Microsoft Windows "Creator" Update

This last week has presented me with a challenge, you see Windows 10 now automatically downloads updates. I don't think this is a bad thing but if only Microsoft could get it's act together and deliver fully tested, safe software with a real purpose, instead I was presented with a "do you want to install me now, later or shall I pester the living daylights out of you until you lose the will to live and accept" dialog box for win 10 Creator's update.

This was actually interesting because for some reason Edge had opened, I wouldn't normally go anywhere near Microsoft Edge (aka Internet Explorer untested vNext, refer to previous comments about untested product) so I must have been desperate. I still have the default home page and it had several articles saying "Microsoft don't want you to install Creator's update".

Typical, as with previous updates, Microsoft have delivered a product that can cause reboot to fail.

So days later having rebooted and shutdown successfully, navigating the nag options on the shutdown panel and repeatedly dodging the "you haven't install me yet" notifications I accidentally pressed "Update and Reboot" instead of Shutdown. See what they did there, just like in some other Microsoft products the "do something really dangerous" option is placed right next to the do nothing option.

Well, to say that install took a while would be an understatement but it finally installed and rebooted successfully.

What do I get for the trouble? Oh Paint 3D! So let's see when I first got Windows (it seems that way, it isn't though because the first few versions of Windows didn't function, bring back GEM) I loaded up Paint, discovered it was a bare bones product aimed at 3 year olds and proceeded to ignore it except for those times I needed to modify a screenshot (until Snipping Tool, Microsoft you did good there, why is it so well hidden?).

So Paint 3D, well it's like Paint (is that now "Paint Old School", "Paint 2D" or just "Paint forget I happened"?) but with some 3d shapes. It feels tantalisingly close to a product with a purpose but it isn't

Anything else worth the hours of updates on the Creator's edition? No, nothing that I have found or I have seen suggested online.

What is worse is that it seems the update is trying to shutout low powered machines which must mean making Home Theatre PCs and those cheap Windows tablets redundant - suggests Microsoft is trying to reduce its market share (or has a new operating system it hopes people will buy not having been discouraged by the last abortive attempt).


Come on Microsoft show us a reason to keep loving Windows.

Synology DS213Air update

I've now been living with the DS213Air for a few months and am pleased overall.

It turns out that the media server doesn't work when in Wireless Router mode - which I'd only changed to from the default Hotspot mode because of poor performance (like unconnectable between floors).

A bit of time spent with my Google Nexus and the free WiEye wi-fi scanner tool has revealed a massive overlap on a number of channels, it also shows just how much wifi on one channel spills into others. Having identified a pretty quiet channel the hotspot mode is now usable on the diskstation which means that media server is working perfectly now.

I've used the Download Station and have just started downloading RSS feeds to keep bandwidth out of chargeable hours which is a nice automation benefit.

I am also hosting all of my music and movies on the device which means less data stored on each PC in the house.

I have installed the DS Photo/ File/ Audio apps on the Google Nexus, they work fine locally but my ADSL router is to old to handle automated configuration for remote access (pretty sure it could be done manually if necessary), besides which DS Audio which is my main interest is too simplistic (missing Album Artist view for starters) to be of much use so I have been using Bubble upnp to connect to the Mediaserver product and that covers photos, audio and video, matched with MX Player on the Nexus and most of my films play pretty well.

I have Cloud Station installed on my PC and it works fine but is limited to 3 shares each (so no good for synchronising my home folder, music, videos and photos, 4 things), it also requires that the Disk station share is configured first which means copying everything to the Synology first and then synchronising it back to an empty folder on the PC, which was bad enough with 146Gb of music, 1.5 TB of movies is a non starter, it also plays havoc with genie backup as all of that data is a change so gets backed up a 2nd time. I'm now using it just for individual items I want to synchronise, eventually I'd like to do my entire Documents folder but a little more confidence is needed first, time will tell. The software is also clearly still in development as it has a basic error in that every time I login it tells me that 17 files have been updated, it's the same 17 everytime because they were the last to change.

Data replicator has been deleted as it's a back tool not a synchronisation tool so not much use for me at this point.

Synology update

I am now the proud owner of a Google Nexus 7, 32gb. What a great device but wholly  dependent on wireless connectivity.

 My first few days with the nexus have been plagued with what seems like network lock ups or connectivity dropping but further investigation has revealed problems with the Synology DS13Air wireless capability.

 To be fair sitting at my desk the wireless connect ion is perfect and much faster than my old net gear wpn802, however, that is about 2 feet from the router. Moving downstairs results in less than 20mbps connections and frequent loss of connect ion.

My net gear wireless signal works fine downstairs - I have raised a support ticket with Synology and as a result have changed the connect ion type from hotspot to wireless router. Functionality remains seemingly unchanged but connectivity is not improved.

Worse, I have been experimenting with dlna / upnp functionality and am having problems in that the media server on the ds 213 disappears at random. Much experimentation has resulted in the discovery that when I connect wirelessly using the, flawed, synology wireless I lose access to the synology media server but it works fine on rge net gear. So another bug on which I am still awaiting a response from synology.

213Air update

Interestingly enough the transfer speed is probably not being reported correctly but I did get a response from Synology which amounted to try it with a cross over cable to rule out all other network components. Not tried that yet.

Audio Station is fully in place and working which is excellent news - the Mediaserver version is fast whilst the Audio Station library mode is unusable.

I have also now received my Google Nexus 7 (32gb) and discovered that my ancient Netgear Wimax wireless device has a much better signal that the DS213 Air and to make matters worse the DS213 seems to drop the wireless connection when the drives go to sleep - raised another support call as the wireless performance is actually unusable more than a few feet away even on high power mode.

DS Audio on the Nexus is passable but doesn't have either the views listed in the library or the views showed on the media server which is a shame as it makes any collection of music of any size unwieldly, however, several DLNA based apps in Google Play - BubbleUpnp seems to do the job nicely - has a good interface and is responsive. The only problem I've found is that it cannot play to two different destinations (the are products out there that will but the interfaces are unusable) - I'm awaiting a response from the developer to see if the pay for version corrects that issue.

Impressed with the Google Nexus 7, tinkering with configuring it just so will keep me quiet for a while - as expected it has many more options that the ipad offers and it's not entirely intuitive to the extent that I am reading the manual (well, I will read the manual).

Synology DS213 Air

My most recent Genie Timeline issues appear to have come about following the demise of my backup disk drive - more often than not it is booting and displaying as a RAW device rather than NTFS. I've scanned the drive during one of its good periods with no problem displayed but it still randomly fails.

I've had numerous problems with the drive / the USB 3.0 caddy it sits on so digging out my old USB 2.0 caddy I soon found that the problem is the USB 3.0 device.

However, I've been considering a NAS unit and this is the final straw as I now want to separate out my data from the PC so making the potential for recovery higher and a new Synology  DS213 Air and a 3Gb Western Digital Green Power drive is now sitting waiting for configuation.

Configuration is going to take me a while as the Synology device has a lot of options and features - luckily the interface is extremely smooth and user friendly, unluckily the SHR file system which is the default recovery option for the device churned the disk for over 12 hours before it was usable.

Genie Timeline 2012

I have been using Genie Timeline for a couple of years now. It is an impressive little package, set which files / folders you want to backup to an external drive and forget about it, each time a file changes a new backup is created so you can return to old versions.

It works well enough that I have 3 legitimate copies, 2 professional and 1 home, home is a little more simplistic in features but still does the job nicely whereas profession allows me to tinker with more features.

It is not a perfect product - biggest flaws for me are the lack of ability to remove something from the backup - the Geniesoft (or Genie 9 as they now calls themselves, not sure, perhaps too much Star Trek) helpdesk recommend just deleting things direct from the backup files (instantly trashing all their indexing information) and the limitation that backups are fixed to the size of a disk - once the disk is full you have to start a new backup on a new disk but it backs up all the same data again. I now have 1.2tb of backups so disks are still growing ahead of my backup size but for how much longer I cannot tell. There are features to limit the backups size but they do nothing on version 2.

Which brings me to version 3, or Genie Timeline 2012 as it is now called. A new look, mirroring the Windows 8 tiles approach but unlike Microsoft's offering with Genie it is well thought out and presents well. It is possible the features I am about to mention existed in the previous version but I had it configured as I wanted and didn't fiddle which as it turns out is a good thing.

First off I've rediscovered the feature to limit backup set size - this was supposed to delete oldest files to keep the backup set under a target size but as Genie (sorry Seven, Genie9) stated to me, it doesn't work on version 2, so I thought I would try it on version 3, not sure if it works or not yet as I haven't reached the set size and....

There is also a feature to delete backups older than 60 days. Interestingly arbitrary number there. For my accounts files 60 days if fine but for my photos where I might want to re-edit an old version of file (bad management on my part but it happens) or when a file corrupts and I want to retrieve an old version 60 days is just so wrong. It needs to be configurable - I reckon I could live with 180 days, around 6 months but 60 is of no use.

All good so far but then I found the disaster recovery option. Sounds like a good button to press, yes it will backup some more tens of gigabytes but those disks keep getting bigger. Box duly ticked. Lots and lots of thinking. I'm not twenty something % protected and , and...it stops.

Machine left overnight and still no change. So I've unticked the disaster recovery and...still no movement.

So having tried everything I can think of (even a reboot :-) I raise a ticket on the Genie9 (yes that joke got old) site - they have a good ticket system and actively respond which is a major plus (so all those sites doing a performance comparison of backups products take note - backups which go wrong are useless without some support, big plus here). I've now started 2 services (Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider and volume Shadow copy) that had not been used on version 2 and although set to manual (ie on demand) had not started with Genie 2012 (is that a bug in their software or are they actually unnecessary, who knows, least of my worries at this point). Still no change.

My worst fears are looming - that I'm going to have to start a new backup & hence purchase a new (one of those aforementioned big ones) drive to handle the failure of my backup software.

Lots of screenshots and logs later I get an offer to remote onto my machine and assist - now this is a surprise. I work in IT and most of the time getting support from vendors is the blood from stone scenario, A large verndor who shall remain nameless but has a naming starting with M and ending in icrosoft will come on site for some hideous price and give bad advice (it is remarkably difficult to explain to one's employers that the consultant from the vendor who you just paid tens of thousands of pounds  gave answers I had already procured from google or were just plain wrong) but beyond that it's google all the way.

So a few days later I have a Genie 9 employee rummaging around my machine - he's polite, helpful and doesn't keep saying "what's this drive for" as he looks at my complicated config. He is logged in via a product called Teamviewer which is a free (for personal use) web based support tool - works over port 80 so no firewall messing around, good tool. He tries for an hour or more and gets to the point where Timeline looks like it is doing something but clearly isn't progressing.

How does this story end. Well more screenshots and logs and instructions to leave the machine to let it work (10 hours, no movement at all), we will see next week what happens, do I have a pretty good piece of software backed up with active support to make a truly remarkable package for the domestic market or .........

Raspberry Pi

I now have a Raspberry Pi model B.

A fantastically small device with more power that a lot of the machines I've used over the years. currently I am tinkering with getting XBMC, or rather RaspBMC working on it and Samba with USB drives.

It's going to take a while not least because of random crashes which seem to affect a lot of owners.

Once I've got something stable working I'll be able to experiment with the python programming and maybe get a little MySQL server running.

More when I make some progress.

Result!

Google's Blogger Dynamic views can now display Adsense ads but for the life of me I could not get them to display.

After much too and fro it turns out that I have AdBlocker installed as a Google Chrome application and that is automatically filtered adsense advertisements seamlessly from the page - no blank patches, simply not there.

The adblock tool also filers content from blog posts - so I had attempted to write a blog post criticising (constructively) Google's adsense help / lack thereof but the post just appeared as a blank box so I was convinced big brother was filtering such comments.

So Adblock duly removed as somewhat over zealous.