I've been working with, playing with, thinking about, building, or demonstrating the wonders of technology for decades. I am a freelance consultant in Los Angeles supporting some of its most creative residents and businesses. This is a writing exercise and in truth I don't know if I will lean more toward the technical or the bizarre. Either way, expect to see some technical writing here in the near future. This is just a place for me to ramble, rant, rave, or reticulate. Got something to say about it? leave a comment.
I have acquired a 2001 Ducati Monster 900 Dark i.e. that was purchased for the movie Mission Impossible 2. It has practically no miles (1886). It was ignored in a garage for a decade so it required a fair amount of paperwork and some maintenance to get it working well and street legal. there are a few minor cosmetic issues like a small dent in the gas tank and broken and taped on turn signals. (i believe the signals were removed for the film)
A few people have asked me to get them pictures and info so i figured this was the fastest way while i work on my actual sales page. I tried to document all the flaws.
This is the latest culinary victim of the pandemic and brutal LA real estate?. Today is the last day.
Status update:
I’ve played with Big Sur, but i’ve had serious reservations about running it on one of my primary machines. Apple backpedaled a bit on some of their decisions and i decided i didn’t have enough problems in my life. So tonight i’m jumping in with both feet to see how it goes and what breaks. This may turn out to be a huge mistake. We’ll soon see.
Not off to a great start so far. Upgrades beget upgrades. After a few rounds of up updating my 3rd party software my system is humming even better than before. Finder is still clunky and has a tendency to hang in the most annoying ways, but they’ve added a few new tricks and an updated look. Am i the only one who misses the brushed metal phase of UI?
This is actually my first go at using this little trick. I only noticed it a few years ago. i haven’t had a need to use it. Until now. i am so delighted that Synology continues to innovate. Every time i deploy a Synology, it has even more functionality. i am not getting paid for this, honest endorsement. I only wish they made direct attached storage or SANs. I do not mean to imply that i have a problem with NAS.
I am not only upgrading the capacity, but the throughput and seek times as well. With dual drive protection, it will be a few redundancy passes before i see any additional storage and probably even longer before i will see much more performance. it will be an interesting project. The process so far has been simple. i just deactivated the outgoing drive and replaced it with the new bigger faster drive. Once that is done, you repair the volume with the new disk and wait. And wait. Eventually do it all again. And again.
After my last car was destroyed, I knew i wanted an electric car. After extensive research and soooo much driving around to check out cars. I am very excited to announce my Model 3 that i have named Zapp Brannigan in honor of its electric power and my favorite cartoon. I cannot wait until i can drive to visit my friends and family again.
I am very thankful for an early Thanksgiving toy! It’s a Monoprice Delta Pro! (originally $1400, they have dropped a few times and are now on sale for $550. Delta printers are so cool. They do not move at all like traditional 3D printers. i can watch mine all day. you can too, the live cam is back!
It was a snap to get it setup. The opposite experience of my Maker Select V2. Oh i love the auto bed leveling. There is no official Cura profile for the Delta Pro, so i had to throw one together from the Delta Mini and the specs. I did have a few failures. I bought some inferior filament and it would continually get clogged. After switching to the good stuff, my prints were beautiful. Then i started to play with the speed rate options.
That articulated slug is a great example. you can see the first layer is a bit sloppier on the head segment compared with the other segments. I turned the speed rate up to 130% I’m not sure exactly what that does, because it certainly doesn’t have that profound of an effect on the print speed. but if you raise it high enough it gets very sloppy. i shaved about 30% of the time for a print by upping the speed rate to 200% but the first few layers had much more serious flaws than the slug. On the whole it wasn’t a bad speed print. I’m sure i can improve it with tweaks.
This is the anniversary of the infamous hack that interrupted a television broadcast in Chicago, Illinois. A Classic Tom Baker Dr Who episode was replaced with a lunatic in a Max Headroom mask. A prank from from 1987, it remains unsolved to this day.
My Drobo has been acting up since last week. I couldn’t get speeds over 40MB/sec for a while i wasn’t seeing anything faster than 25MB/sec. I read all the forums and i was on deadline to return some customer data. I put hours into this only to get to 35MB/sec. The final answer was actually a stupid one i read in a forum but didn’t put much stock in. My favorite part of USB-C is that it doesn’t matter which way you plug it in. At least that is what i thought. Turns out that with some Drobo 5c it does matter. After flipping the port, i’m back to useful speeds. It’s even mentioned in the Drobo 5c FAQ.