House of Eratosthenes

WD Passport Mine showed up Tuesday night. Huge win. I got the tracking notice at work, and stopped off by the hardware store on the way home to pick up velcro before I even saw the thing. Now it sticks on to either one of the two laptops, and I’ve installed a Subversion repository on the Passport. M-U-C-H better arrangement for the important files than just sitting in a “My Documents” folder somewhere.

This is actually working out better than a “real” home network. Fits what I’m doing better. Some of these files are “hot”…as in…getting hammered with updates, weekly or more than once a week, for years. But it’s just not practical to presume all the hammering takes place in the same little cubbyhole all the time. Think I might have put together the ideal setup here; we’ll see how it works out over the long term.

I don’t know what any of those words mean and that black boxy thing looks rather ominous…
- Daphne | 10/09/2009 @ 12:42
Ditto Daphne, it looks cool to me…I have no freakin’ idea what it is…

But thanks for reminding me, my passport is due to expire in couple years.

Have fun with it anyways…
- tim | 10/09/2009 @ 12:54
Okay you two, stop banging those rocks together, step of your mud huts and come out here in the sunlight where I can show you what’s goin’ on…it’s a slimline portable device specifically designed to synchronize data from one computer to another.

My environment at home is: A six-year-old tower unit my kid burned out by leaving it on 24×7 with one of the cheaper power supplies I’d installed the year before; a Dell laptop that weighs enough that those casual blogging trips to the coffee shop aren’t terribly likely; a HP mini that weighs two pounds and does everything I want, but is limited by a 16GB solid state drive; and the girlfriend’s hardware (Compaq tower by her desk, Acer mini notebook I got her for her birthday).

Subversion is a version control tool. That means as you revise a file, it builds a database of revisions. Kind of like Wikipedia. Very important for software development, but if you implement it in your personal life you can find all kinds of things to toss into it. Obviously, having the database actually living on the Passport device opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities, and I’m having a great time experimenting with them.

Velcro is a fabric used to stick flat smooth semi-heavy things to other flat smooth semi-heavy things.

And 250GB is…well, pretty goddamn handy. I’m luvin’ it. Hate to admit it, but this is now the biggest hard drive in the place.

Next week’s project is to stick yet another power supply in that poor old tower, and grab my files off of that. As you can surmise from the earlier remarks, the plans about putting together an honest-to-goodness file server are being shoved to the back burner now.
- mkfreeberg | 10/09/2009 @ 13:16
I like my squirrel meat raw, Morgan.

Come into my cave and I’ll teach you some English, because you’re still speaking a foreign language. While you’re here, I can expose you to the glorious pleasures of Mac.

It’s nice to hear that you’re in possession of a big hard drive, Morgan.
- Daphne | 10/09/2009 @ 13:26
- mkfreeberg | 10/09/2009 @ 14:02
I don’t get the joke. What’s Unix?

Are you pawning my stellar Mac package, Morgon?
- Daphne | 10/09/2009 @ 14:10
Big sorries for the misspelling – I’m working on massive stein number two. Morgan.
- Daphne | 10/09/2009 @ 14:12
Add me to the idiot list. Explanations or not, I still have no idea, Morgan. I have a Dell laptop. When the internet sucks, which is often, I don’t know whether it is Comcast sucking, the laptop sucking, or my router sucking, but I now for damn sure that nobody I call at any help desk will make it any better.
- Andy | 10/09/2009 @ 16:06
Consider yourself added. 🙂

Just dang, people. Am I gonna have to put up a “Let Me Google That For You” link? ’cause that would be more sarcastic than I want to be at beer-thirty on a Nobel Peace Prize Friday afternoon…
- mkfreeberg | 10/09/2009 @ 16:42
Aw, what the heck. You’re all asking for it…here ya go.

Geez, it’s an external hard drive. A really good one. Fastened with velcro. You can’t get any less technical than that until you start talking about hitching an abacus on with duct tape, or something…
- mkfreeberg | 10/09/2009 @ 16:45
No, just add some girly/non-electronic porn to the front page. Ripped, tan abs would be good.
- Daphne | 10/09/2009 @ 16:46
So what’s wrong with saying “external hard drive?” I would have been clued right in. Here’s your whole post, revised for, well, for me:

“Hey kids, I got a new external hard drive, and I really like it.”

See how easy that was?
- Andy | 10/09/2009 @ 17:03
[…] I Gots Me A Hard Drive Western Digital Passport The Big Nobel News I and J These Lousy States Brainy Damage Autumn Wallpapers Difference Between […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 10/09/2009 @ 18:14
Ooh, shiny!

(I got it, without the LMGTFY link, or the explanations…if I was older, I’d be that bearded old UNIX guy.)

Perhaps I should do this for my next backup solution. I’ve got a spare external-drive-box. But I would have to put one of my loose drives in, and put Subversion on it myself…

Or I can buy myself one of those things.
- karrde | 10/09/2009 @ 18:22
Subversion rocks.

Version control in general rocks. Subversion’s the best of the best.

Generally speaking, when you’re considering whether or not to use version control for something, if you just take the anti-version-control people with their “Waitaminnit, why are we doing this?” and just hogtie them in a closet with duct tape over their mouths, then set it up…you won’t be sorry. If it’s worth hanging onto for awhile, and it’s worth changing as something new rolls in, it’s worth throwing into a repository and getting it tracked.

All of which is something left unexplored in this post…but hey…we wanted to get non-technical…
- mkfreeberg | 10/09/2009 @ 18:29
Subversion’s okay in a “you get what you pay for” kind of way. Since I make my living with ClearCase, I’m biased.
- Jason | 10/09/2009 @ 18:47
*lol*

You guys (and girls!) crack me up.

mkfreeberg, the best part about Macs these days is you can be both a smug Mac user and a smug Unix user!

PS: Tortoise SVN – if you’ve not heard of it, give it a whirl. It is the best subversion client for Windows and it integrates nicely into windows explorer.
- pdwalker | 10/09/2009 @ 19:44
Baby steps, Paul. Look at all the guff and backtalk they’re giving me for using the accurate terms to describe an external hard drive. That’s just the hardware…then there’s the Subversion package…now you want to get into the Explorer shell.

These folks are having a tough time with the concept of a rapidly spinning disc storing random-access digital information on magnetic media. Daphne’s already distracted by my eight-pack ripped abs. I wonder how my readers listen to music; is it that 78 rpm gramophone with the dog sticking its ear into the horn?

At this point I’m intimidated from using an innocent three-letter acronym like “USB”.
- mkfreeberg | 10/09/2009 @ 19:53
Nope, it was the big hard drive that sent me off topic. Shame on you for not addressing this integral issue.

Don’t you dare start in on dry USB’s, Morgan.
- Daphne | 10/09/2009 @ 20:24
Since we’re getting all techie here, except for Daphne, who’s geting drunk and invigorated:

Did you consider the Western Digital World Edition 1TB drive?

Three times the storage capacity; automatic backup for everything on your network, including your gaming platforms; stores all of your digital media and streams them to any or all of your machines; and you can access it from anywhere in the world.

It turns your router into a home server. All for $169.
- Gordon | 10/12/2009 @ 15:12
That was Friday night, Gordon.

I’m fairly sober at the moment.
- Daphne | 10/12/2009 @ 15:19
Daphne,

I hope you’re planning to change that.
- Gordon | 10/12/2009 @ 16:51

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Western Digital PassportFriday, October 9th, 2009

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Friday, October 9th, 2009