Why do I keep doing it?
Replacing one cheap lawnmower with another?
More to the point; why do I complain when, as usual, everything rusts, breaks and dies?
Well no more. I've entered a new life. A Stihl life...
I work with a guy who's always been Stihl crazy. I assumed he was just crazy. I assumed if you bought a Stihl, you were paying a premium for a hyped-up brand. I assumed there were cheaper options that'd do the job just as well. I really need to stop assuming things.
Sadly, it hasn't been that long since I last bought a mower. Last time I was considering a battery-powered option, but they were either really expensive or gave me no confidence they had the power or battery-life to do the job. The idea of a rechargeable mower is so damn appealing though - no running out of petrol, no oil spills. Less noise.
So this time, I took the plunge.
The Stihl RMA 410 C is a funny looking thing.
The first unusual feature is the one-sided handle. Although it looks like it can't possibly work, it turns out the German design team at Stihl know what they're doing. This asymmetrical configuration means more convenient access to the catcher - which has its own unique design feature; it comes apart at the back... on purpose.
So instead of trying to shake your clippings out of a small opening at the front... and shaking... and shaking... the rear of the catcher opens up completely to release all its contents in one single dump. Genius.
There are simple and yet brilliant design features like that all over the RMA 410 C. Starting couldn't be easier - or more safe. No throwing your shoulder out as you yank and yank a starter cord. You just hold a button down while you push the safety bar and the mower instantly swings into action. That bar has to stay pushed against the handle to keep the mower running - meaning you can't go anywhere near the blades without the whole thing shutting down automatically.
The height adjustment is just as easy, with a simple squeeze-release to raise or lower to your preferred setting.
But of course, the hero feature of the RMA 410 C is the 36V Lithium-Ion battery and the unbelievably fast, fast charger. The same battery can be used across a whole range of Stihl power tools, including the FSA 65 linetrimmer which I kind of accidentally bought when I bought the mower.
Just as well the battery works so amazingly, or I would've felt pretty stupid.
Luckily, not only does the battery work, it exceeded every expectation. It seems to run the linetrimmer forever.
Running a whole mower is a slightly different proposition, obviously. But as long as the grass isn't too out of control, most mows I get almost an hour's running time out of a single charge, even on my sloping section. In fact, because the RMA 410 C is so light, it's perfect for my angled terrain, especially given its conveniently placed carry handles front and back.
The sheer power is remarkable - the mower absolutely scythes through my spring growth without breaking a sweat. (I sweat, but I'm not in nearly as good nick as the RMA 410 C)
Unfortunately, the battery isn't actually magic and does require charging about halfway through my mowing and trimming routine. This is actually not too much of an inconvenience as a) it gives me an excuse to stop for lunch and b) incredibly, the charger only takes about 75 minutes to get the battery back to full.
Of course, now I know it works so fantastically, I should probably just get another battery. Swapping it from one device to another couldn't be easier.
But if I did that, would I still get a lunch break?
One thing's for certain, I'm never going back to petrol. And right now, it's hard to imagine anything working as well as a Stihl.
Click here for more information and pricing on the Stihl RMA 410 C cordless lawnmower.
Click here for more information and pricing on the Stihl FSA 65 PRO cordless linetrimmer.
When was the last time you were forced to negotiate with international cyber-criminals?
For me, it was just a few weeks ago.
It was one of the worst things that's ever happened to me...
I consider myself a pretty techie kind of a guy. In fact, technically, I'm Technical Director on the Mike Hosking Breakfast at Newstalk ZB - a pretty technical role.
I write tech reviews for the ZB website. Sometimes I'm interviewed as a tech expert for the New Zealand Herald.
Turns out, I didn't know squat.
I thought I did. In fact, I was arrogant about it - especially in terms of my personal cyber security. I don't feel that way anymore.
We have a pretty decent desktop PC at home. Over the years I've pimped it up with lots of RAM and massive amounts of storage for things like music and photos. Important things.
Obviously you need to protect important things like those and yes, I had an external backup drive so I could regularly copy all that important stuff across. But here's my big mistake; I left that backup drive plugged in. Turns out, even a drive connected by USB is vulnerable to attack.
When I type that, it's so obvious but at the time, I never gave it a second thought. Arrogant.
My arrogance extended to my browsing and downloading habits. Sure I would go incognito to keep my browsing private (it doesn't really). And of course I was using an up to date antivirus (provided by my ISP for free)
That didn't protect me.
Turns out, visit the wrong site, download the wrong file, next thing you know, you're encrypted.
The first sign something was seriously wrong was a series of browser windows opening themselves all at once. It was astonishing how fast it all happened. While I was trying desperately get control of my browser back, everything else was being taken away from me; photos, pictures, the lot.
The sense of instant regret was overwhelming. How could I have been so stupid? Why wasn't I running a proper cyber security suite like Norton Security? More importantly, if I'd been running cybersecurity software like Norton Secure VPN and Norton Security Premium, I wouldn't have been able to download this cyber chaos into my life in the first place.
Unfortunately, Norton didn't send me Security Premium or Secure VPN to review until after this had happened!
I spent days researching what to do. I tried everything to restore those precious files. Recovery programs that can undo recent modifications. I ran about every decryption tool available. I consulted specialist data recovery experts. I even notified government agencies.
Nothing worked. The Hermes 2.1 ransomware I was doomed by is relatively new and therefore completely uncrackable. Sure I could rebuild my PC from scratch. My 15 year-old gaming daughter wouldn't be happy about it, she'd lose her progress in a lot of her virtual spaces. But she'd get over it. My music library would be mostly retrievable from the cloud. I'd have to re-catalogue everything, but again - that's just time, not the end of the world.
What made me sick to my stomach though, what was keeping me awake day and night, was losing all those photos. Not just photos, but memories.
Priceless, priceless memories.
Why oh why hadn't I been running better security software and a VPN?
There was nothing else for it. I had to ask the price.
Fearing it might be thousands, the demand via untraceable email was $500USD, to be paid in Bitcoin.
Still a lot of money and the obvious question was, "How do I know you'll decrypt my files once I pay?"
Apparently, international cyber-criminals have systems in place to answer such concerns. I sent them an encrypted photo and they returned it to me, back in it's original state.
As luck would have it, it was a photo of the birth of one of my daughters. I pleaded my case, pointing out how important these pictures were to us. Somehow I managed to negotiate the price down to $300USD. I took a deep breath and decided to pay.
I figured given the bad guys had already programmed their software to unlock my files, there was really no reason for them not to send it to me.
Then I had to figure out how to buy Bitcoin. That's a whole other story that involved a very dark moment when I thought I'd lost all my money with no Bitcoin to show for it at the other end. Luckily, that was just a verification issue and after one of the most stressful afternoons of my life, the transaction was complete.
I notified my friendly extortionist and waited. And waited. And waited.
Another sleepless night passed.
After almost 24 hours I had all but resigned myself to losing the money when finally, after about 15 increasingly desperate emails from me, I was sent a link to the decryption software.
I was using a VPN and a more sophisticated anti-virus now, let me assure you.
Was it all over?
Sadly, decrypting hundreds of thousands of files takes a long time and, as it turns out, doesn't always work.
The sleepless nights just kept stacking up.
After a few more begging, pleading, groveling messages, I was sent a revised app to try.
Hallelujah! I could access my files again, although they had all been renamed and I would have to spend many further hours using specialised software to restore them to their previous forms.
Of course, a lot of damage had been done in the meantime, much of which I'm still cleaning up now, weeks later.
This really was one of the worst things that's ever happened to me. It may sound over dramatic to compare it to a death in the family, but losing thousands of memories of the people closest to you feels like that in so many ways.
And as for being forced to deal with anonymous criminals in the dark corners of the internet, that ain't no picnic either.
Heed my advice, it's so damn simple.
Back up your precious stuff. Either in the cloud, or even better on a separate drive YOU CAN DISCONNECT!
Don't download dodgy files. It's simply not worth it.
And most importantly, run a decent cyber security suite and keep your browsing safe and invisible with a VPN like Norton Secure.
Norton Secure VPN let's you choose your region, including New Zealand, which is important for streaming services like Netflix. You can subscribe up to 5 devices and best of all, it didn't slow me down at all - I've tested my download and upload speeds and there's not issue - in fact, many of my streaming services work better with Norton Secure VPN activated.
Avoid my nightmare. Practice safe net.
Click here for more information and pricing on Norton Secure VPN.
Not another bluetooth speaker!
Well, yes... but if you've ever been impressed by someone else's speaker, because it does something yours doesn't - it might be time for an upgrade.
For those of you suffering from a bit of speaker envy, there is an option that packs a lot of features into one small box...
The Sony SRS-XB31 is the everything, everywhere, every time speaker. Waterproof, dust-proof, small enough to pop into a bag, big enough for Sony's Extra Bass technology to do its thing.
Sony really has made a lot of noise (deliberate pun) about the Extra Bass feature - and justifiably so. The SRS-ZB31 is not large - just 23cm across - yet the bass response is big, warm, clear and powerful. Whether it's the acoustic double bass of a jazz trio or a more oonce-oonce dance beat, it all booms out of this little box.
In fact, I've been impressed with the sound quality generally - and not just playing music. I actually paired the speaker with my telly to use as a kind of mini-soundbar. It worked surprisingly well, producing a much wider dynamic picture than my TV's built-in speakers - especially bass-wise. Unfortunately I couldn't squeeze quite enough actual volume out of it to keep this as my TV sound setup in the lounge - the room is just too big for one small speaker to fill.
Of course, the SRS-ZB31 can link to other Sony speakers via the "Party Chain" function - so that could still work.
This is also Sony's poolside/on-the-beach option. The SRS-ZB31 carries an IP67 water and dust resistance rating. Now be warned; that's not an IPX rating which would make it legitimately submergeable, but you can't actually listen to music underwater anyway... unless you're a whale. I've tried pretty hard to break this thing. I've showered with it. I've cooked with it. I've dropped it in the sink. This kind of behaviour goes against all my natural instincts of course, I was born with an innate sense of respect for technology. Luckily, water, flour, crumbs, soapsuds - pretty much everything I've thrown at the SRS-ZB31 has bounced right off.
It even has flashy lights. Coloured LEDs. Strobes. The whole works. All of this can be controlled using Sony's Music Center app, which allows you to tweak things like EQ and connected apps too.
Oh, and you can hit it to make your own drum sounds. Yup, basically a whole party in one package. While other speakers may do some of these things better, there aren't many that do them all. It's pretty fun.
Click here for more information and pricing on the Sony SRS-XB31.
Okay, this is one for complete nerds, but bear with me.
In case you weren't up with the play, modern laptops don't use hard drives anymore. In fact, most of them don't even use the traditional hard drive form factor, even as a solid state drive. No point in a box when you can just slot in a tiny circuit board, right?
If you thought your laptop was fast already, you won't believe how changing to the Crucial P1 can still improve things.
The primary consideration here is storage space. While your shiny new laptop may well utilise the benefits of an NVMe PCIe SSD chip (many times faster than a conventional hard drive) it seems to have taken a long time for drives any bigger than 250GB to become more commonplace.
These days 250GB is just not enough space, especially if you're editing pictures, audio or video. Oh, I know everything's supposed to be up in the cloud by now, but if, like me, you're working on the same project in different locations, it's still hard to beat having all your raw files stored safely on your hard drive - or now, your Solid State Drive.
Enter the Crucial P1 - Available in 500GB, 1TB and a massive 2TB version coming soon. With desktop-level storage like that, you'll eliminate the need for external drives and sticks - cumbersome accessories that mitigate the portability of your laptop in the first place.
So how hard is it to upgrade? Cloning one drive to another and swapping them out sounds rather technical. Well, it is and it isn't.
The good news is, the Crucial website has a whole library of easy-to-follow instructional videos on exactly what to do, including a free download of Acronis cloning software which is very easy to set up and use.
The bad news is, most laptops only have one slot for ROM storage, so it's not like you can just plug in your new Crucial P1 module next to your existing memory chip and copy everything across.
Using an adapter cable, I had to plug in another hard drive, clone everything to that, create a bootable USB with the cloning software on it, then install the Crucial P1 and clone the hard drive back onto it.
I just wrote that myself and I'm struggling to follow the process.
It was made even more complicated by the fact the Acronis software only works if one of the drives involved is a Crucial drive. Because I wasn't cloning from a Crucial drive and the hard drive I was cloning to wasn't a Crucial one either, I had to find another program to do my cloning for me. Luckily there are quite a few around and most seem to do a pretty good job. I feel like Crucial should include some kind of access code in its packaging so you can use their software all the way through the process.
Once I swapped out the existing NVMe module for the Crucial P1, then I could use Acronis to clone everything back.
If you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, you might want to ask your tech-savvy nephew/daughter/next door neighbour to take care of this for you.
Back to the good news; physically replacing your existing NVMe module with the P1 is really easy - much less complicated than swapping out a whole hard drive like the old days.
On most motherboards the module is easily accessible and usually only held in place by a single screw.
So is it worth it?
Of course it is. My boot time improved straight away and most programs seem to fire up a bit quicker too. Best of all, I get the benefit of all that extra storage space.
Remember, extra space isn't just for storage, it also makes it easier for your computer to save things because it doesn't have to look so hard for the right-sized spaces. This becomes quite evident when saving large audio or video projects.
Of course, any gamers out there will know you usually have to spend a lot of money for a laptop with the speed and space to support most modern games. Now, by simply upgrading to the Crucial P1, as long as your laptop has reasonable graphics capabilities, it's quite feasible you've just turned it into a half-decent gaming rig.
Most importantly, it's a space issue. Right click your C: drive. Click on Properties. If that "Capacity" circle is nearly full, it's time to upgrade.
