Herb garden

The grocer was selling some herb plants so BB & I bought some oregano and thyme with a view to having an indoor herb garden.  Here's what we have so far:

Bottom planter with some thyme and oregano.  We'll see how it does.  Upper tray is some failed thyme.

Titan Tales

Titan is a great addition to our family.  Here are some recent photos.

Titan likes attention, never mind if pub Bandit is in the way!  Some times he's a bit jealous.  Fortunately, the pugs don't seem to mind.

All dogs like couches but Titan seems to take relaxing to a whole new level.

Fire Comcast TV - 2TB disk added

I've been using a 1TB USB disk to store recorded video.  It would unmount from time to time for no apparent reason.  I replaced it with a 2TB internal drive.  No more unmounts.

While everything worked OK, deletes took rather a long time.  A bit of investigation revealed with the large disk have 4KB sectors and that there is an issue with logical-physical sector alignment.  There's more here http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-4kb-sector-disks/.  So I used parted to repartition and properly align as follows:

# parted /dev/sdX
# Set units to sectors (in this case 512B):
(parted) unit s

(parted) rm
Partition number? 1

(parted) print
Model: ATA WDC WD15EARS-00Z (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 2930277168s
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start  End  Size  File system  Name  Flags

(parted) mkpart
Partition name?  []?
File system type?  [ext2]?
Start? 64
End? -1
Warning: You requested a partition from 64s to 2930277167s.
The closest location we can manage is 64s to 2930277134s.
Is this still acceptable to you?
Yes/No? Yes

(parted) print
Model: ATA WDC WD15EARS-00Z (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 2930277168s
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start  End          Size         File system  Name  Flags
 1      64s    2930277134s  2930277071s

(parted) quit
Information: You may need to update /etc/fstab.

All is now VERY well with much improved performance.

With the new 2 TB disk there are no space issues (1 TB was occasionally a bit tight).

Between OTA recordings from MythTV, XBMC internet content, Net Flicks and ROKU we have better content choices than with cable TV.  Project is a great success.

Max, Helicopter & Titan

HB & Max were by in January for a visit.  Great fun.  Max got a chance to try the RC helicopter and managed to fly it a bit.

Max flying RC helicopter Jan 2012

We ended up breaking it after many crashed, both Max and me.  I ordered parts to repair it and it now flys again.  We'll have to take it out to him.

Max also had a grand time with Titan though I think Titan may have been a bit unsure about how to play.

Max & Titan Jan 2012