At WWDC, Apple announced Kabe Lake iMacs. The 27 inch 5k Retina Display machine looks like a nice fit for my requirements.
The new machines ship before the High Sierra OS so I’ll hold out until High Sierra is released.
Last week, I took the plunge and ordered bits and pieces to make a new FreeBSD based FreeNAS file server. This server consolidates Plex, my iTunes library, and Time Machine backups on a new ZFS ZRAID2 volume. I made this move for several reasons.
After a lot of review of the usual suspects in the market place, I was unconvinced that they were sufficiently robust to prevent bit rot. Most were built on Linux, Linux software RAID, ant the EXT4 file system. NetGear Ready NAS uses Linux with the BTRFS making it a bit more robust but was not comfortable with a Netgear solution as it I was unsure if the entire product line used BTRFS or if current products were a mix of BTRFS and EXT4. I also wanted the freedom to run other applications such as audio recording in the future, something an appliance would probably not allow.
This article describes the component selection, commissioning, and software configuration. The references give the detailed procedures used and these procedures were correct and complete. The only disappointment was that UniFi NVR does not play on FreeBSD and I elected not to install a supported OS in a jail. Ubiquity distributes the packages directly rather than through the normal distribution work flows and services. At this point, they are a year behind the community and have yet to release a Win 10 version.
In a future article, I’ll describe how I use ZFS snapshots to give some protection against user filesystem encryption malware.
Back in the winter, I kept a friend’s greyhound while she was on holiday. Crash joined Nick and Missy as their guest. Crash was a perfect gentleman with impeccable manners in the house, in the garden, and on lead. After all, he’s a US racing greyhound and they’re indeed special.
Crash enjoyed his stay with us. He and Missy had several epic chase sessions in the back garden. Missy was overjoyed to have a bouncy boy about her own age for play. Nick, he’s 11 and acting positively senior.
Recently, a friend asked her social media peeps for camera recommendations for a first camera that is not a point and shoot. Her expected uses are garden macrophotography, the occasional photo of the moon, and urban/country trekking photography, including wildlife photography (BellaBob?). And of course, photographing her photogenic dogs when a phone camera just won’t do.
Since I was last in the marketplace, the players have changed somewhat. Several have introduced innovative product lines and new product types. Several manufacturers now make mirrorless advanced cameras. Some are styled to mimic the rangefinder cameras of old and others to mimic single lens reflex cameras. All have an eye to camera view finder. Two things distinguish an enthusiast camera from a point and shoot, the view finder, and the shutter lag.
Rather than try to survey the market, this article will inform you of important camera design considerations and the way in which they influence a purchasing decision. After reading this article, considering how you might use an advanced camera, and consideration of personal characteristics such as hand size, vision, and fiscal health, you can venture forth into the market place. I suggest that you handle each camera and take some snapshots with it on a memory card that you bring along. This will give you a feeling for the view finder, menus, and control layout that you won’t get from reading Amazon reviews. And keep your friendly shop keeper in business by buying local rather than ordering.
Apple has left the home WiFi market. Airport Express and Airport Extreme products are discontinued and the work group that was maintaining the device firmware was dispersed to other Apple work groups. One of the attractions of Apple Airport is that Apple announced device firmware updates in the same way as other software updates. The App Store applied the update and life was good. I had been spoiled since I bought my first Airport Express back in 2002 or 2003.
The Moocher operated his home network with host attached storage for a number of years. Two Drobo storage arrays provide storage for media and serve as a Time Machine spool volume. These machines have served well but are running into age-related limitations. It is time to consider replacing them in the near future.
The Moocher’s 2009 Mac Mini is too old to run Sierra but is it time for a new computer? It is still doing the jobs I use it to do well so just when is it time to trade? In this article, I’m going to offer my current take on trading.
A few days ago, I wrote about setting up an nVidia Sheild TV set top box and configuring Plex Media Server on it. Now that I’ve had a chance to live with it for a few days, I thought it would be appropriate to share my first impressions of this piece of kit.
For some time I’ve been wanting to move media serving off of my Mac Mini because the design of the available servers requires the machine to be running and logged in which vastly increases its attack surface. I’d been looking for a number of alternatives, particularly one that was energy efficient, had a low footprint, and would be doing what it was designed to do. nVidia came to the rescue about a year ago with nVidia Shield TV, an Android TV. So I’ve allowed the Android camel into my tent.
Do two things. First, read the fine manual at [1]. Go through the FAQS at [2]. I didn’t include any video links as most are long on talk and low on information density. The links above will take you to the setup screens so you can review them.
You will need internet service. Shield has both WiFi and Ethernet interfaces built in. Both work well. If you have Ethernet available in your media cabinet, wired service works well. Shield just knows what to do. A wired interface speeds firmware updates. WiFi is adequate for media playback.
The base kit consists of a game controller (left) and the Shield machine (right but just the fin part). The nice aluminum base and the nice aluminum Android TV remote are optional extras. The kit also includes a power adapter, HDMI cable, and USB cable for recharging controllers and remotes. And there is a quick start guide and all the warranty and compliance statements.
Yesterday while I was writing my holiday letter, I was also sorting out, or trying to sort out a Win 10 virtual machine that went wobbly. The symptoms were that it was very slow, the start menu had gone missing, Edge had gone missing, etc.
The Moocher uses Win 10 to run ESplanner, a financial planning tool that evaluates your assets and recommends future spending to maintain purchasing power and stretch assets until estate time. This program is currently Windows only and is not friendly in Linux Wine and other simulated environments. Most MacOS users run a copy of Windows in a Parallels virtual machine.
In the past, the Moocher has attempted to run Windows guests in Linux hosted Virtual Box environments. These mostly worked but JSAF development would typically eat the machine with topography database, computation, and network traffic. Virtual Box worked and the price was Navy approved.
But it was not well integrated with the OS. Parallels is. In addition to providing a virtual machine environment, Parallels provides file sharing, cut and paste between environments, and allows MacOS apps to work with Windows documents. The experience is pretty seamless and Parallels carefully designs the VM to integrate with MacOS in a way that keeps Windows in its jail. The only real difficulties I’ve incurred are in doing keyboard spells to cause Windows to start in safe mode, etc. This is not a VM launch option and hand keying of the spell is difficult.
Dismal Manor Dispatches 
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