Windows Home Server 2011

Well, it's about that time of year again to think about backups.

My initial posts on this blog were raving about Windows Home Server and detailing the creation and installation of my Windows Home Server version 1 machine. After a particularly painful experience with my previous server running Ubuntu, I was wowed with Windows Home Server and how it made so many things so much easier to achieve, at least in an environment where all my other machines were running Windows. As far as media serving duties and performing automated backups, it was like a breath of fresh air, at least initially.

I had plans to take it further moving the server hardware into the garage (there's no point keeping a back-up in the house if the house gets burgled or burns down in a fire!) and already have a hold drilled in the wall of the house that just needed to be widened to feed an RJ-45 cable through. Also by the power of the excellent Drive Extender technology in WHS v1 I planned on adding an obscene amount of extra storage over time and have the box work as a media hub too.

Then a change of job and finances put hold to these plans. The WHS box stopped playing nicely, essentially I would switch on the box and the hard drive activity would never subside, resulting in the box working but becoming incredibly slow. As a result of this I found I could back-up my laptop, but the desktop with its larger quantity of data would never complete a backup.

I tried for a while to solve this issue, but alas with no luck.

Then WHS 2011 was announced with better audio streaming, but shock horror without the awesome Drive Extender!

I, like many others, was unhappy about this (and I still am), but overall the update looked like one to get... when I had the money.

The upshot is that I lost interest in fixing my WHS v1, it literally seemed like more trouble than it was worth,  especially considering that in the meantime I started working in London again so had less time to tinker.

Worryingly as a result I've not had a complete backup of my primary desktop machine for some time now. Dangerous, and less than ideal.

Then I became single, so although I had fewer hours in the evenings to tinker after my commute home, I did have some free time... but still apparently not enough motivation to fix the WHS v1 box.

A few days ago I stumbled across a piece of news saying how the WHS 2011 software could now be had for a few pennies over £37. This seemed like a bargain too good to be true and re-kindled my interest in sorting out my backups, so I ordered myself a copy which has now duly arrived.

Now I needed to start thinking about hardware to run Windows Home Server 2011 on. My original WHS v1 box was an old shuttle micro ATX machine I had recyceld from desktop duties. I had to become quite creative with this form factor to get my hard drive array in, it's short on memory, the processor is old and only 32 bit (unsuitable for WHS 2011) and the network interface was only 100 base-t... Oh, and even by removing the redundant graphics card it still eats 90 watts of power.

Lo and behold I stumbled upon the HP ProLiant Micro Server is selling for £250... and until the end of the July 2011 has a £100 mail-in rebate!

The server only comes with 1 gigabyte of memory and a 250GB hard drive, so I'll be taking them out (The HDD may find its way into my desktop machine) and putting in 4 gigabytes of ram, and either 2 or (more likely) 4 two terabyte eco green drives,  hopefully in a 0+1 raid array (which will be just mirrored if the motherboard can't handle that).

I figure this configuration SHOULD be quite safe, so I'll then move all my media to the new server ready for DLNA access from the rest of the network (other windows machines, the XBox 360 and the TV itself) and remotely.

The server should draw less than 30 watts fully loaded and has a 1000 base-t network port, which should offer faster backups and general access.

After this machine is up and running it will be time for stage 2: my hifi has just stopped playing CDs so I'm planning on getting a dedicated surround system for the TV, along with some additional kit (possibly a Sonos system) for the kitchen, bedroom and lounge itself. That's a long way off just yet, but should be possible in the not too distant future, and now with WHS serving the local media.

The server box is ordered, I'll order the additional drives and memory later, and I'll update on how it goes in a later post.

Has the 3DS changed my behaviour?

I picked up, purely as an impulse buy, a Nintendo 3DS on launch day (Friday 25th March 2011 in the UK). Since then I've been acting a little differently, for 2 reasons.

1. I've been keeping the 3DS with me in my trouser pocket much of the time, and possibly walking a little more.

Why?

The 3DS has tilt switches and so, in addition to other uses, acts as a pedometer. Now I can compare how much walking I've done each day.

In addition to this, walking will also earn you "coins" which can be used in some games, up to a maximum of 10 coins per day. (Un)fortunately I can walk far enough to earn all my daily coins just by walking to the station first thing in the morning on the way to work. I can't help thinking it's a little too easy to get that booty.

2. I'm walking via different routes.

This is not only to rack up a few more steps, but also to pass as many people as possible. The 3DS has a feature called "Street Pass" which, if the console is sleeping rather than powered off, will exchange data with other 3DS users as you get near them. This data includes game functionality for supported games (for example Lap Times for Ridge Racer, Characters for Street Fighter) and adds their Mii to the Plaza on your console. This Mii can then be used to, for example, help you complete a 3D image, or help rescue your own Mii (which has been captured in one of the games).

All in all, providing these two motivations for keeping the 3DS with me at all times is clever marketing by Nintendo; it keeps the console at hand and makes it more likely to be used, and therefore more likely that I'll buy more games for it.

Until the novelty passes anyway...

Oh, and by the way, the 3D is yet to make me feel dizzy, which is a surprise since I can't play first person shooters without getting motion sickness.

Google quite possibly now owns my soul... [Part 2]

So now I'm running Android as my primary phone OS I'm leaning more heavily on the surrounding Google services, specifically:

• I've started making more use of my GMail account. This is actually coming in more useful for talking to job agencies as it's easier to specify the Gmail email address than having to explain constantly that imorital actually doesn't mean anything of significance.
• I'm making use of the Google calendar, especially getting this to sync with my various instances of Outlook. The calendar then automatically syncs to the phone without having to perform this step by plugging it into the PCs in question. Essentially a (more or less) up to date copy of my calendar is always accesible on the web and from their to my various devices with no manual intervention.
• Likewise The tasks. This synchronisation isn't as slick unfortunately, especially with regards to Outlook tasks. I live in hope this will improve over time (hey Google, I'll come and work for you to write the code if you want).
• I'm making use of Google reader to keep track of my RSS subscriptions. Again this is all kept in sync so I see what is unread between devices.
• My homepage of choice has been iGoogle for a while, it offers a decent "at a glance" view of what I want to see on the web, including the aforementioned Calendar, tasks and reader (probably email too if I could be bothered setting it up), along with stock prices, weather, train times, etc.
• I've even used the free Google navigation to guide us to/from our recent holiday.
• I'm currently playing with Latitude, although since (like most of the sane population of the world) I don't always want people knowing where I am, this will likely be a phase.
• I've started using Google Talk for chatting to a couple of friends from both the Google web pages and my phone.
• I'll probably start using Google Voice when it arrives properly in the UK.... assuming it offers similar features to the US version (i.e. free calls to landlines)

Also of note, during my many years of using Windows Mobile devices I probably never installed more than 15 applications, that's changed considerably with the advent of an Android device. So what have I installed?

Well in no particular order and loosely categorised:

Games

• Paper Toss by Backflip Solutions inc.
• Word Up! by Anthrological
• Jewels by MHGames
• Talking Santa Free by Outfit 7 Ltd.
• Talking Roby The Robot Free by Outfit 7 Ltd.
• Talking Tom Free by Outfit 7 Ltd.
• Finger Dance Lite by Blink Droid
• PAC-MAN Championship Edition (Demo) by Namco Networks
• Raging Thunder 2 Lite by polarbit
• Bubble Burst Free by Androgames
• WordSearch Unlimited Free by JiuzhangTech Ltd
• Star Wars light Saber by Eder Rueda Fernandes
• Andoku Sudoku by Markus Wiederkehr

System Stuff

• AppBrain App Market by Swiss Codemonkeys
• Quick Settings by Sergej Shafarenka
• Bluetooth File Transfer by Medieval Software*
• ASTRO File Manager by Metago
• ASTRO SMB Module by Metago
• ASTRO Bluetooth Module by Metago

Productivity Tools

• Yell.com by Yell.com Mobile
• Google Search by Google Inc.*
• WikiMobile by Bonfire Media Inc.
• Google Goggles by Google Inc.
• London Tube Status by Pete C
• RAC Traffic by Oakley integrated Business Solutions Ltd
• Barcode Scanner by ZXing Team
• GTasks by Dato
• Google Maps by Google Inc*
• Evernote by Evernote Corp.
• Gmail by Google inc*

Media, Leisure and Communication

• Audible for Android by Audible
• Just Pictures by Kounch
• Camera 360 by mAPPn, Inc
• SoundHorn by SoundHorn Inc.*
• Flash Player 10.1 by Adobe Systems*
• Endomondo Sports Tracker by  Endomondo
• Waitrose Christmas by Waitrose Ltd.
• YouTube by Google Inc.*
• Adobe Reader by Adobe Systems*
• Epicurious Recipe App by Conde Nast Digital
• Simple Last.fm Scrobbler by Adam Renberg
• Sykpe by Skype
• Facebook for Android by Facebook*
• Kindle for Android by Amazon Mobile
• Twitter by Twitter Inc*

Ecommerce Tools

• Google Shopper by Google Inc.
• Official eBay Android by eBay Mobile
• EZ Tip Calculator by Daniel Hong
• Amazon MP3 by Amazon.com*

Tech stuff

• Droid Forums by DroidNetwork.net
• XDA-Developers by XDA-Developers

Items marked with * are possibly part of the HTC stock rom, however since using App Brain updates to these components are found and installed, after which they appear on my list of downloaded marketplace applications.

I had, as you may well know, already had some experience of Android by running it on my old Windows Mobile 6.5 HTC Touch Pro2. This was running the basic Google UI, but even so taught me the basics of Android (even though some of them were a little more clunky than an HTC Sense Skinned device). The thing that struck me about Android on that phone, was how much cleaner most of the applications looked than WM itself, even though it wasn't the primary OS. That initial impression, even on the large screen of the Desire HD, has not been as great on the new phone, which I put down to knowing exactly what to expect this time. Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty that makes me smile, and the implementation of Android 2.2 is complete (the TP2 version was missing things like Flash and a decent battery meter).

The two things that stand our for me are being able to watch Flash in the browser (I have used this facility to run the BBC iPlayer and live streams extensively, both full screen and in page), and the fact that it's proved thus far to be very stable (it hasn't had a system crash once yet, although a few applications have force closed, but this has been isolated from everything else - interestingly the old Marketplace application proved least reliable).

So overall I'm loving the Android experience, I just need to start coding up some of my own apps now, and even that looks relatively simple. Watch this space!

Google quite possibly now owns my soul... [Part 1]

So, I've had my new phone, an Android based Desire HD for a couple of weeks now, and it's remarkable how quickly I have got used to it just being there.

In this time I've not carried my laptop to work, instead just using the phone to provide my media consumption (video, audio - both music and books, email checking, surfing, etc.) It's not that the phone does any of these things particularly better than a laptop, it doesn't, the larger screen and keyboard still rate supreme, however for convienience it's a lot easier to transport and use on a crowded train or tube.

Primarily however, it is a consumption device, much like an iPad or other tablet. As a result I fully expect the laptop to be making a welcome return on occasion as I try to actually create content. It's not that either a smart phone or tablet cannot do that, indeed for some applications they may be preferable, however their usefulness when, for example, using Eclipse to code up a small Java application or test, is obviously limited, crippled if you will.

The small need I felt to get a tablet has almost entirely vanished now, if it ever existed, now such a device would be merely a curiosity or just another toy to sit and gather dust within months. That, at the moment is equally applicable to both iOS and Android tablet devices.

The phone is in no way a tablet, but it is, for me at least, filling the exact same uses I would see a tablet covering.

Now if only the price of 32Gb Micro SD cards could half, I could upgrade the 8Gb card that currently lives in my phone and carry around a decent library of music.

So that's decided then.

Well, with regards to my choice of next phone, my hand was forced when my existing Touch Pro2 finally gave up the ghost. I'd finally had enough of powering on the phone to find it didn't respond to my jabbing of the screen, so after an age trying to get it to work well enough to allow me to input, I managed to restore it to factory settings.

So, with a clean phone i powered on, but still I was usually getting nothing. This was with the SD card removed and nothing installed, essentially it was the stock rom.

So it appears the root of many of my problems with the phone have been down to the slow death of the touch functionality of the screen. it's almost certainly a hardware issue.

Fortunately this happened about a week before I was eligible to upgrade to a new phone and tariff, so I loaded myself up with my trusty old N95, and played the waiting game until the magic date arrived. Last Monday, armed with the deal I wanted I called up T-Mobile customer service. I told them what phone I wanted, we analysed my usage patterns, and they offered me a deal better than I had found myself, so I've accepted it.

So now I'm waiting for them to get stock in of my new phone.... I finally went for the HTC Desire HD, although it was a close run thing with the Galaxy S until the last minute (if T-Mobile had stocked the 16Gb version instead of the 8Gb version then I may have gone for that instead).

Although I arranged this over the phone they did tell me if I found a T-Mobile store with stock I should get the unit from there, and Surrey Quays expect some in tomorrow, so I could have two new toys to play with over the weekend - the new phone and hopefully the Kinect will on Friday.

Is it Christmas already?

Windows Phone 7 – Keep up the good work.

My Windows Mobile 6.5.3 based HTC Touch Pro2 is driving me insane at the moment. I'm not due to finish my contract until the end of November, but almost every day is going to be a strain, assuming I don’t just upgrade now, which I could do since I’m probably going to get something SIM free away from a contract anyway.

Strangely after all I’ve said previously, for a while  this week I was basing my delay on waiting until Windows Phone 7 is released next week, just to see. Surprisingly the thing that put me off again was reading an article about application development on the device, and how locked down non-Microsoft apps are in this initial release. As an example the Twitter client can’t even get access to the camera or photo album. Good for security, bad for functionality.

Version 1 teething troubles, I’m sure, but they are there just the same, so the operating system must be judged on them. Back in the box for now Windows phone 7, perhaps I’ll see you when you can play with the bigger kids.

If I had to choose a phone to buy today I'd probably go for an HTC Desire or a Samsung Galaxy S, both great little Android phones. The fact Android is under assault by legal terms from Oracle, and Android vendors from Apple and Microsoft worries me only a tiny amount. The Oracle charge seems to be the greatest threat (the others are just play fodder for patent holders).

To a certain extent I sympathise with Oracle, after all they do now own and develop Java, so some licencing would only seem fair. Then again I just know what I read, and having worked on the periphery of media even I know how the truth and reports rarely overlap to and great extent, although I do like to think that for the most part the technical media is more accurate than The Mail.

I'm waiting to get my grubby mitts on an HTC Desire HD or Desire Z, and possibly a look at Android 3 if I can hold out that long.

The Desire HD may be out of the game as the screen is possibly too big. It’s like a tablet device (which would save me buying one of them) but it doesn’t particularly look like it will be comfortable in your pocket.

As for the Desire Z, why not keep the 8MP camera of the HD? Not the end of the world, but frustrating.

I need to see them both before any decision, then weigh up the pricing.

On a related note, I did fancy a Kindle, I am a big fan of eInk screens and I love the way it stores your place in a book between devices, so I could read a book on it from both my laptop and a Kindle and keep my place.

Having said that I’ve been using the Android Kindle application today, and I think for the short periods I get to read these days a backlit screen will be bearable (and it also keeps track of your position). Plus the PDF rendering in Android will be much better than a Kindle I’m sure (must try it), an important consideration with the amount of PDF files I have in my collection. Lastly the £109/£149 I save by not getting a Kindle will help the phone fund nicely.

Of course, for reading the Desire HD screen will be better than the Z…

Gaah!

I guess I’ll just wait and see them in the flesh.

Now, about that Galaxy S...

Is Java Hot Or Cooling?

If you want to take a geeky 40 minutes out at some point I recommend listening to the podcast at https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/scott/entry/java_still_hot_or_losing?ca=dwpodcastall&lang=en

It give a very good and what appears to me to be unbiased overview on the future health of Java.