Saturday 11 April 2009

Droboshare

As I reported earlier my Drobo had become somewhat noisier having added a third drive and so I decided that the simplest solution was to move it off my desk.

Enter Droboshare, it's a little sled that sits under the Drobo and allows you to turn it into network attached storage. Hey presto, I can put my Drobo in another room and access it from any of my other machines over my network.

It was the easiest thing in the world to set up. I simply unplugged my Drobo from my Mac, plugged it into the Droboshare, plugged the latter into the network and the power (there's a neat 'y' power cord which allows you to power the Drobo and Droboshare from the same power brick) and it just worked! My Drobo dashboard on the Mac gives me all the same information I used to get when it was connected directly.

Now I have all the features of the Drobo but over the network and in case I ever run out of space on the single Drobo, I can plug another one into the Droboshare.

It also runs applications too - although I haven't tried any of these yet.

Littlest Pet Shop = Extortion Racket

My daughter (age 7) bought a Littlest Pet Shop VIP toy a while ago. Let's not get into what I think of the toy, the price etc., but it came with the ability to set up an account on their website to explore a virtual world, collect stuff and interact with other owners.

This morning, without any apparent warning, when my daughter tried to log into her account she was informed that it had been suspended and that unless she bought another toy by 9th July her account would be deleted.

Nice way to treat your customers Hasbro! Of course I understand that you can't run the service free for ever but this sort of tactic is pretty low when it's targeted at small children. Shame on you!

Wednesday 8 April 2009

Interested in MPs Expenses?

Here's a map showing the expenses claimed by MPs in each constituency between April 2007 and March 2008.

It makes interesting reading...