Microsoft Surface Pro

If the UK price is confirmed as between £560 and £650 then this tablet is interesting…but if the battery lasts only four hours (as rumour has it), then this will be a serious fail in my opinion. Tablet batteries are supposed to last longer than laptop ones. Microsoft have had a real opportunity to create something special but as a result of the various rumours I've heard, the Surface Pro may be DOA in January 2013. We will see if rumour turns out to be true!

Python

Working on a few demo applications using Python. Nothing big at all…just simple programs to see what they can do. 

Raspberry Pi

We're investigating the possibilities of using a Raspberry Pi as a control system for a new project. The actual computer seems remarkably powerful and the costs are extremely low. Further reading is needed. (raspberrypi.org)

run4charity.net New Site

Work on the new run4charity.net site is continuing. Into the testing phase now - then an step back to check that it meets all our objectives!

Please visit the existing site before it is taken down…run4charity.net

Time Machine

Came back to find one of the desktop machines was having problems with a Airport base station and hard drive…meaning that Time machine hadn't done the backup in over 24 hours. Quick look at the failure: -

 

'pro.sparsebundle is already in use'

 

showed that the system thought that the particular backup hard disk was in use. This is the first time I've had this, but one quick reboot of the Airport hub and things started up okay and the backups resumed. Looking on the Internet…it seems that this happens from time to time and rebooting the hub is the current best solution!

Eventually complete!

All RAIDs have now been successfully built and synched…they took longer than I expected, but in my defence, this is the first time I have done this in three years and the capacities are now measured in Terabytes rather than Gigabytes!

Now to get on with real work!

Cross platform testing

Working on testing new website across the range of platforms that it could be accessed. Dreamweaver's testing facilities are good, but nothing beats using the actual hardware/software.

So have the site up and running on a Mac, PC (XP, Vista, Win 7 and 8), Blackberry, iPhone, Galaxy Note (Android), Nokia Lumia (Windows 8) and two tablets (Nexus 7 and iPad). Phew! Now to iron out the bugs!

QNAP NAS

I've set up a QNAP NAS with 8TB of disks and it currently is re-building itself [RAID 10 configured].

Sunday morning...

A few tasks to do around the house before hitting the keyboard and getting a mail/twitter client link macro written and then moving the new website design along.

Joomla Part II

Continuing on the new site development in Joomla v3. Wrestling to get some of the modules that worked in previous versions to work in it...or find an upgrade/replacement.

Three

Joomla 3 is quite a bit of a change from the previous versions and I've been having a few problems using it within Chrome and Firefox on the Mac. I've also noted that some of the plug-ins that we rely on in previous versions...aren't working anymore. We're going to have to research some new versions...

Coast to Coast Event

We've got a new running total today after another donation to run4charity.net. At this early stage, it is great to be raising so much money! Thank you to everyone concerned.

Joomla! 3

Kicking off a Joomla project today...need to see if some of the old faithful modules and plug-ins are compatible!

A New Donation

We've had another donation to our charity event...check out our running total at run4charity.net

Data Backup

With migrating data from an older NAS unit to a newer one this week, it has brought to mind the issue of data backups and the progression of technology.

It is essential with any business (and personally) to backup data, but what do you back it up to? In the distant past, I backed up to tape drives, then Zip drives and then back onto tape...but with the progression of technology, reading those backups became more difficult [and in some cases impossible] as operating systems changed and were no longer supported, hardware became obsoleted and/or failed, drivers were no longer supported on new PCs and the media also failed.

With the advent of cheap disk storage, backups have moved onto multiple drives, network attached storage and SANS...but the same issues remain. The hardware gets older and is no longer supported; drivers are not updated for the latest operating systems; encryption methods change and hard drives do fail on a regular basis. With the typical PC being supplied with 500GB to 2TB drives these days, making sure you have a backup of all your files becomes increasing more difficult and expensive.

So the advice is to make sure you do back up your critical files but also to revisit your backup strategy once a year and look at how easy it is to restore your backups. Do you rely on a single machine to restore an older backup because it has a specific operating system on it? Does the backup application only run on a specific operating system and service pack level? Do you know what format your backup is in? Are all your machines able to access the backup files...how easy is it to restore them? What kind of backup have you got...a full, partial or incremental backup? Do you know which machine the backup media was formatted with (different filesystems may not be readable on all your machines). When was the last time you tried to restore the data from the backup media?

Take care...those backups may in time become a conundrum that you cannot solve (access)!

NAS

QNAP TS412 four bay NAS delivered today...but I haven't had any time to swap it in for the old one. Will try to get to it tomorrow (or technically later on today).

Applescript and Automator

Started to put together an Applescript script to handle some of the repeated email tasks that I perform...need to complete this and then write an Automator workflow and a Mail rule. Not done this in a while...it's fun trying to remember the syntax and the environment!

Storage upgrade

Just placed an order for a four drive NAS to replace one that the power supply has failed on. Ordered it around an hour ago and paid for delivery on Monday. Looks like I have another important task to complete when it arrives!