Yank's Blog

I’ve been working with drobo support for roughly two weeks now.  They’ve been responsive, but all of the steps required to complete the tests have been frustrating.  Partly because they seem unnecessary, partly because I needed to go back through and do a bunch of backup updates before monkeying with stuff, and partly because I was so obsessive about my wiring that changing wires and moving stuff is a chore.

But by far the biggest hassle was that each test required me to delete and re-copy massive amounts of data to/from the drobo.  I would have to clear the drobo, delete my entire iTunes library, copy terabytes worth of data back to the drobo, and then observe behaviors during the copies and when adding files back to iTunes.  That makes each test a several day process.

Anyway, I tested the firewire cable (which seemed silly given that I had already reported that changing from FW to USB resulted in the same random latency issues).  That proved unsuccessful, so it was on to lugging out the old Mac Mini and hooking up the drobo to that.  This too proved to be a waste of time.  I also created several diagnostic files during some tests and sent those files along to support.

At this point it is unclear what the problem is, so they are sending me a new unit.  I’m really hoping it solves it, but I’m not holding my breath.  It will arrive in the next few days, but as long as I keep the drives in the same sequence I should be able to bypass copying all 3TBs again (at least I hope).

I posted last summer that my storage solution for the home media server was in need of an update.  With about 2.25TBs of video (movies and TV) and a couple hundred gigabytes of music, the number of externals and backups for the externals that I had to keep track of was a zoo.

Drobo sounded like the simplest and most useful solution.  If you aren’t familiar, drobo is the “first data robot” for storage.  The basic model comes with 4 drive bays, but they go all the way up to 8.  I knew there would be some trade-offs for the idiot proof nature of the drobo.  Basically you plug in any drives you want.  Any size, and any order.  If you only have 2 drives you can leave the others open.  The drobo does all the work of turning your drives into a RAID like drive (they call it beyond RAID because it works differently than typical RAID).  Need more room?  Just add a drive into one of the empty slots, or replace the smallest drive with a bigger one.  No need to pony up big money for the biggest drives on the market, just upgrade when needed.  Also, the drobo automatically carves out a certain amount of your drive space to serve as data protection.  Unlike a typical RAID, where you basically cut the space in half to do the protecting, drobo’s method only takes about 1/4 to 1/3 of your space for protection.

Anyway, I finally decided to take the plunge last fall.  The drobo was on sale at Amazon, and the 1.5TB drives had come down far enough to make the total cost of unit and drives seem more reasonable.  I started off with three 1.5TB drives, and a 320GB drive that I was no longer using.  Plenty of space for all of my media to sit on one drive.  No need to repeatedly switch my iTunes music folder to point to different drives (depending on which type of media I was adding to the library).  It was an amazing experience.  So much easier!

When I started approaching the space cap the drobo let me know that it was time to upgrade one of the drives.  It even told me which slot, so I wouldn’t have to guess.  I popped in a new 1.5TB to replace the 320GB, and then waited what seemed like an eternity for it to rebuild.  My data was available during the process, but it didn’t really make me feel any safer.  I even had to wait a week because I knew that PG&E was going to be doing some work on our complex and I was afraid of losing power mid rebuild.  Despite all of that I still felt really good about the drobo experience.

Until about a month ago.  After upgrading my Mac Mini to a newer, quad core, iMac, I began to notice some slowness in response when using iTunes.  Nothing huge, but just found that it wasn’t registering clicks that quickly.  Then it began throwing the rainbow beachball at me (actually it’s a pinwheel, but I think of it as a beachball).  It was several weeks after upgrading to the iMac, so I have a hard time believing it was that.

I also tried backing up all of the media to my older externals (which was a lot of fun) and then running iTunes off of those drives instead.  Everything worked fine.  Reformatted the drobo and added just the music back on.  Still found iTunes was slow, even with the drobo almost empty.

Drobo support has been pretty responsive, but I don’t know that I’m really any closer to figuring out what is wrong.  I read some of the drobo horror stories on the web, and I always thought they were rubbish….but now I’m beginning to worry.

About 25 seconds in I’m prominently featured.  I think I may have been checking my fantasy sports…

Forbes Video Network

A few months back I wrote a lengthy (and rambling) post about my attempt to transition from physical copies of media (DVDs) to streaming.

It’s still working out pretty well for me, but as you might imagine my hard drives are getting pretty bloated.  My 1.5TB “movies” drive has about 50GBs left (probably 30 movies) and my 750GB “tv shows” drive is down to about 60GBs.

The TV Shows drive has me more concerned because if I want to add a new drama program, that is usually about 11GBs per season.

The lack of space, and the general annoyance of having to connect and manage so many drives for my various backups, has me seriously considering a NAS (network attached storage) solution.  Unfortunately even the most basic ones are pretty pricey, so this is going to be a tough call.

It seems that the most appealing solution is a Drobo.  Unfortunately the unit alone costs $350.  To fill each of the 4 drive bays with drives of a worthwhile size (1.5TB) will be another $440 $500.  Then if I want to realize my dream of storing it remotely (in a closet on the other side of the man cave) I’ll need to shell out another $200 to add the ethernet option (drobos only support USB, Firewire, and SATA out of the box).  UPDATE: I’m now hearing that the DroboShare is even more crap-tastic than Comcast services.

So, if it’s not already obvious by how much I’m considering spending on data storage…I have clearly lost my  mind.

I’ve been a loyal (and relatively satisfied) Comcast user for a very long time. Despite the various frustrations over the years (like when my bill almost doubled over 3 months with no notice, or when their shady sales/support guy promised me things that he couldn’t deliver) I have not really come that close to switching. Now I’m really thinking there has to be a better way.

Truth be told, I’m not in a very flexible position to start. The HOA at my complex enforces very strict rules about satellite dishes. Since my unit is on the 1st floor, I’m not allowed to mount a visible dish on my patio. I’m free to put a short pole in a cement filled bucket, and mount an angled dish, but it has to sit below my patio wall (so noone sees it). As you might guess, that idea pretty much blows goats.

I’ve also got the added complication that I use on of my computers as a TV/DVR. Using El Gato’s EyeTV Hybrid (USB) and EyeTV 500 (firewire) I have been getting all of the usual cable channels, plus any broadcast HD channels provided. Any of the cable HD (ESPN, TNT, USA, etc) is encrypted, so those have been absent from my computer, but I was still happy. That is until now.

Comcast recently began running ads about how they were dramatically improving services in my area: adding more channels, improving picture quality, and also beefing up the internet speeds. This is totally separate from the recent Analog to Digital switch that has been all over the news, which really only impacts people with older TVs. What they don’t mention in these ads is that with the change you will not be able to receive more than half of your channels unless you have set-top boxes for every TV in your home (regardless of age or functionality).

I’ve got three HDTVs in my home, all about three years old or less, and each with a built-in digital tuner (so it can find all of the digital channels without a box). Add on the DVR setup on my computer and that makes four.

It's crap-tastic...I mean Comcastic

The Living Room TV has a Comcast HD-DVR, the man cave has a TiVo HD (with CableCard), and the bedroom has no box. I would think that with the built-in digital tuner on the bedroom TV, I would be fine. WRONG.

Comcast has encrypted their channels so you need one of their boxes (or CableCards) no matter what. Comcast is basically saying “get another comcast box and your service won’t be shitty.”  Sure they are offering a free, mini box (called a Digital Transport Adapter  or DTA) but those give you a half-assed level of service that will probably prompt many people to add another expensive full-service box (thus shoving other device makers out and further lining Comcast’s pockets).

This sucks on a variety of levels.

1. Forcing users to put a separate tuner box between the cable and the TV essentially prohibits them from using recording devices.  Comcast will argue that they can still work, but it’s a horrible experience.The recorder only gets whatever single channel the tuner wants to pass along, so say good-bye to watching one thing while recording another.  You can also say good-bye to the TiVo program guide.  And unless you are pretty savvy, you’d better make sure that anytime you want to record a show while away you set the tuner channel before you go.
2. My computer setup is totally crippled, for many of the same reasons referenced in #1.
3. I get to replace my nice Sony remote with a delightfully shitty Comcast one.

My desire to keep the computer based TV/DVR going has left me feeling locked into cable, but I guess now that my computer setup is so totally compromised I may finally be ready to look into something new.

UPDATE: It gets worse. I completely forgot about the older TiVo that we have in the living room. Given the limited space offered by the crappy Comcast HD DVR, we kept the older TiVo for SD content (mostly reruns of CSI, SVU, etc). This way we can use the Comcast box exclusively for HD content. Looks like that won’t work anymore. WOOHOO

While playing with various WordPress features I decided to finally get off the WP.com hosted blog and host one myself.  The only question that Christy and I had was what domain to pick.

All of the fun derivations of “knight” seem to be taken, so the next logical step was something Baxter related, and this one seemed fun.

You can check out Christy’s blog at www.freebaxter.com/christy

WELCOME!

If you take a short stroll around the internet you will find some varied opinions about the future of home entertainment.  Some say that DVD is on its last leg, and that Blu-Ray simply doesn’t offer a compelling reason to upgrade.  Still, it seems that the general public is quite a long way from shifting entirely to download/streaming services (AppleTV, XBOX360, PS3, Netflix, etc.).  You also can’t count out the lingering consumer preference to having a physical copy of the movies and music they purchase.  These conflicting opinions and preferences make the prospect of declaring a truly dominant format to be very difficult.

I, for one, understand that preference for an original, physical copy.  When CD burning first started to go mainstream I resisted because I simply had to have that jewel case and liner notes.  If I didn’t have them I felt like my album wasn’t really an album.  But with the introduction of the iPod I realized that CD cases were nothing more than a pain in the ass.  Trying to store and organize 2,000 CDs surely contributed to the annoyance, but even a smaller amount would still have been a challenge.

Somehow I failed to learn from that mistake and decided to collect DVDs with the same obsessiveness.  This resulted in an entire closet dedicated to DVD storage of titles that were seldom watched more than once.  I also found that having such a collection often made it more difficult to make a selection when it was movie time.  I can’t count the number of times my friends would just stare, eyes glazed over, unsure of which movie to pick.  I finally broke down when I learned that my fiance would routinely select a cropped, low quality, IN DEMAND version of the same movie I already owned, just because it was easier than facing the wall of movies.

Then I visited a friend who had made the jump to AppleTV.  Initially I thought I’d never be satisfied with the ATV solution, given the reduced resolution and lack of 5 channel surround.  Much to my surprise the picture quality was great. In fact, depending on your encoding settings it can be just as good as the source.  Also, the wonderful guys at Handbrake also added support for 5 channel encoding, meaning I was ready to charge ahead.

There are some important things to consider when you are making the jump to streaming.  First of all there are some titles that can be challenging to encode.  I find that it happens most frequently with titles from Disney and Sony.  Ultimately it happens infrequently enough that I don’t mind keeping the originals in a convenient place.

Second thing to consider is the amount of time it takes to encode your video.  Depending on your computer (I’m using the latest Mac Mini) it can take as long as an hour to copy the DVD content to your drive, and somewhere from 1-2 hours for Handbrake to encode.  You also have the option of encoding directly from the DVD, but I’ve found that it’s more efficient to backup several movies to your drive and then queue up several encodes for when I’m away from the machine.

The last major challeng you will run into is storage.  At the settings I use most of my movies end up around 1.5 to 2GBs.  This means that your drive space will go quickly.  To make matters worse, if the time spent encoding represents a significant expense you will want to have your files backed up.  This means double the drives, as well as a backup strategy (weekly? monthly? where you keep the backup drives for safety).

If you aren’t entirely sold on the value of the AppleTV, you can also stream the movies through an XBOX360 or PS3, but I find the interface of the ATV much easier.  It’s also nice to easily access your music, podcasts, and other content from the ATV menu.

Anyway, I should probably also include more details about my setup.

• Mac Mini (Intel Core Duo – 2GHz – 3GB RAM)
• 2 AppleTVs (40GB each, 1 for the living room, 1 for the movie room)
• 2 MyBook 1.25 TB drives for movies (1 backing up the other)
• 2 MyBook 750GB drives for TV Shows (1 backing up the other)

This was clearly not as coherent as I expected, but I think it still gives some good background.

Technorati Profile

All props to Melissa (over at new2oldmedia.com) for blogging about this interesting way to showcase your resume.

I was perusing Oliver Blanchard’s “The Brand Builder” blog a little bit ago and came across a post that showed his blog as a word cloud. I’ve seen this done in the past, but what caught my eye was Oliver’s mention of David Bernardo’s Resume as a word cloud. I clicked. Yep, it was awesome, and expressed a resume in a truly unique way.

So here is mine, and surprise surprise…Community came up BIG.