Blog – Page 21 – Steven UK

Steak vs Lentils for Protein

Summer lunch with spring vegetables, cherry tomato & steak, macro closeup

Steak *drools*

I’ve been reading Muscle and Fitness Magazine and it had a page about Top 10 Protein Facts. What caught my eye were Fact No. 10, which suggested swapping 170g of Steak for 200g of Lentils.

First up they claimed that 170g of steak contained 48g protein, 18g fat (7g sat fat). I’m not sure what sort of beef steak they are eating but 170g steak usually contains nothing like that unless its 13% fat beef burger meat.

Looking at WeightLossResources, it reports the following for 170g of various cuts of Beefs…

Rump Steak – 213 kCal, 37.4g Protein, 0g Carbs, 7g Fat.
Sirloin Steak – 230 kCal, 40g Protein, 0g Carbs, 7.7g Fat.
Stewing Steak – 207 kCal, 38.4g Protein, 0g Carbs, 6g Fat.
Fillet Steak – 255 kCal, 36g Protein, 0g Carbs, 12.5g Fat.

I’m not quite sure where Muscle and Fitness got its stats. They suggest replacing the 170g burger, I mean steak with 200g Lentils, so lets look at 200g Lentils nutritional data.

Lentils (boiled) – 230 kCal, 18g Protein, 40g Carbs (8g Fibre), 1g Fat.

Calories are equal, but half the protein and a boatload of carbohydrates. I noticed they didn’t mention the carb content in the tip either. I’m not adverse to Lentils but I do watch my carb intake, at least try to and even the 8g of fibre can’t justify this one for me. I’ll stick to a green beans or fine beans

Green/Fine Beans (steamed) – 61 kCal, 3.5g Protein, 14g Carbs (7g Fibre), 0g Fat.

Covers my fibre hit, fits well with my steak and tasty to boot.

Image by Robert Owen-Wahl

Photoshop Cheat Sheets

I don’t know about all of you, I could never get used to dedicated keyboards, didn’t help much that I switched between Adobe Photoshop (Photo Editor), Macromedia Dreamweaver (Website Editor) and Adobe Premier (Video Editor). I would have needed a armada of keyboards. By dedicated keyboards I mean those almost rainbow coloured keyboards with short cut keys and macros printed on them. When I moved to Alienware Laptops for mobile editing, I stopped even trying to use the dedicated keyboards and used cheat sheets on copyholder clips which were equally mobile.

On a quick side note, The Alienware M18x R1, M18 and M17 laptops have all been fantastic at editing video and photo. If you need a Mobile Editing station, its well worth considering one. The main reason I advocate Dell is for their Warranty and Accidental Damage cover, usually next business day and engineer turns up, so don’t cheap out.

Back on Cheat Sheets, I found various cheat sheets which were hard to read, huge walls of text and some not so. I eventually stumbled on keyboard style layout cheat sheets and saved them. It was way back on CS3 I started this, and this a more up to date kayout for Photoshop CC, but most of them look the same due to Legacy.

Click it to see the full size version and save it.

Adobe Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet

I’m not sure who made the above graphic, its very good though and suits Apple Photoshop and Windows Photoshop. However remember that wall of text style cheat sheet I mentioned. This one seems to be made by Adobe and is very complete. You’ll see what I mean by wall of text when you blow up the lists below. All 4 Walls of Text Shortcuts, click on them and save them.

Photoshop CS2 Pt 1

Photoshop CS2 Pt 2

Photoshop CS2 Pt 3

Photoshop CS2 Pt 4

Its worth having a google to see what other cheat sheets there are around, maybe another style will suit you.

Synology DS716+ RAM

Corsair Vengeance Ram

Since I bought myself a DS716+ for my birthday last week, I started looking into the 2gb of RAM it ships with and to be honest 2gb RAM to transcode full 4k video to multiple outputs while having video inputs from security cams as well is poor. I have long known the DS7xx series has upgradable ram as well as access to the DX213 (2 Bay) / DX513 (5 Bay) Disk eXpansion units to take it from 2 Bay all the way up to 7 bay. The latter isn’t something I’d do as its putting data through a bottle neck (eSATA I believe) but RAM Upgrades is one of the first things I do with everything.

The RAM Upgrade is on my list once I get around to buying hard drives for it, but more on that later. I seems as best I can tell, the chipset/processor can handle up to 8gb of ram. There is 1 removable ram slot, and Synology charge the earth for a Synology RAM Module, along the lines of Apple memory.

Crucial Memory Compatible

Upon further reading, it seems Crucial do a compatible memory module with the part number CT102464BF160B.

I happen to have 16gb of 2133mhz Corsair Vengeance and 16gb of 1866mhz Corsair Vengeance Modules (32gb in total, 4x 8gb sticks) which I pulled from one of my Alienware 18″ Laptops when the graphics cards died and I upgraded.

As far as I can tell the Crucial modules match up with the Corsair module, so before I go spending £36 on the 8gb Crucial module, I’m going to see if I can use the Corsair Module. I’ll also document the process in a little more detail as well when I get around to it and confirm if it works.

Fan Upgrades

The Synology units don’t have the best fans or fan profiles, and get quite noisy, so an 80mm low noise fan is high on the list as I expect this particular unit will be loud as hell with the extra transcoding load.

Noiseblockers do an 80mm fan, 16db noise and 2200rpm for £10.

Arctic so an 80mm, 19db and 1900rpm for £8.

Noctua do an 80mm, 11db at 1600rpm for £13.

Be Quiet do an 80mm, 15db at 2000rpm for £9.

So a few choices of fan, more about airflow, noise and then speed in the end. I’m not sure the case would hold a bigger fan or even an additional external fan, but then I maybe totally wrong and the original fan won’t be akin to a diesel engine.

I’ll also check into some rubber mounts and sound buffering if vibrations an issue too.

NAS Hard Drives

I have a few “archive” HGST 2tb Deskstar drives which were from my back server and set to Synology Hybrid Raid. They had nearly 4 years hard usage but no faults or anything. I normally keep 1 generation of old backup disk as a “archive” disaster recovery thing but for the sake of testing the RAM upgrade and also if I need better fans I may drag them out of retirement.

I was planning on trying Western Digital 8tb RED NAS Drives, I haven’t used a WD 3.5″ disk in god knows how long, and I think the last 320gb Scorpio Black I bought would be 5-6yrs ago for a laptop, and a 500gb Scorpio Blue for an external caddy would be maybe even longer. Although I did buy a Buffalo branded caddy when Netto closed down for £20 which had a Scorpio blue in it.

I’ll post a more detailed photo blog when I actually get around to installing the device, as well as detailed measurements for the fans and such.

Worlds Strongest Man 2016

Brian Shaw WSM Trophy Courtesy of WSM.

I have been a fan of Worlds Strongest Man for years, and its one of the things which actually got me into gym were WSM. I discovered that guys with my build and strength levels had a sport. I didn’t need a six-pack and bulging muscles, I didn’t need to run a 100 in 10 or anything like that.

Brian Shaw took 1st place with 53pts, followed closely by Hafthor Bjornsson in 2nd just 2pt behind with 51pts who also broke a record or two along the way with Eddie Hall in 3rd with 43pts.

This gives Shaw is 4th WSM Title, matching him with Zyndrunas Savackas, Magnus Ver Magnusson and Jon Pall Sigmarsson. This also takes him ahead of Bill Kazmaier as the most wins for an american. One more win and he’s tying with Mariusz “The Dominator” Pudzianowski with a record 5 wins. Brians ultimate dream will be 2 more wins and he breaks history for 6 titles.

Hafthor Bjornsson broke the keg toss by launching a 15kg keg over 7 meters, he’s certainly racking up the record breaks in recent times. One of my favourite stories about Thor is about why they hired him for Game of Thrones. They needed someone who weren’t dwarfed by and able to lift the huge swords in the show. Most other actors were barely able to even lift the swords but what they didn’t expect is Hafthor to wield the sword with a single hand as if it were made of plastic. They agreed they had found the new Mountain there and then.

Eddie Hall takes his first ever podium spot. Theres lots of opinions such as Hall only got his podium place because Zyndrunas were out of contention this year due to a back injury. In saying that, Hall has been destroying deadlift records as the first man ever to break the 500kg barrier which many thought were another year away at least. Some speculate his concentration on deadlift has slowed his progress down speed and endurance wise.

Konstantine Janashia from Georgia via FB.

Konstantine Janashia from Georgia placed in somewhat of a shocker, first time in Worlds Strongest Man and he placed 4th place.

He’s quoted as saying early in 2015 “If I continue to grow at the same rate, in three years I will definitely be among the top five of the strongest men in the world.“.

Looks like he’s fulfilled his prophecy, in the various events he placed above Brian Shaw, Hafthor Bjornsson and Eddie Hall. After Day 1 of the WSM Final, he were in second place behind Shaw with Bjornsson in 3rd and Hall in 4th Place. Even if Savickas were in contention the Georgian Giant as they call him, would have been top 5 anyway.

At 24 years old, and 160kg I think we will be seeing a whole lot more of Janashia in future worlds contests and he’s certainly on track for a podium placement.

Looking at the previous placements over the last 8 yrs

Year	First	Second	Third
2016	Brian Shaw (USA)	Hafthor Bjornsson (Iceland)	Eddie Hall (UK)
2015	Brian Shaw (USA)	Zydrunas Savickas (Lithuania)	Hafthor Bjornsson (Iceland)
2014	Zydrunas Savickas (Lithuania)	Hafthor Bjornsson (Iceland)	Brian Shaw (USA)
2013	Brian Shaw (USA)	Zydrunas Savickas (Lithuania)	Hafthor Bjornsson (Iceland)
2012	Zydrunas Savickas (Lithuania)	Vytautas Lalas (Lithuania)	Hafthor Bjornsson (Iceland)
2011	Brian Shaw (USA)	Zydrunas Savickas (Lithuania)	Terry Hollands (UK)
2010	Zydrunas Savickas (Lithuania)	Brian Shaw (USA)	Mikhail Koklyaev (Russia)
2009	Zydrunas Savickas (Lithuania)	Mariusz Pudzianowski (Poland)	Brian Shaw (USA)

The same 3 giants of the WSM game have dominated the podium for the last 8 yrs, the occasional other contender taking a single spot but then falls out of the top 3. However prior to Savickas, Bjornsson and Shaw it were dominated by Pudzianowski and Savickas with lots of random contenders, a much more open podium with 16 different men placing, which is more than double than the last 8.

With Savickas Injured, and Hafthor, Shaw, Hall and Konstantine all in their 20s, there is room for a new face or two on the podium.

Main Photo Copyright of TheWorldsStrongestMan, and Konstantine Photo Copyright of Konstantine Janashia

Happy Birthday to Me

Nas Layout

You know its your birthday when you pick up a Synology DS716+ NAS Server for under £200, well £188 from Amazon in the Lightening Sale.

I own a few Synology units (current set up to the right) and have owned various others dating back to 2010/2011 and for the most part they are spectacularly good. I re-purpose the older units within my network, the oldest is a DS211+ currently the Media NAS. The newest is the External Hitachi Touro HDD which does a weekly image of the Main NAS. I did want to buy an 8 Bay NAS to Raid 6 it, but this were a killer deal.

This particular model (DS716+) has been replaced with the Synology DS716+II, so it were EOL (End of Lined) or Discontinued hence the price.

Speculation of Change

There has been a little speculation as why they updated the model to the Mk2 (II) given the lack of serious updates. Some have speculated that Synology maybe taking their lead from other NAS players in the market who release multiple versions of the same NAS with different specs. They currently already do this, but I don’t buy that as reason here, lets look at the DS216 which does have various flavours.

DS216 SE Marvel Single Core 800mhz, 256mb DDR3 (Buy Here £103.04).
DS216 J Marvel Dual Core 1.0ghz, 512mb DDR3 (Buy Here for £129.44).
DS216 Play STM Dual Core 1.5ghz, 1gb DDR3, +HW Encoder, +Transcoder (Buy Here for £191.99).
DS216 Marvel Dual Core 1.3ghz, 512mb DDR3, Hot Swappable, USB Clone, Upgradable Ram, Released Feb 2015 (Buy Here for £213.99).
DS216+II Intel Dual Core 1.6ghz, Burstable 2.48ghz, 1gb DDR3, +HW Encoder, +Hot Swappable, +USB Clone, +eSATA Port, Upgradable Ram, Released June 2016, (Buy Here for £259.94).

Synology Diskstation DS716

You can see the spec changes and price point between flavours is quite dramatic, just looking the DS216 and DS216+II and the change is huge, now lets look at the DS716+I and DS716+II.

Synology DS716+I: Intel Celeron N3150 Quad-Core (Released Jan 2015), clocked at 1.6ghz and burstable to 2.08ghz, Released Jun 2015. (Buy Here for £357.84)
Synology DS716+II: Intel Celeron N3160 Quad-Core (Released Jan 2016), clocked at 1.6ghz and burstable to 2.24ghz, Released Apr 2016. (Buy Here for £378.56)

Everything else is nigh on identical, as best I can tell it is identical apart from the little print (shown on the right). In all likelihood that’s the same chip just modified a touch by Intel.

I tend to agree with the few who say due to the stellar success of this model (and the chip), it exhausted the chips availability thus Intel discontinued the chip and brought forward the next iteration and thus opening a new stockpile of chips.

Hard Drives for NAS Servers

Retired Deskstars

I always choose hard drives carefully, after having been burned quite badly simply by choosing the cheapest big brand (begins with S). So for the last 6yrs maybe 7 yrs with spinning drives I have always run HGST Deskstars (I briefly used Samsung F4’s too) and not had a single disk failure.

Its quite ironic that back in the day around the late 1990s and early 2000s, I were around when IBM Deathstars were vaporising into dust. IBM Deskstars and Travelstars (along with its HDD business) were sold to Hitachi in 2003 who turned it around quite dramatically. This is an interesting post, showing a tear down of a deathstar. Hitachi were then bought out by Western Digital (WD) who appear to have used Hitachi Magic to improve their WD Red NAS Drives, rather than degrade Hitachi’s Legacy.

The above image is one of my retired Hitachi Deskstars (before the HGST rebrand), this batch ran continuously in a 2 Bay NAS then into a 4 bay Synology NAS before being retired. This were the final disk to be replaced on my replacement cycle hence its a few months overdue a refresh. After 3 years, 4 months, 3 weeks and 3 days continuous operation not a single error or bad sector. All the others are similar, no errors, no bad sectors, nothing but perfect service.

Moderate Alcohol Isn’t Good For You

There have long been studies which demonstrate moderate alcohol consumption is good for you, but no longer. The “journal of alcohol and drug studies” performed a systematic meta review, which shows this isn’t the case at all.

A Systematic study is a study of many other peoples studies to correlate the results to get a fuller picture, and a Meta study is where the data from others studies are re-analysed or bias are removed. This means instead of having data on 100 people in one study, they can have results from 100 studies with 100 people each giving them thousands of peoples data across many years.

In this case the review were of 87 studies, covering 3,998,626 people and included 367,103 deaths were recorded over many years.

The Shocker

Previous studies show reduced risk for low volume regular drinkers (1-2 drinks per day), but the study showed many of the abstainers were already of ill health or abstaining due to ill health at the time of the study. This made the regular drinkers appear to have an advantage over the non-drinkers, due to fatalities.

The bias of ill-health were removed from the 4 million subjects and re-analysed, this time is showed that occasional drinkers (1-2 drinks per week) gained an advantage and increased longevity over both non-drinkers, regular drinkers and heavy drinkers.

Its a little shocking that “occasional drinkers” were shown to healthier than non-drinkers and the moderate drinkers we all thought were the better choices.

I would have liked to see if the type of alcohol mattered, since its shown red wine and certain other drinks have some advantages in other studies (at the moment anyway) so does a weekly red wine do more or less than a weekly beer. Saying that, I would want that data analyzed even more to see if wealth were a factor. If the red wine drinkers were healthier, were they generally more affluent.

Image Courtesy of Eyup Salman.

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