Category: Uncategorized

The catchall category for stuff I haven’t decided to warrant a new classification or am too lazy to categorize.

Possible Factorio Gameplay Series.

I am thinking about recording a series of gameplay videos of Factorio. It will probably be a modded series. Likely based around Krastorio 2. To save time will not restart my current play-through. Thus it will start halfway through.

Lenovo Thinkpad X120e – Windows 10 Pro

First, a surprise. It actually works. I do not mean that it barely works. It runs reasonably well. As least as well as Xubuntu 21.04 did. It is still slow. The X120e has 4GB of DDR3 memory, and it has a dual-core 1.6GHz processor. It was never going to win any performance awards. Right now, my biggest complaint is the screen size and resolution. I want a 15.6-inch 1920×1080 display on it. The 11.6-inch 1366×768 display on here is way too small for doing a lot of work.

Update To Reasonable Options For Backing Up A NAS In 2021

As I mentioned in the previous post, the options boiled down to tape or an external hard drive. I chose to use an external hard drive. So far, that option is working okay if I ignore the fourteen to fifteen-hour-long initial syncs of the drives.

At a sustained write speed of one hundred and fifty-two megabytes per second, the entire NAS pool takes nearly fourteen hours to sink initially. I doubt I can get sustained write speeds much higher without spending several thousand dollars. I am not even sure if they make seven Tebibyte SSDs.

A Tebibyte is the base two version of a Terabyte. Excluding storage device sizes Tebibytes and Terabytes are identical. However, the difference is why a formatted storage device is always smaller than its listed capacity. The formated capacity is given in Tebibytes, but the listed capacity is in Terabytes.

That one hundred and fifty-two megabytes per second write speed translates to a wire speed of 1.275 Gigabits per second on the USB 3 bus, which is pretty reasonable for a mechanical hard drive using the full performance options available on USB 3.

Current thoughts on PHP 8.0 and WordPress.

Right now, I am testing this blog on PHP 8.0;

So far, migration hasn’t been that big of a problem. Well, save some issues with passwords. I am not sure if the PHP native hash plugin, PHP 8.0, or a combination of the two is the issue.

I have got it fixed, however. So far, I am enjoying using WebAuthn instead of the normal login procedure. But I will probably do a separate post over it.

New Phone

After four years of good service, the battery on my iPhone 8+ finally got to the point it needed replacing. After reviewing the options and expecting my new phone to survive for four more years. I decided to get the 256GB iPhone 12 Max.

The bigger screen is excellent. However, it is taking some adjusting to.

Reasonable Options for Backing Up A NAS in 2021

What are your reasonable options for backing up a 16TB NAS in 2021?

External Hard Drive?

Pros:

  • Interface Portability. You do not need any new software or hardware.
  • Ability to reuse older hardware: Assuming you have a used drive large enough to hold all your backups.

Cons:

  • Interface instability: USB3 drives especially are bad at this. The adapters are usually not designed to handle the multiple hours of uptime necessary to complete backing up multiple terabytes of data.
  • Transfer speeds: Most USB3 drives are not designed for performance. Even custom enclosures with reasonable drives in them usually struggle to keep a sustained write speed of 100MB/s.

Tape?

Pros:

  • Very reliable: Most tapes will probably outlast the drives that created them.

Cons:

  • Expensive: LTO-4 drives are several grand apiece, including used models. LTO-5 or LTO-6 is even more expensive, and LTO-5 or LTO-6 will be needed for most users with a NAS.

Third Two Week Posting Challenge Review

For these last two weeks, I have posted eight days out of ten applicable days. I am running out of ideas that don’t involve politics, and training for my new job has impacted my free time. Most of the problem is finding nonpolitical topics.

Second 2 Weeks Posting Challenge

During the previous 2 Weeks Posting Challenge, I missed one of eighteen days that it covered. I missed six of the sixteen days covered by this period.

Why did I miss those days? A lack of good topics to write about and a combination of not sitting down to write. I do not want to turn this blog into a political blog. However, divisive politics keep cropping up all the time.

Talk Later

—Robert