Various personal stuff

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Just a word of caution in conjunction with my previous description of the online backup service KeepIT.com

I bought this service after a short test of their free 2gb offering, the price seemed fair and they offered unlimited storage space.  Things did not go smoothly though, at first their client software 1.0 was very poor, the client software seemed utterly unstable;

  • VERY slow (up to 10 minutes) when you tried to select what to backup. 
  • It was as good as impossible to tell what had been backuped (logging was very inadequate).
  • Client software would connect and disconnect from the server totally outside your control.
  • And the final nail in the coffin, when you need to restore you have ONE option – ALL or NOTHING, yes that is right you need to restore EVERYTHING it is not possible to just select the one file or files you need.

To top everything off a few extra actions was added to the story that forced me to discontinue my account; When I ordered the product I read the description on their website and downloaded and tested their product on my Win 2003 server, and everything seemed to be in order, however after returning from a weeks vacation in Milano I found that the backup job had stalled.  All attempts to get it back up and running failed, so at last I contacted their support mail.  The response was surprising, “our software do not support Windows 2003 server – have a nice day!” and then a link to a sub-page on their web site where this was stated.  Well what surprises me was that I never saw this while ordering and testing (we all know it is impossible to make the installer software not allowing installation on unsupported systems, sarcasm ;-)), so I can only come to the conclusion that this restriction was either added after I bought the product or very poorly described.  Anyhow the story ends somewhat satisfying, after a lot of writing back and forth KeepIT.com has agreed to return my payment and cancle my service.

A final word of caution, and perhaps the most important;
If you read the FAQ on KeepIT.com website (at least as it is today) you will find that if you loose your crypto key there is NO WAY of restoring your data, I found this very reassuring when I bought the product (as this meant my data was 100% private and secure).  However upon reading the “Terms of usage” VERY closely you will be surprised to find that not only do KeepIT.com have a ‘sparekey’ they also reserve the right to decrypt and examine your data without prior warning if they so see fit, unless you explicit request that they do not store a ‘sparekey’ (this if however NEVER an option during the orderprocess).  I find this option utterly disturbing.

I suggest you take a look at www.idrive.com instead, this service is cheaper has better client software and seem to respect your privacy.  I will see if I cant make a short review / comparison later.

During the last six months I have caught myself exploring YouTube.com on more than one occasion, my what a treasure box. I quite enjoy the waste musical scope and have spent quite some time browsing/listening through the hours and hours of excellent (and not so excellent) musical entries, I quite enjoy listening to the “amateure” recordings of various songs – some are surprisingly excellent performed.

Should you wish to “harvest” some of the videos for your Ipod or just for enjoying offline I can recommend “Any DVD converter” which can both download and convert the YouTube videos (mind you the quality may not be perfect on your 42″ plasma ;-))..

A few links to get you started;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsHtNZzpzcI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXVrnv7gnVQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqOzre7RcNU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85bnCMg1BIw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SenJPh4nTu8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdRJou6pMX0

And finnaly this one – both pleasing for ears and eyes :-), now I somehow regret not taking French in School 🙂

Some weeks ago my daughter and I attended the Musical “Mamma Mia” performed in Horsens Denmark. And to use an Abba phrase “my – my – how can I resist you!”, what a truly excellent show. I would say Mamma Mia ranks at the top of any live performance I have attended for years, if not ever.. Money well spent.

And as a little twist, this summer the show will hit cinemas as a movie/musical with quite a promising cast even, so good things do get even better.. No doubt I’ll be in the THX center of that performance as well once it hits the northern Europe.

Customs
Be careful what you have on your laptop when entering the USA, the security checks are no longer limited to your physical goods, according to the Danish online magazine ComOn.DK quite a lot of people have had to hand over their passwords to their laptops, in order for the Security personnel at the US airports to search their computers.

Disturbing is the only word I can think of.

I found one serious shortcoming to GPS navigators, what good is it when you forget the unit in the rental car in France 🙂

Standing in the Airport in Copenhagen I got a call from AVIS that they found my GPS unit in my rental car in Basel airport…  How useful is it then 😉

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Christmas and New Year is over, hope you all had a good time.

I held Christmas at my big-brothers place with his kids, it was quite down to earth and very enjoyable..  I had to move for a friend the next morning so come December 26 I was quite finished and glad I had a few days off 🙂

New Years eve was held at this very same friends place, quite relaxed again but that’s the way I prefer it, New Year has never been a personal favorite of mine..

I wish you all a very good new year, I hope it will bring joy and happiness to all our lives.

Happy New Year
2008

Just finished installing my first Microsoft Windows 2008 Enterprise server, nice 🙂

Most disturbing is that it will actually go into production right away, we need some of the new group policy management features..  oh well..

Looks quite nice btw.

Winter is apparoching here in Denmark, some would say its already here..

Anyway, I heard a good old tune on the radio one of these mornings – Elton John / Nikita, and came to think…  scary how the world has changed since the eighties…

Here’s a tune about a borderguard in East Germany and how she would never know how life on the other side would be.. but indeed she could have – had she not been fictional…  Makes you think does it not..

Maybe there is still hope we will be rid of terrorism and extremists…  a small shining christmas hope for the future..

Nikita

We all know the issue, we have a lot of digital pictures and would love to share them with friends and family.  However making the nice menus and uploading is complex, requires different software etc etc.  hence it never gets done..

Not anymore, Gallery Mage is a very simple yet powerful utility to deal with this issue.  It can create thumbnails, html preview and upload the resulting files directly to your website (via ftp) or to a directory which you can burn directly to a cd/dvd or upload to a web-site manually..

It does not get much simpler than this 🙂

Besides being free its even compatible with many open source “online gallery portals” (like coppermine etc) so you can use your existing ‘gallery portal’ if you already use one..

http://tanksoftware.com/gallmage/
Gallery

Actually Celine Dion is not the only one who get the pleasure of entertaining me 🙂 on March 1st 2008 I’m going to see the “Mamma Mia” musical, based on 22 Abba hits…  Almost as great as Celine Dion…

Mamma Mia