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Eating is healthy

Overweight can protect you reads an article in the New York Times. It refers to a large Canadian study that examined more than 10,000 people.



Intel produces netbook OS

According to ZDNet, Intel drives a Linux project called Moblin that is aimed at netbooks.

By the looks of it, Intel has a winner. They are probably trying to create a well-established niche for their Atom processors. These Atom processors are in my opinion real winners. They are cheap, use just a few Watts of power. They are succesful too: somehow over the course of a couple of months I have already accumulated two of them in my household.

And Intel is right again to turn to Linux as well: one of my own Atom processors is on Linux already and the other will leave Windows as soon as I have time to install Moblin on it…



Lost RAID array after Ubuntu 9.04 upgrade?

This thread in the Ubuntu forum might give you some information about fixing the problem.

MDADM could correctly identify the RAID arrays in my system. In my case the solution was to issue the following command:

mdadm –examine –scan –config=mdadm.conf >> /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

Somehow in the upgrade process the information about the arrays is lost, and this fixes it…

TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/q5avj5



How to Share Files With Mac OS X via Netatalk

Again, a tutorial about connecting your sweet Apple Mac to an Ubuntu server box: Make Tech Easier - [Ubuntu Intrepid] How to Share Files With Mac OS X via Netatalk. This one is quite simple yet comprehensive.

UPDATE: Kremalicious.com has another very nice detailed walktrough!



Amazon S3

How I automated my backups to Amazon S3 using s3sync

Amazon S3

Amazon S3

Amazon has made an effort in the past two years promoting their Amazon Web Services (AWS). They are unconventional but appeal through the sheer simpleness and power. Large web services like Smugmug.com use Amazon S3.

Introduction to S3

Honkiat.com has a nice detailed beginners guide to Amazon S3, and considering the benefits and costs, it might just be the next replacement for your home server. For more details, you can always check out Amazon’s website or this article on Digital Inspiration:

So, storing about 30GB of files with a bandwidth consumption of 1TB a month on a highly scalable, durable hardware, maintained by experts at the cost of just about $25 a month; that’s just awesome.

What to use it for?

Amazon S3 is just your storage facility on the web. It isn’t free but not expensive as well. Things to do with it:

  1. Backing up your data - getting a copy of your important data off-site is a no-brainer. But it has to be simple and straigtforward or you don’t use it. Even larger companies ignore the problems that can rise after some disaster happens.
  2. Getting your blog’s media files somewhere else - if your blog grows you might run into bandwidth boundaries. One solution is to get your images on S3. There is even a Wordpress plugin for Amazon S3 to make the effort seamless for WP users.
  3. Scale up and up… as AWS is a flexible service you can actually grow larger and larger

Companies like National Geographic, Oracle and many more are happily using Amazon S3.

Further reading…

How To: Bulletproof Server Backups with Amazon S3

How I automated my backups to Amazon S3 using s3sync

Software Mac OSX

Persistence

Persistence looks like a winner. The developer works at Apple and claims:

Persistence is a reliable and flexible online backup solution for Mac OS X Leopard that is compatible with most Internet servers: FTP, FTPS, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, iDisk… (it even supports offline backups to external drives).

Persistence is a true Mac product that preserves Finder info, resource forks, ACLs… and comes with an elegant user interface and a powerful assistant.

Jungle Disk

Jungle Disk is an already established name and seems to work well. However you actually can’t really buy the software, they require you to subscribe for US$2/month (=$ 24 a year, $96 for 4 years - that really sums up!). You can actually buy a crippled version for US$ 20 but for all features you are asked to subscribe (again..) for US$1/month.

Just sell me the damn software. It takes my accountant more than US$ 1 or 2 to actually process this tiny bill every month!

ExpanDrive

ExpanDrive has a good press, like a recent article on TUAW.

CyberDuck

CyberDuck is a your really good, “gold standard”, good-ole’  FTP client that handles all kinds of servers, S3 included.



World Digital Library of the UNESCO

World Digital Library

World Digital Library

The United Nations UNESCO has opened “The World Digital Library”. It has a substantial amount of original work of historic significance, and because it is funded by the UN (that means all of us) there are no issues with copyright.

One of UNESCO’s goals is to preserve historic and cultural monuments and to do so, opening up important historic documents to everyone is a real nice one.

The mission statement is broad:

Mission

The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.

The principal objectives of the WDL are to:

  • Promote international and intercultural understanding;
  • Expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet;
  • Provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences;
  • Build capacity in partner institutions to narrow the digital divide within and between countries.


How to access your HUMAX digital PVR on OSX

An Andrew Smith has a nice solution to access your HUMAX PVR with Apple Mac OSX or Ubuntu Linux. The software that comes with the Humax PVR is Windows-only and actually not that superb. I haven’t had the time to check it out, it should be worth your while (as my Bootcamp partition with Windows actually crashed beyond repair trying to get some results with the original software…).

Also you can check out The Definitive Guide to Humax 9200T video transfer to a Mac that talks about Andrew Smith’s software, with some extra tips.

On Wikispaces.com is a small overview of software.

Links

Andrew Smith’s solution

The Definitive Guide to Humax 9200T video transfer to a Mac

a small overview of software on Wikispaces



Producing 1080p with 1080i source camcorder (Mac)

Shooting and processing video is quite a chore. I still use my Panasonic PAL camcorder that produces quite decent SD video on MiniDV tape. However the iMovie ‘08 as well as the new iMovie ‘09 software just won’t import the video like it should. It takes only one field of the two interlaced fields effectively importing only half the information it could. I suppose Apple doesn’t care much for SD DV input any more.

As I am shopping for a new camcorder I came across this article of David Glover has a nice tutorial about shooting higher-quality HD. With just a small amount of fiddling you can create 1080p25 video.

Some more reading on this subject:

article of David Glover

HD interlaced workflow with iLife ‘08

MacWorld.com on iMovie ‘09



Get your head out of the cloud: use Tonido!

 

http://www.tonido.com

Tonido

Are you fed up with Google scanning through all of your (digital) life? Internet startup Tonido is getting your Web 2.0 experience back to where it belongs: on your own systems. Lifehacker has a nice article about this new start-up, and if it delivers, it just might be a next big thing. 

Although in beta the website offers some quite slick Web 2.0 apps with all the data residing on your own PC or home server. It runs on Windows, Mac OSX and Ubuntu Linux as well.

Off course, it is beta. However GMail is beta as well. Why trust all your private email and other personal info to a bunch of beta apps running on some server farm somewhere run by an advertising agency? It’s like putting your life savings in the hands of a con artist and don’t even bother to ask for a receipt! (the only promise he makes: whatever I do with your stuff I’ll do it for free!)

Better get that nice home server up and running using Tonido!



Automating finances

It’s generally low-tech but surprisingly a lot of people don’t have their expenses under control.

Lifehacker has a nice posting about “Getting You Rich”, better to be called “How about making a budget”. Ramit Sethi, who is running a blog http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/ explains some basic stuff about budgetting.

In these times, even simple knowledge like this can save your day!