Jul 03
The box containing the DNS-323 and the cheapest compatible drive I could find (which was a 500GB) arrives and is unpacked.
NAS and HD in boxes.
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB.
Eco-friendly cardboard packaging on the DNS-323.
It is even smaller than I expected.
Cables, power brick.
It seems quite nicely made.
Side by side with HD before installation.
Another view.
Rear view.
Front cover just slides off to slide in drive(s)
Assembled and hacked in short order. Got lighthttpd mySQL and PHP running. Just a bit of tweaking and hardening and then I’ll find a place to tuck it away out of sight and save some desk space 
Later
Tucked away in the home theatre cabinet with other fan-bearing gadgets.
Jun 29
I ordered a D-Link DNS-323 NAS on Amazon for under a £100 with the cheapest supported HD I could find without looking for too long which was a Western Digital Caviar 500GB for £36. Should arrive Thursday and once I’ve hacked it will have a web server, PHP, MySQL and such on it and will serve.
Jun 25
Previously.
The mechanical timer did the job but was a bit too noisy.
So I replaced it with this.
I shall find out tomorrow if I managed to program it correctly
Jun 25
Pip managed to smash the dog gate but fortunately I had a roll of duct tape and some metal rods to splint it with.
Jun 16
A while back my desk drawer fell off in a shower of ball bearings. I had to keep papers in a cardboard box on the floor. Today my replacement drawer runners arrived and I fitted them.
Pair of new ball-bearing drawer runners.
Bits of old runners after removal.
New runner drawer side.
New runner desk frame side.
Screw holding drawer runner in place from inside.
Jun 14
My SKY HD DVR needs to be rebooted every day or it develops issues like not recording things. To avoid the hassle of digging around in the cable mess behind the home theatre I plugged it into a RC socket so I could reboot it by remote control.
However remembering to do that every day was a bit of a pain so today I swapped in a timer switch to reboot the box at 6AM every day (a time I’m never recording anything at anyway). Lets see if I got that set up right
Later.
May 26
Got a new18v battery powered hammer drill. Two battery packs, one-hour charger and so on. Cheap but much better than the 9.6v toy I had – it could do a few minutes of screw-driving into wood and then needed a five-hour recharge of its sole battery pack. I also got a set of masonry drills since I’m putting a can crusher on the kitchen wall.
After I charged up both batteries of the new drill I used it to drill holes in masonry, drive in screws into masonry and then drive some screws into wood for fitting a latch to keep Pip out of the bathroom. First battery still full of energy!
Feb 07
Today I opened up my home theatre system to clean the lens on the DVD player with a cotton bud and some isopropyl alcohol as it was beginning to get a bit fussy about rental disks (which tend to be dirty). This was the first time I’ve had to clean it since replacing the whole DVD drive mechanism a while back. It should work with occasional cleaning for a few more months and then I’ll need to replace the whole optical drive again. Or get a new home theatre system.
This is what it looks like inside from when I replaced the drive mechanism.
New drive installed except for attaching the cables.
The old drive before it came out.
