I have for a long time, been using brute force to mate my two computers and keep their tiny brains in sync with each other.

When I try to rsync my desktop and laptop’s FAT32 partitions, it always tried to transfer all the files even when most of them existed unmodified in both locations. A while ago I tried to play with the –modify-window value, but that didn’t make any difference. I relied entirely upon the -c (checksum) command, which went through every byte of the massive amount of data to calculate the checksum for each file on both computers, before deciding that they existed in both locations and so didn’t need to copy it. This understandably took a while, especially on my laptop where the hard drive access speed is less than desirable.

FAT32 is a farily restrictive file system in terms of permissions and has very little file metadata in comparison to a journal file system, like ext3 and so there is little for rsync to go off when trying to find out if a file has been modified, accessed or created. On top of that, the basic mtime for windows uses one less byte, and so has a resolution of 2 seconds which can create interesting scenarios. As if that is not enough, if the two computers are in different time zones (or windoze decides that it will cleverly change to BST even though linux has updated the system clock to that effect, so you still end up an hour out) you can have the same file with different metadata.

Today I got fed up waiting for my desktop and laptop to checksum themselves, and so decided to read the man rsync pages. There I found an option named –size-only, which only compares files based on size rather than the mtime metadata. Now it only takes a second or two to compare the file lists on my computers. Perhaps occasionally I should include the checksum to make sure there are no files that I have edited but are still the same size, but for now I am happy with –size-only.

andy@laptop:~$ rsync -rv –size-only –delete andy@desktop:/file_storage/ /laptop_storage/

Today I tried to use my mobile internet card on the train as I was travelling from Coventry to Manchester. In the 2 hour journey, all I manged to do was send two emails and find out some train times.

The coverage in stations was not too bad, often I got UMTS. However, it took a number of seconds to establish connections, and by that time the train was pulling away.

When travelling, the signal was very inconsistant, much like using a normal mobile phone on the train. The data card seemed to lock up a couple of times, and I had to remove it and restart the software to kick it into touch. It also got confused about when to switch from GPRS to UMTS, and vice versa, presumably because the relative signal strengths were changing too fast for its little brain.

It is nice toy, and useful when I am at uni as the university wireless is intermittant, and they block useful ports like 110 and 25 which stops me using thunderbird. However, it is less useful when travelling due to lack of decent signal.

Today I tried to connect my phone to my laptop to get all my messages off it. However, when I came to plug the serial cable in I found it lacked the neccessary parts. (A similar thng happened a few weeks ago when I grabbed a floppy disk and tried to find where it went, and realised that it didn’t have a 3.5″ drive).

So, the laptop was out of the question and I had to use my desktop. However, my desktop does not have windows on it, and the software to connect to the phone is windows only.

Looking at the mobile programs for linux, I descovered quite a few. I installed kmobiletools via the Ubuntu software manager and tried to get it to talk to my phone via the serial port, /dev/ttyS0. The screen on the phone dimmed (as it always used to, don’t know why) but the software did not connect. I tried to change the software ‘port’ to /dev/ttyS1 and ended up making the software refuse to run – and I could not run the software to change it back. I then deleted all the files in my home directory that had been created by the software, and in addtion deleted the relevant files in the /usr/share/ directory. After reinstalling, again via the software manager I reran the software on /dev/ttyS0. After changing a few settings, I still did not manage to make it work and gave it up for a bad job. When I get time I might try out some of the other programs.

Moral of the story: Don’t buy dodgy serial port phone connectors off ebay.

I have come to realise that having a CD and DVD boxset is quite a cool thing. When you play it on your computer it doesn’t pixalate or need weird codecs to work. Oh, and its not normally illegal to own a CD or DVD.

Some (read much) of my music collection was not strictly mine – it had been collated over the years from genuine friends, and some not quite so genuine ‘friends’ on file sharing networks, most notably DC++ whilst on campus at university.

So the time had come for me to delete all the music that was not mine. The issue was forced when I needed to formatting my desktop hard drive, and not being bothered to fill 25 DVD’s with my collection that I never listened to or watched.

It pained me to do it. All those simpsons episodes and films, all that music, but I guess it was the right thing to do. My hard drive is much ligher for it, as is my concience – But now I must start to buy some of the stuff I liked.

I have added a music and video section to my wishlist to try to list the stuff that I want, but If you have any ideas of music that I should buy & try, please tell me!