Snowed In

Steven Guccione

Can’t ever recall weather like this in this part of the world. Been below freezing for days. Here we are, snowed in during a pandemic. On Mardi Gras. 2021, I had such high hopes for you. If we are being honest with each other I have to say it has been a bit of a disappointment so far.

Zappa Documentary

Steven Guccione

i suppose I’m a Frank Zappa fan. I have a few of his albums, saw him live, front row, when I was in high school. I can’t say I completely grasped his fusion of modern orchestral and do-wop rock and roll music, but I did appreciate that there was something interesting going on there, and I wanted to understand it. Alex Winter has a great documentary out called Zappa. I saw it a few weeks back and can recommend it to everyone, even non-fans. A good article on the film from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Brilliant, broke and wilfully annoying: the sad legacy of Frank Zappa

More Hot Raspberry Pi

Steven Guccione

My desktop Raspberry Pi 4 used a USB HDD disk. Old fashioned spinning platters. It was 4TB and much cheaper than SSDs. Turns out this was probably a mistake. Even with a nice metal heatsink case the Pi was always hot to the touch. I recall about 140F. I sprung for a new 1 TB Samsung USB SSD and (after the usual hassles) got it all set up yesterday. The Pi was noticeably cooler, just over 100F. I suspect the power drawn by the USB HDD drive was enough to heat things up, but probably not enough to cause failures.

Now I wonder if some of the early problems I had getting things like WiFi and Bluetooth to work were heat / power related. Anyway, now I have a proper backup drive (the old HDD). Will be able to organize my files now (really :^)