Computer and technology related topics
I spent some time over Christmas break simplifying and reducing the cost of our cloud backups. I wrote about the 7 Backup Principals on the MacBook Backup Strategy post and the same applies here. My TrueNAS server consists of primarily SMB shares–videos, documents, files, old computer archives, and a webdav share which I use for … Read more
I simplified our backup strategy for our MacBooks. Here’s where I landed: 7 Backup Principles The most comprehensive yet essential list I’ve come across is the seven characteristics of a backup plan created by Ross Williams: I’m using two backup solutions: Time Machine Backup to TrueNAS (local) The MacBooks primarily backup to Apple Time Machine … Read more
I’ve always allowed comments on this blog, and even allow people to disagree. I rarely moderate comments except when they’re inappropriate. But one of the issues I have to deal with is comment spam. I moderated the comments by hand for well over a decade but it gradually turned into hours of work each week. … Read more
Did you know printers can order their toner? September of 2023; my Brother MFC-L3770CDW printer (b3n.org) kept printing awful black and magenta streaks across all the pages. I wasted reams of paper trying to fix it to no avail. It was time to replace it. I was just going to get another one, but there … Read more
TrueNAS Scale and Proxmox VE are my two favorite appliances in my homelab. Overall, TrueNAS is primarily a NAS/SAN appliance, it excels at storage. It is the most widely deployed storage platform in the world. Proxmox on the other hand is a virtualization environment; so it is excellent at VM and software-defined networking. I agree … Read more
How to install a Minecraft server (Java Edition) on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Yesterday, Eli told me 100 random people were on our Minecraft server. Incidentally I set the server limit to 100. One of the players told him it was advertised on a server list. That’s odd because this is a private Minecraft server and … Read more
I’m looking for a scan of a blue note, and I simply can’t find it in Evernote. Evernote versions 4 and 5 were the prime of Evernote. Kris and I used it extensively as our document management system, document knowledge management, and notetaking application. It was a great way to organize things. Every note, every … Read more
Here’s how I configured my WordPress server to handle huge traffic spikes. It’s easier than you think. For those who have seen smoke coming from your server in the garage, you know. But for those who haven’t, here’s a bit of history as I remember it: In the 1990s Slashdot used to link to interesting … Read more
2U Supermicro servers are my go-to. These are much quieter than 1U servers, but the fans spin at 8800RPM. The IPMI fan modes available are Full (9000RPM), Heavy IO (6000RPM), and Optimal (supposed to auto-adjust). Unfortunately, setting the Fan Mode to Optimal seems to have a floor speed of 4500RPM, which is too loud. Even … Read more
Good morning. Today is March 31st. 🌐 It’s World Backup Day. This is a good day to review your backup strategy. I thought I’d share a cloud backup experiment I’ve been running for 9-months. I hope you find it helpful. I needed a cloud service for my offsite backups… the two prominent services are BackBlaze … Read more