Author: gander

  • Modeling – blast from the past

    Modeling – blast from the past

    My recent dive into a hobby that I always wanted to do, but never had the means to do properly – RC Cars – has rekindled another hobby that I used to do, but stopped in my early teens.

    Building model kits. I used to build tanks, airplanes and cars, but I slipped away from it when I got a newspaper route, and then started working more.

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  • Movie: Ford v Ferrari

    Movie: Ford v Ferrari

    It is not often that I am blown away by a movie, but this is one of those cases. If you are at all a gear head, and enjoy tales of the man and machine versus the world this is one you have got to see.

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  • Drobo @#$%

    Drobo @#$%

    My first exposure to Drobo was when I bought a firewire version with 4 drives wayyyyyy back in 2011. Billed as the hassle free external storage, it uses proprietary algorithms (more than just RAID) to ensure that data isn’t lost when a drive goes bad.

    Prior to this, I had just used external drives to store stuff (way back in the 1990’s I used tape, but then in the early ought’s it became far cheaper to just buy bigger disks).

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  • Covid-19 and the shutdown

    Covid-19 and the shutdown

    Back in early March (March 9th for me), employers, and officials began acknowledging that the COVID-19 outbreak was spiraling out of control, and that the prudent course of action was to institute drastic social distancing to slow the spread and to prevent the healthcare system from collapsing.

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  • Bloody hell, I am old

    As a recent …

    Ok, an indication of just how old I am, I began this draft a week ago, and completely forgot what point I was going to make.

    So get off my lawn, dammit.

  • The RC Files: Overseas parts order

    The RC Files: Overseas parts order

    I have been in RC Cars for a relatively short time, but one thing I hear, from the community, is that there are some places that are good deals to buy cars, parts and accessories from. One such is Banggood, a Chinese market of pretty much any good you might want to buy. Batteries, chargers, geegaws and some surprisingly high quality vehicles are all on offer and pretty reasonably priced.

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  • COVID Upsides

    COVID Upsides

    While we are about to crest 100K official deaths due to Corona Virus in the US (the reality is certainly a LOT higher than that) there are a few positives.

    Many sellers are offering incentives to keep business flowing. If some of these are items that you are considering, this might be a good time to jump, if you can afford them that is…

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  • Update: Who Visits Here?

    Update: Who Visits Here?

    I started this on a whim in 2009 more as a way to just post some top of mind items, and whatever tickled my fancy.

    11 years later and more than 1,000 posts, and I have yet to go viral even once. No matter, this is for me. If anyone else gets any value from it, then so be it.

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  • Hobbies revisited

    Hobbies revisited

    I should know this from my past experience with hobbies. Yes, they are expensive. You have acquisition costs, and operating costs, but then there is the cluster of trivial shit that you have to acquire.

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  • The Vanquish VS4-10 Ultra

    The Vanquish VS4-10 Ultra

    The lockdown has led to some boredom, and that, coupled with a new hobby of RC cars, inspired me to buy and build a kit. After a lot of research, I selected the Vanquish Products VS4-10 Ultra. It is a solid platform, with impeccable quality components, and the uplift for the Ultra over the Pro version of the kit is mainly the Curie Portal axles.

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