It is imperative to keep up with new knowledge in the IT business, whether it is networking, programming, AI or other areas. The following is a list of books that I have purchased and placed on my reading list. They are mainly programming books on different programming languages and frameworks. But there are also a few others on the list.
As I go through the list and complete reading each book, I will publish a review on the book. When a review is available, it will be linked here as well.
At the end of 2024, I got a small contract job doing as an End User Support Specialist at HAVI Logistics in Vejle. That meant that I could a little bit of what I did before, though it was main level 1 work, with very limited access into Microsoft 365 admin, Intune, etc. The rest of the week, I continued being a Charity Fundraiser.
Then mid-January 2025 I was offered a 2 month contract as an IT Supporter with Mansoft, providing Level 1 & 2 support from the Digital Workplace department of a manufacturing company in Stilling, as well as helping out our sister department Manufacturing IT, whenever there was an IT-related stop on a production line. This position got extended twice until late May 2025.
Some of my family’s data resides on a ZFS pool made up of 4 disks that are mirrored two and two. This data has been offline for a little while and I need to reconnect it to look through and reorganise our data storage. The YouTube video futher down this article documents my endeavours to get to these files and data
In this first part I will be looking at the computer I intend to use for this task and I install TrueNAS Scale. The drives are already in the server but I may need to reorganise the hardware a bit.
Reading about servers and storage you might have wondered: What is RAID? RAID is a method of melting multiple harddrives together to form a (often) larger logical drive. The acronym expands to either Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks or Redundant Array of Independent Disks.
It is time for taking stock of my servers. My setup has evolved a bit, but not as well planned as I would like it to have. I currently have 4 servers - 5 if you count my Linode/Akamai VPS but only one of them is actual dedicated server hardware.
Servers as of February 2024
Server number 1 is a Raspberry Pi 4B 2 GB running my Home Assistant and Unifi controller. This boots off a 2.5" 250 GB SSD connected via USB.
I am preparing to start the 100 Days of Homelab challenge to educate myself into the different fields of computing that interests me and that will make a difference in my life, such as an improvement of quality of life, enhancing my career, generally sparking my imagination and creative side, and perhaps a mix of them all.
I am planning a reorganisation of my home network, the main goal is to restructure my network backbone and servers so that I can protect and run them in the best way possible. One of the things I would like to do is to setup my key network and my servers is to be supported by some kind of battery backup power system, with the possibility of boosting it with solar power so as to supplement prolong the time I can run them - a) during a power cut and b) with the current energy crisis and cost of energy in mind. Currently the only server I have running 24/7 is a Raspberry Pi that carries my Home Assistant and underneath that my Unifi controller.
Huge apologies for this past years hiatus. I have not posted in more than a year. Actually my latest post was April 24th 2021. But now I am back!!!
A lot has happened since my last post. First of all I started a new job on October 1st as an IT Technician, working at a small IT company. We do IT support for small businesses and private individuals. We are mainly a Microsoft shop, but I do get to do a few other things from time to time.
Many people have built battery packs out of both Nickel and Lithium based batteries for their own personal use. Maybe as a battery bank for a Solar system or for a smaller use case. I have been contemplating to build my own version of a standardised(ish) DIY battery pack. One that I could use for multiple applications.
I will be using 18650 Lithium-Ion batteries mostly harvested from disused laptop battery packs. If you have access to laptop batteries in chances are that you would be able to salvage at least some of their cells for this use. The challenge for the future in this respect will be the ever thinner laptops are using more custom battery cells than 18650 cells in order to become as thin as possible. Another source could be surplus battery packs for discontinued laptops and other battery operated appliances. These would then be available for purchase at sell-out prices.
I have been using Linux for a long time. Some times with a Dual Boot setup - that is when the system starts you choose between the installed operating systems e.g. Windows and Linux. And I have been using Linux as the main desktop as well. In this post I will be exploring getting started with Ubuntu.
This write-up will document my choices and reasonings for those choice. Mainly as a reminder to myself but perhaps it can be of use to you too! It will be a “Work-in-Progress” so consider it ever-changing.
My Home Server is struggling with high IOWait under IO load and the time has come to upgrade the HP SmartArray P410 SAS/SATA controller with Write Cache.
The HP Proliant ML150 G6 server that I am using for our Home Server has 2 storage controllers. It has an onboard SATA controller with 6 SATA ports. In addition to that it has an HP SmartArray P410 8 port SAS/SATA controller.
Having a Home Server enables you to host locally your files and services. It might save you some money subscribing to paid (cloud) solutions. And enable you to try out cool things like containers and Virtual Machines. In this post I will document how I setup my current Home Server. I am using an old HP Proliant ML150 G6 I was given. This is a 5U tower server from 2009 with a Dual CPU motherboard.
In this post I will be upgrading our home network with the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X. Our home network is due a very needed update as it is not running optimally. We have an reasonable internet connection through our local provider. It is a Fibre connection currently running at 100/100 Mbit/s.
The Fibre is terminated at the provider’s router that is capable of providing both telephony and TV as well as Wi-Fi. We have not had a land line for years and decided when we were planning to move here that we would not sign up for Cable TV so both those are inactive. And as I wanted to have better control of my network I have asked the ISP to turn off the Wi-Fi as well.
The Amiga 500 and Amiga 600 relies heavily on their builtin 3.5 inch 880 KB floppy drives. Unfortunately these drives and the floppy disks they store their information on are not aging well. In this post I will be installing a Gotek Floppy Emulator into an external 3.5" floppy drive case to solve this problem.
I originally wrote and posted this article on Amiga Retro Computing.
When I got my new old Amiga 500, I was fortunate enough to also acquire a Gotek Floppy Emulator. The Gotek basically stores images of floppy disks on a USB drive. Many legacy devices like music keyboards, knitting machines, embriodery machines, cnc machines, etc uses 3.5" floppies that are hard to come by as well as failing floppy drives.
I finally got back into the Commodore Amiga in late May 2019 by purchasing a used Amiga 500. I have yet to set it up permanently but it has been running a few times. I am planning how to set it up physically as well as how my setup will be with regard to software and hardware, etc.
This article was originally posted on my old Amiga site (Amiga Retro Computing)
As you may have read in My Commodore history – part one: Commodore 64, my computer story started with a Commodore 64. Through a friend, who had an Amiga 1000 I was introduced to the Amiga world. As I remember, he later got both an Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000. He actually had an Atari ST as well.
This post originally appeared on my old Amiga site (Amiga Retro Computing).
If you have yet to read part one, you can read it here: My Commodore history - part one: Commodore 64
My history with having computers started with the Commodore 64.
This post originally appeared on my old Amiga site (Amiga Retro Computing).
In the early 1980’s when I was a child, me and my friends frequented the retail shops in town that had computers. Back then shops used to have computers on display that you could try. Only from time to time you would get told to move on.
Those days the computers were the Texas Instruments TI-99, the Power 3000 - a rebranded Lambda 8300, the Amstrad CPC 464 and the Commodore Vic 20 and Commodore 64. The ZX 81 and ZX Spectrum must have been present as well but I do not remember seeing them until later.