As of this writing TinyGod is still in flux. Windows XP is running again, and Parallels is running on it, but I can't get networking inside Parallels - the drivers for the virtualized network cards are screwed up. I've given up on it for now and sent in a support request. We'll see what happens. In the meantime I'm still having to reboot into Windows a lot more than I really like, but it's time to just buck up and get back to work.
One thing I've been meaning to talk about is synchronizing my desktop (TinyGod) and my laptop (Kool-Aid). This has really saved my bacon over the last week since I can do just about anything relevant on Kool-Aid. There are three components to this, and they are all really worthwhile to me.
The first is a .Mac account. I know if you're a long-time Mac fan you're outraged because they gave you a free email address and then later started charging for it. If you're a post-OS X convert like me your impression is probably that .Mac is a weak-sauce Google with less features that costs money. But I have a .Mac account for exactly one reason - syncing of Address Book and iCal across multiple Macs. (There are other things that sync such Keychains and Mail rules that are neat, but it's Address Book/iCal that is worth cold hard cash.) If I'm at the office in San Francisco I can punch in an appointment on Kool-Aid and know that it will be on TinyGod, probably even before I get home. This works great and it's in the background. It just happens, and I only have to worry about it if I'm doing something really fiddly with both machines at the same time.
The second is The Missing Sync. This allows syncing information between my Treo 700p and OS X. I have it on both Macs, but I usually run it on TinyGod. This is the other side of the link. I can enter an appointment on my Treo (say I'm at a friend's house and we're planning dinner) and it will make it's way back to TinyGod and from there .Mac will take it to Kool-Aid. The upshot is that all three devices have full read and write access to my contacts, Calendar, and To-Do lists (which come out of Kinkless GTD). If you have a Palm and OS X you should have The Missing Sync. Period.
The new piece of the puzzle is ChronoSync. Chronosync sychronizes folders. This may not sound like much but it has a robust ruleset and scheduler. What I use for is very powerful - I sync my entire Home folder every morning at 4 AM between Kool-Aid and TinyGod. The scheduler (which runs on TinyGod) is sophisticated enough to mount Kool-Aid's drive, perform the sync, and then unmount it again. So every morning I can start using either machine for a given file and it's all good. Days like today where I'm going to reboot TinyGod in another hour or so I can work on it until time to switch and then manually run the saved sync file to move everything over to Kool-Aid. My Kinkless GTD file (aka my entire freakin' life), my fiction projects, any source code I'm working on, even files on my desktop, they all move. NetNewsWire files tracking what feeds I've read update, etc. etc.
Now this is a bit finicky to set up I must admit. In particular the contents of ~/Library/ApplicationSupport is a bit tweaky. You don't want to sync machine-specific logs (but you DO want to sync things like Adium chat logs - doesn't matter which machine I run Adium on, I have access to all my chat logs). If you do something like run NetNewsWire on BOTH machines between synce you'll have to manually tell it to use one machine over the other on the next sync. But the power of being able to just grab Kool-Aid and work on a file and being confident that tomorrow it will be on TinyGod as well is fantastic.
technorati tags:OSX, computer, Chronosync, MissingSync, .Mac, maintenance
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