Category Archives: How To

How to do things

An improvised 12 volt shower

Posted on by

imageNeeded to connect up a temporary shower in a workshop recently.  I looked at doing the whole “plump in a complete shower”, and the quote we received was in the thousands.

This was the quick workaround.

The shower is sighted above a plastic clamshell plastic sandpit.  Clean, warm water is pumped from a clean bin.  (the camping shower includes a built-in water pump).

The water from the sandpit is pumped out into a waste bin, via the Rule 360gph bilge pump.

The bits to make up the improvised shower are below:

Electrical
12V camping shower
12V DC 10A Desktop Power Supply 2.1mm DC Plug
Rule 360gph 12v bilge pump
DC Power plugs

Other
27 litre rubbish bin (2)
2m Grey PVC Washing Machine And Dishwasher Outlet Drain Hose
Shower curtain (2)
Shower curtain rings (several)
Clam Shell Sandpit
59.5 x 39.5cm Timber Duck Board Bath Mat (2)
Floating Pool Thermometer
Corflute panels (2)

What about hot water supply though?!?
With buckets.  I have access to a hot water tap, so I fill buckets and transfer into the 27 litre bin.  If I need to generate my own hot water, I’d buy a Portable Gas Water Heater and a separate water pump.

How I setup my external backup drive.

Posted on by

VeraCrypt128x128I use VeraCrypt to create a encrypted hard drive.  That way, if I lose the drive, the lucky finder won’t be able to read the data.

The steps are as follows:

  1. Using DiskPart and Clean the drive
  2. Start VeraCrypt and select the VeraCrypt Volume Creation Wizard
  3. Encrypt a non-system partition/drive
  4. Standard VeraCrypt volume
  5. Select the external hard drive
  6. Create encrypted volume and format it
  7. Select the default encryption options
  8. Volume size is the entire drive
  9. Select the NTFS Filesystem AND the “Quick Format” option
  10. Click format

Using PowerShell to ZIP something.

Posted on by

powershellI needed to ZIP-up some log files in a number of subdirectories.  In the past, I have used the PKZIP utility.

I couldn’t find my copy of PKZIP Sad smile

“Doesn’t PowerShell have a compress-archive command?”
’Why, yes it does!’

Two commands later:

$files=get-childitem *.log -Recurse
compress-archive $files -DestinationPath c:\data\AllTheLogFiles

I had my AllTheLogFiles.Zip file.

Backup date/time and SyncBackPro

Posted on by

imageMy backup tool of choice is SyncBackPro.  It’s a quality product at a reasonable price.

One of the things I backup is my Apple iPhone and iTunes folders.  I take a snapshot of these by using the Compression feature, with a custom filename.

You can generate a custom filename this by creating your own variable in the Profile Setup/Variables area.

In the screenshot (about) you can see that I’ve created the Variable Name DATETIMENOW with the Value %YEAR%%MONTH%%DAY%_%HOUR%%MINUTE%%SECOND%

In the screenshot, this translates to 20180717_213656

I then use this in the Profile Setup for the actual backup:
image

As simple as that.