Christmas – New Tools!
I hope everyone reading this enjoyed their Christmas events, time off, and the company of friends and family.
This year, I actually made a list, much to the delight of my parents, so that they didn’t need to scramble and search for something they think I’d like (despite my assertions that gifts were not necessary.) In the end, my list was entirely composed of tools for electronics, and how happy was I to find on Christmas morning a plethora of utilitarian gifts!
Daniel Joannis – Catharsis
It has been a little while, but here is another release. It was under the working title of “Mental Breakdown”, but in keeping with my tradition, I didn’t keep the working title and instead it has been named “Catharsis”. After you listen to it once on its own, I would suggest opening RainyMood in another tab and having this play at the same time : ).
Video Arcade: Build Log
The video arcade is complete! To be fair, it was complete when I posted the introduction article on the 28th… Anyway.
There it stands, in all its glory.
Read on for the whole build story.
Ooh… that was clever.
Video Arcade: Intro
The youth entertainment business has always been a matter of evolution. They get bored easily, and what was fun last week is obsolete the next. But what about for the older crowd? Their attention spans are higher, and some of these obsolete, youth-targetted trends become timeless classics and passtimes; hobbies and business.
You’ve seen me post before about pinball machines, the collection, the reparation, of these machines that long ago lived in arcades, abused and unmaintained. When technology began to evolve, and interest declined, there was a successor that pushed the bounds of existing entertainment, that captivated the youth, helped children reach bankruptcy hundreds of times before the age of 16. This phenomenon, ladies and gentlemen, was the video arcade.
Domain name!
Well, I finally did it: this website has moved from BIGBLUE to a dedicated host, and along with that, it has its own domain name! https://blog.danjoannis.com. Feels good to say it. I have signed up for 6 months, so we’ll see how it goes. If I like it, I’ll keep it here (the site is so much more responsive now).
Any comments or problems with the site? Let me know!
Edit: The link was updated to reflect the final, official address.
Upgrades to BIGBLUE (server)
Sorry to anyone who’s been trying to access the server the last 24 hours, I’ve had to take it down a couple times. I’ve just installed two new 1TB hard drives (RAID 1), and split the previous 750GB RAID 1 into two separate drives, giving me a total usable capacity of… 2.5TB! Seems like lots of storage now… but in a year I am quite certain it will be almost full, yet again.
I ordered the 750GB (x2) drives last November, and in a year I managed to almost fill them.
Of course, here is a lovely photo of the server, filled to the brim with hard drives! Beautiful, and awful at the same time.
6 drives, and not enough plastic rails to slide them securely in place (the bottom drive is just sitting there upside down). I’m out of SATA ports, but there’s still connections for IDE RAID!
The Arcade
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about pinball, so I figured I’d share some photos of his arcade, the “Silver Ball Arcade”!
Daniel Joannis – Northern Solitude (Song)
And today I release to the general public a new song! Titled “Northern Solitude” based on the feeling I get from listening to it, this chillout-like song relaxes, chills, and saddens, but it is easy to listen to, and in any case, I sure like it. I hope you do as well!
Newfoundland
I spent the last week (Aug 7-14) in Newfoundland, Canada. We stayed with non-biological family in Point May, on the Burin peninsula, for the first 5 days, then spent the last 3 days in St John’s, checking out places like Signal Hill, the harbour, Quidi Vidi Village, and doing the touristy thing, checking out all the shops on Water Street.
We were lucky to have excellent (and uncommon) sunny/cloudy weather, didn’t get much fog, and didn’t see any moose. This province has the best driving roads I’ve ever seen, long and winding, with excellently steep drops. The wide open space and relaxed environment also makes this one of the most peaceful places I’ve been.
Beach we went to the second day in Newfoundland, located between St Laurence and Lord’s Cove if I remember correctly.
LCD Monitors
Recently, my “biggest” home project has been acquiring and repairing broken LCD monitors. Most of the time, LCD monitors stop working simply due to some blown capacitors inside, and for me, this is very easy to fix. Because this is a common problem, it has been easy for me to acquire screens like this. In fact, I now have a total of 3 monitors I’ve repaired myself, along with another display that the panel was physically damaged on the top, and another monitor I couldn’t locate the capacitor causing the problem, but that I plan to convert to LED.
The display on the left is a Norcent that was destined for the trash,
the right is a Philips with a band of damage along the top.