The Machines Will Rise - The Smartphone is Our Demise

They're Getting Smarter

MediaTek has unveiled the world's first true octa-core mobile chip recently. According to media reports and the company's figures, the MT6592 chip manages to beat what appears to be the quad-core Snapdragon 800 in benchmarks, power consumption (as low as 40 percent) and temperature.
This means the chip is doing more with less resources. Just what any cyborg (cybernetic organism) will appreciate. This means we can developer smarter and efficient cyborgs thanks to our pursuit of ever powerful and efficient mobile devices.

All over the world the development of these technologies, like the the LG G Flex self healing phone can be combined to create some advanced machinery. Watching this space.

Raspberry Pi - The Hardware Equivalent to OSS

Raspberry Pi Anyone?

The Raspberry Pi is a credit card-sized single board computer which can be used for electronics projects. The product can be used for applications such as industrial control systems, security systems, entertainment systems, home automation systems and as a computer for teaching technolgy in schools and universities.

Raspberry Pi Computer

 



For information about the Raspberry Pi please visit the Raspberry Pi org website by clicking here. I have been planning to buy one now for some time. I will think of  project in 2014 before I buy one.

It is a Quantum Possibility

Time Travel - Beyond Existence

Dear quantum mechanic, would you for a moment, indulge the naive in the possibilities and implications of time travel.

Could and object or living being travel in time to a point before it existed or after its existence in the normal fabric of time? Would I be able to attend my funeral? Can the time machine travel to a time before it was created?

On a more atomic level, this would mean that the same atoms would exist at the same time at a point in time - time travel would result in the creation of duplicate matter at a moment in time (The Atomic Twins Question). How will it affect that point in time that the object has travelled to? How will if affect the point in time that object has travelled from? How will it affect time and other matter between the two points in time?

Geyser Timer Switch

Geyser Timer Switch - Hot Savings!

Do you hate waking up early in the morning to switch on your geyser? Do you sometimes wake up late and have to bath with cold water? Is your electricity bill driving you up the wall? Relax, get yourself a timer switch like the one in the figure below.

Timer Switches on a Distribution Board

You can programme a timer switch to switch your geyser on/off on your behalf. This means you'll never have a cold bath again (You'll have no choice when there's no power, it can't help you there). The switch also has a manual override. You can keep it in the OFF position when you are going away on holiday, or you can keep it on the ON position when you need lots of hot water all day long. One of the features I have discovered lately is that you can put it manually on ON mode, then put it on AUTO mode. This will force the switch to go into the ON mode, even though it's not supposed to and automatically switch off as per its programmed OFF time.

A timer switch will cost you around R150 in South Africa and these pay for themselves in about 3 months (Just a guess, I did not do proper calculations). Please get e registered electrician to do the installation otherwise your house might go up in flames due to an electrical fire.

PS3 as a Media Player

PS3 as a Network Media Player - I ain't Playing Playa

I am currently using my PS3 as a network media player. Reasons that you may want to do this are:

1. You don't store any media (pictures, video or music) on your PS3, so it remains fast
2. The media on network attached storage is easier to manage

The setup I have at home is PS3 connected to a Netgear router, a Netgear ReadyNas drive (which is a DLNA certified NAS drive) also connected to the router. The PS3 is connected to my Sony STR-DA3200ES ES 7.1 Channel Surround Sound A/V Receiver via a single HDMI cable. The Sony Receiver sends full high definition (Full HD) images to my Sony Sony KDL46EX500 television.


Sony KDL46EX500



STR-DA3200ES

Netgear Stora 2 Bay NAS Drive

 

 

X-RAID EXPLAINED

X-RAID: I See IT, Eye Know IT

Please check this video by Netgear on X-RAID Technology:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P96HqEx8hB8

Netgear's X-RAID

X-RAID — RAID for the rest of us (http://www.readynas.com/?p=214)

The X in X-RAID stands for “expandable”, and as you may guessed, X-RAID is expandable RAID. So you’re probably asking “great, it’s expandable, but how?” or “how much work do I need to make my RAID expand?”
The answer is it’s automatic. That means there’s no need to worry about selecting the wrong command or trying to remember the right series of steps. The ReadyNAS makes all the right decisions for you.
To really see how easily it works, let’s start out with a one-disk ReadyNAS and go through the X-RAID expansion process. Remember that with just one disk, there’s no data redundancy, so when that one disk fails, your data is lost.

Adding a 2nd disk

If you had started off with a one-disk ReadyNAS and wanted to have protection from disk failure (often referred to as having redundancy), you’ll need to add a 2nd disk that is at least as large as the first disk. The disk can be added when the ReadyNAS is powered off, or it can be hot-added while the ReadyNAS is running. Simply insert the disk into an empty tray, secure it with 4 screws, and insert the tray into the a disk slot. It can be any slot, but to keep it simple, add it to the 2nd slot from the left.
Once the 2nd disk is added (or when the ReadyNAS is powered on after adding), your 2nd disk will start syncing to the 1st disk. Depending on the size of your disk, it may take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours. The sync occurs in the background so you can still keep on working with the ReadyNAS during this time.

Once the sync process completes, your data volume is now redundant, meaning if one of the disks fails, the other disk still contains the data, and thus your data is now fully protected from a disk failure. The capacity of the disk is the same as when you had just one disk.

Adding a 3rd disk

You can add the 3rd disk just like you added the 2nd disk. For our discussion, we’ll hot-add the disk, as you really don’t need to power-down the ReadyNAS if it supports hot-swappable disk trays. Just make sure you are adding a disk of at least the size of the 1st disk. You can add a larger disk, but the extra space will not be utilized until all disks are at least that size.
Once you’ve added the 3rd disk, the disk will be initialized and will be scanned to make sure it is good. This is done in the background and can take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours, again depending on the disk capacity. There’s no performance impact during this time and you can continue to work with the ReadyNAS during this init process.
When the init is complete, your data volume will begin to expand automatically. Again, this is done online, so you can continue to work while the expansion is going on. The time for expansion depends not only on the disk size but also the number of files in your volume. The more full and the more files you have in your volume, the longer the expansion process. Typically the expansion process can take an hour to 12 hours or more. Once complete, your existing data will still be there, but your data volume will be twice the size of your 1st disk, and it remains protected from a disk failure.

One thing you might notice is that with a 2-disk X-RAID, the overhead for redundancy is one disk, and with a 3-disk X-RAID, the overhead for protection is still only one disk. This will be the case with X-RAID even when you add a 4th disk.

Adding a 4th disk

Adding a 4th disk is identical to adding a 3rd disk, other than the fact that the resulting capacity is 3 times that of the 1st disk. In fact, if you had wanted to add the 3rd and 4th disks at the same time, you can do this to save time. Just add the two disks while the ReadyNAS is powered off, as it’s important to add the two disks at the same time to kick off the init process at the same time.

Horizontal vs. Vertical expansion

The process of expanding from one disk to four disks is what we refer to as horizontal expansion. X-RAID also supports another form of expansion that we refer to as vertical.
With horizontal expansion, the capacity is limited to 3x of your original disk. But as larger disks are available or they become more affordable, and you need more capacity, you may want to grow your volume even larger. This is where vertical expansion comes into play.
X-RAID supports replacing each of your disks with larger capacity disks while keeping your data intact, whether you have 2, 3, or 4 disks. Simply replace each of your disks one by one with a larger disk. Each time you replace a disk, the ReadyNAS will initialize it, scanning to make sure the disk is good. This can take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours, just like in the horizontal expansion process. After the init process, the disk will be sync’d to restore data redundancy. Again, this process can take 30 minutes to several hours. Both these processes occur in the background, so you can continue using the ReadyNAS as usual.

Once you have done this for all four disks, just reboot the ReadyNAS to start the volume expansion which occurs in the background. When the process completes, your data will remain intact, but your data volume capacity will have expanded to 3x of the smallest capacity disk in your ReadyNAS.
The beauty with vertical expansion is that you can keep expanding your volume repeatedly with larger capacity disks, a definite future-proof advantage that you can count on with the ReadyNAS.

RAID

A Day Without Raid

RAID stands redundant array of independent disks. This is is a storage technology that combines multiple disk drive components into a logical unit for the purposes of data redundancy and performance improvement. Data is distributed across the drives in one of several ways, referred to as RAID levels , depending on the specific level of redundancy required and performance required.

Next topic will be a discussion on Netgear's X-Raid technology