Poppy spent her first night in a big girl’s bed last night. She went to sleep straight away with no problems or worries.. there was only one incident to which Vicky tended where she found Poppy standing next to her bed crying. We only found out what had happened when we quizzed her this morning and were given a simple answer “I’ll not fall over again”. Anyway, in other news, Poppy survived her night with Daddy in charge. Vicky toddled off to London on Monday and I fed Poppy a nutricious meal (Burger King) then got her to bed nice and early (just after 8pm). Then on Vicky’s return on Tuesday evening we arrived back in the village just in time for Santa’s tour-de-coed-hirwaun. The entire village populous appeared to have evacuated their homes to enable the mass following of Santa who was standing in the back of a pickup being driven around a village-wide circuit (at slow speeds be assured, this was some sort of WRC Sleigh leg). The evening culminated in a photo with Santa in his sleigh, carol singing with a brass band, and mince pies of course. I have taken some video footage which will hopefully appear in the Christmas 2008 video to be released next year. On that subject, I’m after some random Christmas-based techno remixes – if anyone knows of a track or two let me know, the worse the better please cuz they get on Vicky et al.’s nerves… 
What a surprise… through my letterbox this morning arrived the Matter Box from Royal Mail. I signed up for this months ago and it has finally arrived. The idea behind the scheme is to send people a small box of freebies and marketing material in the hope of eventually sending targeted boxes of tat to prospective punters. The next Matter Box is due out beginning of 2009 so if you are interested then sign up here: 
My second gadget of the week has arrived. This time it is in the shape of Buffalo Technology’s Linkstation Mini 1TB (that’ll be a Terabyte… 1000GB, 1000000MB) NAS. It’s a comparatively tiny device as you can see from the picture to the left yet it contains two 500GB 2.5″ hard drives. I have set these up as a Raid 1 array giving me 500GB of total storage space. RAID, for those not in the know stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks and RAID level 1 (RAID 1) simply mirrors the contents of one disk on to another. So.. in theory, should one of the hard drives in the Linkstation die, my data should be safe and sound on the other one. This little device is currently sitting in my study running completely silent as data from my server copies across the network. It has not fans and consumes a measly 10W of power (I’ve not tested that yet… I’ll check later). It also has a USB port on the back which can turn the device in to a print server, or just allow you to plug in more external hard drives for extra storage. Now, as my media files were still copying across, I’ve not had chance to test the DLNA streaming to my PS3 yet. My sister’s boyfriend has a Linkstation NAS and mentioned that he has the odd problem with it not refreshing the database.. I’m hoping that the newer firmware released a few weeks ago addresses this problem as for the price of this toy there is nothing at all comparable around. More features I have yet to test include an auto-power on/off when you access it, FTP server, web access. and built-in remote backup routines to another NAS if you have one.
Finally.. after many months of eager anticipation I have my beloved shiny new freesat+ box. OK, so the only programs I’ve actually watched in HD are “In The Night Garden” and some Chinese cookery show, but that isn’t the point. Tomorrow I will be able to phone up Sky and cancel my subscription. It’ll be an historic moment as I’ve been a customer since I moved out from my parent’s house. OK, so the bad points regarding the foxsat-hdr box first: (1) There isn’t much HD content at the moment, just BBC HD and the occasional bit on ITV1 via a press of the red button, but that’s not the fault of the box and things can only get better there. (2) It’s a little bit slow to respond compared to my Sky+ box. (3) The remote control is sexy looking but not as sensitive to use. (4) I can’t fully get my One-for-all remote to learn it’s functions (I have a code which gives 90% functionality, but I can’t the a button for viewing recordings to work.. quite crucial really). (5) Spooks isn’t in HD. (6) The supplied remote can control all my equipment.. but there is no ‘volume-punch-through’ function which would allow the volume buttons to control the amplifier’s volume whilst in freesat mode.
