I recently had two sub three year old 120GB hard drives fail at home. This was a real pain for me so I researched some solutions that give me large network attached storage (NAS) with some redundancy and management features like backup etc. My solution was the Infrant Technologies ReadyNAS NV. This unit features:

• 4 lockable hot-swappable SATA disk trays
• RAID 0/1/5
• Programmable backup button
• One USB 2.0 port in front, two in back
• Server-rated power supply
• Low power consumption and silent operation
• Gigabit Ethernet with Jumbo frame support
• print server

So far I have found this unit great. I am currently running it with 2x SAMSUNG 300GB drives which are currently good value for money. I will eventually, as I can afford it and need the storage, increase the number of drives to 4. I am running the NAS using a system called X-RAID which dynamically expands the volume and data onto new disks and migrates from RAID 0 to 1 to 5. You can even sequentially replace each disk with larger ones and the NAS will migrate over to the larger disks.

I looked into some DIY options but these all involved having old pc's lying around and no doubt a fair amount of my time I now don't have. A DIY NAS solution is cheaper in terms of hardware cost, but this appliance solution is really small (think toaster size) and requires little setup time and gives you the confidence that comes with a well designed and tested product like this.

As broadband, home media servers, video editing/storage and hard drive failures become more common, I see the home NAS market picking up in the next year.

- Gabe

I bought Dee and Zavier home from hospital yesterday. Dee has been recovering well and was keen to get Zavier used to life at home. We gave Zavier his first bath today which he didnt seem to mind too much. Zavier is keeping rock'n'roll hours where he seems to be more awake at night than day, but that said he sleeps up to six hours between feeds so far which is good. We have Dee's mum Angela staying with us helping out which has been really good easing us into parenthood.

-Gabe

What a huge night and day it has been for us. Zavier Laird Smith was finally born by c-section at 12:05pm today after Dee spent a long night in labour the night before. Zavier weighed in at 8lbs which is a healthy size and I am still amazed how little Dee was able to carry him around for soo long during the pregnancy. Zavier came included with a good 3-4cm of bonus blond/brown hair and he has blue/brown eyes currently. Zavier seems to be very chilled out so far crying very little yet feeding well with mum and oh yeah doing a LOT of sleeping. I have been absolutely blown away by the whole process and the strong emotions it has brought out for me. Dee has been a real trooper and I have nothing but complete respect and admiration for what she has been through. Dee is recovering from surgery and resting up in Wellington hospital for good few days with with our little Zavier. I am going to catch up on a nights missing sleep. Sorry to all who I haven't contacted in person yet. Please check out some photos of Zavier here in the mean time  and please tell everyone who you think would like to know.

One very extremely proud dad - Gabe

Hi all, here is a baby update. Zavier is currently five days overdue so we will be going into hospital tomorrow night (Sunday 16th July) to start an induced labour process. So all going well, we should have Zavier born some time Mon or Tues next week. We are super excited about his arrival. Expect a blog update in the next few days with more news. I am taking a couple of weeks off work to get used to the whole family of 3 thing and supporting Dee. Anyway time for my last decent nights sleep for a while.....

- Gabe

Over the last weekend, I installed the Ubuntu 6.06 distribution of Linux on one of my old PIII laptops.

In short I must say I am really impressed with how polished Ubuntu has become for a free OS. I am treating this as a linux learning challenge for me to get to know linux a bit better. I thought what better than to install it on machine that I use for mainly web browsing and email while watching TV (how sad ).

The base install went fine but getting my DLink DWL-G650 Wifi card working turned out to be an interesting eye opener for how google-support (searching forums and web sites) works when you have linux. The shear range of solutions from people with similar hardware, OS, versions and problems ranged from re-compiling kernels right through to installing different wifi network stacks and everything else in between. Ubuntu was recognising my card but was unable to configure it to work on my network properly. It turned out all I needed to do was run this script:

sudo ifconfig ath0 up
sudo iwlist ath0 scan
sudo iwconfig ath0 key [key goes here]
sudo iwpriv ath0 authmode 2
sudo iwconfig ath0 essid "[SSID here]"
sudo dhclient ath0


I am impressed with how committed the linux community is to getting things to work and helping each other but I think the challenge for them is making this easy for your average joe who just wants his computer and hardware to work without much hassle. It seems to be a bit of minefield of solutions and you constantly have to check the solutions are for the same hardware, chip set, linux distribution, version, CPU etc. That said, I must admit the enjoyment of getting it working is increased when you have to hack around a bit!!

Anyway Ubuntu is definitely worth a look if you are Linux curious and running the LiveCD (same as the installer) is well worth a look.

-Gabe

Intergen are hiring. If you want to talk to me about this, please feel free to contact me on gabriel.smith@inNOterSPAMgen.co.nz if you are interested.

-Gabe

Well as most of you will know Dee and I are expecting our about to be released, baby boy Zavier any time around now. The due date is the 10th July 2006 but he doesn't seem to be in any hurry so far. We think it might be the cold weather that is keeping him from coming out  ! At this stage his delivery will be induced by the 17th of July at the latest so watch this space for any news or updates. We are looking forward to him arriving but it does feel like being held in holding pattern like when about to land at an airport. Dee is well and keeping active.

-Gabe

After a bit of time to think and research after the initial excitement of the Freeview announcement last week, I have the following predictions on Freeview and HDTV in New Zealand:

• Freeview set top boxes will be standard definition (MPEG 2, DVD like quality) only initially due the pure cost of the units. HDTV capable receivers are still pretty expensive right now. I will try and get this confirmed from Freeview New Zealand (currently I am questioning TVNZ on Freeviews behalf).
  
• HDTV content and HDTV capable set top boxes will arrive after (probably at least a year after) the initial release of Freeview in New Zealand.
• The introduction of HDTV Freeview in New Zealand will most likely follow the standards being trialled in the UK right now by the BBC which use MPEG4 with H.264.
• Sky New Zealand will no doubt introduce HDTV Sky before Freeview HDTV in a defensive move to keep subscribers.
  

Some interesting links:
Freeview set top boxes in the UK http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/freeviewreceivers.html
HDTV UK FAQ http://www.burnyourbonus.co.uk/hdtv-faq/faq1.html
New Zealand and Aussie Satellite TV info http://www.apsattv.com/

Things to think about:

• What sort of PVR will eventually replace my Tivo? Vista Media Centre with HDTV support maybe? A proprietary HDTV PVR set top box? Should I still use my Tivo with SD Freeview?
• Will Sky open up there HDTV service to third party PVR solutions? Probably not I would say but it sounds like this might be possible in the UK with SD Sky see http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/onyourpc.html.

I am keen to get a PC DVB-S card and start having a play with receiving the current TVNZ/Freeview trial service on the B1 satellite. If the budget can stretch far enough, I might try and get a MPEG4 H.264 capable card in preparation for HDTV in the future.

I will let you all know how this goes...

- Gabe