A pleasant experience with Windows Live Sync, and Office Live

I'm getting ready for a long trip where I may have only intermittent internet access, so I wanted to find a way of working offline with my laptop while on the road that would let me sync everything again with my office when I did have access.  I wanted to be able to keep a fairly large working directory in sync, about 80gb or so.  One possibility would have been DropBox, but that amount of space would cost money, so I kept looking at other possibilities for automatic synchronization between laptop and office.

In the past I never had much luck with synchronizing across computers.  I had experimented with SyncToy for shared folders on computers connected by Hamachi LogMeIn VPN, but had given up on SyncToy because while in many ways it was a neat and handy program, it did have glitches.  I had tried some other freeware or shareware sync programs, and it seemed like every one of them had some kind of limitation or another, like they had problems with syncing across time zones, or couldn't handle Unicode characters in filenames, or were just slow or erratic.

I came across some positive assessments of WindowsLive Sync, so I decided to give it a try.  I was hesitant because my experience with free Microsoft applications was that they always seemed about 95% of the way there, and never quit did everything I needed, or weren't documented very well.  SyncToy, for example, was really neat but I had to give up because of frustration with some glitches.  But the reviews of WindowsLive Sync were pretty positive so I installed it on my office and on my laptop.  Setting up a folder pair on the two machines was pretty straightforward, and one nice feature was that as long as Sync was installed on both machines, it was easy to choose the folder on the other machine remotely, via a web based interface that also allowed creation of new folders.  I paired the documents directory on my office with a newly created empty directory on an encrypted external hard drive connected to my laptop, and it began syncing immediately.  It processed about 18,000 files very smoothly, filling up the newly created folder.  I was pleased to see over the next few days that changes to a file on one machine were immediately reflected in its copy on the other machine, even large datasets of several hundred megabytes, but the sync didn't interfere at all with the data processing that I was doing.

I liked it so much that I decided to sync my music collection between office, home, and encrypted external HD on laptop, and somewhat to my surprise that worked fairly smoothly, even though thousands of files were involved.  It worked so smoothly that I have decided to rely on Sync to keep my music collection consistent across different machines.  Previously I kept my music collection on a home machine that I used as a server, and accessed from the office or elsewhere via folder sharing over LogMeIn Hamachi, which required some tweaking of the MediaMonkey .ini file to ensure all the machines use the same database file on the home machine.  Now I will give up on a having the music and database on a single machine and instead have synced copies of the music on all three machines, with a separate database on each.   Changed files, including with updated ratings, tags, etc., propagate instantly to the other machines.  I just have to set MediaMonkey to monitor the synced folders and I should be golden.

One limitation to WindowsLive Sync is that each folder pair can only have 20,000 files.  I had more files in the folder trees I wanted to sync.  There was a pretty easy workaround: I just split my my music collection into two root folders and set up each of them separately to sync.

While I am at it, I will mention another positive experience I have been having with another Microsoft product, Office Live.  I have been experimenting with it and so far it seems to work.  The advantage over Google Docs, it seems to me, is that you get full formatting.  The biggest weakness of Google Docs, it seems to me, is the lack of control over formatting.  Office Live seems to offer the hope of combing complete formatting with shared access.  I especially the Office plugin that allows for editing of shared documents directly from Office.

A new introduction to my Beijing (北京) photos

I've been doing a little more work on my photo site.  I am reorganizing the front page to provide better guidance to my featured photos.  I am setting up pages talking a little bit about my specialties, for example, China, Beijing, and so forth, that include a slideshow of favorites and links to collections of galleries and favorites.  Right now my most developed page is for Beijing.  I talk a little bit about my experience visiting the city and my impressions, and then have some links to galleries organized by neighborhood.  I'll probably expand a little bit on it, but in the meantime, please check it out if you have the time.  At least you may enjoy the slideshow...

http://www.canghuixu.com/Slideshows/Beijing/10559553_zYdRX

My new domain

I finally set up a domain name for my photo site and my blog.  My photo site at Smugmug is now http://www.canghuixu.com although http://canghuixu.smugmug.com will still work.  My blog is now accessible at a subdomain, http://blog.canghuixu.com.  I used GoDaddy Custom Domains for Smugmug to register my domain and it worked pretty smoothly, just by following the instructions at the Smugmug site.

Assigning a subdomain to my blog at Blogger was also fairly straightforward.  In the control panel at GoDaddy, I added a CNAME entry for alias blog  and pointed it to ghs.google.com  Then I went into settings for Blogger and told it I was my blog had a custom domain, blog.canghuixu.com, and everything went smoothly.

The GoDaddy account came with some kind of free email account.  It took longer for the email account to become active than the domain name.  Once it was active, it was pretty easy to configure my gmail account to access it.

I'm curious as to whether my blog being under a separate domain, rather than being at blogger.com, will make it accessible in places that block blogger.com.  We'll see.  If you are someplace where blogger.com is not normally accessible, and you can read this, please email me or leave a comment.

Hong Kong night scenes, with slideshow (香港夜景幻灯片）

Now that I have been back for a few days, recovered from jet lag, and finished processing and uploading my Hong Kong pictures, it is time for a summary post. First of all, here is a slideshow of my favorites...



I was pleased to see that Smugmug now supports feeds for multiple keywords, which can in turn be supplied to embedded slideshows. In the past, keyword feeds on Smugmug were limited to one keyword. The slideshow above takes advantage of the new functionality, selecting photos that have the keywords favorite and hong kong.

My favorites from this trip can also be accessed via the following link:

http://canghuixu.smugmug.com/keyword/favorite-hongkong-nov09

I ended up with four primary galleries, one each for Tsim Sha Tsui, Temple Street, the Central/Mid-Levels escalators, and Sai Kung. I also created separate galleries of pictures from the public pier in Sai Kung, and the elevated walkways in Central.

You will probably notice that all of my shots are at night. I was pretty busy most days with my real job, and only had time to get out in the evening. Fortunately public transportation in Hong Kong is great, so it was easy to zip out for dinner, spent a few hours shooting and perhaps stop somewhere for a drink, and still get back in time to go to sleep at a reasonable hour.

All of the places I visited were interesting in their own way. Personally, I thought the escalators were the coolest just because the whole thing was so unique, and had a futuristic feel. And I really like escalators and moving sidewalks, to boot.

Tsim Sha Tsui at night, November 2009 (香港尖沙咀夜景)

I also spent one evening and part of another wandering around Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon with my camera. The first evening, I started out at the Avenue of Stars and then worked my way north, staying close to Nathan Road, and ending up at the Knutsford Terrace where I had a martini and then a glass of white wine at the interestingly named "All Night Long" bar. The second evening, I spent most of my time near Tsim Sha Tsui MTR. Tsim Sha Tsui is a really interesting area, and fun to walk around. I walked past the Chungking Mansions but couldn't really get any shots that I liked.

Here is the gallery...
http://canghuixu.smugmug.com/China/Hong-Kong/Tsim-Sha-Tsui-at-night-Hong/10522423_ZZzF3

And a few of my favorites...

On the Avenue of the Stars...





And then in Tsim Sha Tsui...

An evening on the escalators from Central to Mid-Levels in Hong Kong, November 2009 (香港中環至半山自動扶梯的晚上慢步）

While I was in Hong Kong, I heard that an elaborate system of escalators had been constructed to whisk people from Mid-Levels to Central in the morning, and back up the hill for the rest of the day. This is apparently the longest connected systems of escalators in the world. I was interested to read that the construction of the escalators had transformed the neighborhoods along the way, and that the areas near the escalators had become increasingly populated with bars and restaurants.

I immediately decided that I needed to spend an evening photographing it, since I love photographing escalators and moving sidewalks. Lately it has been hard for me to indulge this passion because the coolest escalators and moving sidewalks tend to be in airports, subway stations, and train stations, and hanging around photographing them with an enormous SLR has on a number of occasions led to my being approached by security to ask what, exactly, I was doing. I was hoping that I could spend the evening photographing outdoor escalators in Hong Kong without being disturbed, and indeed, it went fine. I also stopped at an organic food restaurant overlooking one segment of the escalator for a glass of an organic wine.

Here is the gallery and a selection of favorites.

And a couple of shots...

Somehow this shot makes me think of the end of an assembly line that is making clones, or pod people, or robots...



I thought this was evocative...



I liked the color palette here, it reminded me of Wong Kar-wai's 2046... That night I sometimes wondered if this escalator system had inspired the look for that movie...



And of course I need at least one picture of people eating outdoors...

Night scenes from Temple Street in Hong Kong (香港庙街的夜景）， November 2009

I just came back from Hong Kong. I woke up early this morning because of jet lag. I couldn't make myself focus on anything productive, so I decided to process my next set of photos, from an evening I spent walking around Temple Street. I had been told that Temple Street had all sorts of perils, at least in the evening, but at least to me it seemed pretty tame. It wasn't especially crowded, probably because it was a weeknight. It certainly was fun and interesting to walk around and see all of the restaurants, food stands, stalls, and shops. And there were just enough shady looking characters loitering around off the main drag to give it a little exotic appeal, without making it downright scary, like some of the neighborhoods I walked through in Lisbon last year.

Here is the gallery:
http://canghuixu.smugmug.com/China/Hong-Kong/Temple-Street/

As always, you can just restrict yourself to a selection of my own favorites.

And a few of my real favorites for you to look at...

A fruit stand on a nearby street. Looks like a slow evening...


An outdoor seafood restaurant...



Another restaurant, not quite as busy...



A store with a funky looking car parked in front of it...



And I thought this was just sort of cool...