At any one point in time, I have a seemingly never ending array of projects running simultaneously.  I’m using this page to keep track of them (for my own purposes) and also to share a little insight into the mind of a guy whose brain never sleeps.  I know what you’re thinking…why aren’t you like all the other guys and just get off-your-tits at the pub every Friday and Saturday night? Yeah, well why don’t you shut your mouth when you talk to me?! 

This is the list, by level of interest and/or newest:

Electric Scooter (20% complete)

Not to be confused with me, Scoota, I’m not going to stick my finger in a power point.  This scooter is a cross breed between a kids mountain bike and the original Razor Scooter with a little electronics “ingenuity” (a term I use very loosely) involved, for the lazy man inside us all.  I’d really like to get this done over my January annual leave stint this year and will be adding a page specifically for this project as it’s underway.

Deep Sleep Agent v3 (50% complete)

A basic little Windows-based application to better manage the standby functionality of  your computer.  I’ve got version 2 running on my Media Center system in the lounge room at the moment and it’s working a treat.  The problem is, no matter what I do, the MCE boxes I have will always wake up for no apparent reason (with all wake-on-xyz settings disabled etc) and this gets around this issue.  So I’m basically just reworking the whole thing to make it more user friendly, more customisable in its configuration and also adding some data logging features, for freaks like me who need to know too much.

Backup File and Drive Space Manager (40% complete)

Another Windows-based application to handle the remedial task of clearing space off the USB backup drives at work, just to be able to perform another backup.  Basically, you run this application before your backup starts (usually by configuring this option in your backup software) and this app will remove the oldest backup file(s) off your backup drive, if it thinks you’ll need to, to perform the impending backup.  Sounds basic and worthless but it actually makes for a set-and-forget backup.

To clarify, it analyses your backup drive to determine how much space you’ll likely need for the backup about to be executed and freeing up the right amount of space.  It does this by calculating the amount of disk space currently used on your volume (just in case you’ve deleted a considerable amount of files since the last backup) but it also factors in the average size of your backup files for the past x backups to factor in fluctuations in your data set (it does this by means a data logging, not just by what exists on the drive).  Most importantly, it will also monitor the free space on your backup drive as the backup is under way and if it’s still getting too close for comfort, more space will be freed from the drive on-the-fly.  This is the plan for version 1 anyway.

In future versions I’ll definitely be adding the ability to shift the old backup files to another location (network share, FTP etc) plus e-mailed log files and yadda yadda yadda.  Please contact me if you’re interested in beta testing this application.

Detached Data Synchroniser (0%)

This one is pretty basic.  A Windows-based app that will synchronise/mirror two drives/directories on computers that can’t be easily networked, say different physical locations and no wireless LAN…or maybe the files are just too large to consider doing it over the net.  So you’re back to old school methods.  Or, are you?  Nah, you’re not, not with the Detached Data Synch-er!

Using this tool, you will be able to specify a ‘host’ computer and update a client computer, so that the client computer’s data is identical to the host computer (like when I want to update my Car PC with all my latest music/tv series from my notebook but I’m not going to park in the driveway for half hour waiting for wireless - hello DDS and a USB drive).

I guess you’ll be able to do other methods for updating directories between two computers, like mirrored updates both ways with friendly conflict resolution.  But that’ll be stage 2.

The Enlisted Browser (0% complete)

At the moment this is just an idea but the concept is to create a web browser that will constantly synchronises itself back to your home computer (or alternatively a 3rd party server).  The idea is not to create a new web browser, but add on to the functionality of Internet Explorer (or better yet Firefox, if I can) so that every important setting is available no matter where you go.

For example, it’ll sync your home page setting, your history, your bookmarks, search engines, rss feeds etc.  So when you’re out and about at a friends place, at school or using your iPhone, you can quickly and easily access your profile by logging into a web page and also being able to quickly download the Enlisted Browser to your system to get 100% functionlity.  Woo hoo!

And before you say it, I know that there are add-ons and plugins for all browsers that can perform some of these features.  Well I’ve used them and they’re great, but I’m all for having a super simple setup that covers the basics, without the need to have several logins to several sites etc.  Bah.

And more…like my own Car PC software, whoops, what happened to that?  Not to mention a ton of others from the past that I can’t remember right now, which may just be a blessing in disguise.  Yay!