10 Gb Ethernet Cards

Visit the US, buy hardware from Fry's. Wanted to play with 10G Ethernet for my servers. Very expensive in Europe, sometimes significantly cheaper here. This one was 200$. Sadly they had only one. Where could I buy cards cheaply online/Europe?? But funny with the heatsink on a network card.

They also had a 200$ 10G switch but only with 2 10G ports, not so useful for my purpose, even with a extra 1G ports :-) Any suggestions for low-cost switches?

Also, this is 200-400x faster than my Internet connection, so obviously not so useful for external connections. But maybe I can increase the speed of my backup processes from one file server to another :-)

Photo credits (c) 2017 by Jari Arkko

19" Wine rack

A 3U wine bottle storage for your rack system! But does it come with RJ-45?

Photo credits by Canford (the supplier for this product)

AMD Ryzen

Janne is today building the first computer ever bought for him (previous ones were from Olli's scrapyard). AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU, Asus Prime X370-PRO motherboard, Define R5 case.

Photo credits (c) 2017 by Jari Arkko

Gaming museum in Vapriikki

Se on moro! I'm spending the winter vacation weekend in Tampere with Janne. First stop the gaming museum in Vapriikki, with ping pong, C64 in real-life settings, and the fall-the-stairs-make-insurance-claim game Stair Dismount.

Photo credits (c) 2017 by Jari Arkko

Spareparts

We are starting to build the new file server today. I'm still missing the intended CPU and a better cooler, but it turns out Olli the overclocker has a box of spareparts...

Photo credits (c) 2017 by Jari Arkko

10TB

I am in California for a quick 2 day visit this February, on IETF business. But I'm not so busy that I couldn't stop on the way from the airport to pick up some storage from Fry's :-)

Photo credits (c) 2017 by Jari Arkko

Revenge of the Electronic Shower

If it has electronics, it can break. Like the my teenage son's shower unit...

Oras Ventura is a battery operated shower controller than has a display and drives the water controls via electronic motors. I have two of these in the house, and they generally have given very little grief in their soon 10 years of existence.

The units display temperature, and strength of shower can be controlled via up/down buttons, as well as choosing hand/top shower. Not a big deal as such, and other than looking great they don't add that much functionality. One potentially useful function is that there's an automatic 5-minute cut-off for the shower, if it is left accidentally on. Possibly useful for people like me who worry if they left shower/oven/iron on when they leave the house :-)

The downsides are that this brings more parts that could break, and the potential for battery changes. Also, the Venture seems like a first-generation product. The response to inputs is sluggish. And you can't load any shower apps :-) And there's no touch screen or WiFi. WTF?

But the four D20 batteries last a long time, in the order of five years even with daily use. However, now one of the units is acting up. Not turning on the display, making a constant noise, and not responding to inputs. It first displayed E10 (per unreliable teenager reports) and now displays nothing, even with good batteries.

Revenge of the Things?