Maybe someone has already experimented this situation:

You’re hacking on your local working copy and you want to keep it up-to-date but, since you have some uncommitted changes, git-svn rebase cannot be executed

I was just thinking to write something about_ _this problem when I read a post on digikam blog.

In this post Marcel proposes a workaround using a bash function. In fact there’s a “cleaner” solution, if you’re interested read the last part of my git-svn howto.

Last days I saw a lot of warnings in /var/log/messages, that my hard disk will die soon, thanks smartd. I used this disk only as a storage, to backup my work, my notebooks, movie, music, .... I don't want to lose all these things, so, I decided that is the time to buy a new hard disk. There are many options here, I can buy an internal hdd and put it in my desktop, buy a dedicated NAS, for home use, use a old computer and install FreeNAS on it, or just take an USB external hard disk. I would stay away from the NAS the reason being the cost, and flexibility reasons. I am looking for an external storage, and I am not interested in sharing files off computers.

The best option would be to take two external USB drives, which are simpler, so they are generally less expensive, much less expensive than NASs. I said two drives, because every hard drive will fail and I will need one as a backup. It's cheaper to buy two external drives and using one as a backup than purchasing a NAS and setting up the RAID. Also after, you still don't have a stand alone backup.

Finally, I decided to buy a Buffalo, DriveStation TurboUSB.

The drive enclosure contains a 500GB, SATA disk, 7200 RPM. More details about this nice external drive here. It is quiet and uses a heat sink for heat dissipation, but also has a connector to use an optional fan that Buffalo sells as well. This drive contains Buffalo's TurboUSB technology, which seems to be a software method to allow increased data transfer speeds of up to 37% faster than those of standard USB hard drives. It comes with FAT32 preformated file system, ready to be used:

*vioan:\~ \# fdisk -l /dev/sdc*

*Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes  
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders  
Units = cylinders of 16065 \* 512 = 8225280 bytes  
Disk identifier: 0x00000000*

*Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System  
/dev/sdc1 1 60801 488384001 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)*

Also, on cd, there is Memeo™ AutoBackup software (Download Memeo™ AutoBackup), and the disk comes with SecureLockWare™ technology. I was surprised to see in the box also an plug adapter for UK (they have three pins, not two as in germany).

Because, I don't have many files larger than 4G, and I would like to use this external hdd also on unix/linux machines, not only on windows, I decided to keep fat32 as file system. Finally, I copied all my files from the old hard drive on the new external drive. For moment my files are safe. I am planning to buy a second one, in the near future, but I am still not sure when :). This was my story, I am waiting for your comments, and, also please fell free to share it.

A widely touted IT factoid states that
80% of the information produced by
and contained in most organizations
is stored in the form of unstructured
data. Most of it is text (such as memoranda,
internal documents, email,
organizational Web pages, and comments
from customers and from
internal service personnel), and most
of the applications that reflect the
value of unstructured data are able to
process it. Although unstructured
data takes other forms, including
images and audio, here I focus on the
applications, technologies, and architectures
for unstructured text acquisition
and analysis (UTAA).

Last Saturday Linux day 2007 took place.

Linux Day is an Italian manifestation that promotes Linux and FOSS. During this day different organizations (mostly Linux User Groups) arrange events with speeches, installation parties and more.

Since lot of people requested it, I gave a speech about KDE 4 during the Linux day organized by my LUG (BGLug).

The presentation covers the main changes and features introduced by KDE 4. I took inspiration from Troy’s “Road to KDE 4” articles (I like them really much).

People liked the speech and, most important of all, showed great interest for KDE 4.

Could you pass this along to your developers -

Today I installed Evolution 2.12.0 as part of the Ubuntu Gusty release.

Every issue I have had with Evolution is now resolved. Performance is spectacular, caching is perfect and I no longer have to use OWA to ensure reliability.

My concern is that Evolution/Exchange connector is such a negative experience that it threatens the success of the entire SLED platform.

The Evolution e-mail client presented the biggest problem. Every time he launched the application, he had to wait five minutes to use it, until it synced with CareGroup’s Microsoft Exchange server. If he deleted an e-mail before the entire store of deleted e-mails had synced, or if he tried sending an e-mail before all stored e-mails had synced, the application would crash.

Congrats to the folks at Canonical who maintain Ubuntu and to the folks at Novell who have significantly upgraded their Evolution email client to meet the needs of Microsoft Exchange users.