Hey guys,
I found a mind-blowing tool for synchronization, even real-time. And it’s for free! Have a look at FreeFileSync, it’s awesome!
Hey guys,
let’s look at synchronization tools – all of ‘em from MS, and all are free and very very good:
Microsoft SyncToy (GUI only)
Robocopy (Commandline, additional gui, single threaded copy)
Richcopy (GUI, threaded copy)
SyncToy is the easiest to use and sufficient in 90% of the time… If you want to sync at a defined time. Same for richcopy, which is very performant because you can have multiple threads do the sync. With robocopy you can have an automated synchronziation in nearly realtime (periodically each minute robocopy checks for changes on the source folder and replicates them to the target folder).
Unfortunately, everyone of these tools does not support a real-time two-way synchronization. You don’t think this is necessary? Well – it actually is! And I’ll explain you why…
In my desktop I use a 1000GB drive to store everything – this drive can be called the “lord of data” or simply the master, as all the other drives are just for backup purposes. Okay, lately I bought a external 2.5” 1000GB drive which is connected via USB2. What I want to do now is work on my fast internal 1000GB as usual and – in the background – Iwant to have every change replicated to the USB drive. Well, this is one-way synchronization only, real-time but one-way. Well, you’re right… But I do actually work on files on the USB drive as well, so I do also have to get the changes from the USB drive to the internal one. So – you’ve already guessed it – I need a tool for 2-way real-time synchronization.
And guess what – I think I found one, called Unison. It requires the GTK+ runtime, which you can get here.
I’ll test this in the next weeks and then, maybe, I’m going to write again about it.
Regards,
Daniel
UPDATE: Forget Unison, not usable on Windows. I’m back to SyncToy – which works.
Hey guys,
sick of having different content management systems, I merged everything into wordpress and finally achieved the “single source principle” without loosing any pros of a CMS. If you wonder what I’m actually talking about – maybe just have a look at my homepage once. You’ll see my blog and all of my former homepage now in one place. Cool, isn’t it? 
I’ve also added a new page, check it out: Games.
Regards,
Daniel
.. is to get your keys from a CA | certificate authority (Wikipedia). There are a some commercial ones and there’s one non-profit one – CACert (http://www.cacert.org).
From CACert you can get certificates for your emails, domains, servers (webservers, mail servers,…), etc… For free! What do you have to do to use it, especially with Thunderbird? Well, follow the following instructions:
1. Create an account at CACert
2. Verify your email address
3. Create a certificate for this email address
4. After creation click the link “install certificate” – now the certificates (private key, public key) are stored in the browser cache. If you’re using firefox, you can save those certificates (options -> security -> certificates)…
5. Save the certificates to your harddrive.
6. Save the root certificates of CACert (class 1 and class 3) from this page to your harddrive as well.
7. Open Thunderbird, Menu: Extras -> Settings -> Certificates. Click on the tab certificate authorities, then import both root certificates. Afterwards clock on the tab “your certificates” and import – well, your certificate!
Done!
Now you can sign or|and encrypt emails and 1. you don’t have to use enigmail/opengpg anymore and 2. you are using trusted certificates rather than some pgp key from some pgp server.
Oh man, sometimes these google guys just overdo it!
Simple ideas well engineered, I guess… But sometimes I wonder why the audience get’s excited about e.g. spelly. I mean… How damn new is this feature? Never seen a spellchecker before?
Hey guys,
as I was fed up with never having my emails at my girls place, I decided to migrate from this usual Outlook|.pst get-mail-from-gmx-via-pop-situation to google mail (gmail) and IMAP.
Google provides a lot of space and – as one of the few providers – it provides full IMAP access for free… Means I can organize my mails as I did in Outlook. Basically the only thing I was worrying about was the fact that Outlook itself really sucks when in use with IMAP. It’s damn slow! But – one URL away – the solution, called Thunderbird. I was using Thunderbird a lot, but due to syncing issues (ActiveSync with a Windows Mobile Phone) I finally gave up and migrated to Outlook. But now, as sync is working properly with funambol, I finally switched back to Thunderbird. And the lately released version 3 has – guess what – special support for google mail. Great, isn’t it? 
Last thing to work out – is it possible to have a local backup…? Oh yes, it is. Basically it’s configurable on a folder basis, so I’ll have my emails available on my local PC even when the internet is broken (as it is sometimes – thanks to my current provider KabelBW) or as soon as I have access to gmail. And with Thunderbird as mail client I can use enigmail like I did a looong time before. Now I everything’s crypted here. Weird.
After I finshed the migration I googled about some enigmail stuff, and I found some guys had already written a good guide how to change to gmail/TB/enigmal…Great stuff… So, rather than writing the same stuff again, have a look at
http://www.rayacayan.com/the-web-mail-migration-project-procedure/
Regards!
Hey guys,
for some reasons I decided to crypt all of my stuff (harddrives, usb sticks, operating systems, etc.) using Truecrypt – you may have heard of it.
It’s good and it’s free. So use it! Read more…
Have a look at this for a big tool chain:
Synchronization Tool Chain visualized
Hey guys,
obviously many other guys who are into software development had the same thoughts as I did – but they were more motivated to write about the pain of DVCSes (especially for Win users who are used to the stability, look and feel of SVN by AnkhSVN or TortoiseSVN).
Have a look at:
and
I’ll stick with SVN as long as there is no proper replacement, that has reached the same grade of usability and stability, especially for the windows guys.
Regards,
Daniel
