Category: Hardware

The cutest little muscle machine ever

I got me that brand new Apple Mini with Snow Leopard OSX Server unlimited edition included. This is such an adorable machine, you wouldn’t believe it. It has everything you can wish for in a server, as far as I can make out after just a couple of hours with it. It’s super easy to set up and to monitor. It’s small, it’s beautiful, it’s almost totally noiseless, and seems to use hardly any power. When you feel the case, it’s just barely warmer than the environment and the same goes for the power supply. When I switch off everything else in the room, I can only hear the server running from less than a meter’s distance. It seems to produce about the same noise level my 13″ white MacBook does when it’s just started and perfectly cool. In other words, practically inaudible. Still, it’s running two 500 Gb drives in there, which I’ve set up as a mirrored (Raid 1) set.

I’ll probably brag about this system some more once I get to know it better. But meanwhile, it’s the nicest computer purchasing experience I’ve ever had. Except for the Mac Pro. And the MacBook. And the iMac, of course. And the iPhone. And Apple TV.

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Powering up your ReadyNAS NV+ remotely

I have two ReadyNAS NV+ units from Netgear and I’ve put them in a backroom where nobody normally goes. I don’t either. Now, for extra security in case of fire or a break-in, I’m actually moving them to a neighbor’s spare room, which means I can’t easily get at them anymore and the energy consumption could become a problem. As could the constant whining, but I don’t think so.

The problem with the ReadyNAS is that even though you can power them down through their config pages using a browser, there is no way to switch them on again short of actually, physically, walking over there and pressing the blue button. There’s no wake-on-lan or any other similar provision. The only alternative is to have it power on and off according to a schedule, which is what I have done so far. But if you do that, that schedule will be unnecessarily liberal, just in case you need access to the units. I’m mainly using them for Retrospect backups and disk images when doing recovery, and very little else, so I don’t even use them every day. I calculated that the 16 hours a day these two boxes are running, costs me around 900 kWh per year. That’s around $150 in electricity per year. And it’s ecologically rude, too.

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Merging mice

I’ve got this Wacom Intuos 3 tablet and I like it. The mouse, in particular, is very nice. Good feeling. As long as it works. The problem I’ve had is that my first mouse started to give switch bounce on the left button, and a problem with the scroll wheel, after about 16 months. Out of warranty, of course. So I ordered a new one for around $40. That one lasted eight months before it succumbed to switch bounce, but this time it was the right button. The distributor just sent me a replacement for free, and didn’t ask for the defective one in return. So I ended up with one good and two bad Wacom mice. Since I’m pretty sure the new one won’t last more than a year, or max two, it seemed prudent to start assembling a fully working spare from the two failed mice. That’s what this picture story is about.

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