Creating a GitHub Library for Downloads

Since blogspot does not support uploading files, Spare Time Notebook needed to find an alternate location for dumping non-image files on the internet.  Since some of these files over time will most likely be source code (Java / Arduino / etc), the decision was made to create an open source project on GitHub.

The location for the new repository is:
https://github.com/sparetimenotebook/sparetimenotebook

The first file posted was a zip file containing the project contents from June/July series:

Building an Arduino LCD Interface
http://sparetimenotebook.blogspot.com/2012/06/building-arduino-lcd-interface-part-i.html

and can be located in the downloads:
https://github.com/sparetimenotebook/sparetimenotebook/downloads/sparetimenotebook-lcdpanel-v1.zip

Reconfiguring the WD Sentinel DX4000 to use a Fixed IP Address

Like all new devices on the network, the WD Sentinel decided to be grumpy about a few things, its DCHP lease being one of them.  Every 12 hours or so, I observed the following in the server logs:

With the details from Event Viewer being consistently along the lines of:

or

After a bit of research, I stumbled across the following issue thread on the Netgear forums.  It appears that the WNDR4000 (the network device hosting the WD Sentinel) has a known issue with DHCP renewals - well, at least known to the user community, it would appear based on the age of this thread that Netgear has chosen not to fix this problem.

In attempts to bypass the problem, the WD Sentinel DX4000 was reconfigured from DHCP to a static IP address, per a discussion thread found on the Western Digital forums which led to the following set of directions from the vendor.  The update was a fairly standard TCP/IP configuration change for Windows (the DX4000 host OS), although WD uses an interesting NIC "team configuration" which I was unfamiliar with.  After following the directions and rebooting the device, it came up fine with its new static IP address.  I'll monitor the drive over the next few days and verify that this removes the network warnings from the system Event Viewer, but fairly certain this should solve the problem.

CD Spring Cleaning... in August

With the mighty THOR (DX4000) online and hard drive space more than plentiful, I took the opportunity for a bit of belated electronic spring cleaning.  We all have that pile of software CDs that we'll probably not need again, but refuse to get rid of (because as soon as you do, you'll need them of course)...

In my case, its some old Dell drivers, peripheral support, etc.  Most likely any new reinstalls would have me downloading the newest versions, but nonetheless, I have trouble parting with originals.  So, to solve this problem, I made ISO backups of the CDs, and tossed the physical media.

Having Windows 7 on my primary workstation (and being too lazy to walk to the Linux box), I needed to find something to copy the CDs to an image.  A few Google queries later, I was installing the most recent version of Infrarecorder.

The interface is fairly idiot-proof, and building the backups could not have been easier.

An hour later, all the CDs were stored on the DX4000, and my desk was feeling a bit cleaner.