No Live Mesh in Windows 8: time to build a NAS.

Windows Live Mesh is a brilliant bit of software, yet it has always been poorly promoted by Microsoft.

Live Mesh seamlessly synchronises folders between multiple PCs, including those of friends you invite to share. You can choose which PCs have which folders and you can also sync up to 5Gb of your content with a cloud storage area – but importantly this is optional. I currently use Live Mesh in three scenarios:

1. Documents: it keeps documents backed up to the cloud, and in sync between my home desktop, laptop and work PC
2. HTPC Media: it keeps photos, music and videos in sync across the HTPCs we have in our kitchen, lounge and bedroom
3. Family Photos: it syncs our photos of the kids over the internet with my parents’ laptop

By distributing and replicating files, Mesh also implicitly offers resilience: if a hard drive needs to be replaced, or a system needs to be rebuilt, the affected PC can be removed, repaired, then added back into the Mesh and it gets all its content back.

It recently emerged that while Windows 8 will work nicely with Windows Live SkyDrive, including 25GB of free cloud storage, PC to PC syncing will be dropped in Windows 8, and Live Mesh will be discontinued.

So before that happens, I need to find new solutions for my three scenarios, plus the resilience issue.

1. Documents

Windows 8’s SkyDrive integration will be fine for documents, and I’ll probably continue to use it. I’ll keep my documents in Live Mesh for now and move them over to SkyDrive when I upgrade to Windows 8.

2. HTPC Media

One of the reasons I decided to use Mesh to distribute media between HTPCs was that they were initially networked using WiFi, which wasn’t capable of streaming content from one box to another quickly enough, but was OK for syncing files between machines at a slower pace.

Following a DIY project last summer, that is no longer the case, and everything is now nicely wired together. I also have the problem that the HTPCs are starting to run out of disk space. So, I’ve decided to build a NAS.

A NAS (Networked Attached Storage) is a box with lots of disk space and a fast network connection which is dedicated to dishing out files to other devices on the network. Once the NAS is in place, the media content I currently sync between PCs will go on there and I can remove my media folders from Live Mesh.

After reading this blog post, I’ve decided to go for an HP ProLiant MicroServer running FreeNAS from a USB flash drive, with four 2TB disks. I’ll set the disks up in a RAID 5 formation which will give me 6TB of capacity. This also offers resilience, as although the files are now only in once place, RAID distributes them across the hard disks, so individual disks can fail and be replaced.

3. Family Photos

Once the NAS is set up, I’ll also shift our photo archive up on to it, then make it available from there via SSH/SFTP which looks pretty easy to set up in FreeNAS. On my parents’ laptop, I’ll remove Live Mesh, and write a simple batch file which uses WinSCP’s Synchronize capability to pull any new photos down from the NAS each time they boot up their laptop. I’ll post something here on my blog when I get this working.

Use C# to organise photos into date folders

I like to keep photos of my children in folders which are named based on the date the photos inside were taken. For example, all photos taken on Christmas Day last year are in a folder called 2010-12-25.

I finally got round to writing a quick C# console application to organise photos into folders automatically. The date the picture was taken is easy to get using the BitmapMetadata class.

Here’s the code:

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Windows.Media.Imaging;

namespace OrganisePhotosIntoDateFolders
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string folderPath = "C:\\PhotosToOrganise";
if (args.Length > 0) folderPath = args[0];
foreach (string photoPath in Directory.EnumerateFiles(folderPath, "*.jpg"))
{
string subFolderName = "Unknown";
string photoFileName = new FileInfo(photoPath).Name;
DateTime dateTaken = DateTime.MinValue;
using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(photoPath, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read))
{
BitmapMetadata md = (BitmapMetadata)BitmapFrame.Create(fs).Metadata;
DateTime.TryParse(md.DateTaken, out dateTaken);
}
if (dateTaken > DateTime.MinValue) subFolderName = dateTaken.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd");
string subFolderPath = String.Format("{0}\\{1}", folderPath, subFolderName);
if (!Directory.Exists(subFolderPath)) Directory.CreateDirectory(subFolderPath);
File.Move(photoPath, String.Format("{0}\\{1}", subFolderPath, photoFileName));
}
}
}
}

Use Last.fm to find the song currently playing on BBC 6 Music in Spotify

We have BBC 6 Music on in the office and every so often a song comes on which I wouldn’t mind adding to my playlist in Spotify.

6 Music scrobbles everything they play to their last.fm page at http://www.last.fm/user/bbc6music. (Thanks to Steve for showing me this)

The currently playing song is highlighted yellow. Click on its title to go through into the song details.

If the song is available in Spotify, there is a link which will open the track directly in Spotify, and that’s it.

A question of statistics

According to the Guardian today, 37% of Africans have a mobile phone, but only 25% have electricity. So how do they charge their mobiles?

Rafa Benitez on squad sizes

‘They have quality, especially the quality on the bench… Against us they had Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Dimitar Berbatov on the bench. When they can change players of this value, these players can make the difference… So they have these kind of players, we have less of these… When you pay £20-£30million for each of these players, it is easier.’ – Rafa Benitez
Daily Mail, 18th May 2009, http://tinyurl.com/obg2ro

Uefa have branded as “ridiculous” the number of players on the payroll of the Premier League’s Big Four clubs. Liverpool, who under Rafa Benítez have stockpiled a 62-man squad, the biggest in the league and enough for more than five full teams, have come in for particular criticism.

Uefa limit clubs to 25 players each for the Champions league and their general secretary, David Taylor, speaking exclusively to Observer Sport, said: “Ridiculous. 62? You could have two full-size practice games. You can only field 11 at one time. It’s an open question as to how many you actually need. Is it 20, 25?”
Observer, 29th March 2009, http://tinyurl.com/d7epns

Afternoon TV

Watching Deal or No Deal at the mo. Have you got a system? Yes, I’m a big Liverpool fan Noel – so I’ll be opening the boxes in the order of the Istanbul penalty takers. First up, number 9, Djibril Cisse. £100k. Oh dear. Second number 16, Did Hamann. £50k. Ah, I didn’t know this show could be so entertaining.

It’s about emotion, respect, loyalty – and real love

Arsenal accounts reveal it took £10m (£5m wages, plus a private £5m one-off fee) to keep Thierry Henry for one more season. “I stayed for love,” said Thierry in 2006, before the accounts were made public. “I simply could not face leaving the fans. I’ve never played in Spain and now I never will. This is where my heart is. And my decision to stay or leave was never going to be based on economic considerations. People want to give you a label as a footballer where it’s all about money, money, money – they should stop talking about that. It’s not. It’s about emotion, respect, loyalty – and real love.”

via Football: Said and Done | Football | The Observer.