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19 August 2008 0 Comments

Always look for a voucher code when shopping online

Although we’re not technically in a recession yet, we are certainly in midst of a downturn in the economy and with prices rising and wages stagnating (or even falling in real terms) I think most people are definitely feeling the pinch on their wallets.
However, everyone still needs to make some purchases, and there is [...]

16 July 2008 1 Comment

SATA hard drives for our coraid ATAoE SAN

We are looking to purchase some drives for a Coraid SR1521 storage appliance. Coraid maintain a list of compatible drives on their site, so it would be wise for us to stick to drives that have been tested without problems.
Hard drives comparison

All disks shown are 1TB SATA drives.
MTBF is the Mean Time Between Failures
AFR is [...]

12 July 2008 8 Comments

Vacuum Cleaner Suction Power

Our “hoover” is rubbish. It’s an Electrolux Vitesse Pet Lover which I bought for £70 from Tesco about 18 months ago when we moved house, but as the old saying goes if you buy cheap, you buy twice. The main problem is that it overheats after 5 minutes of use, and needs to take a [...]

21 June 2008 2 Comments

A credit card worth having

My general view on debt is that is it is that is mainly useful when acquiring an asset that will give you some tangible returns. For example, if a business wants a loan to buy some machinery that would allow them produce their widgets more efficiently, then that is a good reason to borrow. On [...]

13 May 2008 5 Comments

Water Conditioner Road Test

Background
Magnetic water conditioners are used to treat the effects of hard water. They work by creating a magnetic field that causes the calcium carbonate (limescale) that is naturally found in water to remain in solution, thus preventing it from furring up as scale inside water pipes.
Science
This method of water treatment is a controversial subject. Although [...]

30 March 2008 18 Comments

Replacement bed slats

I have a bad habit of diving on to my bed, and unfortunately, most times I do this I end up snapping one of the wooden slats that supports the mattress. After I had snapped about 4 of them I thought I should order some replacements, but that turned out to be more difficult than [...]