Geekin' 2014
Trying to make the best of my unwilling homebody-ness, I've taken the opportunity to do some upgrading of my implements of computing and music, and in this case, there's a lot of overlap. Last year I replaced the troublesome Onkyo receiver with, well, another Onkyo. I have to admit that the company treated me well, repairing the unit twice well outside of warranty at no cost to me. If I had to do it, it would've needed a board that costs about a grand. I got the latest model (TX-NR5010) because it fit a bit better into the overall use I wanted for the home theater, and the old 5007 will become the center of a second system downstairs. All I need to do is haul away a metric cubic shit-tonne of junk down there and reclaim the space. The studio setup got its final upgrade with the Mackie monitors and audio controller. That was years in the making, and I decided it was time to finish it off and begin making the best use of the equipment. A lot of time and a fair amount of money sent on the enjoyment of music. If it seems a bit sudden it's because I honestly feel I don't have many good years left to truly enjoy music as I know it. My hearing is slowly failing, and apparently as my body falls apart in other ways, the treatments for those ailments have a nasty side effect on my hearing. So, rather than suffer in silence, I will keep listening until I can no longer listen. I might go deaf next week, or it will be several years, but that part of my life will apparently have a soundtrack. In addition to satisfying my urges as a long-time audiophile and a (sadly, lapsed) musician by doing this at the homestead, Jeff and I will continue to head off to concerts, shows, performances of all sorts. It is so good for the soul, after all.
I've also taken on the needed upgrades for some of the computers and especially the rather involved network that ties it all together. A few years ago the LAN got upgraded to gigabit ethernet in order to handle the high-definition video and audio flying around the cables, and I eventually began running into problems as to where to keep all this digital goodness. I demoted my main server to file server duties, and today installed a Synology 8-bay NAS to handle both the backing up of the various PCs on the network as well as the main repository of the various media. I threw a pair of 4TB drives in it to start with, and it's running nicely. The NAS has a total of 4 gigabit LAN ports that can be aggregated for a fourfold increase in throughput. The main file server as well as my monster Xeon workstation have paired LAN ports, and I need to add another switch eventually to handle all the cables. I knew I should've gotten more than a 24-port switch. I will get another, similar switch and heap all the high-bandwidth stuff on it, and team two or three ports between switches as a trunk to handle the traffic. It should be able to handle 4K video without trouble. Beyond that, I doubt if I will need much more. Unless the thing becomes sentient and starts making demands, that is.
This weekend is special here in the Land o' Mayhem, and I'm gonna be a happy chappy with having a 4-day weekend with Jeff. It's Groundhog Day, after all, and we do some celebrating. I hope to make the best of it.
I've also taken on the needed upgrades for some of the computers and especially the rather involved network that ties it all together. A few years ago the LAN got upgraded to gigabit ethernet in order to handle the high-definition video and audio flying around the cables, and I eventually began running into problems as to where to keep all this digital goodness. I demoted my main server to file server duties, and today installed a Synology 8-bay NAS to handle both the backing up of the various PCs on the network as well as the main repository of the various media. I threw a pair of 4TB drives in it to start with, and it's running nicely. The NAS has a total of 4 gigabit LAN ports that can be aggregated for a fourfold increase in throughput. The main file server as well as my monster Xeon workstation have paired LAN ports, and I need to add another switch eventually to handle all the cables. I knew I should've gotten more than a 24-port switch. I will get another, similar switch and heap all the high-bandwidth stuff on it, and team two or three ports between switches as a trunk to handle the traffic. It should be able to handle 4K video without trouble. Beyond that, I doubt if I will need much more. Unless the thing becomes sentient and starts making demands, that is.
This weekend is special here in the Land o' Mayhem, and I'm gonna be a happy chappy with having a 4-day weekend with Jeff. It's Groundhog Day, after all, and we do some celebrating. I hope to make the best of it.