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Setting up my Mac (part 2)

(Okay, I’m going to syndicate this to the python planets, because well .. it seems general enough of interest that maybe other python folks might be interested.  However, if this sort of stuff is unwanted, please tell me and I’ll reign in my planet posts to being on-topic.)

Anti-Virus

So, I think I’m going to go with eset nod32 anti-virus.  From my research there are about a dozen pretty good anti-virus solutions.  I had tried this one out about half a year ago, and I found that it didn’t drain system resources.  My main objective with anti-virus is to have *something* and have it stay out of my way.  This one has one several awards in the past few years, so I guess it must be decent.

Folder Sync

I mentioned in my last post that I really wanted to be able to sync my photos, music, and documents between several machines.  I would use subversion, except somehow it just doesn’t seem like “the right tool” for the task of managing 1000s of photos and mp3s.

What I did find is the Unison File Synchronizer, which appears to do exactly what I want.  If we have a photo gallery and we add pictures to it, those pictures will get automagically synced to a central server and then automagically synced back to other machines.  It wouldn’t be a useful solution for source control, but it looks like a nice solution for managing a photo / music / document collection.

I’ve only given it the five minute inspection, so I can’t say for sure if it will work yet.  Stay tuned for a later report on it.  (If anyone has used it and has tips they want to give me, I’d love ’em!)

Python on Mac

Most people suggested MacPorts.  I guess I’ll give that a whirl sometime.  I think I need to update Classic Galcon at some point anyways.  (Okay, I did mention something about python.  I failed at being 100% off-topic.)

Virtual Machines

I haven’t resolved all the issues yet.  Right now I’m a bit vague on how many Windows XP licenses I’m using.  I’ve got Bootcamp, VMWare, and Parallels all with XP Pro .. Does that count as 3 licenses?  Or one?  Hmmn.  I suppose I should figure that out.  I was able to get Parallels to work with Ubuntu by disabling shared folders, disabling the sync time feature, and enabling the adaptive hypervisor. (As per some post on the Parallels forums.)  Hopefully though, they can fix the bug that causes it to hang with those features on.

Life In General

I’m looking forward to the Christmas break 🙂  A lot of things have been going on between my two businesses and life-in-general.  So a couple days off will do me well.  I must admit, the diversion of messing with this laptop has been pretty fun.  I was able to power up the gimp the other day and color in our Christmas card.  Merry Christmas to ya:

5 Responses to “Setting up my Mac (part 2)”

  1. Simon Says:

    I tried Unison a few months back and it has been running on macs every 5minutes since.

    You can setup multiple configs so I sync my photos/music once a day, and my work once every 5 minutes.

    With the use of LaunchAgents you can schedule it to run periodically or when you plug in your data stick! If you do this you should also run it manually once in a while in case there are things it doesn’t sync (e.g. file edited on both computers)

  2. john harrison Says:

    Phil,

    I’m confused by the anti-virus software. My understanding is that for the most part Mac anti-virus software simply detects Windows viruses. Is that something you feel like you need?

  3. philhassey Says:

    I’m running Bootcamp and VMWare for virtualizing windows .. so I have windows on my Mac 🙂

  4. john harrison Says:

    so I assume that you’re just running the anti-virus on the windows partitions?

  5. philhassey Says:

    That’s the plan …