Four Things

Four jobs I’ve had in my life

• Mechanics
• Web developper
• System engineer
  

Four movies I can watch over and over

• Monty Python’s Life of Brian
• Fight Club
• 12 Monkeys
• Aristocats :)
  

Four TV shows I love to watch

• CSI
• 24
• CSI:NY
• 6 feet under
  

Four places I have lived

• Nice, France (why change ? ;)

Four places I have been on holiday (in the last year and a half)

• France
• Senegal
• Danmark
  

Four of my favourite dishes

• Pizza
• Pasta
• Chiken/curry
  
• Mezzés
  

Four websites I visit daily

• Bloglines
• Gmail

Four places I would rather be right now

• None, thanks

Four bloggers I am tagging

• Kelbos (in your face my dear friend :)
  

Cleanning robot

Have a good smart home package is a difficult goal to achieve, so have a smart home is a good point but a clean smart home is better ;)

There's a lot of cleanning toys arround, but this one is small, easy to use and his prize is realy interesting.

Electrolux with Trilobit or Roomba already offer vaccum cleanner that are really good, but they cost at least $400, ; the "Robomop" cost less than $40 and also do the job.

How does it's work ?
A simple sphere in a platic cage with a dust cleanning pad on it, that's it, no more stuff except equipment charger.

So, you press on/off button, put the sphere on the cage, and now you can spend more time to play with child, and Robomop clean the house.

It's work well on flat floor, without stair or lots of stuff in room (like children room ;) Circular cleanning pad are a bit expensive, but if you don't have spear pads, you can temporary use normal pad. Just cut it to feet the robot, it's better than nothing.

Despite theses small drawback, it's a good cleanning robot, priceless and efficient. Ok, there's no geek stuff, like remote control, autocharging, autocleanning but it's easy :)

It can be find on Conrad website in france/europe for 34 euro.

Offline backup software

In previous post, i talk about online backup witch is mandatory to protect your data, now let's explore offline backup solution (for pictures, video and music)

There's several hardware solution, NAS, home-made NAS with samba, or external drive in usb with plenty GB and even TB with LaCie solution.

So, will using a NAS or other offline solution, there's some software bundle provided but in most case, they are no so much efficient.
I will describe two software solution, one for nerds and other for "normal" people :)

• Rsync (http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/)
  
• SyncBack (http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/)
  

Rsync is an open source software that run in command line and it was a little bit complex to understand, but i work well on linux, windows and mac.

There's an exemple to backup data on windows :

rsync -rtvnP --stats --modify-window=2 "/cygdrive/c/My Data" "/cygdrive/d/Backup/"

SyncBack is a windows only software but really easy to configure and to use. There's several version including a freeware version, efficiant enough for personnal use. Backup can be zip (4GB maxi), saved on ftp, or network drive.
User interface is clear with an expert's option button. An intereseting option (for smart home software inclusion) is log file in html format, witch can be send by mail when backup is done.

Both software are usefull and stable, my preference go to rsync because i can have full control and it can be use in several plateform.

Well, now our data should be safe for a long time :)