Right now reliable, safe, long-term data storage means having multiple, redundant disks on the network – which can be a considerable cost.  Our home requires somewhere in the vicinity of 2-4TB of storage to handle everything comfortably, with some room for growth.  Whilst this is not a lot of storage in today’s terms, any future-proof device would still be quite large, noisy, hot and have a low spouse acceptance factor.

So, what’s the answer?

Cloud computing and storage has always appealed to me and have reached the point where they’re just as good, if not better, than local alternatives.

The home network will always require some local storage.  Home broadband hasn’t yet reached the level where everything can be streamed from the Internet as an on-demand service – not in the UK at any rate (and certainly not in the US or Australia).  So, a local 1-2TB, low-power NAS for transient video data is still required and, because of the nature of the content, backups aren’t required.

Music is roughly in the same camp.  Since most of the music is synchronised with a portable music player, in the event of an disaster, a simple re-sync should be sufficient.

Photos are a tricky call and one that I’ve had to take quite a firm stance on.  Typically, when taking a bunch of photo only a few are ever really any good and worth showing to people.  What do we do with the rest of them?  They usually languish in a folder somewhere getting pushed from computer to computer, medium to medium without ever being accessed again.  So, I say, get rid of ‘em.  The rest should be put into the cloud for sharing with the rest of humanity.  Flickr, PhotoBucket, Picasa… take your pick.  Let them worry about the storage and bandwidth.

Documents are fairly easy.  There are plenty of services out there that will do simple, cloud-based file storage sitting on top of Amazon’s S3 or Rackspace.  Again, take your pick and get them off your local disk.

If you take this approach it becomes fairly obvious that your local PC, laptop or tablet (hello, iPad!) becomes a commodity device as it simply consists of an OS and a bunch of applications that allow you to access the cloud and your content.  Nothing of consequence is ever stored locally.  It also means that you become free and untethered to a particular machine or environment.

So, what happens if the cloud disappears?

First of all, all of The Cloud would have to disappear at once, which is unlikely.  Secondly, you can always backup your data.  There are services that offer backups of your cloud-based content.  Backupify are an example of such an organisation.  Their restore and export procedures are not yet complete but their experts will help you out should the worst happen.

As a geek I also tend to have a slightly above-average set of requirements when it comes to the Internet; all of the above as well as running a blog, a micro-blog, having several domains, source code repositories, etc. all of which have to be hosted somewhere.  Previously the sensible option was to host these myself.   However, recently I’ve come to the conclusion that out-of-the-box software (such as WordPress & Google Mail) do a pretty good job as they come and no longer require me to install, configure, upgrade and maintain software — leaving me with more time to do other things.

Not only have I save myself some effort but I’ve also saved quite a bit of money, as a majority of the cost before was running a server.  The cloud now provides a plethora of services for free (usually subsidised by advertising) that have relatively low-cost upgrade paths also providing scalability, should you need it.

The following table is a simple side-by-side cost comparison for the content that I was hosting myself previously versus the cost, today, of utilising cloud technologies:

Not bad, eh?

I still, however, have some concerns about turning all my data over to the cloud.  Will these companies disappear one day, without a trace – taking my data with them?  Possibly.  Will the data be backed up somewhere?  Maybe. Will I be able to access it?  Probably not.

These questions are unanswerable right now and only time will tell – but I really can’t think of a better way of doing it, today, without having a vast, “expensive” storage array at home.  Hopefully, someday soon, there will be a breakthrough in storage technology and I can store my ever-growing digital life safely and locally, somewhere that I trust.  But, if that does happen, you can be sure that content generators will find a way to use it — resulting in an arms race again, pushing the limits of storage technology ever forward.

I do, however, feel lighter for having made the move.

Apparently, Apple modified the Airport Extreme drivers and removed the API. However, for a simple scan, the one built into Mac OS X is sufficient.

To perform a scan, use the ‘-s’ option. A GUI wrapper can be found here.

$ /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -s

The question is, how do we get all our old email into our shiny new Gmail account? 

The answer is fairly straight forward but my method requires a bit of know-how and a *NIX mail client.

First, the overview: Basically I used Alpine (the mail client formally known as ‘Pine’) and Gmail’s IMAP abilities to bulk save the messages from the local folders to Gmail. Primarily I was concerned with my ‘Sent’ items from the past decade but this will work with any folder(s):

1. Enable IMAP in Gmail.
2. Install Alpine on your *NIX workstation or server.
3. Configure Alpine to see to your existing email folders.
4. Configure Alpine to talk via IMAP to Gmail:
   • Inbox: {imap.gmail.com/ssl/user=username@gmail.com}inbox
   • Collection List:
     • Server: imap.gmail.com/ssl/user=username@gmail.com
5. Go to the folder you wish to bulk upload to Gmail.
6. Select all messages (shortcut keys: ‘;’ followed by ‘A’).
7. Save all messages (shortcut keys: ‘A’ followed by ‘S’).
8. Select the destination folder (shortcut keys: CTRL-T)
9. Choose your Gmail collection and then the destination folder.
10. Hit Enter to bulk save the messages into Gmail.
11. Rinse and repeat for any other folders.

Using this method, I was able to bulk upload approx. 10,000 messages from the past decade of my Sent messages in approx. 1 hour (this will depend on your bandwidth, of course!).

-w       Overrides the Disabled key and sets it to false. In previous versions, this
         option would modify the configuration file. Now the state of the Disabled key
         is stored elsewhere on-disk.

So, to enable the SNMP daemon correctly:

$ sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.net-snmp.snmpd.plist

1. Visit the share in question so that Mac OS X mounts it.
2. Run “Sytem Preferences”.
3. Select “Accounts”.
4. Select the User you want to change by double clicking.
5. Click on “Login Items”.
6. Click the + button.
7. Select the Samba/CIFS share you want to mount. It should now show as a new “Volume item”.
8. Close “System Preferences”.
9. Beer.

1. First, you will need to install the RSS News Feed reader application in Facebook.
2. Once installed, take note of the RSS feed URL.
3. Create yourself a new Twitter account.  This account will be used to hold all your Facebok friends’ updates.
4. Create an account on Twitter Feed.
5. Add your Facebook RSS feed URL (from step 2) to your Twitter Feed account (from step 4) and have it post to the new Twitter account you created in step 3.
6. In your usual Twitter account simply follow the new Twitter account that should now contain all your friends’ Facebook status updates.
7. Make yourself a cup of tea.  Go on.  You’ve earned it.  You tech-wizard, you.

Update: To eliminate the annoying  s, you could pass it through a simple PHP filter, if you’re lucky enough to have a server connected to the Interwebs on a 24×7 basis:

<?php print str_replace("&nbsp;", " ", file_get_contents("http://www.gencolee.com/fb/newsfeedrss.php?u=user_id&s=feed_id")); ?>

I had thought that their answer had been lost in the sands of time — but, as it turns out, it was sitting in my email archive all along. So, for posterity’s sake, here it is:

Is there a reason why the Picadilly line doesnt stop at Turnham Green during normal hours?

Dear Mr Wallace

Thank you for your recent email enquiry.

The level of service provided at individual Underground stations is subject to regular review, taking into account substantial changes in demand, be they actual or perceived. Passenger opinion, including responses to origin and destination surveys, forms an essential part of the review process, as does the potential increase in passenger numbers created by expansion of residential or commercial development in the vicinity of stations.

In determining whether additional stops can be justified within an existing route, consideration has to be given to the effect on overall journey times and the availability of resources to maintain required frequencies. Since September 1996 the Piccadilly Line timetable has offered by far the most intensive service anywhere on the London Underground network. Trains are scheduled at two or three minute intervals between Arnos Grove and Acton Town for the greater part of the day, which, due to present constraints in track and signalling system capacity, can only be achieved by running non-stop between Hammersmith and Acton Town, six minutes being allowed in the schedule for this.

During early morning and late night periods, when trains on both the District and Piccadilly Lines run less frequently, Piccadilly Line trains are able to call at Turnham Green, adding one minute to the scheduled journey time between Hammersmith and Acton Town. Between 0645 and 2230 on Mondays to Fridays some three hundred and seventy Piccadilly Line trains in each direction pass through Turnham Green without a scheduled stop. Were all these trains revised to call at Turnham Green, the cumulative effect on the timetable would be an increase in the total running time equivalent to a return journey between Cockfosters and Heathrow. Unless there was a reduction in the existing frequency, two further trains and at least six extra drivers would thus be needed if Turnham Green is to be served by Piccadilly Line trains all day. On the basis of survey results to date, the marginal increase in revenue generated is unlikely to be sufficient to fund these additional resources in the foreseeable future.

Meantime, the District Line daytime service has been enhanced to provide a train about every four to six minutes between Hammersmith, Ravenscourt Park, Stamford Brook and Turnham Green, with Ealing Broadway services linking Turnham Green, Chiswick Park and Acton Town at intervals of eight to thirteen minutes. Cross platform interchange between the Piccadilly and District Lines is available at Barons Court, Hammersmith and Acton Town; since Hammersmith is a busy station in its own right, many passengers prefer to make westbound connections at Barons Court.

In exceptional circumstances, arising perhaps from a signalling or train equipment failure, Piccadilly Line trains may be diverted to run via the District Line tracks. Since there is a need to interlace with District Line trains in so doing, the number of Piccadilly Line trains in service might need to be reduced accordingly. The Line Controllers, in consultation with their District Line colleagues, can arrange for Piccadilly Line trains to call at the intermediate stations between Hammersmith and Acton Town on these occasions, if the disruption is likely to last some time. More commonly, individual Piccadilly Line trains will call at these stations to compensate for prolonged gaps in the District Line service. Piccadilly Line drivers have also been instructed to open the train doors at Turnham Green if the train has stopped in the platform because the signal ahead is displaying a red aspect.

I hope that this is of assistance.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Summers
Customer Service Centre
London Underground Limited

I’m only 50 pages into it but, so far, it’s a very interesting read.  I’m inspired but really trying to resist doing anything until I’ve finished reading it.  Tough.

I’ll let you know how it goes when I get to the end…

• 4 tablespoons self-raising flour
• 2-4 tablepoons sugar (depending on how sweet you like it)
• 2 tablespoons cocoa
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
• a small splash of vanilla extract
• 1 large coffee mug

Steps

1. Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly.
2. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix again.
3. Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes on high.
4. The cake will rise over the top of the mug — dont be alarmed!
5. Allow to cool for 2 minutes.
6. Eat with ice cream.

Sound familiar? 

Until recently, this was true for us.  Until we came up with a plan. Many people have said they’re impressed with the plan, which I find surprising.  It’s mainly common sense and most people, I’m sure, would say, “Duh!” — but here it is anyway:

1. Find seven recipes for the next seven evening meals.  Write the meals down and stick them on the fridge (or somewhere else convenient).
2. Add the ingredients you’ll need for those recipes to your weekly shopping list.
3. Buy the ingredients from the supermarket, or wherever.
4. When you’ve unpacked the shopping, check the meat and set a rough order for the meals using the expiry date as a guide.

I told you it was simple.  Now when you get home in the evenings it should be very simple to decide what to have for dinner and all the ingredients should be at hand.

Tips:

• If you make more than you need for the odd meal or two, you could save yourself a night or two of cooking.

Pros:

• It’s a simple decision when it’s time to eat.  Just take a look at the fridge and pick a meal.  Hey, it’s like a menu at a restaurant!
• You can try out exotic and interesting recipes instead of eating the same meals week after week.  I really enjoy using our cookbooks every day instead of just for dinner parties.
• Shopping trips become quicker and more purposeful.  No more wandering the aisles aimlessly looking for inspiration.
• You’ll find that your culinary skills will improve.  Practise makes perfect!

Cons:

• It’s not much fun coming up with seven meals in a single sitting.  You could try splitting it out across the week so when shopping day comes you don’t have to do it all at once.