The Xtreamer
So I got a new gizmo a while ago. I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while. An Xtreamer, It streams video and music to the TV downstairs from the WHS. Its a good little product and works well. When it works, when it doesn’t its a little frustrating. I think last night it took 10 minutes to navigate the menus and sometimes it decides not to even play a file.
I have mine set-up on the Wireless N router (D-Link DIR-655) which doesn’t cause any problems at all. I wasn’t sure how well the wireless would work, as I don’t have the option to hook it up to a real connection, but no complaints with the wireless. One annoying point is the cooling fan inside the device. Its whinny even on the lowest of the low settings, sound a bit like a fly buzzing around. However you can turn it off but as I found out the other night after about 4 hours of streaming or being turned on its performance starts to get affected by it over heating. A new head sink add-on has just been released but still it shouldn’t really over heat.
Although when it works its a really good little device. The navigating the menus are quick but sometimes there is a little delay from the remote. I hope a firmware update maybe fixes of these issues when it arrived it needed updating so maybe another one is in the wind. I should ask google.
This is not suppose to be a rant or a review of it I’m just saying. I’ll keep this updated. I think I’ll get this heat sink and with a firmware update then maybe all these problems with go away!
A Few Changes
I’ve made a few back-end changes to my website hosting. You’ll never notice any of these changes but I thought they are worthy of a post. I’ve released the domain TJL-Online.net which was assigned to the account and other domains parked on top of it. I have bigger and better plans as some may say. Some links may not work but give us a shout if you find any errors.
A Weekend of Work
Well its been a very busy week. I went home on the weekend, back to Newark, for a couple of reasons. The first being that I was helping my sister move in to her university accommodation at Sheffield Hallam. She is a fresher and has a very nice room which is bigger than mine was at Staffs and has a double bed, OK its not a double but its bigger than a single. However all was not amazing as her shower area looked like it had not been cleaned in a while. Other than that it seemed a very nice place to live for a year.
The second reason for going back home was to Read more
Windows Home Server In The Office?
This week a nice big box was waiting for me at home. It was a nice new HP ML115 server but unfortunately its not for me to keep, its for my Dad. For those of you that don’t know I handle the IT for my parents business. Its quite a handy role. I can pretty much do everything remotely, it helps towards refilling my pockets and its getting me quite alot of experience in all sort of areas in IT which I can then use on my placement or when I need to look for a job in 2 years time.
Anyway back to the point. Why the nice shiny server I hear you ask? Well its part of a plan I am putting in place in order to keep everything on the business computers backed up! There is a simple backup system in place but it doesn’t cover everything. Only the important bits. So its Windows Home Server to the rescue. Yep that’s right I’m going to put Windows Home Server on the new machine. Windows Home Server (WHS) is quite handy when it comes to small business’s and/or offices. In this case the backup of networked computers is the main reason WHS is being deployed and here is why…
- Backs up all the computers daily
- Pretty much restore a computer in 10 minutes.
- Restore a whole computer or that file you just deleted
- Doesn’t use up terabytes of data space
Its an all round win. You can aswell, with a bit of a nudge join it to a domain and run services on it like Virtual Machines, DNS, FTP etc etc..
I’m not the only one deploying WHS in a small business. Microsoft even recommends it and are starting to push the idea to small business’s…
Whoops!
Looks like someone forgot to renew his webhosting account… Well its not my hosting I’m just borrowing it to be honest 
… Not to worry I’m back on the net!
It shouldn’t be too long until my site finds a new much, much, much faster home! Will keep you posted on that…
I’ve decided to end my relationship with Twitter. I’m increasing finding it annoying to use so I have deleted my account and here a short list of reasons why..
1. Its full of crap.
Say you decide to follow your favourite IT website on twitter only to find they just have an RSS feed posting on their account. Its not just news websites that do this though its other websites to, TPB for example just posting random links to news links to twitter… I have Google Reader to do that for me!
2. Spam
Its like spam is in fasion… I know they are clamping down on spam accounts but it took them long enough! Also trending topics in a neat idea but you search the term to find people are using it to spam!
spam,spam,spam,spam,spam,spam… No one likes it…
3. No one really uses it properly
It was and still is the “in thing” to be on… Staffordshire Univerity have an account to post downtime alerts for the computer system (Again just an RSS Feed) This is a great idea but I bet less than 2% of people at uni actually are following them to get the notifications.
4. Downtime
Pretty much every week twitter is down for some reason or another… Its just not funny.. Its annoying considering the steps you can take to have a website online 100% of the time..
Anyway, Just a little rant and mostly a post to say that if you find you can’t find me on Twitter.. its because I deleted my account..
