
To a child, often the box a toy came in is more appealing than the toy itself - edward
http://vincentsanders.blogspot.com/2015/02/to-child-often-box-toy-came-in-is-more.html
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jcrei
Slightly misleading headline, but after reading the article I have to admit I
have been in the same position myself. After years or pilling on HDDs, I now
have a small collection that would be better used as a side storage. Sadly I
haven't been able to find any decent solutions (i.e. good price/quality
ratio). You either go with expensive NAS solutions, or find feeble HDD
enclosures that are prone to failure. Has anyone found something good to house
3-4+ HDDs that can be accessed via USB?

~~~
rdl
I just put a bunch of external 4TB USB drives on a Mac Mini which is also
connected to home theater. I was going to go with a Synology or QNAP but 1)
drives were expensive when I was buying (no longer true) 2) this is
incremental 3) none of the lower end devices support decent full-disk crypto
-- you need to go up to an i3-based system, which is kind of pricey.

I looked for the same thing (a multi-drive USB enclosure), but a good
Pluggable hub and a bunch of discrete drives seems to work better.

ZFS seems like the right solution now, so if I move to a place with an
equipment closet, I'll probably do that. (current solution is also pretty
quiet)

~~~
jcrei
So out of curiosity, what file system format are you using? HFS+?

~~~
rdl
Yes :( I realize this is suboptimal, but it's easy.

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kingmanaz
As a child I recall using imagination to superimpose the glorious boxart of
Atari 2600 cartridges onto the crude sprites of the actual games.

[http://a.dilcdn.com/bl/wp-
content/uploads/sites/6/2015/02/em...](http://a.dilcdn.com/bl/wp-
content/uploads/sites/6/2015/02/empire-atari.jpg)
[http://babysoftmurderhands.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/08/Ha...](http://babysoftmurderhands.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/08/Haunted_House_-_1981_-_Atari.jpeg)
[http://www.retrogamesnow.co.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2013/10/at...](http://www.retrogamesnow.co.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2013/10/atari-2600-breakout.jpg)
[http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/scale_small/9/93770/2367...](http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/scale_small/9/93770/2367714-a2600_junglehunt_au.jpg)

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acqq
Makespace mentioned in the article is this one:

[http://makespace.org/](http://makespace.org/)

"a community workshop in Cambridge for making and fixing things, meeting
people, working on projects and sharing skills."

~~~
xrjn
Here's a list of places similar to that:
[http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces](http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces)

Unfortunately, only the larger hackerspaces have laser cutters, so your milage
may vary. Fablabs are also places you can look into, however they usually cost
quite a bit (techshop for example costs 100$ per month) compared to
hackerspaces.

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strictnein
Yes, this has nothing to do with the article, but the title of the article has
almost nothing to do with the article either.

One of the things my kids (6 and 4 now) love more than anything: 1\. Go to
home depot, buy 20-30 packing boxes of various sizes ($50-$100). 2\. Buy a
bunch of packing tape and one of the tape rollers ($10-$20) 3\. Buy two good
box cutters ($10)

Now, when the kids are asleep, stay up all night and build something. I've
done haunted houses, Christmas castles, and more. It's really fun and helps
work some creative juices that normally don't get worked by just programming.
Kids love it and will play with it daily. And when they've finally destroyed
it, it can just be recycled. We had this year's Halloween creation up for two
months until we took it down for Christmas.

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jackweirdy
I’m finding the bizarre phenomena of people commenting before having read the
article just as interesting as the article itself

~~~
strictnein
The article itself is actually pretty boring.

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TylerH
As a child incredibly into LEGOs, Tinker Toys, Linkin Logs, K-nex, etc., I can
say this was never the case.

~~~
300bps
I think the saying is more a commentary on all the useless crap we buy kids
for their birthdays, holidays, etc that are played with for 10 minutes and
then thrown in a corner. For many of these "filler" gifts the box literally is
more fun than the gift.

Like you said though, there are some gifts that stick with a child... My
Commodore 64 that I received in 1982 and my 300 baud modem I received in 1985
for instance changed the entire path of my life.

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jarnix
To a cat too.

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mxyzptlk
And the box the refrigerator came in is the best toy of all.

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agumonkey
I think we've all seen this first hand. Christmas, young kids, ripping out the
shiny wrapping, the box, and then having this look 'is that it ? that was
cool' while leaving the toy on the floor.

Isn't it the same for adults though ?

~~~
meric
Did you read the article?

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agumonkey
Obviously..

Ironically, I am in the exact same situation, having collected many ThinkPads
parts, I have a dozen of drives sitting here and am just finishing pushing
everything onto a ZFS NAS. Still I'd like to repurpose all these drives (web
cache/proxy, DMZ, tiny cloud)

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Htsthbjig
This only happens when the toy is badly chosen.

I volunteered to teach very young children to use 3d printers basically for
making toys, and it is incredible how much they have inside when the toy is
open. The only problem with 3d printers is time.

Children want open toys, a helicopter that can dive and then transform into a
car.

A box and two wires could become a car that girls could use to add passengers.
The passengers could be a piece of cardboard and a boam ball, made in 15
seconds.

Passengers could talk, and be daddy, or mom, or grandma.

It is sad so many times the box(and paper) is the most open thing children
could have access to.

Legos that could only make one thing is not what children wants, it is what
manufacturers want. Fragile dolls. Dumb toys so kids do not harm
themselves(which makes them not learn basic responsibility).

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thrownaway122
Read the article before commenting please.

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davidw
Frankly I think the discussion about children and toys is a bit more
interesting than some storage thing, but to each his own.

