Fish gotta swim, scammers gotta scam. You are minding your own business, surfing the web, and then this pops up. What do you do? These are internet scammers at work here. Be careful.
This actually is NOTHING. What you do next matters though.
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NIIMBOT D110
The folks at NIIMBOT have made yet another great label maker. I have previously reviewed their B21 Label Maker, and their B3S Label Maker. Both are stylish and fun and very efficient. And while both are portable the NIIMBOT Label Maker D110 really excels at portability.
It checks in at 4.2″ tall, 2.9″ long, and 1.2″ wide. And it is so light you’d never feel it after you slipped it into your backpack, purse, or toolbox. And after posting a picture of it after I received it, my brother messaged back and said he owns this very label maker and the portability is what he loves best about it.
The design is sleek and simple with one control button, one release mechanism for changing label rolls, and one USB-C charging port. And it is of course, a thermal printer that never needs ink.
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I thought I had upgraded my SSL certificate on John’s Tech Blog but it expired on Jun 30th. I was able to install the new certificate on the morning of 1 July.
Don’t be alarmed if you have to accept a new certificate when visiting the site. Nothing fishy going on. Just me installing the new certificate incorrectly before the other one expired.
John
Ooni Karu 12
For a number of years I have fancied myself a bit of a good pizza chef. Mind you, I only made pizzas for myself and family and friends but I’m getting pretty good at it. My craft has evolved over the years. But I have really stepped up my game with the addition of an Ooni Karu 12 Multi Fuel Pizza Oven.
I want a giant kitchen with a real brick oven but at 60 years of age I’m probably in my last home. Over the last couple of years I’ve been eyeballing outdoor pizza ovens. The other day I was in a local Dick’s Sporting Goods store and I saw one in a store for the first time. They have always been sold out.
An employee came by and asked me if I was interested and I replied, “Maybe”. His response was “We can’t keep them in the store”. Okay, John, it appears the time to get an Ooni is now or never. I got just the oven and I sprung for one of their pizza peels as well. I have no beef with the pizza peel but I’m a woodworker and subsequently made my own wooden pizza peel. Probably should have just done that from the start.
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I recently bought a new smart TV from BestBuy. The LG 43UQ7590PUB
It’s a Piece Of Fucking Shit and earns John’s Tech Blog’s coveted Piece Of Fucking Shit Award.
I bought it in January 2023 and it has been nothing but trouble. My wife and I frequently watch TV in separate rooms and just about the time I get comfortable and engaged in some program here comes the call from the other room.
“Honey, the TV sound disappeared”, or “Honey, the TV just rebooted and now XXXX app doesn’t work”.
I’ve reached the point where mild annoyances that this TV produces has now expanded into full blown rage. Two days ago I told my sweet wife…….“Fuck this fucking TV. It is driving me crazy. I’m buying a new TV”. Normally, there might be a little back and forth discussion coming from the mouth of a reasonable and loving partner. Option exploring. My wife is good and real sweet in this department.
No discussion this time. She was 100% in agreement that this TV needed replaced. To her credit she didn’t use my US Navy vernacular sentence enhancers.
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Sculpfun provided me an S9 laser and then subsequently provided me a Sculpfun S9 to S30, 33 Watt Upgrade Kit. I did a “First Impressions” blog which you can read here. After using it for a couple of weeks I decided to do a deeper dive on upgrade kit.
33 Watt Module
The S30 Ultra 33 watt module is considerably larger than the original S9, 5.5 watt module and contains a lot of really cool features
Most noticeable is the addition of an all metal air assist. One of my favorite features of the air assist is that it not only is secured in place with an allen screw, it also threads on and contains an O-ring to keep the air contained.
The tube is considerably larger than most competitors air assists which allows for a higher volume of air movement.
Removing the air nozzle allows for access to the lens for cleaning.
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Sculpfun 33 Watt Laser
The great folks at Sculpfun recently sent me their S9 Laser which I did several reviews of. Also, they very kindly sent me their 33 watt Sculpfun S9 Upgrade Kit which upgrades the kit from approximately 5.5 watts to a FULL 33 WATTS OF POWER to review.
Diode laser modules are roughly 5.5 watts and to obtain higher wattages, multiple diodes are combined into one beam. In the case of a 33 watt module that means there are 6 individual blue diode laser modules.
There is one important point that I would like to make before I begin this review. Let’s get to it, shall we?
There has been a story in the news the last week or two that caught my attention. And that story is the civil unrest in Sudan. I had one of those literal “Oh My God” moments that I’d like to share with you. And because the title of this website contains the words “Tech Blog” I’ll focus on some aspects of Bible Technology.
Ezekiel was a Hebrew prophet who wrote the Book Of Ezekiel. He was taken to Babylon during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar. In Ezekiel 38 there is a war referred to as the Gog Magog War. As a Christian this conflict has fascinated me because quite frankly you can literally see the pieces falling into place. And this civil unrest in Sudan fills in one of those pieces. It is what inspired me to write this at 1AM in the morning. That in itself is weird. I felt kind of compelled to write this in the middle of the night.
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Mokerlink L2 Managed
When upgrading your home or small business network you will quickly discover that 2.5G switches are not cheap. Today I do a Mokerlink Review of their 8 port, managed 2.5G switch.
I ordered the switch from Amazon at a cost of $175. While that might be inexpensive for a 2.5G switch it isn’t inexpensive for a network switch. It will definitely make you question whether upgrading your network to 2.5G is worth it. I understand that a 2.5G switch is going to be more expensive than a 1G switch but there is a huge chasm in pricing between the two.
The first thing I noticed wasn’t about the actual switch. As soon as I buy something I head to the internet to download the manuals for it. When I went to the Mokerlink website their https certificate was expired and my browser was telling me it might not be safe. The next day I tried and the website was down. This morning, I finally was able to get to their website and download the manuals.
So my first impression is not a good one. Someone is not minding the store at Mokerlink and keeping track of their web host. Heck, at John’s Tech blog and my other web site I get a ton of emails from my host months in advance of an expiration of a domain name or a certificate.
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Let’s talk about the Raspberry Pi shortage. Pi’s of just about any variant have been close to impossible to get since Covid entered our lives. Particularly difficult to get are the Raspberry Pi 4 of any memory configuration or the Compute Module 4 (CM4).
I particularly like the CM4 for the fact that an SSD can be added to it and that it can have a Real Time Clock (RTC) depending on the Carrier Board you use.
Server Rack Full O’ Pi’s
A few weeks ago I scoured through all my parts piles and disassembled all my old projects and found a ton of Raspberry Pi 3’s. To my utter surprise I found I owned SIX Raspberry Pi 4’s. But they were mostly 1GB and 2GB models.
I also had FOUR CM4’s. Sadly most of the CM4 Carrier Boards you see out there are either lacking in functionality or are simply vaporware. The official Raspberry Pi IO Board is almost the only real choice.
You would think this is an adequate number of Pi 4’s and CM4’s for me, but it isn’t. I’d have a couple of Pi’s in every room, doing various jobs if I could get my hands on more.
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