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By Johnny, September 5, 2011 1:07 am

Those that work with me or know about my weird obsession with backing up my data and building file storage solution servers will be glad to know that I’ve finally broke the the 1TB mark last month. I’ve finally decided to step up and build a big boy network attached storage (NAS) box. I actually considered buying a Drobo and popping a couple of drives and call it a day. But after helping a friend configure her Drobo, I found the software available for additional features being very lacking for my needs. It was also a pain in the a#$ to configure and relied on the fact that you need special Drobo client software to complete some of the that configuration.

Around the same time, I had helped my brother-in-law build his own NAS box with the extra machine that was lying around at my home. I decided to install FreeNAS 0.7.2 which I’ve played around briefly a few months back. The main reason I went with this version was that it had the ability for him to host movies, pictures, and music files using uPNP (Universal Plug N’ Play) so that he can stream his personal content from the NAS box to his PS3.

For my own purpose, I was thinking about replacing my current file server solution which consists of a Slackware 12.2 server which runs my Samba share for Windows, Fuppes for uPNP for my XBox 360, and LAMP server for my personal Wiki pages. The server contains a 20GB root drive, 250GB mirrored RAID 1 drives, and an externally attached 500GB mirrored RAID 1 drives. It is my primary backup server which serves up movies, photos, & music to the rest of my network. I’ve used up about 80% of my storage on this existing server so far so I think it was a perfect time to think about expanding out. With the possibility of using hardware that was more powerful, energy efficient, and quiet was very appealing.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to do a complete replace of the existing system. The software that I chose to run my NAS box is FreeNAS 8.0. This is the next generation of the software which is primarily built on the ZFS file system. ZFS is a fairly knew concept in which the software uses your hardware and create virtual devices and then device pools to manage your storage needs. It allows you to expand your storage needs similarly to how Drobo does it. This is a huge requirement for my next file server in which it needs to be expandable. I don’t want to go through the trouble of backing things up and replacing hardware and restoring from that backup. The downside of this software is that I lose functionality to share my media to my XBox 360 since uPNP was not available. I’ll also lose LAMP for my Wiki. The only way around this is to add my new build to my server farm of 2.

I carefully picked out my list of parts for the build. I started with four 2TB green drives from Western Digital (WD). I’m usually very hesitant in using WD as my drives but the years that I haven’t been keeping up, Seagate’s quality seem to have withered while WD has made great strides in the large capacity drives. From there I ordered the rest of my system which featured the following items:

• Asus E35M1-I micro ITX motherboard with a passively cooled AMD Dual Core E-350 processor
• 8GB G.Skill RipJaw 4GB x 2 Memory Kit
• Lian-Li PC-Q08 mini tower case which has 6 internal hard drive slots
• Antec 380W ATX power supply
• Verbatim 4GB Store ‘n’ Stay USB Drive

Stay tuned for Part 2 which will explain the build in detail.

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By Johnny, February 25, 2010 8:13 pm

So I attempted to start this post on February 8th but failed to continue putting some words around this. That was a few days after I bought an iPhone. I suppose posting back then would be a bit premature since I didn’t really had the opportunity to use this thing out in the wild. But now it’s been 3 weeks and this thing does rock.

Let’s put this in the context of a car-free-bicycling-riding bachelor. The app that I use most frequently is the Maps application. Wherever I am, I’ve been able to find my way back home or to my destination by pulling up directions on the Maps app. I use this thing religiously to find my way on the Metro, in a car, or on a ride out.

I made it a point to use my Google Voice number when I bought an iPhone. Having this number allows me filter my calls based on a schedule during the week or weekends. During the week at 9am – 6:30pm it will ring my work cell and work phone. From 6:30pm – 9am it will ring my iPhone. Then during the weekends, it will ring my iPhone only. If you tried to visit Google Voice from an iPhone it transforms the site to a web application where you can save to your iPhone dock. The web app let’s you text and call anybody in your contacts. You can have your text sent to your Gmail account as well so you can respond as an email. Once a text is forwarded from Google Voice to your phone, you can simply reply to the unique number. Get this, it will text the originator of the text with your Google Voice number even though you’re texting to this other number. What this means is you don’t need to maintain a conversation within the Google Voice app. You can start it there and continue by other means.

I use the Weather Channel app which gives me an expanded weather report compared to the default Weather app that came with the iPhone. I check this app every morning so I know what to expect.

Other apps I use frequently are Pandora for music discoveries, Yelp for reviews, IMDB for the times I need to know entertainment trivia, NPR News for news programs, Twitterrific to stay in touch 140 characters at a time, Flickr for access to my photos at all time, ESPN for news on my favorite sports teams, Mint to help keep track of my finances, and Words with Friends for ongoing games with friends and family.

It’s my complete all-in-one lifestyle device. I can’t believe I lived so long without one. Alright enough gushing but here’s a video I took with the phone which outlines why it is impossible to swallow cinnamon powder.

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By Johnny, September 11, 2009 4:05 pm

This past weekend I decided that I needed to take another big step in the future car-free lifestyle. I went out and bought me a FreeRadical & Longtail Kit by Xtracycle from Flying-Pigeon LA. This would convert my current commuter bike to a longtail bike. Essentially my bike becomes a Sports Utility Bike (S.U.B.) in which I can haul can carry load up to 200lbs. Impressive huh?

The kit sat in my garage until this Wednesday when I decided to begin working on my conversion. In the process, I rip apart my current commuter bike, a 1997 Specialized Rockhopper. I removed the rear brakes, derailleur, chain, rear rack, wheel, and rear fender.

I was ready to add the FreeRadical on. The instruction called for the installation to happen upside down first so I can mount it easier. The thing to note about this product is that they have very creative names for some of the parts. For example, there’s a “Boss Hog”. That’s the part that holds your bike’s rear drop out in place. Very unique.

After the FreeRadical was mounted I was told to install the derailleur and rear brakes back. That wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was re-cabling the rear brakes and rear derailleurs. Adding the FreeRad essentially stretches your bike. The brakes was pretty easy but the derailleur was a struggle. I had issues getting it out of my grip shifter and installing it back into place. The cables started to come undone in the process which caused lots of painful pricks to my fingers. Let’s just say they are very tender at the moment. Imagine getting a needle stuck into your thumb. Yes, painful. The worse part was that I ran out of the cable because I had kept on cutting the cable to make it more “neat”.

It was also a pain to get the handlebar grip off but to do it three time was tiring. Luckily I learned that a little bit of Simple Green on the inside makes it slides on and off nicely. I had to postpone the finish one more day so that I can buy longer cable, cable housing, and some grease for the grip shift (since I started wiping that away while figuring how assemble it again).

Nevertheless, I continued with my build Thursday night and got all the cabling corrected. I proceeded to tune my derailleurs. Which was surprisingly easy compared to the ordeal I had gone through. The tough thing last night was attaching the extended chain together. I had to devise a way to hold the derailleur arm so that it gave me enough slack to connect the chains together. Took me a good hour to get the chained hooked in.

I assembled the rear fender and added the Longtail kit. Attached the snap deck and the secured the bags securely to the Vbars. Pretty easy compared to what I had gone through earlier. I installed the kickstand and oiled the chain. I was pretty proud of my construction. Unfortunately I couldn’t take it out for a spin because by the time I was done, it was 1 in the morning and I was exhausted.

I couldn’t wait to check out the ride this morning so I took it in to work. Friday’s are usually my “fixie” day (Fixie Friday) but I’ve been riding the fixie into work Wednesday and Thursday so I was pretty much done with that plus I wanted to really ride this beast I put together.

This rides very well with the center of gravity moved a little further back. The bike now absorbs shock a lot better than before and the ride is a bit more comfortable. Why I did notice is that the chain started slapping the frame. I’ll have to find a way to protect the frame and may have some Teflon tape that my co-worker is willing to let me use. He’s got a Xtracycle as well and said it worked very well for his bike. I’ve gone out a few times today to meetings and can’t help but admire what I built every time I walk by it. I can’t wait to get back on the seat and ride it home today/tonight. One small build for myself but one big step towards one less car on the road.

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By Johnny, December 28, 2008 11:10 pm

I just got back from helping my sister move and had to post on an amazing invention that caught my attention a few weeks ago. When my new washer and dryer was delivered, I noticed that the delivery guys had these straps they used to move the washer and dryer. They easily moved both items in a matter of minutes without much struggle. I was so impressed I went online the next day to see if I can buy myself a pair. Upon further research, I found that people were complaining that the arm straps are bad for moving things up and down stairs. Through the magic of Amazon’s related item query, it pointed me to the Shoulder Dolly. This was supposedly a better version in which 2 movers straps on a harness and use a single strap to lift a heavy item using their legs and shoulder. I HAD TO HAVE IT!

With my Amazon credit I ordered one and finally had the opportunity to use it today. There was a bit of skepticism in the part the moving party but I was able to convince a friend of my sister to help me move the refrigerator down a flight of stairs. Lifting the thing was a amazing. But when it came time to bring it downstairs, we struggled a bit. The person going down the stairs had the bulk of the weigh on him. We then continued moving both washer and dryer which was much more successful. Especially the dryer since that was light. We easily moved it down the stairs without any struggles. It was a matter of adjusting the straps properly so that item was evenly distributed and high enough off the ground so it doesn’t interfere with the steps. My dad even asked for it when we were moving the heavy items out of the truck! Unfortunately, I didn’t bring it because we had a heavy duty dolly and the place we moved to had no stairs.

Check out their website for more information. This will certainly come in handy when I get into woodworking (hopefully). And now an instructional video to go over how to really use the thing.

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By Johnny, June 30, 2008 11:00 pm

As I was sitting on the train today I was staring out in darkness and began to reflect what’s been happening in my life the last couple of months. I’m at a completely different phase in my life right now compared to last year. First of all, I’m sitting on a train to work! I’m sure I never thought I’d be doing this a year ago. I’m actually happy that I am doing this to help be more green and not contribute in the demise of our environment.

Last year, I was playing poker on a weekly basis. Now we’re playing once every 3 months as it seems. I miss the face time to BS with the friends and catch up. I got to do that 2 weekends ago when all of our schedules allowed it.

I’m 10lbs lighter than I was a year ago. I’m more active and enjoy running and biking this year. Last year, my bike was sitting in the garage collecting dust. I was coming with all sorts of excuses not to go to the gym. It was not until the blood results that came in on my annual check-up to wake my lazy ass up. I’ve already run 2 5K back-to-back weekends. I will be participating in my first sprint triathlon relay this year and hopefully the LA marathon next year. I’ve added 2 more bicycles to encourage myself to ride them. And ride them, I do. This is one trend I don’t want to forget.

This year we’ve been actively searching for a new home for my family. Unfortunately nothing has turned up and I may have to look for property for myself. I can’t help it when my folks are so picky about all the places we’ve seen. My second offer to potentially the last house of our search has been submitted. It’ll take a miracle for the seller to accept the offer but I guess we’ll see.

I’m in this weird purging phase. My motorcycle is listed on Craigslist still. I’ve had people who were interested inquire about it but no formidable offers that I can entertain. Lots of people want to trade me for another bike and even a boat. That does nothing to someone who doesn’t know how to swim. I’m also playing with the idea of selling my trusty car and get a more fuel efficient Honda Fit. I love the fact that you can carry crap in such a compact vehicle. Maybe after I buy my first property.

I’ve lost interest in gaming from last year. Yes I still play my XBox but it’s still the same game, NBA 2K8. I love that game!

In the work front, things aren’t looking so good. I’ve inherited more applications to handle and it’s starting to stress me out. The overall company politics is making it harder and harder for me to do my job. It’s only a matter of time where grinning and bearing won’t work. Until that time, I can only keep my head up and work through this tough time.

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By Johnny, June 1, 2008 5:50 pm

I’m finally done with my fixed gear conversion of a Nishiki International road bike. I’m not going to lie and tell you that this was close to even being a cheap ordeal. Here’s the list costs that was necessary for this complete build:

• 19 teeth cog and new bicycle chain = $48.71
• Bar tape & 3 inner tubes (1 for spare) = $19.78
• Nitto bullhorn handlebar = $54.89
• 2 Panaracer Strada Pro tires, front brake pad , and White Lightening chain lube = $80.18
• 2 rim tape = $8.64
• White Specialized Alias 143 seat & brake cable = $72.09
• Spray paint & electric tape (extra bar tape) = $5.80
• Cyclocomputer, front & rear lights, wedge bag, mini pump, and miscellaneous items = $149.32
• Donations for stand time @ Bike Oven = $65.00

Grand Total = $504.41

I guess I could have went real cheap and buy the plain black tires with no puncture protection or no red stripe sidewall or even gone with a bulky wired cyclocomputer or big no name front lights. This bike, in my opinion, deserved a better assortment of accessories. Hence the expensive bill.

I did gain 3 things from all this:

1. Being comfortable with taking bikes apart and working on it.
2. Owning a kick ass fixed gear bike to ride.
3. Fixed gear riding is sooo different than regular free gear riding.

Converting the bike felt like when I first got into computers in college. I was obsessed and was laser focused on the task. I was thinking about the bike when I wasn’t around it. And when I was working on it, I felt at peace. The time working on it went by very quick. I think I’m going to actively volunteer at the Bike Oven to learn and work on bicycling. This is so fun that I’m actually considering selling my motorcycle so I can use that to buy a very nice road bike. Yes, I am that into it.

Here’s the before picture of the bike when I picked it up:

Here is the finished conversion with new white toe clips and all.

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By Johnny, January 30, 2008 12:13 am

The morning when Apple announced that they were going to release the MacBook Air, I came across a couple of comments on Gizmodo‘s site where people were saying that you can buy 5 EEEPC. What the hell was a EEEPC? After a brief search, I found 2 sites that was interesting. First, the official Asus EEEPC site which was the sales site for this little machine. The second site was the EEEUser site. This was the unofficial fan site. After reading about it, I found myself compelled to purchase one. I checked Amazon and saw that they sold this wonderful machine. I quickly ordered one with a 8GB SDHC memory card for extra storage.

I received it this past weekend and have been carrying this little machine around. It runs a Xandros Linux operating system. The systems is very straight-forward and easy to use. It’s perfect for on the go computing. I just need something to jump onto the Internet or small tasks like taking notes wherever I go. It’s tiny and unobtrusive. Boots up really fast from a cold shutdown. One complaint I have is that it gets hot which then kicks off the somewhat noisy fan. Battery life could be better since this thing doesn’t use your standard hard drive. It uses a 4GB Solid State Drive (no moving parts). The folks over at the EEEUser site have been doing alot of hacking to their system. I think I’m fine with the default OS installation. I thought I was wanting a full-blown Linux OS but this interface from Xandros is very useful and I don’t need anything more than what is offered there.

This thing isn’t going to win any computing race. But when you think about the purpose of this machine, it does the basics at a quarter of the price of something similar in size. Don’t expect to buy this to be your primary machine. The screen is too small and it doesn’t have enough juice to be doing heavy lifting like image manipulation, video editing, or even documentation. But for the times when you just need a machine to quickly get onto the web or jot down a quick note, this is perfect. So for those who can’t afford a MacBook Air but would like a portable system, I ask you to consider this.

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By Johnny, November 18, 2007 3:01 am

So its been over a month of using my Mac Mini. It’s been a good experience. I find myself missing the Expose feature whenever I’m on my PC now. I bought Leopard but have resisted upgrading until all the kinks are worked out. So for now I’m using Tiger. I ended up ordering a 2GB RAM upgrade. I finally got the memory today and did the upgrade. The process wasn’t too bad. Except the part where I had to pry open the cover of the system using a putty knife. I was convinced that I must have broken something but luckily I didn’t. Maybe a little scratches here and there. But nothing too bad. Everything was documented on the 123macmini.com site where they had people making videos on how to dissect the little machine.

The upgrade was definitely worth it. Now I can run Parallels and other applications without any hiccups. The Parallels Windows instance loads up much faster now that I’ve allocated 1GB of RAM for the Virtual Machine. I must admit, this has been a pleasant experience using my Mac. Adding this much memory has made this machine shine. Things not only “just work”, they work responsively too. Let’s just say my next laptop will definitely be a MacBook Pro of some sort.

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By Johnny, October 20, 2007 1:16 am

So I find on the Internet that Apple recently released a video tour of the next Mac OSX operating system, Leopard. I have to tell ya. Seeing someone using some of those features makes me want that new operating system much sooner than the October 26th release date. Don’t know what it is. It’s like being brain-washed by the company. I can’t wait to use features like “Time-Machine” for back-ups and “Spaces” for desktop management (similar to many Linux GUI interface).

I found myself perusing their website for more of these videos and saw one for iLife. OMG, this was a good one. I was almost going to dismiss the entire iLife application to be something cool and may one day use it. But after watching this video, I wanted to jump on and begin managing my pictures better with iPhoto. The video showed the basics of using the application and got me up and running. So tonight I spent my time importing all my pictures into iPhoto. I have to say the software is very well thought out. I mean I imported an entire folder of albums and it knew that each folder was an album for a particular event and automatically created “Events” for each sets of folders. Amazing to say the least. I think I’m finally getting why Apple products are such fan favorites. For example, things like knowing when to turn on and off when you insert and remove your headphones on your iPod is awesome! They really thought about their products before they even begin building it. That attention to details and making everything so damn easy to use, really wins over demanding users like myself. It’s so hard to not want to use an Apple system now. I find myself missing things like Expose when I’m on the PC. Damn you Apple for brain-washing me!

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By Johnny, October 12, 2007 4:15 pm

My free time has been completely consumed with 3 things this week.

1. Radiohead‘s In Rainbows album
2. My new Mac Mini
3. My new Uninterruptible Power Supply

I did get some Halo 3 in the mix but I must digress. In Rainbows has been playing non-stop on my work computers and my iPod. The more I listen to this album, the more I love it. Yes that’s right, love it! I find myself looking forward to Jigsaw Falling Into Places everytime the album loops around. I still haven’t decided if this is top 3 of my RH albums. It’s so hard because the more you listen to it, the more you enjoy an album. This happened to Amnesiac and Kid A. I didn’t like those album at first but when I started to listen to them more and more, it grew on me. In my opinion In Rainbows is another masterpiece.

I used the hell out of my Mac Mini this week. It’s been on 5 days straight. I’ve been making it my own by installing various freeware and testing out Parallels. I got my laptop’s WinXP loaded on my my Mac Mini. Only thing left is to get an activation key from Microsoft. My iTunes is setup similar to my PC but I don’t think I’m going to reformat my iPod with the Mac. The PC has all the interesting historical data like the star ratings and the times I’ve played a song. It’s so stupid how little things like that makes such a good experience in using an iPod. Moving it over to the Mac is a cumbersome task. My entire library is on my Linux fileserver.

I also had to replace my UPS this weekend. I got it setup but was interested in getting it to shutdown my server in the event of a power failure. The model I got was an APC BACK UPS XS 900. It came with software for Macs and PCs. Unfortunately none for Linux. I found out that there is an open-source solution called apcupsd. It basically are scripts that allows you to do shutdowns for APC branded UPS. I also found that people have used my UPS with this software solution successfully. I installed the source code and compiled it. Everything is working fine, I think. I’m in the middle of running various tests. So far it passed the few early tests. I need to simulate a complete power failure and see if it shuts down my server. May not sound fun to you but gobs of fun for a geek like me.