Divergent Thought

         by Josh Barfield

With the release of iCloud and the potential it provides there is a lot of confusion about how to set everything up in a multi-account environment. I’m going to detail how we plan to configure everything for our devices and what we expect the outcome to be.

First, a few details. iCloud allows server side storage and synchronization for many items. Those include:

• Mail – (provided @me.com address – not your existing email)
• Contacts
• Calendars
• Reminders
• Bookmarks
• Notes
• Photo Stream
• Documents & Data
• Find My [Device]
• Storage & Backup

The scenario:

We have one central Mac that all of our devices sync with. We have an iPad 2. I have an iPhone 4 and my wife, Sandi has an iPhone 3GS. Her 3GS currently syncs with her own user account and iTunes account (Apple ID) on our Mac. I exclusively use my iPhone, so I want all of the syncing on it to be around my account. She exclusively uses her iPhone, so she wants all of the syncing on it to be around her account. We both use the iPad but she uses it more than I do. I would like some things synced to it but other things should be synced with her account such as calendar and contacts. We are alright with using two separate Apple IDs for purchases – you can always authorize one account for the other device to share apps and avoid multiple purchases. This way her apps stay with her device unless I want to share. We don’t care about sharing photos via Photo Stream. In fact, I will likely not use it. I want Find My [Device] to be under the same account for all devices for easy access.

The solution:

First I’m going to define an iCloud master account. The master account is the one configured in Settings -> iCloud on your iDevice. The master account must sync Photo Stream, Documents & Data, and Storage & Backup. Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Bookmarks, Notes, and Find My [Device] are all optional. They can sync with the master account or with a second iCloud account.

I will configure my iPhone with my Apple ID and my iCloud account. This iCloud account will be the “master” account. Since I am using the master iCloud account for all of my syncing, that’s all I need to do for my iPhone.

Sandi’s iPhone will be configured with her Apple ID and with her own iCloud account. We want her data only syncing with herself, so there is no need to use the previous master iCloud account on this device. That’s all she needs for her iPhone

The iPad will be configured my Apple ID and with the master iCloud account and set to sync Documents & Data, Storage & Backup, and Find My [Device]. Photo Stream will be turned off because I’m not using it. We will then add another iCloud account to the iPad via the Mail settings. This will be Sandi’s iCloud account. Her iCloud account will be configured to sync Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Bookmarks, and Notes. These will sync with the cloud and with her iPhone, and will not sync with my iPhone.

Lastly we will want to share a few calendars between accounts. From either account we can create a calendar on iCloud and then share it with another iCloud user. This makes the calendar show on all devices and just like that we’re connected.

There are obviously many different ways to approach device syncing and accounts  but I believe this will be the smoothest for our uses. I’m really looking forward to the ease of connectivity that this software is going to provide!

I’ve begun searching for a solution to the following: I want multiple bootable partitions on a USB flash drive.

Notes:

• Apparently Windows will only see one partition without hacks.
• If I can’t get around the above, the Windows/FAT32 partition needs to be the main visible one.
• Going to need some sort of boot loader to pick the OS.
• Planning to put this on a 16GB stick. Don’t want to use up too much space with OS clutter.

 

UPDATE: 05/17/11

I’ve played around with some different options and settled on a single FAT32 partition with Slax/syslinux offering up a few different OS choices. I’ve added an ophcrack image, a BartPE image, and a TAILS image (runs off Debian Live). Everything is working mostly how I want it to except I’ve run into a bit of a snag with some linux distros. You can move the kernel and intird files around all you want (as long as you update slax.cfg) but they’re very picky about their squashfs files. If the name of a squashfs file from one distro to another is the same you can’t use more than one. I’ve dug around a bit and can’t find a way around that for now.

Earlier I mentioned that I had set up a reverse SSH tunnel for VNC so I could remotely work on my mom’s laptop. It’s pretty straight forward but I wanted to explain exactly how I set it up.

One of the reasons I like this so much is I don’t have to worry about the various locations mom’s laptop might be. No punching through firewalls or mapping ports through routers. All of that configuration is done on my end. All she has to do is open a file I placed on her desktop.

OS X (10.6.7 is what I’m using) has built a built in VNC server and VNC viewer. Everything needed is already on your machine; you don’t need any extra software to make this work.

On your machine (the one we’re connecting from):

Navigate to System Preferences -> Accounts and enable create a new standard user. I called mine tunnel. Give this user a simple password that you don’t mind sharing.

Navigate to System Preferences -> Sharing and enable Remote Login for the user you created.

Make sure port 22 is forwarded through your router/NAT and is allowed through your firewall.

To make things simple you might want some sort of DNS updater.

On her machine (the one we’re connecting to):

Navigate to System Preferences -> Sharing and enable Screen Sharing. I enabled it only for her user name. ¹

While in the Screen Sharing pane click on Computer Settings. Check the VNC viewers may control screen with password: option and enter a password.

Open your favorite text editor and type in ssh USER@IP -R 5900:127.0.0.1:5900 - where user is the user you created previously on your machine and IP is the IP or host for your machine. Again, a dynamic DNS updater would be ideal here. Save this file with the extension .command so the user will be able to launch it via Terminal. You’ll need to change permissions on this file to make it executable.

Open the file you just created. It should ask for the password ² for the user you created above. Once entered the tunnel should be established.

Back to your machine (the one we’re connecting from):

Now that the tunnel is established from the other end open Finder and navigate to Go -> Connect to Server (command+k). The server will be vnc://127.0.0.1:0. If you previously enabled screen sharing for a specific user name you’ll need to enter those credentials now.

You should see a window open with the remote desktop within!

 

I’m a big fan of Apple’s Time Machine. I love how simple they’ve made it to backup your data. I’ve struggled in the past keeping copies of my family’s data and now my mother can handle a backup by herself. Wonderful technology!

I have some inconsequential qualms with Time Machine for my personal day to day use. Most of them are small technical issues like ease of multiple backup disks and such. My biggest frustration isn’t really a problem with Time Machine, but more of a problem with the way I think about disk space. Let me explain.

My MacBook Pro has an 80GB SSD and 640GB HDD with about 400GB combined usage. I backup to a 1TB FW800 drive. Of that 400 something gigabytes used I want to backup maybe 200. Aperture data, music, documents, settings. The stuff that’s hard to replace. I have “scratch” folders that I use for projects. When I need to edit an image for a quick laugh or gather a number of different file types for research I usually put that info into sub folders in my Projects directory. Some folders I want backed up, others I don’t. Usually I’m pretty good about Time Machine exclusions and folder sorting and only get the files I want. But just today I noticed Time Machine calculating changes and preparing to backup 18GB of new data. Not good! I had to hunt down the changes and exclude those additional folders. Well, I didn’t have to.

That’s my problem. Even though I have a roughly 5:1 ratio of backup space to content I’m still paranoid about backing up things that don’t matter. I’m very meticulous about maintaining archived backups for as long as physically possible. I still have local and offsite copies of archives from when I first started saving files. I think I’m just worried that my 1TB drive is going to fill and start removing archives of data I’ll probably never need again.

How do I get over this?

 

 

It’s time for a new watch. I’ve grown quite accustomed to checking date and time via my iPhone 4. I always have it with me, it works. It just feels clunky. I feel like I’m missing an accessory. My wrist is bare. The last watch I wore was my old Luminox 3602 Titanium steel-titanium dive watch. I was really excited about it and wore it on and off for a few years. But now the watch but the battery is dead and I want something different.

I decided I’m not too interested in an analog watch. One of the things I missed on my Luminox was stopwatch and countdown timer functionality. So out of the gate I knew I wanted both of those features and while there are analog options I feel like digital is the right path to head down.

I took a look at Timex’s offerings first. Initially I was thinking a simple Ironman would do the job. Then I saw a solar variant and realized that could be quite cool! But Timex has very little to offer in that area. The one interesting watch I saw didn’t have the look I was after so I headed off to check out Casio’s options.

Casio has a lot of watches. So many different categories and models within those categories that seem to overlap with no clear distinction. I got a bit overwhelmed but I decided I was most interested in the G-Shock and Pathfinder lines so I went through each watch in those categories looking at features and style.

I had thought I wanted a nylon band (or at least the option for nylon) but after talking with a buddy and remembering my past experiences with nylon I realized it’s probably just going to get dirty and smelly. It looks like most Casio watches have replaceable bands anyway so it’s something I could modify after purchase.

When I research things I typically do a process of elimination. I gather up all of the possible candidates for purchase and knock them out one by one until I have a reasonable amount to compare. This helps me to finalize my decisions. Looking at the G-Shock line I ignored anything missing a countdown timer. I then saw some other really neat features and, of course, rewrote my original checklist of requirements. I was now looking for:

• Minimal design.
• Stopwatch.
• Countdown timer (larger than 60 minutes).
• Atomic Timekeeping.
• Solar powered.
• Resin band.

Determining that these were the features I was interested in really helped narrow down the list. For some reason (I suspect memory) a lot of the countdown timer variants only have a 60 minute timer. If I’m putting a countdown timer on my list of must haves, it must have more than 60 minutes to countdown from. There are plenty of times I’d need to countdown from several hours. Unfortunately the lack of countdown timer eliminated some models I was really interested in such as the GW530A-1V and the GW800-1V. I favored those due to the larger time font. But I don’t think I can compromise in the countdown timer area.

I finally narrowed it down to one G-Shock and one Pathfinder option.

 

 

G-Shock GW2310-1 – $75 at Amazon. Looks very sturdy and I’m fond of the bland colors. It has every feature I want and the price is pretty good. The only downside is the display looks a bit small. Certainly usable, but not optimal if I were designing from scratch.

 

 

 

 

 

Pathfinder PAW-2000-1 – $228 at Amazon. More features than a dollar theater. This thing has digital compass, barometer, altimeter, thermometer, and recording/graphing for all of the above. The crazy thing is it’s not that much bigger or heavier than the other options and it still has solar charging. The big pro here is the display has larger numbers for time which is something I wanted. Mildly concerned that the Pathfinder wouldn’t be as sturdy as the G-Shock. And then there’s the downside that it’s $150 more than the G-Shock.

Heading to the mall tonight to see these in person before making any further decisions. Will report back.

 

EDIT: Stopped by Macy’s and they had a G2300EB-7 which is the same form factor as the GW2310-1. I like the feel and the weight.

EDIT2: Ordered the GW2310-1 from Amazon this morning. Should be here by my birthday!

 

UPDATE 04/25/11: Watch came in over the weekend and I’ve been wearing it for a few days now. It feels good on my wrist. Size is just right. When it first came in I did a manual atomic sync which took about seven minutes. Per the instructions you are supposed to leave the watch face up on a window sill over night for the sync to work. I don’t have a window sill near the bed so I left it on the night stand. It failed to sync over night. Interestingly though, the following two nights I left the watch on my wrist when I went to bed and both nights it synced within 4 minutes of 0000. Maybe my body is acting as an antenna?

When I pulled the watch out of the box and tin can it shipped in I was surprised to find the charge indicator was at high. I can’t think that Amazon would expose the watches to light in the warehouse so I’m assuming it was shipped in some sort of power save sleep mode. Messing around with the watch as one does with new toys I got the charge indicator to go down to mid but after 10 minutes in the sun it was back to high and hasn’t left. I think between the drive to and from work, the natural window lighting at work, and the ambient lighting otherwise, I’ll have no trouble keeping it charged.

Very happy with it so far. Would recommend!