Dropbox, SugarSync, Live Sync
A while ago I had to look for an alternative for live-sync (the Microsoft synchronization tool between multiple computer) because Apple hadn't bothered to tell anyone in advance of certain changes between OSX 10.5 and 10.6. I chose Dropbox. Dropbox is a paid for service and it works pretty much like Live Sync, except that it also stores files on the Dropbox servers.
There is no doubt that many people find this attractive but it also collides with my companies security policies (I use the synchronization services to keep copies of all files on my Mac, Windows 7 desktop (yes I still have one of these) and my home servers (for storage & backup)). So recently I decided to look around again to see if MS has fixed the issues and it seems they have. However, i looked around and to my surprise there aren't many services that "just to sync" .... they all have "cloud storage", which I really don't like, imagine what would happen if Dropbox or Sugarsync got acquired and change the terms-of-service, they simply could decide to mine all the stored date for 'interesting opportunities', yes I'm suspicious I know but there are good reasons why ISO27001 forces companies to think about where they keep their data and who has access to it.
Apart from all this security and 'i-don't-want-to-have-my-live-in-the-cloud' stuff I also found a few problems with Dropbox and Sugarsync:
- Dropbox requires a single 'drop-box' directory from where the synchronization happens. I have several different directories on my machines in the various location and I don't want to move them to a single directory, I don't want to adapt my way of working for this program. Sugarsync doesn't have this 'problem'.
- neither Sugarsync nor Dropbox have an easy mechanism to have someone else's shared directories storage on my system in a location that I want. Dropbox will store it in the 'Dropbox' directory, Sugarsync doesn't store it at all, it just gives the user access to the 'cloud' directory
There is a third program I looked at: PowerFolder ... it does what live-sync does but at a rather steep price: $90/year. It does have the ability to keep files in the 'cloud', but if that is needed Microsoft Mesh might be suitable as well, though that is still in Beta and from what I've read not everybody is really happy with it.
So, in the end I'm reverting back to live sync for the 4 machines that I have and the 2 additional machines from my dad (for his photos) and my father in law (also for his pictures). It seems a service that works and is simple to use, which is a real benefit, I found both Sugarsync and Dropbox to have too many features for my liking.
Colibri – Quicksilver for Windows
I was looking for a quicksilver replacement for windows ... I'm a commandline person for launching applications, what can I say. So I installed colibri. It works great but for a few oddities with windows 7 64 bit: when I want to launch a 64 bit application (like photoshop) via a shortcut to the "C:\Program Files" directory (it works well with 32-bit application launch via shortcuts to the "C:\Program Files (x86)" directory) I get the following error message:
"Path to Shortcut"
The specified path does not exist.Check the path, and then try again.
after come looking arround I found a workaround (link):
1. create a folder somewhere on your disk.
2. hold down shift on that folder, right-click and select open command window here.
3. type: mklink /D foldernameyoucreate "full path to original folder in quotes"
example: i created a folder called x64Fix on my disk to hold all my symbolic links for the apps that aren't working. i created my symbolic link inside of it like so (using photoshop as an example):
C:\x64Fix>mklink /D Photoshop "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4 (64 Bit)"
4. verify message that symbolic link was created (you should also see a shortcut arrow on the Photoshop folder).
5. You should then have a folder path like C:\x64Fix\Photoshop
6. Create your shortcut for the jumplist from C:\x64Fix\Photoshop folder path to the exe rather than the real path.
so, instead of your shortcut being:
"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4 (64 Bit)\Photoshop.exe"
it will be
"C:\x64Fix\Photoshop\Photoshop.exe"
This works it seems and now I can launch a 64 bit applicaiton from colibri. Anyway, colibri is great, look here: http://colibri.leetspeak.org/ and it works on windows 7
Popcorn hour C200
I got my new media streamer today: the popcorn hour C200.
I'm streaming all content from a windows home server (I've iso-ed all the kids movies - mostly to protect them since they will get scratched) from where I stream the iso and avi files through the C200. admittedly I've only had the device 1 hour but I noticed (or rather my daughter did) that the streaming (via SMB) can halt from time to time (I'm still finding out why), I think this has to do with the CPU load on the WHS machine, it seems to spike from time to time and judging from the network traffic from the WHS machine it seems to dip inline with CPU load ...
Update: I've been using the PCH for some time now and I'm really happy, the quality is great and its very easy to use, the remote control is radio based, so no line-of-sight is needed, which means I've put the device in a closed cabinet (I don't have HDD or blu-ray player so the device doesn't get too hot and I don't need to access it).
I've also figured out that the YAMJ (Yet Another Media Library) is a great tool to show the kids movie collection ... so I've spend the last week/weekend to encode all the 70+ kids DVDs to ISO and get the album art correct, but the result is fantastic !!
Update: the best tool to copy your DVDs from DVD to ISO: anyDVD ... Nero also does a good job. If you really need to convert it to a AVI/MKV format (or the likes), use FairUse, its one of the few tools where I get a consistently playable file (i.e. playable on the kids Archos' devices)
bluewin TV Box
Interesting, I started a port scanner from my mac (stroke) and I found two ports (8080 and 8086) and then the box reset itself in an infinite loop ... hmmm, then i tried to use firefox to connect to port 8080 (after it came back up again) and the rental movie that played on TV stopped and all sound went away.
Apart from some angry noises from my daughter it all seems to work fine now but it almost looks like there is some build in security (ping-ing the box is fine, not disturbance)
ruby and mysql on OSX 10.6
here are some note on installing ruby on OSX ... as usual this probably will not work for anyone and these are just some notes on mistakes I made:
- I used the installed version of ruby on OSX 10.6 - Snow Leopard
- Install the 64 bit version of MySQL from the mysql site (link - and selec the x_86_64, I've used the 5.1.40 installation)
- install ruby dbi module (dbi-0.4.3) : sudo gem install dbi
- install ruby dbd module (dbd-mysql-0.4.3): sudo gem install dbd-mysql
I've also installed mysql (mysql-2.8.1) (though I don't think you need it with DBI/DBO described above). this is the command line I used to install it:
sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config
note: the mistake I made earlier was to not use the "x86_64" parameter and I (I think) as a result for the following error message :`load_driver': Could not load driver (uninitialized constant MysqlError) (DBI::InterfaceError)
So after this I was able to execute the simple DB queries via the ruby dbi interface:
begin
# connect to the MySQL server
dbh = DBI.connect("DBI:Mysql:#{$DB}:#{$DB_SERVER}", $DB_USER, $DB_PW)
# get server version string and display it
row = dbh.select_one("SELECT VERSION()")
puts "Server version: " + row[0]
rescue DBI::DatabaseError => e
puts "An error occurred"
puts "Error code: #{e.err}"
puts "Error message: #{e.errstr}"
ensure
# disconnect from server
dbh.disconnect if dbh
end
