2020

Recently I decided to add a USB connected printer to my OpenWrt router.

While I normally use a wireless solution with built-in AirPrint (so I can print directly from my iPhone/iPad), sharing a USB printer on a network involves purchasing a print server.

Unfortunately, currently available print servers lack support for, for example, AirPrint, i.e. the ability to print wirelessly from Apple devices such as iPhone or iPad.

If I find one that has AirPrint, it is either very expensive or the manufacturer has discontinued its further development, which is a pity.

So I decided to use my OpenWrt router. Since it has two USB ports, one of which, USB 2.0, which I happen to have free, is perfect for connecting a printer.

In fact, I cared most about AirPrint, and you can read about what came out of it below.

It happened! Google calculated that the business it got into with Google Photos, while it has irreversibly changed the way we store photos, is very expensive for itself.

Disk space (storage) and its maintenance cost a lot, and not a little. The energy necessary to ensure the continuity of its services plays an even greater role, especially in the era of caring for the climate.

Someone at Google did not consider the fact that people like what is free, especially when you can’t see the difference. And we are talking about photos and videos stored by us on Google Photos in compressed form, but without losing visual quality, and at the same time without them taking up disk space available as part of the service.

And so after over 4 trillion (4,000,000,000,000) photos uploaded by users to Google Photos, and as large companies began to look at the money they were generating from their operations during the pandemic, it was time for Google to start thinking like a profit-oriented company.

On one hand, someone had a great plan, to offer something that would revolutionize the market. On the other hand, someone had an even better plan!

Did anyone know that after a few years (over 5) of using Google Photos, it would be increasingly difficult for anyone to move from it to another solution, if such a thing exists?

As a person who likes technical innovations, I like to play with the latest equipment. When it comes to Apple equipment, if changing the device to a newer one right after its release is not part of our work, a typical upgrade is usually expensive and not always profitable.

Having owned an iPhone 6 a few years ago, I was in no rush to upgrade until the iPhone X came out, which I had for two years. When the iPhone 11 Pro was released, I moved towards purchasing the iPhone XS (yes, one generation back). As the item (an exception to the rule) turned out to be inconsistent with the description, I had to return it, and in order not to be left without a phone, I decided to buy the iPhone 11 Pro 256GB.

As Apple offers 0% installments, the total amount was £49.99 per month with the first payment of £20 and the last payment of £29.23. It’s not some kind of deal, but I don’t overpay at all, as is the case with operators in the UK (especially for individual customers).

I have been looking at Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Programme¹ for a long time. For a fixed monthly fee, you get a new phone, which you can replace with a newer one after a year (without having to pay the remaining “installments”). Apple Care is included in the total, which additionally encourages you to think: is it worth it?

Recently I had the opportunity to transfer data from one computer to another. Since the first one was already running Windows 10 in the latest version and everything worked perfectly (only the hardware was a bit lagging behind), I decided to clone the disk from the first one to the second one.

Using dd as a method (a little slow but effective) I ran the same system on the new hardware, with one difference. The target hardware was licensed with Windows 10 Pro compared to the old hardware with Windows 10 Home.

Therefore, I decided to do an upgrade.

Even though I’m not a fan of excessive photo editing, sometimes even the best-taken photo just cries out for a little TLC (as the English say, “touch love care”).

There are a ton of apps on the AppStore (and Google Play) that will help you achieve your goals. Some have just a few useful options, while others have limitations that force you to reach into your wallet to get what you want.

I’ve recently been going through a ton of apps to find the one that has everything I need to achieve the desired effect.

Cloudflare is known for being the next Google and providing us with high-quality services, many of which can be used for free without any compromises. Fortunately, unlike Google, it is not so eager to kill its services.

From domain management, to SSL certificate for your website, secure and fast DNS, to turbocharging your internet connection with WARP (or WARP+ for those who want more).

The UK’s service providers are very much behind the times when it comes to the latest technological developments. Given the somewhat phlegmatic attitude of the British people towards new technologies, it’s no wonder that ISPs are still stuck in the Stone Age (IPv4), even though the stones (the pool of IPv4 addresses) are gone. While I am lucky to have an external IPv4 address, I can forget about a version 6 address (thumbs down for Virgin Media).

Luckily, there is a solution, and it’s free!

So you want to add a torrent client to your OpenWrt router, so that you can download, for example, a Raspbian image using this method, save it to a previously connected and configured USB drive and access it from the local network?

Continuing my post Adding a USB drive to a router with OpenWrt using the USB port (using the Linksys WRT3200ACM as an example), we move on to sharing our drive on the local network.

Today’s solution is a bit unusual - my network drive (NAS) recently stopped working, and to sort it out I need to do some digging in it. In the meantime, I would like to use the USB 3.0 port built into my WRT3200ACM router with OpenWrt software to share a USB drive on the network.