[00:00:08.980] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.310] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.310] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.380] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.730] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And welcome back. We are sorry that we weren't with you last week. Why weren't we with them last week, Taylor?
[00:00:31.410] - Taylor
So last, two Mondays ago, I went away. I went to Copenhagen and visited there for a couple of days.
[00:00:41.100] - Gordon
This is your 12 months of coffee, isn't it?
[00:00:43.080] - Taylor
Yeah, and it was great. I really enjoyed it. Quite expensive, but it was a very lovely city.
[00:00:48.130] - Gordon
We should explain what 12 Months of Coffee is for those who haven't already watched this. For 12 Months, Taylor is going to go to a European country for a few days, sit in coffee shops, enjoying their coffee and watching the world go by while still working and doing things as well. So he can basically travel the world and still be able to work. That's about it.
[00:01:11.720] - Taylor
Pretty much.
[00:01:12.220] - Gordon
Yeah. So tell us about Copenhagen, expensive, you say?
[00:01:16.010] - Taylor
Yeah. So the first day I was there, I got a coffee. From a, it's called Espresso House. It's like the equivalent of Starbucks in the rest of the world, essentially. They're the biggest chain. And they're similar to Starbucks in the way that they brand themselves and things like that. I paid £7.30 for a coffee.
[00:01:40.370] - Gordon
Wow. That is expensive.
[00:01:43.290] - Taylor
Yeah, just a bit. So yeah, it was a lovely city, but just very expensive overall, really.
[00:01:50.830] - Gordon
So what did you come away having seen there? Did you go and see anything in Copenhagen?
[00:01:59.080] - Taylor
I did quite a lot of walking, really, and looking at just looking around the city. And there was some lovely architecture, very colourful. A lot of people have their houses painted bright colours, pink, yellow, green. Yeah, it's just really nice to see. There was a really nice canal that I walked down and I had a lunch outside of. And yeah, just overall, it was really nice.
[00:02:25.100] - Gordon
Very good. And are you finding that this 12 months of coffee is working out how you expected it to?
[00:02:32.650] - Taylor
I think it's always slightly different. I think I'm getting better at traveling and understanding what I need to do and how just to go about it to make sure that I'm the most efficient with my time and just traveling in general. So that's obviously quite good. And yeah, I enjoy as long as I can find... I normally find on the first day, I normally find one place that I kind of like settle, and then I go to that one quite a bit and sit in there because obviously... At least for the ones I've been to, I've found my coffee shop that I spend the three days in, pretty quickly. I visit other coffee shops and things like that as well. And I always find the one that I find first is always the best. It has the best plug outlets. It's not too crowded. It's a nice place in the city.
[00:03:31.500] - Gordon
Okay. And the reason you're doing this is because you want to travel, right? You want to see new places and get new inspiration?
[00:03:39.900] - Taylor
Yeah. I mean, it's always nice to see the differences in cultures and how people live their life in other places. Especially in Copenhagen, it's very much a cycling city similar to Amsterdam, where cyclists have nearly the right of way, essentially. There was a road near from where I was staying, and it was a one way road for cars, but it was a two way road for cyclists. And the car and the cyclists, so the car went down the middle and then they had cycle lanes on either side. And the cycle lanes were similar size and width to the one car lane, which...
[00:04:26.460] - Gordon
Because of the number of cyclists that use it, I guess.
[00:04:28.710] - Taylor
Exactly. And yeah, everyone cycled everywhere. They have a very interesting lock. So a lot of people will use their bike stand to prop their bike up when they leave it. And they have this circular disc lock that they put around their back wheel. So how we normally have a U shape lock or D lock, I think it's called, or a chain. They have this weird circular disc that they just put around their wheels and they don't attach it to anything. They can just leave it on the side of the street. And it's quite an affluent area because of the way it's so expensive and it's very safe. I was talking to one of my mum's old bosses who moved out there and said that they could just leave their laptop in a coffee shop, go to the toilet, leave all their stuff and it'd be fine. And if you did that in Croydon or in London, it'd be gone within about five minutes. And so, yeah, it's a completely different culture and just way people live.
[00:05:36.080] - Gordon
What does the disc actually do?
[00:05:38.150] - Taylor
It just stops the bike from, I guess, rotating.
[00:05:40.910] - Gordon
The back wheel from rotating. Right. Okay. So someone could still come and pick it up and walk off with it. They just can't cycle away with it.
[00:05:47.300] - Taylor
But because of the culture that there's very little crime or not as big as it is in other places, they don't have that worry because everyone doesn't need these things. You don't really need to lock it up the same way you would in other places.
[00:06:05.740] - Gordon
Very good.
[00:06:06.400] - Taylor
So it's there. It's a sort of deterrent, but at the same time because it's a completely different environment and different types of people, you don't need to lock it up and have that level of safety, I guess.
[00:06:19.640] - Gordon
Very good. Excellent. Anything else you want to say about Copenhagen or your trip away or work that's happening at the moment?
[00:06:28.040] - Taylor
I still really enjoy just the actual experience of traveling in terms of going to the airport and getting on a plane. I still find it... I haven't done as many flights as Marc, for example.
[00:06:42.330] - Gordon
Our friend Marc in America who seems to live on an aeroplane more than he lives off an aeroplane, basically.
[00:06:48.850] - Taylor
Yeah, he passed his 500th flight or something earlier this year, which is quite incredible. I'm up to about 20, 25 or so of the ones I've tracked because I've, obviously, I went away when I was younger, but I haven't got all of those details and flights and things. But yeah, it's still semi-novelty. I feel like I'm in between the frequent flyer and the novelty holiday type person at the moment purely because I only go like once a month or whatever.
[00:07:18.790] - Gordon
And that's the way you want it to stay. You don't want it to become drudgery. You have to go on an aeroplane to go to meetings. You see all these people in suits sitting on aeroplanes and you know they have to be there. And therefore, they're really not enjoying the whole process. You want to be in a situation where you're actually looking forward to the trip, and you're looking forward to the experience and going to a new airport, for example, as opposed to these people who go to the same airport probably once a month, and it's just a commute for them. Not quite so exciting.
[00:07:53.830] - Taylor
I think the three days is perhaps maybe not enough because by the time I settle, it's time to go. But I think that it's just enough that it is that point where just as I get to settling, it's time to go home and so I don't settle too much. Sometimes when you go on holiday and you go for a week or two, you feel like, I want to go home now. Whereas this is, it's not too short. So at least I get an entire full day, but it's not too long that I...
[00:08:26.380] - Gordon
Well, maybe you should try and see if maybe four or five days is going to be as good for you because the expensive bit is getting there and getting back again. So when you're actually there, although there is an extra expense, there's a lot less expense to actually stay for a day or two longer. So maybe you should try that out and just see if you can find the sweet spot for you.
[00:08:52.270] - Taylor
Yeah. So the reason that I was going from a Monday to Wednesday is because I have BNI on a Thursday, which I need to be back for. So I could potentially go on a Sunday maybe and come back on a Wednesday. But yeah, we'll have a look and see. And so the reason there wasn't a episode last week was I was going to catch up with a lot of stuff that was location dependent rather than work dependent, if that makes sense. So a lot of the stuff I was still working while I was out there, but a lot of the stuff that I was doing when I got back was things that I had to be in person for and I had to physically be able to do so.
[00:09:31.520] - Gordon
And you never know what your internet is going to be like over there. So you have to try and find places like a coffee shop that's got a good internet connection so that you can do your normal work.
[00:09:40.980] - Taylor
Yeah, there was one bit of work that I need to do that I needed to take a backup first. And the backup was like a gigabyte. And I knew that I wasn't going to be able to take the backup before I did the work. So I had to hold that off until I got back.
[00:09:53.630] - Gordon
Right. Yeah. Because taking a gigabyte on someone's free WiFi is taking the mickey a bit, isn't it?
[00:10:01.460] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:10:01.800] - Gordon
Cool. Well, I'm glad you had a lovely trip and we came and picked you up from the airport. And for those who don't know, if you are going to Gatwick or Heathrow, I believe, they've got these silly fees now you have to pay just to pick someone up or even drop them off. It's really annoying. It's like £5 to drive through, let someone get out the car or get in and then drive off again, get to the gate and you've now got to pay £5. Really annoying. But we found a workaround. The long stay car parks give you a period of free time. So what Taylor is doing now is he's getting on the bus when he gets out of the terminal, which takes them to the long term car park, which is like a five minute journey, not far, gets off on the first stop he gets there, and then we'll be there ready to pick him up and drive off. And it's adding maybe 15/ 20 minutes to our time in total. But it's a lot cheaper. And when you're doing this every month, that does add up. And it's always good to keep the cost down. Good. Right. Topic for me today is my ongoing computer hardware issues. So I set up a NAS, so that's a Network Accessible Storage. Is that right?
[00:11:28.980] - Taylor
I think so.
[00:11:29.410] - Gordon
I want to say it's that, I think that's right. It's basically a box with lots of hard drives in it that's attached to an Ethernet port which goes to the network, and then any machine on the network can access the files. And the reason I do that is because I have a huge number of files which I don't necessarily need every day, but I'm archiving them off, if you like, so that I can get to them when I need them. And some of these files are things like stock photography that I've purchased, or audio files, again, that I've purchased, or artwork, illustrations, client work, this sort of thing, something that I might need to go back to, and I don't want to get rid of. Graphic artwork, the masters for that. Some videos, I don't keep a lot of videos because they take up huge amounts of space. So that's the reason for setting up my NAS. And if you've been following This Week With for a while, you'll know that I had a disaster about a month and a half ago now where my NAS drive of choice, which was a Drobo, failed on me and the drives inside wouldn't read. And so I've currently got seven terabytes worth of data that I don't have access to, which includes all my own photography, the Masters of, which I just don't have any backups of. I have JPEG versions on Flickr, which is fine, but they're not the masters, they're not the RAW files, which I prefer to have. So I am still, still, and I know it's been about a month and a half now, trying to rescue those. And very sadly, the software that I've got and the hardware that I'm using has managed to rescue 8.6% of it. And that's in a month and a half. And it took a few days to get to 6.3%. And then from then on to 8.6, which is where we are now, it's taken about a month and a quarter. So it's going to take forever. I'm going to need to contact the... What do you call it? The people who do the software to see if they can help again because there's definitely something wrong. And it's in a format that I can't actually access easily because of the format it's in. And Drobo have gone out of business. The software no longer works on the newer operating systems, which I knew was coming. But it's only when you get pushed into things like this that you take action. So I replaced it. Sorry, go on.
[00:14:13.850] - Taylor
So is it the drives that failed, or is it the Drobo itself that failed?
[00:14:18.650] - Gordon
One of the drives failed, and so I attempted to fix that, and then the Drobo failed. So both of them failed.
[00:14:27.520] - Taylor
Could you perhaps find someone that also has a Drobo and see if you can put your files in there to at least get access to them?
[00:14:37.640] - Gordon
I have someone I know who has one. That is something I could try. However, the more you physically handle these disks, the more chance there is of them failing completely and losing everything. Because I need all the drives that are there for me to get my data back. And the other problem I've got is that they're running 24/7 at the moment to try and recover the files, which means they are going to die at some point soon just because of the amount of stress that they're being put under. So it's a real fine line at the moment as to what I do to get the data back. In the back of my mind, I've got used to the idea that I might lose everything. And although that would be a real pain because there's video footage on there that wasn't edited, and the gentleman that I filmed is no longer with us. So it's not like I can go back and recover that. In fact, the interviewer who was with me at the time is no longer with us either. So there's only me from that shoot that's still around. So we can't redo that shoot. So I do want to try and get that data back, but that's going to be problematic. So I've replaced it with a Synology drive, which is another NAS drive, but it's one that I know is being fully supported currently. And I've now deployed this. So it's now running, it's now backing up my computers and it's having the files on it as well. But it's not a backup on its own. It's a really good storage facility because you get, in my case, I've got currently 16, I want to say 16, maybe it's 12, 12, I think it is, terabytes worth of backup storage, with redundancy. So it copies files to more than one drive. So if a drive fails, you still have files on the other drives. So that's how a NAS in a Raid system works. But that's not a backup. That is just storage. So what I've also got now, which I've also just deployed is an 18 terabyte hard drive standalone USB external drive, which I've plugged into the back of the Synology and I'm now backing up all of the files that go onto my NAS drive onto this 18 terabyte drive as well.
[00:16:54.820] - Taylor
Okay.
[00:16:55.300] - Gordon
So I've now got a copy on the USB drive. I've got more than one copy on the NAS drive. And we mentioned this before, the 321 backup system. I'm not quite there because I have now got two copies of the files and I have them on two different devices. What I don't have is an off site copy.
[00:17:22.470] - Taylor
So could you use a cloud service?
[00:17:24.770] - Gordon
I could, but with the internet we have, I couldn't. It's just not fast enough.
[00:17:29.860] - Taylor
But would it work if you were backing up, say, once a fortnight or something like that, that it's there in case? And it's obviously going to be once a fortnight or once a month, maybe. And obviously, it would be one's that, only the files that change get backed up as well, which obviously the first initial one would be a lot. But then ongoing.
[00:17:51.150] - Gordon
Yeah. You're right. I could do that. I'm currently on the new NAS with new files, and I'm trying to replace some of the files that are on the drives that I've lost by redownloading assets and resources that I've had in the past to save having to worry about the ones that are on the recoverable drives. So I haven't got to worry about whether they get recovered or not. I'm replacing some of the data, for the data that I can replace. But already I'm on three and a half terabytes worth of data. And on the internet connection we've got, that's going to take three weeks to upload just for that, the initial backup. And yes, I could take it somewhere else and I could upload it somewhere else on a different connection, and that may be an option. But currently it's not. I am hoping because I have read rumours about BT making sure that every single home has fibre directly to the home by 2025. So we've got fibre up to, I believe, the road.
[00:19:05.150] - Taylor
The cabinet.
[00:19:05.790] - Gordon
Or the cabinet, yeah. And then it's copper from there on, which limits our speed dramatically. And I believe the only way they can do this is by digging up the road or pulling the cables out, putting them through again. I don't know. But BT have said they're going to do it. Fibre from exchange to the house by 2025 for everyone. I'm skeptical that they're going to meet that because we've been in this house now for, I think it's something like 17 years, 18 years, and it's never had good internet. We have the slowest of the slow. I think we get 12 megabits per second. It's pitiful. 0.6 megabits per second up. It's amazing how I ever manage to do any work, basically. Which is why you got your own internet connection. You're using 5G, which could be a way to go, but your 5G is not reliable currently. It falters to 4G and sometimes even to 3G. And 3G is being turned off soon. So that's an issue as well. And I think that's why Fibre is being brought in by 2025, because I think somewhere between now and then 3G is getting switched off. Anyway, my backup solution is getting a lot better. It's not 100% yet, but if my computer were to die or I would lose my computer for the repair like I had just a few weeks ago, I do have a drive now that I can plug into another computer, download the Synology software, and I would then have access to it again, which is the important thing. I'm not going to have to stop work completely because I've no longer got access to my files. So that is a good thing. I am getting there. It's taken a long time and it's costing a lot of money. Buying a 4 terabyte NAS hard drive on its own is about £80 currently from Amazon, which is a lot cheaper than when I used to buy them. However, I've got to buy five of these. So that's going to add to the cost. The Synology drive itself was about £700. And the one I've bought allows me to buy an accessary which will be an add on box with drive bays in it, another five drive bays. And you can add two of these on to the system I've already got to expand your storage. So instead of taking out a 4 terabyte drive and putting an eight terabyte drive in, for example, you can buy one of these boxes and put more drives in and just keep adding up to 15 drives, at which point you'll then need to upgrade the capacity as drives get cheaper. So that is an option. However, the extra box with the five bays in is again another £500. So that's before you even buy the drives. I was looking just last night, weirdly, and to get 30 terabytes worth of hard drive space, which is not actually usable because they have to split it up to give you redundancy. I think off the top of my head, you're going to get about 24 terabytes ish, maybe 22 terabytes from a 30 terabyte drive capacity, is £1190 currently, which is a big investment. And if you're going to have data that you are storing, you have to bear that in mind that the cost is quite high. And online storage for that amount is a huge amount more than that. I mean, a physical hard drive is a lot cheaper than uploading everything to the cloud. I don't know the costs off the top of my head, but I know if you've got 10 terabytes worth of data and you want to put it in Google Drive or you want to put it in Amazon, you're looking at thousands of pounds a year. It's a lot of money. So having a system maybe where you can swap them out. So you have physical hard drives and then you have another duplicate unit which you can then copy data onto and then physically take it to another location would potentially be cheaper than doing the cloud storage, as you were saying. But yeah, I haven't got that far yet. I haven't thought that through. I've never needed it up to now. And until you actually need this, it's very difficult to invest money in it, especially that sort of cost. But that's where I am. So my system is now a little bit more stable. I don't have as much storage currently as I want. One of my four terabyte drives is stuck in the recovery pile and I can't take that out until it's finished what it's doing, which will then boost up my current storage by another four terabytes. So until then, I'm stuck with about 12 ish and I'm about a third full already.
[00:24:41.160] - Taylor
Okay.
[00:24:43.200] - Gordon
So we're getting there. We're getting there. Those of you who have data that you rely on, make sure you have a good backup solution, because don't be like me and just wait for something bad to happen and then deal with it. The other thing is, which I haven't even touched on, which I won't touch on now, but is to do tests of restores. There's no point having backups if you haven't tested the restore to make sure it works. That's really important. Something I'll come to another day because I haven't tested that myself yet. I think that's everything I want to say at this point. Anything you want to add to what we've discussed?
[00:25:20.880] - Taylor
No, that's everything from me.
[00:25:22.970] - Gordon
So as always, thank you for watching. If you would like to see any... If you'd like to subscribe, like, share, that can be done on Facebook and on YouTube. I'm getting my words all muddled now. My brain is thinking of other things.
[00:25:43.590] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes and anything we may have spoken about.
[00:25:50.060] - Gordon
We'll be back all willing and happy and hoping nothing goes wrong, next Friday at 1pm. Until then, my name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:26:03.600] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:26:06.150] - Gordon
See you next week. Bye bye.
[00:26:07.880] - Taylor
Bye.
