W Sisters Short: A on Distracting Me

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I was sitting on our big red easy chair in our living room. It is a comfy spot to relax. I think the whole family likes haning out there. I must have been reading on my iPad and A comes over to me. She puts my hand on her cheek like i am cupping her face. She does that sometimes. I really do not know why however i think its cute so i dont ask questions. She then has me squeeze her cheeks. Then A announces that she did that to distract me from tickling her belly.

Well played A. Well played indeed

The State of My Private Cloud in 2019

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I have been maintaining my private cloud network powered by Resilio Sync for a few years now. I have talked about it before. See this search for all those posts. When I built the original version of my private cloud the intentions were for it to provide a 321 backup solution for my stuff. The effort involved in maintaining the system turned out to be more time involvement than I would like. Overall even with more work than i thought it still has been largely a success for me.

At the time when I built the network my intention was to use Raspberry PI’s as my remote nodes. As my use of the system evolved that stopped being a viable solution. One of my first Raspberry Pi remote nodes had to be replaced. The drive i deployed just wasn’t big enough. That wasn’t a Pi specific issue. The next thing that happened was I ran into significant challenges around the amount of memory available on the a Pi II. Resilio would crash the Raspberry Pi. The reason was the app would consume all of the available memory until the OS froze. I had the same challenge on my Synology disk station at one point. That was fixable with a $15 4 gig memory upgrade. I was not able to do anything like that with the raspberry pi II.

To work around the limitations of the Raspberry Pi 2 was that I bought more powerful and thus more expensive computers. The two remote machines that I had running were fanless zotac z-boxes. They were great. The only downside was the cost that was significantly more than a pi. I bought a low-end Celeron version of the Zotac for around $150 plus memory and drives. The costs were about 4 times as much as a similar Pi 2 setup. At the time I had no good alternatives.

Then someone at work put me onto buying a Hardkernel ODROID-HC1 that was designed as a personal cloud type machine. It came with a case to put an internal hard drive in. The beauty of these machines were they had two gigs of memory and were not that much more expensive than a Pi 2 at around $50. I think I maybe spent $70 including memory card etc, not counting the hard drive. The hard drive was an internal one so cost to get one was cheaper than using an external one for the PI.

I purchased two ODROID’s within a year. One was at a friends house. The other was replicating data at home. I had problems with what I think was corruption of the OS on the SD card on both machines. The remote host had to be rebuilt twice. By the 3rd time it had a problem I gave up. I just didn’t want to spend the time troubleshooting it. I’m not sure why they continued to get corrupted. I still have one of them at home that has been pretty stable this year. I gave the remote one to my friend who hosted it for me. He was going to see if he could use it for something. The ODROID was a good idea however it did not turn into a long-term solution for me.

When I first started this private cloud project the public or consumer file storage services did not really offer zero knowledge encryption. The only service at the time that was financially viable for me to use was MEGA. I tried that out and it wasn’t seamless for me so I abandon a public cloud solution. I went with my private cloud. Today there are a few service providers that cater to people looking for zero knowledge encryption for remote storage. There still aren’t a lot of them however I was glad to see the landscape had evolved since I started this project.

I’m not sure what triggered my research into public clouds again. I started looking at what the cost benefit would be to go with a zero knowledge encryption public cloud provider instead of continuing to build my own network over last summer. I found a provider I liked, Tresorit. They ticked all the boxes for me on what I was looking for. The challenge was for 2 TB monthly cost over £20 a month. There only cheaper solution was not enough space for my needs.

When calculating the lifecycle of the hardware I buy for my own private cloud network versus the service costs of the provider it’s probably cheaper to keep doing it myself. Originally that was not true. From when I started this investigation in moving to a service provider until today there was a change in what kit was availible. The Raspberry Pi 4 came out. Having a need to replace the ODROID and possibly one Zotac at a minimum in the next 3 years would have been several hundred pounds. The Pi 4 was clocks in for the 4gig model at around £60 for the computer and all the accessories I needed minus a hard drive. I am recycling a hard drive so there is no additional cost there. When they announced the latest pi4 I immediately put in order for one of the 4gb models. My hopes were that it would perform well enough to use in my private cloud network. On paper it solves the memory usage issue of the Pi 2 & 3.

At the time of writing this I have had my first Pi 4 running in “production” for almost 3 months. The software has been pretty stable. I am running it within a docker container on a Pi 4. So far the system is consuming way less than 50% of memory. Ussually somewhere between 1 to 1.5 gig. One of the other clean up things i did was consolidate the many shares I had into 5 total shares. The Pi replicates 4 of them.

With the extra space i have on a remote node can also take local copies of the replicated data on that remote machine. That should complete my 321 backup strategy. Since I want to add extra resiliency into my plan I will continue to take annual point in time offline copies of most of my data.

Since I am reusing hard drives right now (i over bought on size I needed on the last upgrade and the drives are great) that means i can get another Pi 4 for £60 pounds and have a refreshed pair of remote nodes. I continue to use my Synology, my laptop, and a Linux server for the other nodes at home.

My costs this year are on target to be £60-£120. That is half the price of one year of cloud storage service. The new machines should give me 2 to 3 years of service easily. Especially since I’m deploying them with 5 TB drives and I’m only using about 1.3 TB for what I’m backing up today.

I am pleased that the build my own system is cheaper and continuing to work out vs the public cloud option. As long as maintaining the system is not a lot of trouble I picked the right option.

W Sisters Short on My Haircut

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The other day I got a haircut. For me that’s a pretty rudimentary thing to do. I get one every couple of weeks. The girls like to rub the back of my semi-shaved head. They think the short hairs feel good on their hands.

This haircut however T for some reason was patting my head. Then she started measuring how much hair I had with her finger. She proceeded to tell me that I had a lot of hair. The funny thing is I don’t. I keep it pretty short. Compared to her I have almost no hair. She then said she wanted to see me with more hair. I told her I was not going to grow my hair out.

I did let it grow a little in High School. Never liked it. I then told her that my dad, her puppy used to have a really long/big hair. She didn’t really believe me so I offered to show her and A picture.

When I shoulder the picture she said something like “Oh my gosh”. Then she asked if that was taken long ago. I said it what is however I remember his hair that long.

It reminded me of a funny story my sister told me. A few years ago my mum was wondering out loud to that strange man was standing next to her in a picture. My sister said that dad. I can only assume he had a huge head of hair at a time

So I Went and Got a Facebook Page

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So funny story. In the effort of evaluating my social media use I went and got a Facebook page. For friends and family please like and follow it. I will be posting blog entries to there and not on my wall going foward.

The backstory to this is in July and August I sought out to decrease my social media usage and data exposure. I wrote about it and will post that series in a bit. As i was doing that I (yet again) attempted to get rid of Facebook. I realized that I do use it to push updates to my blog. My blog metrics show that is a lot (for me) of traffic. I decided since my blog posts are public anyway why not do a facebook page. It allows me to stop posting on my own timeline. It also lets me schedule updates to my blog. that is something i cannot do anymore since Facebook killed that years ago. If i do that i can post to facebook blog entries without actually logging in. No distractions for me!

So please like and follow my page, or not…

A Note To My Future Self On Why I Do Not Use Android Phones

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In July before my trip to Bangkok i picked up a mid range Android Phone. I opted for the Motorola G7 since it offered dual SIM cards. I got the phone for less than 200 pounds. An iPhone that would do that was several times more than that. My need was for a dual SIM phone so i could keep my UK SIM and have a Bangok one. Then when I went to NY for most of August I would also have a US SIM and my UK SIM card.

My intentions mostly worked out the way i wanted it. As much as I prefer iOS for many reasons the new Android was ok. I liked the big screen for a cheap price. I wasn’t happy about some of the security trade off’s however i was letting that go and being in deial about it.

I then put in a Pi-hole as my DNS at home. Looking at the metrics from that made it impossible to be in denial as to how bad my Android phone probibly was to violating my privacy after i clicked on agreeing to whatever terms and conditions. The cover photo is a graph of my entire DNS queries in my house for a 24 hour period. The part on the right where there is a huge spike is purely my Motorola G7 making calls out to the internet. Doing what i am not 100% clear since i wasn’t using the phone. It just got on wifi and started phoning home alot.

The photo below shows that the same Android phone is one the chattiest device on my network at home and also gets its requests blocked more than any other device. For a phone that i dont use alot and wasn’t in my house for most of the 24 hour period measured that is pretty creepy. To put it in context M and i have iPhones and iPads and none of them get blocked or “talk” on the internet that much if we are not using them.

The Motorola G7 in question is being reset to factory defaults and wiped as I write this article. It will get sold on ebay shortly. This entire episode highlights why I had reservations about Android as a technology in the first place. It is slick however the trade off on my privacy is not worth it. i would rather save longer and keep using iOS.

The W Sisters and The Story of the Pizza Tables

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Our girls love pizza. They are little kids so that’s not a shocker. I am glad that they are enjoying pizza even after moving from New York to London. For me the pizza in London is not the same as NY. It is however not bad. For the girls they are happy enough with it.

On nights when we order in pizza there is one thing above all that is the most important. Who gets the Pizza Table. Or is everyone else must know it as the white plastic thing that sits in the middle of the pizza box to keep the box from touching the pizza. I don’t know when it started to be a thing. Probably a year or more before we moved to London. I believe it was T that started asking for it. Her sister seeing that she wanted it was quick to follow. If we ordered one pie we would have to be sure to take turns on who got the table.

Sometimes we would get two tables in a pie. Then the girls would be able to share. In London the diameters of the pizza pies are much smaller than NY. I may end up writting about that on its own at somepoint. We learned this very quickly when we order take away. One large pie is not enough for all four of us. Two large pies depending on how much the girls eat is more than enough. That means nowadays we get two pie’s so more than enough tables for both to have one when we order take away. The night this picture was taken I cannot remember if we had an extra table in one pie or we just had three pies. It was like the girls won the jackpot.

The Story of My Site’s Hopefully Last Name

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It’s another year so its time for me to overthink my blog setup. Alright maybe i dont do it “every” year however sometimes I do. Last year I changed my blog domain name to scottodyssey.com. I did it in 1, hopes of getting more google rank vs my obscure .ac domain. 2, to better reflect what i was thinking the direction of the site was. Flash forward to now and i am thinking of simplification. For years i have lived with the delusion of anonymity on this site by obscurity. I knew if someone wanted to find me they could. THe illusion felt good though! Now a days thinking abut personal branding using just my first name or a cute blog title isn’t what i am looking for. Instead i am simplying to scott.weinstein.me. I owned the domain name and used it for some email for years. I figured why not simplify.

The change for me is minor. The bigger changes are in how i use a bunch of other domain names behind the schemes for mail and other things that is bigger. My plan is to downsize and save some money on a few more expensive domains that i am under utilising. For some of them it may take a while to move all the things i use them for off of them. In the long run it likely makes sense.

This change allows me to have a simple domain that reflects me. It is my name after all.

www.scottodyssey.com will stick around mirroring my new URL for about 10 months until the domain expires.

The Story of My Holiday Travel Tech

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By the time this posts we will have returned from our Summer holiday. We went to NY for a month. I worked for two weeks out of the office in Times Square while M and the kids stayed at my mother and father in laws. I went up for the weekends. Then it was off to my mom’s for two weeks while i had off. I cannot tell you if I had a good time or not. Since i am writing this while still on the flight to NY. I assume it was a fantastic trip. This post isn’t about the holiday itself anyway. It is about the Tech used for this holiday.

FIrst and foremost in my mind when planning what to bring on this trip was how were we going to stay connected. Connectivity (Data, Video, Voice probably in that order) is scarily important in this day and age. It turns out for mobile phones we were pretty set already. M has a 3 PAYG SIM. I never got her on a contact. The cost of what she uses isn’t worth it on a pay monthly plan on EE or 3. In the end she stayed on the 3 PAYG she got when we first arrived. It has been fine. What i like about it is their roaming. The have the best roaming of any provider i have found in either country. With M’s regular plan she can roam in Europe or the US with no extra fee. In the US she can use her voice, text and data like she is in the UK. For data that is great. For texting that works since she uses apple messaging or whatsapp and doesn’t truely send texts often. Voice calls is the only oddity. She can make and receive calls in the US just like she was in the UK. That means in practical sense that she can call friends in the UK with her included minutes. If she wanted to call a US number it would be an international call just like if she was in the US. That’s annoying but not the end of the world. We have a voip provider for those people who don’t have FaceTime or WhatsApp.

For me i was worried i would have a problem. I do not use 3. I went with EE after a few months of being in the UK. I found their data network to be faster and more reliable. They did not have a roaming deal for the US as nice as 3. Their Europe roaming was good. After a bit of research and a call to EE support they told me that i could buy roaming in the US and Canada for £10 a month. I get all my data as well as texting and calling to the US. I haven’t tested this yet however if what they say is right for the £10 i spent i can make calls to US or UK numbers with my minutes. The only downside is people calling me from the US would still have to make an international call. I do have my voip provider with my old US mobile so that shouldn’t be a major issue.

To mitigate any issues receiving calls (if there is any) i did buy a US SIM card for the month. After some research i actually settled on Google Fi. I may not have written about it yet however i purchased a Motorola G7 so i could use its dual SIM function on this trip. I doubt i will keep Google Fi after the trip however i can cancel anytime. And the price was really good. Stress dreams aside from my use of Google services and their collection of everything i do when i use it. Seriously i had one. I will write about that another time. For the month i am in the states i figured i would try it.

Other tech I brought with us is lots of US adapters. Luckily we use mainly apple products so i had a bunch of US power plugs from our devices when we moved. I kept a bunch of them for this exact situation.

Another must is my Bose noise cancelling headphones. Great for the plane or when working in a noisy office.

For WiFi and other connectivity both parents houses are covered.

I also brought my Sony Alpha 8000 (i think its an 8000) mirrorless camera. I do not use it as much as i should since i am lazy and use my iPhone. However on a trip like this i will want it for some days. I am still amazed at how awesome the pictures it takes are.

I traveled heavy with other tech. I was working for two weeks so i needed my MacBook. It’s associated charges and adapters. I also brought a 5tb he’d with a backup of my data on it just in case. I also had to bring a USB headset for all the phone calls i will be on for work.

For personal use i brought my iPad Pro 11”. That is what i am typing on right now. It is basically my goto device for personal use now a days. I also had to bring my iPad Mini. One of the girls uses it on the plane flights. The Amazon Kindle Fires they had broke. Both in the span of a month of each other. We got a handful of trips out of them. They lasted a year and a half. For the $100 i spent on both of them it wasn’t a bad investment. I am not sure if i will get new ones. We have been surviving the past two trips with my iPad mini and M’s iPad. For now there is no plans to replace the much lower end tablets since the iPads work fine for the kids limited use case.

I packed one of my Raspberry Pi’s for the trip. I am not sure what / if anything i will do with it. I may need it as a VPN host somewhere. That is another blog topic on its own that i hope to get to. Either way the Pi was so small that i figured why not pack it. I just had room for it with my chargers and other adapters.

The last big bit of tech i would note is M and my 20,000 mili-amp batteries. I bought one for the family when we traveled. I also got each of us small 5,000 milk-amp ones for day to day use. M found she wanted/needed the bigger one so i started not having it in my weekend bag. I then got her one so she could always have one and so could i. So far this 7 hour flight has 48 minutes left and i used it to charge both my Moto G7 and my iPhone, plus my iPad Pro. The battery still has about 50% of its charge left in it. That is why i carry it. Well worth the £20 for it.

What Knuffle Bunny Free Taught Me

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My kids have enjoyed many of Mo Williams books. I can still get laughs out of them from elephant and piggy books. They have also enjoyed Knuffle Bunny since they have been as old as Trixie in the first book.

After our last holiday I was reading the girls Knuffle Bunny Free. They were asking lots of questions that were very insightful for children their age. Sometimes it’s hard to get through book because they ask so many questions. Sometimes that’s great since their questions are very funny. This night they were asking what seemed like a lot of questions. I was trying to answer all of the topics to their satisfaction. When I got to the end of the book I realised my biggest take away from it was that airline they flew on really does not know how to clean planes. They were gone a week and Knuffle Bunny just sat in that seat back pouch.

I know that’s not the point. I know that it’s improbable they would’ve sat in the same seat on the same plane. I guess my frame of mind after traveling was just to zoom in on the fact that that plane must be really dirty.

The 3,500 Mile Bagal Delivery

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Even before we left for England we knew there would be things we would miss or could not get while there. From what we read lots of people struggle with missing certain kinds of food from home. We also had trouble with not being able to find certain brands or products in the stores.

There have definitely been types of food that just point the same here. Too much less to groupers been things you can buy here in the store that we could only get in America. We’ve had enough family visiting that they bring any odds and ends that we just cant get. Food on the other hand is hard just isn’t an option and must we find an equivalent here.

Most of the things in relation to food I don’t think it is the same here isn’t a major urge to walk all the time. For example a good slice of New York pizza is very different than what I can get here. It doesn’t drive me crazy enough that it really matters. I love good Southern barbecue. Even in New York I didn’t go that often so not having it is an a huge problem. Growing up in New York from the bagels anywhere else just aren’t the same.M and i used to get bagels at least once a weekend pretty regularly when we lived in New York. That was one thing that I thought I would really mess when we moved. When I think about it I miss it. I just don’t think about it too often.

In May M flew to Washington DC for the Early Bank Holiday weekend. She went to one of her best friends wedding. . When M got home Monday morning she surprised us with bagels from DC. I ran out to the local market and picked up some cream cheese and smoked salmon. We had a proper Biggles and smoked salmon.

It was delicious. Much better than anything we could get in London. It reminded me that as much as I love Bagal’s I just don’t miss it that much. Apparently M and her friends swung by a bagel store Sunday late afternoon on the way to the airport. By the time we got them they want exactly fresh however they were still better than anything I can get here. That will probably be the most longest bagal delivery I will ever have.