David Baakman

With my new NAS, it was also time to rethink my backup strategy. I used to have a simple strategy on the NAS itself:

• Stored all data at a RAID-1 array
• Once a day, ran a small rsync script that would create a snapshot (at a separate disk), using --link-dest to only store the actual changes (and hardlinks to unchanged files)
• Once a week, used rclone to sync the backup to Backblaze B2 (and had Backblaze configured to perform deletes after 6 months)

My data is as follows:

I use Gnome as my desktop environment for my private laptop. As a Linux user, at the moment I was distro-hopping, I also tried different desktop environments:

• started with KDE: as everything is customizable, this gives a lot of options and possibilities. But also a lot of possibilities to screw-up (or at least, make everything inconsistent). For my use-case I found it a bit too customizable.
• then Gnome: maybe a bit too minimalistic. As far as I know, they have really thought about the workflow. But as someone who uses multiple operating systems, I found the default gnome workflow too different from what I expect.
• Mate: didn’t like the Gnome 2 look, can imagine when you’re really used to that, you like it, but as I don’t have an intimate history with Gnome 2, I don’t care about that feel.
• Cinnamon: liked the defaults. But in the end didn’t go for it, but to be honest, don’t really know anymore why

In the end, I gave Gnome a second chance, and opted to go for as little customization as possible. The first time I installed it (and updated it), a lot of extensions broke, were not compatible with each other, and were basically just giving headaches. So, for the last two years, I’m using Gnome.

At this moment, I have an HP Microserver Gen8 as a NAS. Next to it, I have my old homeserver that I bought 10 years ago, to host Home Assistant and some Docker containers.

This is a historical grown situations. I started with the Microserver just as a NAS. When thinking about running some applications on a server, a few options came along. Either I could upgrade my NAS (it fits a Xeon, and the memory could be increased), or buy something new. The easiest solution at that time however was to start using my old machine that I still had laying around. With a 3th gen Core i5 and 32 GB memory it had more than enough power, and it was free, as I already had it. This had the additional benefit of separating storage and compute. So, that I could make stability and security of my NAS a priority.

My first NAS was a Synology DS109. Apart from the fact that it didn’t have redundant disks (I actually bought a DS109j as well, to give to my parents and act as a replica, but in practice, I’ve never set up the replication), I really liked it. Synology’s support is outstanding, their latest firmware release is from 2017, 8 years after the device came to the market . But in 2015 support officially ended, still an impressive 6 years.

I’ve bought my first SSD 13 years ago, in October 2009. For 199.98 euro, I bought the 80 GB Intel X25-M, to be used in my work laptop. Just before that, I had a chat with someone from our infra department, and asked them casually how much trouble I would get into if I swapped my harddrive in my laptop for an SSD (I learned - they didn’t really like it when I bridged my ethernet connection to connect my PDA to the network…). The answer was: not really, they were quite interested in the speed improvement themselves.

Somebody at work asked my input for good books for starting (Java) developers. As this is something that might be useful for others as well, I’ll post my list here as well. This list contains books that I found to be the most influencal to me - and are timeless. So, by design, I won’t include really specific books (the ‘how to use scrum’ of ‘spring 5.0’ type of books) and books that were really good, but I would not recommend in 2022 anymore (eg, ‘The Pragmatic Programmer’, ‘Extreme Programming Explained’).

There are a lot of good Youtube videos on steaming milk with your espresso machine. For example, these videos by James Hoffmann or Lance Hedrick.

But everything I found, already started with the idea that you already have the proper milk pitcher.

It is really hard to find the answer to the question which size milk pitcher (or pitchers) you should actually buy. As I obviously needed to buy something, I can now answer that question.

When I learned Java 22 years ago, I could not know how much impact it would have on my career. At that time the language was only 3 years old (I certainly didn’t know that at that time…), but the University of Twente used it already for teaching their Object Oriented and Imperative Programming class (a lot of AWT (Swing didn’t exists yet), and Applets - that will be the future!). I still have my copy of Deitel & Deitel - Java: How to program, 2nd edition.

“Do you really want a new hobby? Because that is what espresso at home is.” - James Hoffmann. Apparently I do, as I just bought an espresso machine, and don’t really like coffee…

Twelve years ago I bought a Nespresso machine, and I’ve used that ever since. I was not really drinking that much coffee, drinking one cup every 2 weeks or so. But they stopped selling individually packaged Senseo packages, so I needed an alternative. The initial set of cups that I bought with a discount (200 pieces) lasted me about 2 years (and most of them were used by guests…). Anyway, over the years I started drinking a bit more (once a week, few times a week, almost every working day), but most of it was at work. Well, and then I suddenly was working-from-home…. So, then suddenly my Nespresso machine was used daily…

Ok, for a few years I’m irritated by the following:

See.

When you have multiple ovens in your kitchen, it is impossible to set them to the exact same time. So, once in a while (every minute ;)), there is a period where there is discrepancy. And that irritates me.

First of all you can question whether it is useful to have two clocks above each other, but that is a different story. But how hard could it be to synchronize them somehow? That shouldn’t be extremely hard, and considering that the combined cost of two mid-tier ovens is around 2000 euro, the few cents / euro to get this done shouldn’t be an issue.