Mystery moves on the Dart

Our first trip away this year in the van, for a long weekend of paddling on the River Dart with Friends from Whitewater Action Medway. This was Bo’s first over night trip away from home so it’s been a bit of a learning curve for us and her, luckily the club were staying in a bunkhouse and we were fortunate enough to be able to park the van in the car park and share the bunkhouse facilities.Dartmoor Sunrise

Friday and Saturday were very wet, due to this the river levels were really good so I took the opportunity to go squirt boating on the Dart Webburn seam.

Sunday we woke to a frost, when its cold like this I reach over and turn the night heater on to warm things up before I get out of my sleeping bag, once the temperature had climbed to more comfortable level got up and dressed to take Bo out for a quick walk. Once back in the van Bo quickly found an novel way to enjoy the lovely warm air coming out of the Cali’s night heater while I fixed breakfast.

Bo making use of the night heater

Bo making use of the night heater

Squirt boat Surfing the River Dart

Squirt boat Surfing the River Dart

 

 

Qnap RAM Memory Upgrade

I’ve had a Qnap TS 469L for a while now, the standard 1GB physical RAM has always hovered around 80% used with a 400-500Mb Swap file in use, in order to try and speed up the responsiveness of the unit I looked into upgrading the RAM from 1GB to 3GB for the claimed 48% improvement in speed.

Qnap TS-469L Cover removed

Qnap TS-469L Cover removed

The best price I could find for official Qnap ram was £89. this was a bit expensive for me so I looked into alternatives.  Kingston 2GB DDR3 KVR1333D3S8S9/2G appeared to have  worked so I purchased a stick from eBay

The upgrade is really easy to do, just remove 3 screws, slide the cover off, pop in the new ram into the slot and turn it on. http://www.qnap.com/index.php?sn=4605 On powering up with the Kingston RAM installed all I got was the HDD lights flashing slowly red, I removed the Kingston RAM and lucky no damage had been done and every thing power back up fine.

After a bit of digging on Google if found a blog by Cyconet who had also experienced problems with the kingston RAM it turns out there are 2 different designs of ram it seems essentially that the module has a 8-chip design. The Kingston module has only 8 memory chips, but the design is a 16 chip chip both using the same part number and only the 8 chip version works with the Qnap NAS, so I ordered a Samsung M471B5773DH0-CH9

M471B5773DH0-CH9

Top – Kingston 2GB DDR3 KVR1333D3S8S9/2G Bottom – Samsung 2GB DDR3 M471B5773DH0-CH9

Once fitted the Samsung M471B5773DH0-CH9 worked perfectly, with a noticeable speed increase.

Ram after upgrade

Springer Spaniel Puppy our New Addition

I’d like to introduce the new addition to the family ‘Bo’

Bo - 9 Weeks old Springer Spaniel

Bo – 9 Weeks old Springer Spaniel

It’s been a while since I posted mainly due to my hands been full with her.

Bo - 14 Weeks old

Bo – 14 Weeks old

She’s a springer spaniel from BreezeLeaf Kennels

Springer Spaniel puppy Bo