Drobo FS Lion Time Machine Fix

Many Drobo FS owners out there who upgraded to Lion were unpleasantly surprised by the fact that their Drobo no longer behaved like they used to. After months, drobo released new firmware, but it didn’t improve things all that much. With the new firmware, the Drobo FS:

• is slow or entirely unresponsive, Time Machine backups don’t finish at all or take days
• doesn’t show up in the Finder of Lion Macbook owners connecting through wifi
• has a transfer speed of 20MB/s, even when connecting through GB Ethernet, regardless of OSX version (tested with Snow Leopard, Lion)

If you have one or more of the problems listed above, you will be pleased to hear that there is a “fix”, although it may not be what you were hoping for.

The Pan Rant

You may have seen recent tweets from me ranting about my frying pans. I’ve ruined a few (very expensive) pans and replaced them with dirt-cheap pans which are actually much better. I would like to share my experiences and solutions with you, so that you can buy the right (cheap) pan without having to go through the same thing. Links to all the pans are in the article below.

Review: Lamy Pico pen

A few weeks ago I saw this amazing pen design by Lamy, the Pico. I’m a heavy computer user so I don’t do much handwriting, but I do like nice tools so I thought I’d get this. Particularly the small form factor when retracted and the sleek design attracted me.

There are some things about the Pico that nobody is telling you, so I thought I’d write a little review.

The Useless Machine

The past year, you may have seen me tweeting some “#secretproject” tweets. Last week, the project was finally revealed, and here is the video, in case you’ve missed it:

This is what is known on the internet as a “Useless Machine” or “Leave-me-alone Box”. In case you want to make one, there are plenty of instructions online. I think you can build a basic version of this in about a weekend, and it will cost you less than ten euros. 

Catnip Watering System

Here’s a one minute how-to on growing catnip without having to water your plants every day.