Helene

The New York times reports that the sale of ebooks have exceeded the sale of hardcover books for three months now. For every 100 hardcover book that are sold, it sold 143 kindle books.

Good news, good news

The full article

A couple of days ago I wrote about Sugarsync, a service that stores all your data online and makes the data available on most devices. I have spent some days uploading all my data (which takes a bit of time). Since I have data going at least ten years back or more, one can safely assume I don’t have it neatly organized. I have several folders with names like “backup_daymonthyear”.

I have spent some days just getting rid of duplicate files. I downloaded Duplicate Cleaner, and it came as no surprise that I had about 40 000 duplicate files. I even managed to find a file I have been looking for months ago and written off as lost in a trash can somewhere. That tells a little bit about my problem with excess data. Too much data and little  organization makes it impossible to find what I was looking for.

I have spent several hours a day just going through my data, and today it finally dawned on me in a way I will remember this time. I love optimizing systems (including my own file structure). I think many people would prefer sitting in the dentist chair rather than working through large amounts of data. That love of optimization doesn’t just extend to going through my own data. I remember I used to love to take code and making it better, I just wasn’t always conscious of how much I liked doing it. I naturally gravitated towards it. It’s not just loving to see the final result of the work I’ve done, I really love just the process of doing it. Spending time just doing it. No wonder I have used hours just sifting through files (and I have countless hours left…. 40 000 files!).

Now that I’m aware of how much I love it, I’m going to make sure that will be embedded in my everyday work. For what better way is there when you can go, feeling refreshed from work, just by doing what you love?

I know that’s the place I want to be.

Klassekampen had a good statement about the french ban on burqa (norwegian). The ban has to be violating one, if not several human rights. The ban will probably go some rounds in court, ending up at The International Court of Justice in Hague.

I have a lot of data – that’s where it started.
Secondly, I use a lot of computers and operating systems (OS). I have a private macbook pro, a notebook with windows,  a work computer (usually with Linux), iphone and ipad.

My main need was to be able to access all my files from all the computers, no matter what the OS was.

For a long time I have been a user of a service where you can store your data on the internet just through using a regular file management application like the Explorer or Finder. I work on the files locally, and changes gets synchronized to the internet in the background.

I never have to worry about backup again.
I have access to all my files – everywhere.

And it only costs me 10 dollars (65 kroner) a month for 60 GB or 5 dollars for 30 GB.

For a long time I have been using Dropbox, which has a free version with 2 Gb of storage. It’s a genious service which makes file backup and synchronization as easy as it gets.

There are a myriad of services out there that provide backup at a very cheap amount, but I needed synchronization of files between computers.  So when I had to start paying for it, I started researching who could give me most value for my buck.

I landed on SugarSync which is a little bit cheaper (or give 10GB more storage space) and have more functionality than Dropbox:

• The coolest feature being music streaming, though I doubt I will be using it much.
• Photo gallery
• Easy to share files/folders with friends
• Easy to make files/folders public (give everybody access)
• Easily store mobile pictures to Sugarsync

If you would like to try it out, use my referrer link (which gives both of us extra 250 MB): Sugarsync. Unfortunately they have made it a bit cumbersome to become a free user (you have to enter credit card details just to become a user).  Moreover, I was unable to validate my account and it took two days before support fixed my problem.

The easiest start is Dropbox.

I read a good review of SugarSync vs Dropbox at another blog. Many comments that the upload of files from sugarsync is slow, and I can vouch for that. It’s a good idea to set off time and a computer to upload files first time around.

Massive Attack have a new album, Heligoland. As good albums usually do, it took a little time and several listening’s for it to grow on me. Below is the youtube video of my favorite song on the album.

Server clocks has a tendency to drift, so to ensure correct date, time and zone once and for all is a good thing.

Setting the date
sudo date +%Y%m%d -s "20081128"

Setting the time
sudo date +%T -s "08:23:00"

Setting the timezone
This is done by making /etc/localtime into a symbolic link that goes to the timezone the server is to use.
sudo ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/your/zone /etc/localtime

Setting UTC or local time
Change the content of the file /etc/sysconfig/clock to “UTC=true” or “UTC=false” (in norway it’s true).

Setting the hardware clock
Synchronizes the hw clock and system clock. Only add the “–utc” parameter if you are using UTC:
/sbin/hwclock --systohc --utc

Regurlarly synchronize the clock toward Network Time Protocol
This is done by adding this to crontab (ensure that the path to rdate is correct beforehand):
# update time with NTP server
0 3, 9, 15, 21 * * * /usr/sbin/rdate 128. 2. 136. 71 | logger -t NTP

“Coffee should be warm as hell, black as the devil, pure like an angel and sweet like love”.
C.M. de Talleyrand-Perigord, a french politican.