Happy 2️⃣ 0️⃣2️⃣ 2️⃣ to the Micro.blog fam! Some have already ‘arrived’. We have another 6 hours 15 minutes to go. 🎉 🎊
We’ve long relied on Keurig but on Christmas I surprised the family with a Ninja® DualBrew Pro Specialty Coffee System. It has been a huge success. Quick K cup coffee when we want as well as espresso drinks that turn out great. Even the teenager loves it.
We enjoyed our short roadtrip to visit relatives we hadn’t seen for a few years. But I have to admit we are going to feel nervous the next 3 days of possible incubation of the virus. Here’s to hoping we manage to start 2021 without symptoms (we are fully vaccinated). 🤞
It’s rather apparent rain has been lacking for over a month. Still a nice view though.
Merry Christmas all! 🎄 I’m busying myself with a few projects to help pass the time on this quiet Christmas eve. After today we’ll be busy with opening presents, sharing a Christmas meal, and a brief trip to see some relatives for the first time in a couple of years.
Having inadvertently triggered a ned to udpate my weather system to the newest Weewx, I decided to re-skin the associated web site. You can click here to see current conditions, forecast, records etc.
Today’s XKCD comic on interpreting Rapid Covid Tests gave me a very good, and welcomed, chuckle.
One of my Raspberry Pi Zeros collects data from our weather station using weewx which puts it in a database and also provides a web interface for reporting. I wanted to install a new package today but that required updating other packages which unbeknownst to me would update weewx to a major new version requiring python 3 which broke all kinds of things. A great example of something seemingly simple turns into a major project.
Current thankless task akin to watching paint dry: finally getting around to using my iMac to securely erase a HD that was formerly in my NAS but started having sector errors.
I have an ancient Thermaltake disk docking station I keep around just for this task. Unfortunately mine is USB 2 so slowwwww.
I’ve made the switch to Arq Backup for all devices (Mac, Windows, NAS, and Raspberry Pi) and all 3-2-1 destinations (Local NAS, Cloud and Offline Disk). I’m really pleased to have one backup tool “to rule them all”.
I started using Arq 5 a couple of years ago to do low-cost offsite backups to Amazon’s AWS Glacier storage. It was much cheaper than a service like Backblaze since I needed to run on multiple computers. Over that time period Arq proved to be stable and reliable.
Recently I moved some data-oriented workloads from my NAS to Raspberry Pi’s. This triggered a look at how to include Pi’s in my backup plans and, one thing leading to another as it does, I reviewed my whole backup strategy. As I started documenting my goals for backups and the possible tools/solutions I could use I saw how Arq’s v7 backup tool could greatly simplify my life (well my backup life at least).
Arq’s software can backup to a crap-ton (technical word) of online services including Amazon Drive, AWS, Backblaze B2, Dropbox and OneDrive to name a few. Arq can also backup to local HD/SSD as well as NAS devices. When I set up AWS Glacier a couple of years ago it was a bit daunting and I have to admit I’ve found monitoring AWS usage to be rather opaque.
To advance my effort to simplify backups I decided to adopt Arq Premium which includes two key features in the annual fee: a license good for 5 computers and a very easy to use 1 TB of their own cloud storage (additional costs charged at a reasonable amount per GB). N.B. They also offer their software on a license basis without an annual fee with no Cloud storage included i.e. a “bring your own storage” approach.
From a design standpoint I decided to make my iMac the primary hub. In addition to running its own 3–2-1 backups it backs up the Raspberry Pi’s as well as selected portions of my NAS using Arq tasks that automatically mount those devices’ drives. The other Macs and Window devices independently run their own 3-2-1 backups using Arq.
Setting up the Arq tasks was straightforward. Over the course of my research and implementation I contacted support with questions and she very responsive and accurate in her answers. Since I never include operating system files or applications I was pleased with how much fit within the 1TB included storage amount even though my backups do include a large library of photos as well as our movie library. I don’t know that I’ll ever need more than 1TB in spite of backing up the key data from multiple devices. I think Arq’s de-dup and compression algorithms work well.
Overall I feel I made the right decision. If I didn’t already have a few years experience with Arq 5 I probably would have taken a slower approach. But jumping in with both feet feels right and the result is more reliable backups and more convenience for me in checking on status.
I seem to be in the mood to tinker. After moving Plex a few days ago, today I started switching to Arq for both local and cloud/offsite backups. I like that I can now use one tool for both destinations and on both Macs and Windows machines.
My initial tests of Plex on a Pi4 went well so I installed Docker and a few helper tools today. Now I’ve started one of several long tasks to copy video from my NAS to a USB drive on the Pi. More testing tomorrow.
I have a Synology NAS I’m quite happy with. In spite of this I decided to start tinkering with running Plex on a spare Pi 4 now that I have a combi heatsink/case for it. A simple stream test worked fine. Tomorrow hopefully I can configure it more properly with an external HD.
An Old Fashioned snowman 🍹 😉
It just dawned on me that in the past couple of weeks running errands I have not seen a single Christmas tree lot 🎄Guess all the trucks are busy with other goods.
Questionable decision? I just noticed that when I decorated I put this snowman right next to my Hakko soldering iron… ⛄️ 🤷🏽♂️
Photo of a nice summer thunderstorm. Only thing is it’s December… ⛈
Wikipedia prevented me from logging in saying my IP address range was blocked. I was confused because the IP was not my public IP. After research I found the IP address range was part of Apple’s ‘iCloud Private Relay’ feature which I use and like. So I sent a query to Wikipedia…
I’ve signed up for several MB based newsletters today. I think most everyone had a newsletter via another service but I never bothered to sign up. I like the low friction of the MB approach. I wonder if there will be a ‘directory’ of MB users with newsletters?
Thanks @manton!
For any who enjoy maker projects, programming, electronics, the IoT or etc I highly recommend Andreas’s Youtube channel. He has a ton of experience and a real knack for explaining things in well edited and intentionally shorter videos.
Success! After yesterday’s abject failure we succeeded in making dinner rolls from scratch today. Our first ever bread-type effort. They were a big hit - the rack was full a few minutes ago! We’re looking forward to more and invested in a stand mixer afterwards. 🍞
We decided to try making some dinner rolls from scratch today. It did not go well. Apparently we murdered our yeast in the process. Yet we survived to try another day.
A hazy sun but pretty sky this morning.
What do folks use to do simple video editing on an iPhone? We’re putting together a few videos of 10-15 minutes comprised of a few clips and iMovie is not handling it well.
I’ve never finished shopping for my wife’s Christmas gifts this early to say nothing of getting them all wrapped. I do enjoy my santa role.🎄🤶
Pictured: detrius of the wrapping in progress
