Colorsplash: a must have iPhone app

Colorsplash is a new app that I downloaded today. It let's you turn a color photo to gray scale then you can paint the color in. It very quick and easy to use, yet give great looking results.

Go check out the app store and search for colorsplash.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Syncing Contacts

I had a problem, I wanted to sync my outlook contacts, with my Gmail contacts and also with my mac & iphone. Since i have the iphone already using active sync to my work exchange server, I couldnt use the new release google sync, as it uses active sync and the iphone only allows you to sync with one active sync source,

So after a bit of looking and finding Soocial on lifehacker, I decided that it was the best fit for me.

So after signing up to the beta and doing the inital I finally have my contacts synced and backup up acroos all the devices / applications that I wanted.

Go give it a go it you are looking for a good contact sync tool. Soocial

I loved the Muppets

Finally got backups sorted

Yeah it took a while, due to the disk formats as mentioned, TimeMachine only likes OS X formatted drives. So once I got all the drives to that format, which once again required moving of data, Then I stuffed up the dir-sync when using Chronosync, and got duplicates that I had to clean up. So that extended the time of setup.

But its now all good, Macbook, and local USB drive (HPF+) backup using TimeMachine to an external drive attached to the TimeCapsule. TimeCapsule internal drive used for Movies and TV files, and another External USB drive on the TimeCapsule used as a shared location for media such as photos for easy access from all Macs and PCs in the house. This data is synced via Chronosync to my local USB Drive, and included in the TimeMachine backup, Since this is the most important data its in three locations.

TimeMachine & TimeCapsule

Ok, my plan to have the USB drive that is connected to my macbook isnt backing up via Timemachine to the Timecapsule. But I think I know why. The USB drive was FAT32, and I from what I have found, thats not a supported format for timemachine, So I now have to move the data off, reformat to HFS+, then copy the data back. So hopefully this will resolve this issue.

Moving to online webhosting for glittergirl

So with the whole move from self hosting and having multiple servers running at home I have slowly moved my data into the "cloud". The next step was to move my wifes website to a hosted service.
Its a really simple html site so I didn't need lots of fancy backend stuff. So my domain registrar, RegisterDirect offered webhosting, it wasn't free, but I can mange all the DNS, redirects, MX records all from one interface. And the price compared to other webhosting services wasn't that bad.

So now www.glittergirl.co.nz is a hosted site. I took me all of 20 minutes, signed up for the hosting service and paid the yearly subscription, FTPed the site up, changed the default homepage reference from homepage.html to index.html.

Done.

An Apple a day ....

Week two of living with my new purchase, an Apple Macbook. So far .... life is good. I have just spent the last week sorting out where to store all my data (Music, Movies, Images, Software, ISOs) Since the laptop only had a 160HD and I have over 1.5TB of data I needed to come up with some way of managing it all, and not to use My vista PC as the file server as I will be using that a Windows 2008 & 7 play thing later on. So I need a consistent low maintenance approach to have my data available not only to me but also to my wifes iMac.

I limited this to just focus on the Music / Images, as the other data can be easily replace, and most of the software and other data really needs sorting and cleaned up. So this reduced the amount of data I had to deal with. I have most of my data on external USB drives and synced to another location in case a hard drive fails. So after a bit of research I decided to invest in a Apple TimeCapsule 500GB (as this model as the better harddrive)

So why did I go TimeCapsule, First simple TimeMachine backups over the network to a second drive, gave me the redundancy I needed. It also backups up USB drives attached ot the source device, which is a feature I wanted. So my macbook and the external drive that has the master source of my data is backed up to the internal TC harddrive, automatically on a daily basis. This is my failsafe for my data.

I then via a hub attached the USB drive that had my movies on it to the TC (No redundancy needed). I also attached another USB drive that has shared data on it.

So it looks like this, The USB drive attached to my laptop is the master source of data (ie all our user generated data), this is backed up via TimeMachine to the TC internal drive. I then use Chronosync to sync the shared data (Subset of the master source) to another USB drive attached to the TC. This allows the data to be accessible on the iMac & other PCs in the house.

So my master data set is in two locations and update daily, Movies are accessible to everybody on the network (AppleTv included) shared sub set of data available to all.

This allows me to have the Vista PC turned off when not is use, also I can take my laptop with me and all shared data is still available.

Clear as mud.

The biggest issue I had doing all of this was the drive formats and the time it took to move data around. Since all my USB drives were formated NTFS, which is ok in the PC and OS X can read it, but cant write to NTFS (you can get 3rd plug-ins) I wanted to OS X as much as I could and if in doubt use FAT32, Yes I know the limits of FAT32, but is a compromise that Im conformable with considering the workload the devices would be under. So finding space move the data to and then reformatting the drives and then moving the data back. I think I have shifted over 4TB, takes a long while, And I changed my mind on how to do things and had to start over again. But I am finally there now.

So as of yesterday Vista64 shut down awaiting a rebuild on Windows7 beta or Windows2008, macbook able to be turn off or taken with me, data backup up and shared data always available ..... I think Im done .... well for this week.

Vista be gone ....

I have had a long love hate relationship with Vista64. But in the end i have decided to go and live in the MAC world and the land of Leopard. I purchased a second hand Macbook off trade me. its 18months old and isnt the flashest. But it has 3gb ram & 160GB harddive and came with leopard Disks & iLife08.

So how has life been since. Well go a mini-dvi to DVI to run an extra screen. Worked just fine with my viewsonic 21in wide screen (No drivers needed, just pluged it in and it worked).

Next big job was getting all the software I use for the MAC,

Firefox + Foxmarks
Gmail Notifer
Keeppass
Dropbox
VMware Fusion
Google Picasa
LogmeIn
Quicktime Pro
VLC
Microsoft RDP

I have it pretty well sorted at the moment. Software wise. I am build a XP VM up to run anything that I cant find for the MAC. I still have the Vista64 machine running until I feel that I have everything over that I need.

The biggest issue I have had is moving itunes and getting access to my data. This is due to Leopard by default only able to read NTFS formated drives. All my USB drives were NTFS. I know I could hack the OS to allow it to write NTFS, but didnt want to go that path. So it took forever to move 1TB of data around and reformat drives to Fat32 and move data back. But now back up data is sitting on the Vista64 box, and "live" music & media are on a USB drive connected to the Macbox,

iTunes was a real pain to move and it took a few goes but its now all configured and no loss of data.


So far very happy with the swap, will post more on the experience.

I just love Christmas

Well that's typical isn't it. Just when you. Think you have everything covered for Xmas a big expense come a knocking at the door. This time it's tires for the PT. It squeaked pass it's WOF. But I knew that they were nearly knackered. Was hoping that we only would need two. But since we are heading away for a long trip it was wise to get a set of four. Safety first. But it's a cost that we had not planned for. Got to love Christmas.

[Posted from my iPhone]

iPhone blogging tool

So since I love my iPhone so much I looked for a quick blogging app that runs on the iPhone. After a bit of research I chose iBlogger. This is the first test from the iPhone. So far so good.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

New location

I have decided to move the blog location from my web server sitting in the wardrobe to the blogger infrastructure. I am wanting to simplify the amount of IT I have in the house and need to manage and keep reliable. So the first step was to move the www.vwratrod.com site over, which I an still doing. next is the www.bluefish.net.nz blog. So I may bring over some posts, but most likely start fresh. I have not been blogging much due to the lack of free time that I have had. I hope that will change. But in truth Facebook has taken over the need to update friend and colleges of whats going on. But for longer articles and technology "stuff" I will continue to use this site.

Wifi Issues and a new Apple Airport Express

For a while now I have been having the wifi that I have setup in the house cut out, and the only fix has been a restart, well sometimes it was "broken" for over a day and then just start working again. I thoughtthat someone may have been hacking it. But doing scans I could find no other wifi in the area when it was "broken". This had been going on for a couple of months and was starting to do my head in as there didn't seem to be consistent cause. So the last time it did it, I put it down to a flaky wifi unit, it is a couple of years old. So since I have become bit of an apple fan, and really like the options on the Apple airport express, I went and got one. I really like the idea of using the Iphone remote app and AirTunes to control music in the house.

So got home and plugged it in.... expecting setup to be Apple simple. Well it was but it didnt work straight away. I couldn't get the bloody thing working. No wifi connectivity. Bugger.... Then I had a brainwave. Perhaps there is some wifi interference from something. But what?

Nothing new has been added, or changed..... cluck goes the old brain. The baby monitor, we have a video one, and the little one sometimes plays with the camera in the bedroom. Its one of those that have three channels you can select from. So setting the camera setup to a different channel and wifi started working. Double bugger..... so after all these months it was the bloody wireless camera messing with my wifi. So the inconsistent occurrences were due to when the little one decided to play with the camera. I turned the camera off, and after all my mucking around with the airport trying to get it to work I did a hard reset and started again. Bingo everything worked first time.

Well I was happy that it was all working, So now I wanted to try the remote speakers and itune / iphone remote features of the airport. I could not get the iphone to show up in itunes as a remote on the PC, It would on the MAC. Frustrations..... I checked Vistas firewall settings and Application settings. I could not get it to work. Then while on the MAC I noticed that the MAC airport was on. During my numerous tests to get the Airport express to work I must have
left it on, when I turned it off the iphone remote didn't work. Hmmm puzzling.

So after even more Googling I found a reference to make sure that the itunes PC/MAC are on the same subnet as the iphone. But they should be have been, as I have only one home network IP range and one DHCP server. But checking the Iphone it was getting a different IP range that the LAN IP range. So I jumped onto the Airport setup utility, yip sure enough it was dishing out DHCP address in another subnet range. There is a little setting which turns this off and make the Airport a bridge. Once that was selected and updated, the iphone remotes started showing up in itunes on both the MAC and Vista PC.

The actual iPhone remote application and the controlling of music and speakers is very slick and worked a charm once setup. After all the trials which were all due to my environment I can full recommend the Airport Express.

I ended up putting my older wifi unit back in the mix (since it wasn?t faulty) as it had a larger range and used the airport in the lounge hooked up to the stereo. So now i can fire up music on the lounge stereo with the iphone and then use it as my whole house music remote...... very cool, Now I need another airport express for the other rooms music.