Monday, January 8, 2018

Kelty Horizon 2

 


Our take This affordable shelter strikes the right balance between weight, protection, and cost for intermediate backpackers looking to level up. To achieve the mix, the Horizon 2 (like COLEMAN INSTANT TENT )uses a hybrid, double/single-wall construction: The 40-denier nylon fly is sewn into the tent above the door. This saves weight, and, combined with an all-in-one hubbed pole design, makes for a quick and easy setup. A pair of standard, 20-inch sleeping pads fit fine, width-wise, but the 28-square-foot floor space is at the low end of average. Those of us taller than 6 feet reported feeling cramped by the 84-inch length. The Horizon 2 handles light rain and breeze better than many similarly priced options, but it’s not the shelter for wicked weather: Testers reported the tent felt insecure in 20-mph winds during a rough night at Chapel Pond Pass in the Adirondacks. It gets stuffy inside on rainy nights with the door closed; our crew had to roll up the door to expose the sidewall mesh to manage condensation.

The details A single front door allows easy access to the 9-square-foot vestibule, but the space fills quickly. The door props open with trekking poles to make an awning.

Trail cred “I really like how easily it packs down—just smash the whole thing in its 12-by-15-inch sack at once. That integrated fly system simplifies the whole process,” said our tester after a dozen nights in the Adirondacks.

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

NAS drives



NAS drives are like cloud storage: you can access all your files from anywhere, both inside and outside of your home or office. You can use them to store and play your music and video collections, as well as documents and other files.

NAS drive buyer's guide
NAS stands for Network Attached Storage. It enables you to have a large amount of storage connected directly to your broadband router. This storage is therefore available to all your devices.

NAS drives (like DROBO B800FS ) are designed to be turned on permanently, which means you can have access to your music, movies, photos and documents at all times. Most have timers so you can set them to turn on and off during the hours you want.
One of the most popular reasons to buy an NAS drive is for media playback. Videos can be viewed on your TV, without having to connect a computer.

A NAS drive will use much less power than a regular PC, too, making it much cheaper to run. For ease of setup and ease of use, a dedicated NAS drive is hard to beat.
What capacity do I need?

The first requirement is capacity. You'll need one that has enough storage to meet your needs now and in the future. Plenty of NAS drives come with no disks at all - these are known as diskless or bare drives. The advantage is that you can choose the drives you want and how much capacity you need.

You can now get disks up to 10TB is size, though for you’ll be paying at least £400 or so for the privilege. 4TB disks are arguably the current sweet spot, at around £120.
Disks for NAS drives

When you choose your disks, look for ones that have been designed to work specifically with NAS boxes. NAS-optimised features include more secure construction providing more resistance to vibration, which makes a lot of sense for a drive that’s designed to be on the whole time. They also offer power management so they can adjust performance based on their temperature.

These drives also offer special features in firmware known by WD as TLER (Time-Limited Error Recovery) and by Samsung and Hitachi as command completion time limit (CCTL). This optimises the error correction for drives when they are installed in a RAID array (explained below) as is usually the case with NAS drives.

What is RAID?

RAID stands for redundant array of inexpensive disks. RAID can be quite complex but at a basic level you’ll want to use it primarily to provide redundancy so if a disk fails your data is still safe. Three of the most popular variants are RAID 1, 5 and 6.

Most NAS drives will offer at least two bays, which means that you can set them up as RAID 1. In this scenario the second drive is a mirror of the first, so if one drive fails completely all your data is safe on the other. You can then replace the faulty disk, and rebuild the RAID array.

RAID 5 requires at least three drives and offers parity data. That means a RAID 5 array can withstand a single drive failure without losing data or access to data. As data is ‘striped’ across three drives, reads are fast, but at the expensive of slower writes because of having to also write the parity data.

RAID 6 meanwhile requires four drives but offers both striped and dual parity, so two drives could fail and the RAID could still recover.

Whichever you choose however, don’t consider RAID to be your only backup of your data. If the box just dies, or if something catastrophic happens like a fire, you’ll still lose all your data. To mitigate this you'll want another external backup, preferably to the cloud.

Hot swap
Hot-swap capability enables you to take out or add a drive without having to power down first, which could be important if you’re running business applications off your NAS and want to maintain uptime.

Remote connectivity

Consider whether you’ll need remote access to the drive. Previously this required signing up to a third-party DNS service, but these days with most NAS drives you can just sign up for an account with the manufacturer as you set up the drive. Log into the account and they'll handle the connectivity to your box at home.

Transcoding
How powerful does your NAS’s processor need to be? The dedicated OSes that NAS drives run are lightweight, but a faster processor and more memory will enable features such as transcoding.

This means that any media files can be converted on the fly into a format that's playable by your TV or set-top box, so you don’t have to worry if it can't play the file as it exists on your NAS.

Thursday, October 5, 2017

New nanomaterial can extract hydrogen fuel from seawater



It's possible to produce hydrogen to power fuel cells (like RENOGY 200 WATT 12 VOLT SOLAR STARTER KIT ) by extracting the gas from seawater, but the electricity required to do it makes the process costly. UCF researcher Yang Yang has come up with a new hybrid nanomaterial that harnesses solar energy and uses it to generate hydrogen from seawater more cheaply and efficiently than current materials.

The breakthrough could someday lead to a new source of the clean-burning fuel, ease demand for fossil fuels and boost the economy of Florida, where sunshine and seawater are abundant.

Yang, an assistant professor with joint appointments in the University of Central Florida's NanoScience Technology Center and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has been working on solar hydrogen splitting for nearly 10 years.

It's done using a photocatalyst -- a material that spurs a chemical reaction using energy from light. When he began his research, Yang focused on using solar energy to extract hydrogen from purified water. It's a much more difficulty task with seawater; the photocatalysts needed aren't durable enough to handle its biomass and corrosive salt.

As reported in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, Yang and his research team have developed a new catalyst that's able to not only harvest a much broader spectrum of light than other materials, but also stand up to the harsh conditions found in seawater.

"We've opened a new window to splitting real water, not just purified water in a lab," Yang said. "This really works well in seawater."

Yang developed a method of fabricating a photocatalyst composed of a hybrid material. Tiny nanocavities were chemically etched onto the surface of an ultrathin film of titanium dioxide, the most common photocatalyst. Those nanocavity indentations were coated with nanoflakes of molybdenum disulfide, a two-dimensional material with the thickness of a single atom.

Typical catalysts are able to convert only a limited bandwidth of light to energy. With its new material, Yang's team is able to significantly boost the bandwidth of light that can be harvested. By controlling the density of sulfur vacancy within the nanoflakes, they can produce energy from ultraviolet-visible to near-infrared light wavelengths, making it at least twice as efficient as current photocatalysts.

"We can absorb much more solar energy from the light than the conventional material," Yang said. "Eventually, if it is commercialized, it would be good for Florida's economy. We have a lot of seawater around Florida and a lot of really good sunshine."

In many situations, producing a chemical fuel from solar energy is a better solution than producing electricity from solar panels, he said. That electricity must be used or stored in batteries, which degrade, while hydrogen gas is easily stored and transported.

Fabricating the catalyst is relatively easy and inexpensive. Yang's team is continuing its research by focusing on the best way to scale up the fabrication, and further improve its performance so it's possible to split hydrogen from wastewater.

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Duromax XP10000E 10000 Watt Generator Review



The Duromax XP10000E 10000 watt generator is a powerful device that you can use on campsites, in your home or on the road. An RV is easy to use when you have a such powerful generator onboard, and this product from Duromax gives you the power you need for every application. You have an opportunity to set up a power supply in your home that is more than reliable, or you may power a large campsite using the generator.

Duromax XP10000E 10000 watt generator (for example: GOAL ZERO YETI 1250 SOLAR GENERATOR KIT ) works fine in a variety of settings including camping, small to medium size outdoor events and musical rehearsals. It also acts as a powerful power supply in emergency situations such as the unexpected power outages. Therefore it can also be effectively used in ordinary home setting.

Features of the DuroMax XP10000E Portable Generator
Duromax XP10000E comes equipped with a fuel tank that measures at almost nine gallons. The generator surges at 10,000 volts, making it suitable for large scale use. You may maintain the power on the generator at 8000 volts for a long period of time.
Duromax created a low oil shutoff switch that will prevent the generator from running after it has lost too much oil. Of course, you still need to maintain the generator in the best way you know how, but the generator will stop itself from running with no oil in the tank.
You can choose between the electric and manual starter. You can easily use the manual starter when the electric starter is not working. Otherwise, the electric starter will get the generator going in just a moment.
The 16 horsepower engine will run for 10 hours on a full tank. It is worthy noting that it will run at its maximum power capacity for the whole duration of its fuel supply.
The steel frame on the Duromax XP10000E 10000 watt generator is going to protect it from damage, and there is a cover that prevents the generator from being damaged by rain or wind. Debris will also not make its way into the generator. You can easily clean the generator with a damp cloth should it get dirty.

PROS:
The Duromax XP10000E is a durable piece of equipment that will help you power your equipment, your home or your RV. The XP10000E is strong enough to run your whole home in the midst of a storm, but at the same time the generator is small enough to stay out of the way.
The large fuel tank is going to keep the generator going for most of your waking hours, and you may refill the tank at any time to keep it going. Users of the Duromax 10000E will find it relatively easy to pull along on a trip. We also admire the fact that it is easy to clean in case it has been through some bad weather.
We like the way the Duromax XP10000E provides power to large groups of people for long periods of time, and the massive surge in voltage on the generator makes it one of the most agreeable generators on the market today. You can hook this generator up to your home’s power lines, or you can switch it on when you get to your campsite in the evening.

CONS:
The Duromax XP10000E is a bulky unit that may not fit in certain RVs, and you may have a hard time fitting it into your basement where your power supply enters the house. Generators of this size can become cumbersome, but honestly this is the only real issue you will discover with this unit.

Conclusion

The Duromax XP10000E is a sturdy unit that will provide you with the power you need to work outdoor events, live comfortably on a campsite and keep the house operating when you have lost power. Filling this generator is simple, and it shuts down at the first hint of trouble. Maintaining this generator is simple, and you can keep it with you for many years in the future.

A family that values safety and security should have a generator at home that can be taken with them at any time. The Duromax XP10000E will travel with the family or sit in the corner of the basement until it needs to be called into emergency use for the family.

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Small Business Headlines from Skype, Web.com and More



Skype is one of the most popular tools for small businesses that need to communicate with remote workers, clients or others via video and voice chat. But the service experienced a global outage earlier this week, delaying some small business communications.

In addition, Web.com and other small business service providers also made headlines this week. Read on for more in this week’s Small Business Trends news and information roundup.

Technology Trends
Skype Experiences Global Outage; Service Restored After Three Hour Delay


Skype, Microsoft’s phone, chat and video conferencing service, experienced an outage this morning across parts of North and South America, the U.K., Europe and eastern Asia. But the platforms management team reported the Skype outage resolved within hours. An official announcement on Skype’s website confirmed reports.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Small Business News From Twitter, Kickstarter and More



Want to live stream video content for your business in 2017? If so, you just got another option. Recently, Twitter added a live broadcast feature to its iOS and Android apps.

And speaking of apps, Kickstarter just released open source versions of its iOS and Android apps to help independent developers and startups looking to build their own apps.

These headlines and more are included below in this week’s Small Business Trends news and information roundup.

Social Media
Twitter Adds Live Broadcast Feature to iOS and Android Apps


The new Go Live on Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) is here. Just announced, the new feature looks to simplify the way you can broadcast live video straight from Twitter. This announcement comes as Vine is shutting down and Periscope is establishing itself as a live broadcasting alternative for Twitter after it purchased the company in 2015.

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