Rsync is a great tool for syncing files between 2 remote locations and it is also used for backups by sys admins.  But for those  Windows users out there who love GUIs and are looking for a quick way of syncing files without a lot of reading up on functionality and going through complex configurations then 1 solution i found does just that, rsync.net Windows Backup Agent

You can find the Windows Backup Agent for free here.  It is a great free tool with a lot of functionality including syncing files both ways, handling locked files, scheduling automated backups et cetera.  Have a look and play around with it.

Thanks to the Rsync.net guys for the great free tool!

Any comments?  Please let me know!

http://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/windows_backup_agent.html

The setup: 1 old sparc machine (makes enough noise to be confused for an airplane engine) running solaris, 1 Debian net install cd (to install debian as the new operating system), 1 serial cable

The idea is this: connect one end of the serial cable on the sparc machine and the other on an ubuntu machine, start the sparc machine, insert the cd rom, install debian.

As the sparc machine has no vga card and since it defaults to the serial terminal connection when no keyboard is installed this is the only way of installing debian. (any suggestions please do tell )

Firstly: go to http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/sparc/install.txt.en and keep it open.

Reality:

Once you have plugged in the serial cable on the ubuntu machine you will need to make sure that it is picking it up.  To make login as root using sudo -i .

Then read this page: http://www.debuntu.org/how-to-set-up-a-serial-console-on-ubuntu .  Have in mind that you will need to restart your system  as in my case checking for the serial connection (ttyS0) turned up nothing.  After a restart everything ran smoothly.  So from the page above the useful thing to pick up is $ dmesg | grep ttyS0 to make sure that the serial connection is alive.

Now, we will need a program such as minicom.  Google minicom up and remember to set the speed to 9600 (Control + A takes us to the option menu).  When we start up the sparc machine we will need to send a break command.  To do this, once we boot it up we will need to do a Control A and then press F.  An ok prompt will pop up.  This means that we are in the boot loader program of sparc, OpenBoot.  Open Boot has several options, have a read here http://www.adminschoice.com/docs/open_boot.htm.

One problem that i have read about when install Debian on a Sparc machine with solaris installed already is that you will get a memory alligment error.  The solution is to set the boot sequence of the sparc machine to boot from the cd first.  This is how to do it: setenv boot-device cdrom disk net .  Then reboot by typing boot and pressing Enter.  More on this can be found on this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=588088 .  When you reboot you will see the proper debian install menu over the console.

This is all for now, any corrections or suggestions please let me know

For those using internet explorer, Stop Using It. It is a security bug by itself!!

The following error kept coming up using internet explorer with a joomla site of mine “can’t execute code from a freed script” . I had no idea what caused it but in the end it turned out to be the order of the script and meta tags in the head section of the page.
Make sure that all meta tags are before any script tags.  Joomla will add its own meta tags that don’t appear hardcoded in the template itself. It turned out that some plugin also added some script tags in the head section in this rather unorthodox way. A meta tag which followed caused havoc! I ended up moving the content meta tag at the top of the head section and the problem was solved. Kudos to the following website:

http://www.akatombo.com/en/comments/cant_execute_code_from_a_freed_script/

The following article, hosted at the new York times, aims to compare prices between the US and Japan regarding cost of upgrading speeds for cable companies.  It also mentions costs of high speed Internet in the Netherlands which, according to the article, costs 80 euro for the 120 mb service it offers. That is a price i would be more than happy to pay for such a service.

Read more here: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/the-cost-to-offer-the-worlds-fastest-broadband-20-per-home/

Well some people had a very simple idea! Take a font, put some holes in it, and tada, saving ink while printing! up to 20% on ink costs to be more precise! The font is called Ecofont and it is the work of a Dutch company which took an Open Source Sans Serif font (didn’t know open sourced fonts existed, whats next? Open source food?? ) and started experimenting trying to figure out how many wholes one can use before the font becomes unreadable. Give it a try! You can find it at http://www.ecofont.eu/downloads_en.html

Well far from it, but there is an interesting article at the www.examiner.com.  It talks about Einstein’s  theory of relativity, and how that relates to a new theory brought forward by Randell Mills and his laboratory.

Quoting “It centers around his discovery of what he calls “hydrinos,” a previously unknown form of hydrogen in which electrons move to a lower state of energy than previously thought possible but still manage to kick off power.”

If you are using windows xp, click control alt and one of the arrow keys, this amazingly rotates the screen, great way of spreading panic to friends!

For those who with a computer science background or any other background which included programing then you might be familiar with the concept of object oriented programing and functional programing.  Sadly the second was considered to be out of fashion by many and i remember people i used to study with in Cyprus demanding that they be thought OOP.  This article though gives us reasons why functional programing might be the way forward.  Click here!

I just received my first facebook live chat spam message from what appears to be a compromised facebook account of a friend. It prompted me to visit a page which appeared to be serving malware! YAY

time for facebook to pay more attention to its security. Kids use facebook too these days, don’t want them to open up pages of the wrong content among other things

After spending a few minutes reading the 20+ page cartoon google released about Chrome (thumbs up by the way on that Google, great idea) Chrome is based on Webkit, used by Safari and google’s Android project. It has some impressive features such as threaded browsing and sandboxing, with a focus on security.  Ofcourse many have promissed this, few have delivered.  In any case this is a very promessing browser, i look forward to seeing it in action

On a last note, a new Javascript virtual machine is one of the most impressive features showcased.  More on that to come.

To read the cartoon go to http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

Some of you might not be surprised by this but Google is getting a new browser out there aimed to increase the usability of web pages for the users. Codenamed Chrome, or Google Chrome, the new browser is said to be designed from scratch to work more efficiently with web 2.0 content, or atleast that is what the point of this browser is.

Remembering that google was one of the pioneers of the new web (old web + a lot of javascript and re branded) one might not help but wonder if google is trying to use this new browser to gain even more control over the user market (“monitoring user trends”), pushing new working frameworks focusing on this new browser and perhaps setting standards aside for the sake of getting things to “look” nice — (new features that only work) — on their own browser. In addition it remains to be seen how Google’s ties with the Mozilla foundation will evolve with this new browser coming out, perhaps aiming to rival open source projects like Firefox in the near future.

I also wonder if google can deliver on efficiency as web browsers these days seem to be suffering from it.  Will google’s “start from scratch” aproach be a solution? Let’s hope it pushes other browser vendors to start improving their own prodcuts

Read more at http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

Here is a new definition of a free man. A man is free, free to be exploited by all money making capitalist corporations out there. This is not the same as Free software. Where ‘s our right for privacy and freedom gone

Read more

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7444390.stm

For the last 3 months i had no access to my blog, and i sure as hell missed it!   The reason?  Well due to the fact that the person managing the domain i had in my possession for years now, forgot to renew it, and then did not manage to contact the company that he got it from to get it back from me.  This is a very rough sum up of a lot of conversations and a lot of stupidity, and to be honest, i will take responsibility for trusting someone to deal with something that is important to me.  I am trying to get it back but for the moment this does not seem to be an option as the current owners, some spam company, will not respond my emails.  Isn’t this ironic?  A spaming company considering my emails as spam?  I wonder why the domain name authority that is in place does not have provisions for such situations.  The domain name i had does not have any value to anyone but me, and i guess a lot of spammers who use the people who link to it.  Oh well! life goes on, and everything is up and running finally.  We learn from our mistakes.  I will be back with more later on, about my job hunting bad experiences and tips!

I was looking around the internet and spotted a few articles on how to download videos from www.youtube.com .  But none of them seemed to be easier than the way I will describe below.

1. Find the youtube video you wish to download

2. Copy the URL of the page the video is located at e.g.   http://youtube.com/watch?v=J7JmsMMIR4Y

3. Go to http://vixy.net/ and paste the URL at the input box at the top and click “Start”

You would ask your self why you would need to download the videos from youtube if they are already there.   Well the first and most important reason is that a lot of service providers (or university networks such as the one in the University of Kent) impose restrictions on the speeds you can connect to youtube.  The second reason is that you might want to save them for your own personal collection.

You may also ask your self why you should not prefer another webpage such as www.kissyoutube.com .   The reason is that www.vixy.net will convert your video into AVI format and not in an FLV format such as most other pages do.   It also gives you other choices for compression and formats (MOV, MP4, 3GP, MP3 for audio only) in case there is one that suits you better

This will save you the time of converting it the FLV format or downloading an FLV player.   If you do want to get the video in FLV format, for reasons that are beyond me, then remember to download a player from http://www.download.com/FLV-Player/3000-2139_4-10467081.html

Enjoy!!!

According to the statistics posted here Firefox is becoming more and more popular in Europe with 24.1% of the browser “market”. Slovenia at 44.5% and with Finland (41.3%), Croatia (36.5%), and Germany (36.2%) are leading the way as the countries with the highest percentages. � If you are not already using Firefox why not give it a try. � Its overall safety along with its extensibility and functionality offered by the available plug-ins out there make it hard to resist! �

Simply go to www.mozilla.com/firefox/ and give it a try:)