Gongoozling, Finishing and New Project

Some excitement at our mooring yesterday evening with the passing of a number of hire boats.  The Ashby boaters are obviously more experienced after a week of boating whereas the two Clifton Cruiser boats struggled with the bend.  The first ended up across the canal and the second gave us a glancing blow before almost T-boning the boat moored behind.  The lady at the tiller then put the boat into reverse with maximum rev’s giving us another blow as she very swiftly reversed.  I shouted out to slow down which was repeated to her by the male passenger.  She just ignored these instructions and I envisaged her T-Boning the boat behind her.  Eventually she managed to get the boat back under control.  The male passenger did profusely apologise but there was nothing from the woman at the tiller.  Probably because she was concentrating on getting around the bend.  The boat moored ahead of us left this morning and we decided their spot was safer so we bow hauled Waiouru forward two boat lengths.  The passing of more hire boats today validated our decision.

This afternoon I finished the painting in the cockpit by lightly sanding and applying a coat of light grey top coat to the top of the gas locker.    

Reader if you’ve been with us for at least the last nine months you might remember I purchased a Raspberry Pi with the intention of using it to make a dumb TV smart <post here> and wrote about the project in mid December 2015.

One of the advantages of the Raspberry Pi (RPi) is all the software fits onto a micro SD Card.  After setting up the RPi as a smart TV controller I can backup the content of the micro SD Card onto another device (hard drive, usb stick, CD, etc).  This makes the RPi available for another project.  So I’ve started another project.  But first I learned something from our youngest son.  He saw my RPi and decided to purchase one.  However he wasn’t quite as clever as his father (albeit he thought he was being more clever).  My RPi micro SD Card has a capacity of a mere 8GB, however this is more than enough to store the full operating system. Son purchased a 64GB micro SD Card thinking it would give his RPi much greater storage capacity(which it does).  But using a large capacity card has a major restriction.  When the card is backed up the entire size of the card is stored rather than the used portion.  My 8GB card doesn’t take long to backup (or restore) but his 64GB card backups are rapidly filling up the hard drive on his computer.  It also takes him an hour to make a backup.

What I have done to overcome my potential RPi storage problem is to buy a nano 128GB usb stick.

The RPi has four USB ports and I’m using two of them.  One for the Edimax network wifi dongle and the other for the Sandisk 128GB storage stick.

The Project

I’m going to build a downloader which will be capable of downloading movies, TV shows, music, books, magazines and comics.  Because money is tight all this has to be done using ‘freeware’  If you are reading this then you probably used an internet connection. I’m not going to use the internet.   I’m going to use UseNet as an alternative.  UseNet is much older than the Internet. Thirty years ago I was using UseNet when I was a keen Bulletin Board Service fan.  If you want to know what UseNet is and how it works click here.

Software.  My project requires five different pieces of software

1. The operating system.  I will use the standard Raspberian operating system
2. A downloader.  I’ll use NZBGet
3. A Film Manager.  CouchPotato
4. A TV Show Manager. Sonarr
5. A Library Manager.  Lazy Librarian

All of the above are ‘freeware’.

I will need at least one UseNet paid subscription and one or more UseNet Indexer subscription.