Hungry Philosopher

It has been a while since I posted anything and I thought I would get back to it.

A few weeks ago I happened to be in a corporate data centre looking at all of the cables that came out of the back of a fully populated blade chassis. There was a lot. I was struck by the similarities the other day when I looked at the mess under my desk: 14 power cables, 10 USB cables, 4 network cables and 2 video cables - it’s a mess.

Is wireless the answer? I don’t think so… would I sleep in the same room as a wireless access point? No.

So what is the answer? I haven’t worked it out yet but I am trying.

So my back up strategy has ran into more problems. I’ve come to realise that my backup strategy had a fatal flaw I was not able to manage the lifecycle of my backups. I was doing a daily incremental backup and after a month discovered that I had no disc space left. The incremental backups took up more space than expected.

I’ve reached the conclusion that I will have to use Acronis to make full backups of my system and write something around it to externally manage the backups. Why is nothing ever simple?

A few weeks ago Microsoft released Silverlight, their ‘Flash’ killer. Well, last week I finally got around to install Expression Blend and have a play… I was quite impressed.

Essentially it allows for the creation of ‘rich’ applications in XAML, a particular flavour of XML. It relies on the user having Windows Presentation Framework installed on it. It is an obvious rival to Adobe’s Flex, I’m not sure quite which I prefer. I must admit that I am currently leaning towards Microsoft’s XAML.

From using the Expression tools it is clear that they were not developed in-house. They are not quite up to the standard of Visual Studio. So I like the language but not the tools.

I’ve decided that having two onsite backups of my PC isn’t enough and so I have decided to also add an offsite backup using Carbonite’s service. So far it looks pretty good: it integrates well with Vista and looks like it will give me the extra protection I need.

Why am I so paranoid? Two words: digital photos. People do not really stop and think how valuable the digital content on their PCs is - personally I would be devastated if I lost my photo collection.

I’ve just finished building a new machine running Vista and must say that despite my early problems with Vista, I’ve grown to like the OS. It’s a lot more polished than XP and pretty much works with all modern hardware.

I nearly installed XP but just could not bring myself to do it. It felt like a step backwards.

My new machine is based around MSI’s new motherboard that includes HDMI, it can be found here. So far I am very happy with it. Running a new AM2 processor my new machine seems very quiet and cool.

So Palm have announced a new mobile device: the Foleo (http://www.palm.com/us/products/mobilecompanion/foleo/). What were they thinking????

I just don’t understand it. It is the same price as a cheap laptop and does less… it is yet another platform that hopes the Open Source community will provide much needed applications.

Oh dear.

I started to read Malcolm Gladwell’s book a couple of months ago when I was on a plane to Thailand… I found it a very interesting read, so I was particularly disappointted to realise I left it on the plane or in my cab or wherever. So I finally got around to buying it again recently: this time as an audiobook. Regardless of the format I can recommend the read.

I found it a very insightful read and can strongly recommend it.

I feel obliged to plug a product… despite the fact that Vista comes with its own backup tools I felt the need to get something better.

Since my DR woes I have been using Acronis True Image and I have been very impressed by it. My backup strategy has two parts to it: a weekly image of my PC is snapped with Acronis and stored on a USB drive and on an hourly basis my key data is backed-up to my NAS using Synctoy.

If you haven’t discovered it Microsoft’s Synctoy is a great free Powertoy for synchronising files. I tried using offline files at home but gave up as I found this problematic. Synctoy is a significantly more powerful tool for this sort of activity.

I have come to the conclusion that the definition of a PIM needs to be updated. Originally the concept of a PIM was born from the syncing of a PDA with Outlook. I think it is fair to say that is a concept about ten years old, so I think it is due an update. Ten years ago I was thrilled at the prospect of having the contents of my Outlook with me but today I am more demanding.

I believe that a PIM 2.0 should now contain:

• Outlook Mail, Contacts, Tasks etc
• Bookmarks
• RSS content and status
• My music and playlists
• My videos

Yes, I am demanding but I think it makes sense. I believe the capabilities of a mobile device will dictate how much of this content it is able to store.

To overcome my Vista woes this week I thought I would go for a belt and braces home DR strategy. I failed.

Why?

I now have a USB drive attached to my computer that provides a backup image of the hard drive and I have increased my NAS space to accommodate all my data. So what has gone wrong? A power cut. I am writing this blog by candle light (very retro) on a laptop with a 3G card (not so retro), the electricity board tell me to take solace in the fact I am one of 1200 homes to lose power in London tonight.

Note to self: buy a UPS tomorrow.