and about 12% CPU) and sounds excellent.
Good result!
As the time...
... for my evening meal approaches, I've been twiddling my thumbs while the single RAID 1 volume I've created on the new pair of 4TB drives is being verified. I recall this process took several hours (or seemed to!) with the 3TB pair a year ago so I shall just leave well alone until the box next beeps at me. Or melts. I was very impressed by the neat disk trays and the fact that no screws were needed at any point. I also note that both Synology boxes are already ready for business as far as the Windows network is concerned.
All I have to do now is sort out a halfway-decent data strategy and all will be tickety-boo :-)
"Proof" of a sort
Having applied the 14 separate security patches I browsed through the KnowledgeBase information for each of them, eventually finding one that implied it would only go on to a system that had, indeed, successfully installed that angsty "Update 1" last month:
Not so reassuring to find the first three KB links were all broken, but that's documentation for you. Nor do I have a clue what this blessed .NET Framework is all about but I refuse to worry about such trifles these days. I have other fish to fry. (Actually I've only once fried fish since Christa died, and that was some tuna steak for Big Bro.)