Using

I don’t pay much attention to the phone market unless I’m actually in the market for a new phone. I see the odd new model pop up on the usual news and social media feeds, but there just doesn’t seem to be much beyond the annual and incremental updates from major players. Or maybe it’s just me. One company I did take notice of ‘out of cycle’ was Nothing in 2023. They’re a relatively young design company founded in 2021 and based out of London and who contract out their manufacturing to China; also they don’t just do phones, but also earbuds (which was their first product) and now smart watches. ...

This page covers what electronic devices, equipment and software I’m running right now. Time since last update: 6 months. What’s New? After the relatively large reshuffle of the last update, there’s only a few changes this time but one is quite telling, albeit service related. After over 15 years with Pair Networks hosting, I’ve moved to Kualo.com. Pair have been great, no issues with their services. However, this month they restructured their product offerings, meaning that for my usage case, my monthly bill would have tripled. Everyone needs to make a profit but this is a small hobby for me and the increased fees would have pushed the ROI a bit over budget. I looked around and decided on two things: I wanted a greener, eco friendly host and if possible I wanted something European based. ...

After over 15 years, I’ve moved my three websites and all of my email away from Pair Networks. Their new home is over at Kualo Hosting! Why move? Well, Pair was purchased about 8 months ago and earlier this month they announced a restructuring of their product range and the change which impacted me was that they seperated out the email portion of the shared hosting package and would begin to charge for that seperately, whilst keeping the hosting portion at the same rates, just sans email. ...

Desktop Linux This is going to be a bit of an odd post. If you go back through brightblack.net for a while, there’d be a lot of hits on the term ‘Linux’. I’ve been a keen Linux and other open source user since the mid-1990s due to the rather unsexy reason that I couldn’t afford Windows and other pay-for software at the time. I’m actually writing another post on my history with Linux, so I’m not going to rehash that here. I’m sure I’ll post that in the next decade or two. ...

This page covers what electronic devices, equipment and software I’m running right now. Time since last update: 9 months. What’s New? Honestly, after almost a year, not much new stuff is the answer! I just don’t have much need for new things, so most of this is replacing aging parts, and adding capacity. After almost 13 years, I replaced the old Ivy Bridge era Intel i5 3470 in the Linux archive server. The upgrade was to a 65W Ryzen 5 5500GT - that’s minus 12W from the Intel i5 predecessor. The 5500GT also has a built in GPU - something of a rarity in the 5000 series. Went for the ASRock Steel Legend mobo as it has decent capacitors, decent power phasing and 2 x PCI x16 slots. Put in 16GB of Team DDR4 RAM. Added in an Intel I225-V (B3 Stepping) based NIC from Kuroutoshikou for better throughput and WoL support. Upgraded the archive server from Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS to 24.04 LTS. Added yet another drive to the desktop PC - a Crucial T500 M.2 - so it’s back to being a dual boot Windows / Linux machine - but mainly Linux. Replaced the battery in the Dell XPS 13 after over 6 years. Bought a Meta Quest 3 VR headset. Hardware Desktop PC My Frankenstein’s monster of a desktop box is mainly for audio and video editing, encoding, gaming and some work. It generally gets updated piecemeal. ...

The Archive Server Ah, the unsung hero of my home setup yet I’m not sure I’ve not posted on it in over a decade. For a long time I’ve had a machine for storing backups and files I just don’t need on my laptop or main desktop and so I called it an ‘archive server’. That means its main job is being storage really. For a long time it’s been made from retired desktop parts, but it came to the point where the the current incarnation was using up to 13 year old parts, and I have no real need for new desktop parts, so there was nothing new coming down the line. ...

This page covers what electronic devices, equipment and software I’m running right now. What’s New? Time since last update: 6 months. Honestly, not much has changed! I installed a new power supply into the archive server, removing an 11 year old 450W Antec unit, and replacing it with a new Fractal Design 550W unit, so slightly more capable. I’d still recommend Antec units. Upgraded the Windows desktop machine to Windows 11. Windows 10 still has a year till EOL, but I may as well cut over now since you can move the Start menu from the middle to the left of the taskbar again, which I found a bit cluttered and distracting last time I tried it. Hardware Windows Desktop PC My Frankenstein’s monster of a Windows box is mainly for audio and video editing, encoding, gaming and some work. It generally gets updated piecemeal. ...

This page covers what electronic devices, equipment and software I’m running right now. What’s New? Time since last update: 6 months I added a new camera lens - a 7artisans 60mm MK. II manual focus macro lens. I wanted to play with a macro lens for a while as I’ve never had a dedicated macro lens before. It’s been a lot of fun. On the archive server, converted the single remaining ZFS mirror pool of disks to a btrfs mirror. Functionality-wise for my use case there’s very little difference between the two systems, but it’s easier to just remember one set of maintenance tools than two! I actually upgraded my Windows desktop GPU! After 7 years with the a Zotac GTX 1060, I went for the new RTX 4060 from nVidia via ASUS. It’s mainly to play a few older games better at 1440p (as most gaming is done on the PS5) and to add a little more pep to video editing and some other grunt work the machine is often used for - and it’s been a huge improvement there. After 5 valiant years, my GoPro 7 finally died - a combination of a small water leak and a broken on/off button, meaning it powers up and down as it wants. Sad to see it go. I get a lot out of my action cams, so the replacement is the DJI Osmo Action 4 since I felt like a change from GoPro, and it has a bigger sensor for low light with front and back touch screens, magnetic mounting blah blah. I picked up a GMKtec NucBox 5 on sale (it’s an older model) to replace the Pi 1 and 2 for Syncthing and Pi-Hole duties. I need the Pis for some other projects. Hardware Windows Desktop PC My Frankenstein’s monster of a Windows box is mainly for audio and video editing, encoding, gaming and some work, and generally gets updated piecemeal. ...

This page covers what electronic devices, equipment and software I’m running right now. What’s New? A minor update - a new motherboard in the Windows machine. Also, I got a PS5, admittedly 2 years afer its launch, but I think it was two years before I got the PS4 too. Also, I moved from SpiderOak to iDrive for backups. I was happy with SpiderOak, but the product has been in maintenance mode for 3 years, and is no longer on the front page of the company’s website, so that’s likely a hint to move on, and so far iDrive has worked well for both Linux and Windows. ...

This page covers what electronic devices, equipment and software I’m running right now. What’s New? It’s been 9 months since my last ‘Currently Using’ update and this one is largely incremental. I just haven’t really needed to buy anything or make any major changes - though I’m expecting to have to make a few hardware replacements in 2023 as some of my kit hits the decade mark! The only real hardware change was to the SSD on my archive server. The old one was a 9.5 year old Samsung 840, only 120GB, and in itself was fine, but I was increasingly using it for a few different things on the machine itself, aside from OS, with some extra logging and config backups and just the age was beginning to make me nervous - even for an SSD. The new drive is another Samsung, but it’s gone from an 840 to an 870 EVO. I also updated the OS from Ubuntu Server 20.04.03 to 22.04.01. ...