So now the problem was serious. Luckily my old server was still running so I switched DNS for the site back to it. At least the site would be up once that change propagated.

More searching a looking but no progress. Nothing at all was being logged when I tried to start Apache. I received a starting message but that was all.

To cut to the end, the problem seems to have been caused with a recent update to Apache. When I looked at the apache2ctl file in /usr/sbin directory. The file was 0 bytes in size and there was a apache2ctl.1 file. It looks like a recent update caused the problem. The zero byte file was dated May 13th.

So I deleted the zero byte file and renamed apache2ctl.1 to apache2ctl. All was fine.

I did some more checking and I’m note sure what actually caused the problem. My test server, running the same software didn’t get any update to apache2ctl since the initial Apache install. Not really sure how to prevent it or even detect it. At least in the future I’ll recognize the symptoms and it will be one of the first places I look since it’s easy to see.

The Basics

Among the apps delivered with the iPad I use:

Mail – I configure mail using IMAP on my iPad so I don’t have push notifications which is what I like on the iPad. (On the iPhone I configure mail using Exchange so I get push notifications). I configure all my email accounts which include Google Apps email, Windows Live and Apple mail (I lost track of what they call it – iCloud or Mobile Me).

Safari – I haven’t found a reason to use a different browser.

Contacts – I’m not a fan but I do sync my contacts to it.

Calendar – I don’t like the built-in calendar at all so I use Calvectica. I’m not a heavy calendar user.

Reading Apps

Instapaper – I’ve been a long time user of the Instapaper website and the iDevice apps.

Kindle – I mainly use the Kindle iPad app for reference/training books and not long form reading. It doesn’t get a lot of use.

GoodReader – I’ve used this for viewing PDFs I receive and create, along with other documents. It’s grown into a pretty full featured file management app for the iPad.

Missing from this list is iBook and Newstand. I tried them but haven’t been drawn to using them.

Home Network

These are the apps I use for connecting to other computers/devices in the home.

Ignition (From LogMein) – I use this for remote access to all my computers. They recently changed the pricing model and this app now seems to be $130. While I frequently use it I’d have a hard time justifying that cost. But I’m happy I got it at the old price. I use it with free LogMeIn accounts except for my WHS which has a paid account (reconsidering that at next renewal).

FileBrowser – Great for getting files from my Windows Home Server, Windows PCs and Macs to my iPad. Can also stream video files over my home wireless network.

I also have the full suite of Synology aps installed but I don’t use them much. DS Finder is useful for checking alerts and disk status/usage, but that’s about it. Their usage may grow as my Synology usage expands.

My Web Apps

These are apps I use to manage and access my web server and applications on it.

The already mentioned Safari is great for running the WordPress admin panels. No problems.

Prompt – My SSH client for connecting to my servers.

Productivity

Bento – I have a couple databases I sync to my iPad. I can make changes and they sync back. Syncing isn’t automatic so I tend to do most updates on computer and use the iPad for viewing.

OmniOutliner – I also use their desktop version, but sharing documents between computer and iPad is too much of a hassle since it requires remembering which copy is the most recent. So any outlines generally stay on the iPad.

Outliner – Yes, duplicates OmniOutliner. A simple Outliner I use when it’s more important for me to sync to my iPhone.

Toodledo (in the dock) – My primary to do app. Not my favorite To Do app for the iPad but my favorite all around to do app. I have to do a lot of tapping. But it works the way I like to manage most tasks. One big benefit for me is that I can use the web interface from my work (or any) PC which allows me to cut and paste between apps and tasks.

OmniFocus (in the dock)– This used to be my To Do app, but I found Toodledo worked better for  me on a daily basis. I still use OmniFocus for managing larger projects.

Info Management

Evernote – I use this for information storage and reference. Since it’s on everything this tends to get everything.

Misc Apps

NetNewsWire (in the dock)– My RSS reader for the iPad, using my Google Reader feed list. It hasn’t been updated in over a year but I’m familiar with it and can fly through the feeds sending articles of interest to Instapaper if there’s no time to read them. The lack of updates is a concern on one hand, on the other it’s not lacking any features I want.

Downcast – My podcast app, I wrote about it here. I use it more on my iPhone but it gets use on my iPad for video podcasts and the occasional audio podcast.

Tweetbot – My twitter client

Weather – I have an addiction to weather apps so have a rotating selection. But Wx for iPad is a daily visit.

The only game on my iPad is Plants vs Zombies. Still addiction.

There’s plenty more apps that I haven’t mentioned, you’ll see some in the screenshot, but these are the ones I use most.

Have an iPad? How’s this compare to your favorites?

Logo Credit: Yaxxe - click image for more of his work

In the last Trail Log I mentioned I was having problems with my Windows 7 PC so had decided to rebuild it. I got around to doing it this weekend. Just some notes from the rebuild, mainly to jog my memory for the next time I do it.

I wasn’t planning on any hardware changes but this was a good time to open up the PC and blow out the dust balls. This was my first opportunity to use the Metro Vacuum ED500 DataVac Electric Duster. It was better than expected, well worth the cost. It’s typically compared to 5 cans of compressed air as a way to justify the cost. The reason to use it is that it’s so much better than compressed air. It’s electric, so there’s a twelve foot cord which may limit its use for some people. It’s metal so it’s heavy. And it’s noisy. But it gets the dust out. I feels well built and has a five year warranty. There’s a variety of attachments for directing the air and it was easy to blow the dust out from between the cards, drives and fans.

Since I had the case open I did decide to pop in a 2GB Hitachi drive that I had. I run a lot of VMs on the PC so this will give me more space for snapshots and additional VMs. I can also split the VMs between this and the other drives which would improve performance (in theory) if I run them at the same time. We’ll have to see on that last point.

Some additional tips from the installation:

• Before booting the install DVD I pull the power to all except the system drive. I’ve had problems in the past where windows installs some pieces on a second drive and then I remove that second drive, breaking windows and requiring a repair.
• I don’t enter any activation key until my trial period nears its end. This way I can re-install without burning an activation (and I re-installed twice over the weekend to try different ways of moving the profile).
• I used the procedure found on Lifehacker to move my user profiles off the SSD drive C: and onto a Velociraptor (10000 rpm drive) drive. The procedure worked as described in the article.
• There were a lot of patches even though I installed from a Windows 7 SP1 DVD, 85 to be exact.

I archived my Windows Home Server 2011 backup of the PC before doing the installation. This brought on the “Monitoring Error” problem that’s been happening since Roll Up 2 was released. (In short, if there an archive PC it generates a monitoring error alert since the OS is unknown.) Theirs is a patch but I’ve decided to ignore the alert until I delete the Archive in a week or so.

My data is all on my Windows Home Server 2011 server so there’s no day to day data on the PC. I just made sure I had the latest virtual machines backed up and then I flattened the PC. I was treating this like a PC restore. If I didn’t have a good backup the files would be lost. This is another way of saying I was too lazy to verify everything and decided to go for it. No issues so far.

The computer is significantly faster. There’s less crud and any file system problems I was experiencing are behind me. I’ve yet to re-install everything, I’m waiting until I actually need the software before I install it. I’m also deciding if I should change the way I do things (like e-mail on Windows). Most of my apps are cross-platform or web based so having my MacBook Air means I don’t have to rush to do the re-installs.

Essentially, this is the problem to be solved:

• Time Machine is designed to keep backups until a drive is full and then delete the oldest backups to free up space.
• A share is assigned for Time Machine in the Synology DSM software. Only one share can be used across all computers.
• Shares will use as much pace as available on the volume.
• Quotas are user based and apply to an volume, not a share. If there are multiple shares on a volume, the quota is applied across them all for the user.

So the choices are to use a dedicated volume for backups and allow it to be filled, or use an ID dedicated to backups and set the quota on it. This article covers the latter option.

Requirements & Notes

I’ll need an ID dedicated to Time Machine backups. A ID could be shared across Macs but I decided to go with individual IDs per Mac. This gives me slightly more flexibility in the way I manage quotas.

I found that Time Machine does not handle quota changes. It appears that when Time Machine first attaches to a drive (or share) it registers how big the drive is. Even though Time Machine saw the extra space after a quota increase (in it’s space available display) when it got down to the actual backup it based the backup on the old quota. For example, I had to delete the Time machine backup for the Mac and have it start over after I increased the 1 GB quota I used for testing. . I suppose I could have copied the old files for safe keeping, but this was just testing. This isn’t much different than a physical disk, but it would have been nice to have the flexibility.

This works on my DS 212J and DS1511+ NASs. Both are running DSM 4.0-2219, which is the latest version at this time. My Macs are running OS X 10.7.3 Lion, also the most recent version.

Setup

The setup process includes creating the share, enabling TIme Machine in DSM, creating the IDs in DSM and finally, setting up Time Machine on the Macs. Click on any of the images in this section to see them full size.

Create the Share

First off I’ll set up the Time Machine shared folder using the DSM control panel.

Create the shared folder.

Don’t setup any privileges yet so just click OK on the privileges screen without enabling any access. I don’t want any of the regular IDs to have any access to this share.

Create the User(s)

This is also done through the Synology DSM Control Panel.

Create a new user

Fill in the user information

Click OK on the groups screen and allow the user to be a member of the Users group. (For this purpose I don’t think it needs to be a member of any group, but I’ve yet to test it and I’m not all that concerned with security for this ID.)

Give the user access to the Time Machine share.

Set the quota for the volume that the Time Machine folder is on. This is how much space the ID can use for Time Machine.

There’s no need for additional privileges so I disable access to the applications.

After confirming the setup I’m done. I repeat the steps for a second ID, setting a 500GB quota for the ID MBUser.

Enable Time Machine on the Synology NAS

Time Machine is enabled through the DSM Control Panel

Enable the Mac File Service and select the Time Machine shared folder.

Click Apply and acknowledge the warning that network services will restart.

Setting Up Time Machine on the Mac

This is a normal Time Machine configuration, but I’ll run through it.

Open Time Machine Preferences.

Click the Select Disk button. The Synology NAS should appear in the available drives. I the screenshot below both my test and production Synology NAS’s are shown. Normally you’d see just one Synology NAS listed.

You’ll be prompted to provide an ID/password. Enter in the ID created above.

Time Machine will begin a countdown to start a backup. You can make any exclusions at this time. (For example, I exclude my virtual machines directory on my MacBook Air so I don’t back them up over wireless.) You’ll also see the amount of free space. In this example, the volume the share is on is 10TB in size so it is seeing the 250 GB quota.

Further Testing & Wrapping Up

I’ve only used this configuration a short time so it’s long term viability is still undetermined.  I have setup my test server with smaller quotas and on a smaller volume so I can see what happens when the quota is reached. I also want to see what will happen when other files consume so much of the volume that there’s less than the quota available to Time Machine, I’ll come back and update this post when I have that information.

So far I haven’t had any problems connecting to shares using my regular ID from the Macs that have Synology Time Machine configured.

I’m still skeptical of using Wireless to backup Time Machine, which is unrelated to Synology. I have a pretty reliable wireless connection but there’s still the relatively slow speed. If I’m doing other work that makes heavy use of wireless the Time Machine backup could impact that. I’m going to leave it setup, at least until it causes a problem. I’ll come back and update this post if it does and I’ll include a status in my next Trail Log.

Anyone else have any experience using Time Machine servers, Time Capsule, Synology or others?

But Synology wasn’t about to be problem free.  I’ve configured Synology’s DDNS service on both my Synology NAS’s. Sunday morning I had a bunch of alerts from both saying they couldn’t register it’s address to the DDNS service. Long story short – the error message indicated the logon failed but I had numerous messages in the log that is was registering with their service successfully along with the failures. It was trying about every 15 – 30 minutes. Most were successful. My WAN IP address wasn’t changing and my other DDNS software wasn’t seeing changes so I figured it was Synology.  The was another recent forum post with a similar issue. I turned of DDNS temporarily. If my address doesn’t change (and it rarely changes) it will continue to work. I’ll just need to turn it back on within 30 days since Synology will delete my name after 30 days of no contact. By Monday Synology acknowledged it was a “glitch” at there end and I re-enabled DDNS. The DDNS registrations on my Synology boxes seemed to have returned to their once a day rhythm.

My Windows 7 PC has joined in the frustration fest. A while back I had a problem with Picasa needing to be re-installed.  I figured it was a Picasa issue, but the problem spread. I found it was a Windows 7 issue, the file permissions are getting changed/corrupted. If I fix them all is well and the app runs. I’ve also had other scattered disk issues. It looks like it’s time to re-install everything. The only question is will I get to it before the problem goes beyond mildly annoying.

Being an equal opportunity OS user I’ll go ahead an mention that my Mac Mini is also getting frustrating. Disk reads are getting pretty slow. To the point that if I’m watching a video I better not copy files. Other programs slow down when there’s other disk activity too. I haven’t really dug into the problem but it may be time to flatten it and re-install. At least I hope that’s all it is and not a hard drive going bad. Opening up the Mini is a real pain. On the other hand, being forced to replace the HDD would be a good excuse to put an SSD in there.

I already wrote about my Windows Home Server 2011 problems. Things have been fine since.

Operating Systems

I’ve yet to install the Windows 8 preview although I have downloaded both desktop and server. I can’t get too excited about it. I like Windows 7 and until I get hardware to take advantage of Windows 8 I don’t see much benefit. While it still remains to be seen what the hardware vendors will do with Windows 8, I am looking forward to the Windows 8 tablets.

I’m more curious about Windows 8 Server (and storage spaces) than I am about the desktop. I’m happy with Windows Home Server 2011 but I’m always interested in alternatives. Still, probably not something I’d look at before the release candidate due in June.

“Cloud” Storage

Then there was the Windows SkyDrive update and Google’s long awaited G-Drive. I already used Skydrive to a small degree so I was able to go in and claim the 25 GB. I haven’t spent much time with Google Drive (and only on my Mac), but so far I’m not impressed. It’s more like sync than cloud storage, I did see options to limit syncing at the folder level which may help. It copied all my Google Docs locally although they would only open when I was online.

Other than getting my 25 GB I haven’t done anything with SkyDrive. I use Mesh but what I like most is its ability to sync files among my computers withough having to go to the internet. I use this for videos and I don’t want to install SkyDrive and find all this video going to the internet and then back down to my other computers. So I’ll have to check it out before installing it.

Wrapping Up

I’ve been using the ipSec VPN feature in pfSense and it’s been working pretty well. I’ve been having some issues around name resolution between my local network and the internet. It seems like problems keep creeping in and I have to tweak the settings (or use IP addresses for my local network). It seems most of my remaining issues are related to specific apps, especially iPad apps.  Most of the remaining problems seem to be limited to specific iPad apps. Hopefully I can get them sorted out over the next month.

Also on tap for May is re-installing my Windows 7 desktop and my Mac Mini.  Once that’s out of the way I’ll start exploring the Synology apps to see if they’re good for more than disk storage. We’ll see hope much of that I actually get to over the next month.

• RAID array rebuilds are a low priority background task and have no noticeable impact on performance.
  Example: I was doing a RAID rebuild while at the same time running robocopy to copy about 5.5 TB from the drive array to a different array. The RAID array rebuild progressed less than 10% during the first day and a half while the copy (and other activity) were running. Once the copy was done and the drive wasn’t being used the remaining rebuild took less than 6 hours.
• DSM seems to queue even unrelated drive/volume changes and does them serially.
  Example: During an array rebuild on one disk group I expanded a iSCSI LUN on a volume configured on a second disk group. Despite not being on the same drives and seemingly unrelated I had to wait for the array rebuild to finish before the LUN expansion happened. It could be initiated, but stayed in a “waiting” state until the raid rebuild was done.
• The root and swap file systems (basically the OS) are on the DS1511+ drives but not part of the file system volume that’s on the drives. They appear to be spread across all drives.
  Example: Removing the volume that’s on the drives still lets the system boot. Removing one of the drives, even with no volumes on it, results in messages that the root and swap volumes have entered a degraded state. Popping in a new drive results in eventual message that the consistency check on both volumes is done. At this point an additional drive can be removed and replaced without a negative impact (but another degrade/consistency check).
• DSM did not like it when I removed Volume 1 from the DSM 1511+. I was a bit concerned it wouldn’t let me remove the only volume in the unit, but it did so without any warning messages before I told it to go ahead and do it (I had moved everything off it – it does warn if a share, service or package would be impacted). But during the removal I got a message that the volume had crashed. There’s not much to do with a crashed volume so I rebooted. The volume was gone after the reboot and everything seems fine.
• Disk Group and Volume names are system generated and cannot be changed (at least through the GUI). Just something to keep in kind if you try to organize disk groups. When I deleted Disk Group 1 I still had disk groups 2 & 3. When I went to recreate the disk group it was named Disk Group 4 and I had no disk group 1. (This might be related to the crash when I removed the original Volume 1 but it does seem completely gone.) [Updated Apr. 29th: When I created a disk group and volume about a week later they both slotted in as Volume 1 and Disk Group 1 respectively. I also did a firmware upgrade before doing the volume and group creation.

That was it for this weekend’s explorations. I did come up with a couple of questions I want to explore in the future:

1. Can the disk groups be moved between the expansion bays (for example, if a expansion bay fails can it be moved to a new one)? A similar question is can the drives be moved to a new NAS and preserve the data, but I don’t have the hardware to check that out.
2. If DSM 4 is re-installed, will the disk groups and anything installed on them remain after the installation? According to Synology this can be done, although with the loss of configuration data for some Synology DSM services that are kept in it’s internal database.
3. After swapping out the fourth drive (out of 5) I never got the consistency check finished messages for the root and swap. Maybe it did a consistency check on one of the reboots and never logged it. Maybe I'll crash the system when I pull that fifth disk. [Apr.29th: Pulling the drive went fine, see below.]

I suspect that the DS1511+ will crash when I pull that 5th drive for replacement. Synology’s solution involves having their tech support remote in the check/repair the file system. Instead I’ll make sure I have an extra backup then go for it. Might as well test how this thing holds up. Once I know I’ll update this article.

[Updated Apr. 29th]

I was wrong in point #3. Everything was fine when I pulled that 5th drive. I got the degraded error message for root and swap but everything worked, even with a reboot. Eventually I received the message that the rebuild was complete. So it looks like those earlier consistency check complete messages were just lost in the ether.

Everything was fine when I applied the updates and rebooted the server. It never came back online. I run the server headless so all I knew was the server had power and there was no hard drive ativity. I figured the MS security updates had corrupted the OS so I moved the boot drive to another box to check it out. (Much easier than moving the server to a monitor.) The drive was fine. So it was time to move the MicroServer to my workbench so I could hook up a monitor an keyboard.

Long story short, I spent some time swapping drives around and checking things out until a light bulb went off and I went into the BIOS. The drive priorities were back to the defaults (I boot from a drive I added to the media bay so it’s not the default first drive).  So setting the drive priority allowed the server to boot. It booted fine so I put it back in its place.

But I wasn’t done. The server seemed to be fine from my desktop but I couldn’t access it from my laptop. I thought this was a wireless problem, but other wireless devices also had intermittent problems. While I first thought it was a wireless problem, further tests showed it was a problem with the WHS 2011 box and probably the onboard NIC. It was the only box with a problem, and even the wired connections had problems once I started doing more than pings. Since I use the onboard NIC and opening up the MicroServer is a hassle I decided a server swap was the path of least resistance since I had a second server with the same hardware. Then I could work on the problem box at my leisure.

The replacement server was the exact same hardware and had the same BIOS version so I wasn’t expecting any problems. I moved the drives over and fired the replacement up.

Configuring WHS 2011 on New Hardware

Once the drives were in (and set properly in the BIOS) I fired the box up. The server booted fine. There were some settings I had to change or update:

• I had to re-enter the IP address & configuration. The OS remembered the original adapter and saw the new hardware as a new NIC so it created a new connection. I use a hardcoded IP configuration so I had to re-enter it.
• WHS 2011 had to be re-activated within 3 days. Makes sense since as far as the OS is concerned it’s all new hardware.
• I had to reconnect the iSCSI drive. Although the drive and data was fine I did have to reconnect it.

Once I made those changes I was good to go and moved the home server back to it’s place on the shelf. Getting the server running on the new hardware took less than half an hour once I made the decision. Unfortunately all the troubleshooting before that took all the time. Despite the problem happening with the super Tuesday updates the problems were unrelated and probably would have occurred whenever I did the next reboot. It took me some time to convince myself the problem  wasn’t related to the patches.

This is one situation where keeping things simple (no RAID arrays or fancy hardware) and cheap made for a quick recovery since I had a complete new computer that I could pop the drives in and go.

A Little Less iTunes

I recently looked at Instacast and Downcast as podcast apps for my iPhone and iPad. Both were good enough to get me off iTunes for podcasts. A long overdue event. Both are still on my iPhone and iPad although I’m going with Downcast as my first choice.

I also switched over to iCloud for my iDevice backups instead of my Mac. I’d stuck to Mac for backups for two reasons: security and time machine. I’d been saved once by being able to go back to an older iPad backup saved by Time Machine. But when I got my new iPad I rebuilt it from scratch, no restore. That rebuild took longer than the restore, but not by much and not for the important stuff. As for security, I recently realized I could exclude some app data which alleviated my security concerns. And not backing up that data isn’t a problem since that particular data exists elsewhere and syncs to the iPhone.

All that’s left for iTunes is my music management. These days that means I won’t use it very much. Synology has an iTunes services for music and video management. I haven’t used it yet and third party apps that emulate iTunes don’t appeal to me since I figure it’s only a matter of time before an Apple change breaks something, Plus, music management is the only thing I still do with iTunes.

Software Upgrades

Synology Disk Station Manager 4 left beta and saw a production release. I was already running the beta so the upgrade was a non-event. I didn’t notice a difference in the relatively small subset of features I use.

CrashPlan saw a minor upgrade. It’s been set it and forget it on my Windows Home Server 2011 so again,  no noticeable change for ne,

Picasa (on Windows) had another upgrade or two the last couple months, They usually go quickly without a hitch. But the latest one caused me problems. Picasa wouldn’t start after the upgrade so I had to uninstall and reinstall. It saved the setting (database) so everything was fine after the installation.

There was the typical stream of software upgrades but other than Picasa they were all uneventful.

Home Cloud

I had an email asking me if I had found a way to route my internal network based on target URL rather than just the port. (Layer 7 routing or deep packet inspection). I haven’t found anything suitable for a home (meaning free or low cost). This has made me go down a different path. I’ve been finishing up testing IPSec VPN into my home. This gives me the connectivity I need for myself as if I was local. And it’s secure.

That doesn’t work for public or family access that I want to keep simple. But that access is pretty simple and really only one web device (port 80/443) so there’s really no concern. Synology has some ability to target different Synology NAS’s from outside my home network so I’ve started looking at that.

iPad

OK, now for the iPad mention. The more I’ve used my iPad the more I’ve liked the screen. Since the text is sharper it’s been easier to read. I still prefer an e-ink Kindle for longer reader sessions when it’s just text. But the iPad is clearly the best LCD screen I’ve used for reading.

I guess this year’s internet kerfuffle for the iPad was the heat issue. As I mentioned in my initial review:

The iPad 2 never got warm for me. The new iPad has gotten warm enough to notice. It’s not hot, but there was a temperature increase while watching video and after extended use. Never happened on the iPad 2.

Compared the the iPad  2 which never seemed to get above room temperature the new iPad got warm, but never too warm to touch or anywhere near hat I would call hot. Maybe some sort of event trifecta would cause more problems or maybe there’s some bad iPads out there. But from my experience it’s a non-issue. I can’t remember the last time I had a laptop that wasn’t hotter.

…Ismail Jadun, a biology student from Youngstown State in Ohio who saw the need for it after reading comments on the lack of backup awareness on social news site Reddit.

There are several offers and links to backup how to articles on their site. But the unbeatable offer I saw cam through my email -  50% off Cloudberry Backup for Windows Home Server. It’s $14.99 through April 7, 2012. I use Cloudberry to create my critical backups. I do hourly backups of my critical data to Amazon S3 (Amazon S3 costs are additional) and then nightly backups of everything to a local NAS. In the past I’ve done backups to attached external drives.

I also use CrashPlan as a safety offsite backup. They don’t seem to be offering any discounts today (just a free e-book with sign-up) but they are relatively inexpensive if you have a lot of data you want to store offsite. They do have special offers occasionally which is how I signed up. Data caps and slow upload speeds limit its use for massive amounts of data, which is one way they get away with an unlimited data plan.

I guess the concept of World Backup Day is a good way to remind people, but backups should be a every day occurrence.

Like Instacast, it has the features I require:

• Sort all podcasts from oldest to newest so I can play the oldest first
• Syncing between devices
• Podcasts can be downloaded to the device
• Keeps track of unplayed episodes
• Handles password protected podcast feeds
• Can play podcast at double speed (or triple speed, or some fraction in between)

Then it has the features I like but are just nice to have:

• Can stream without downloading
• Mixes video podcast in the same list and in the playlists list
• Supports multiple playlists
• Has a sleep timer which also works when Downcast is playing in the background. So it doesn’t prevent me from using my alarm clock app.
• Highly customizable – each podcast or playlist can have it’s own settings or use the global settings

Things I Miss:

• Nothing – not sure what other features I would want

Dislikes:

• Granular Settings – this is really only a problem during the first 24 hours, but the large number of settings and my experimentation led to some unexpected results.

Compared to Instacast

I found the interface more intuitive. I only had to read the online help once when I misunderstood the “Sync Episodes” setting. (It syncs the episode status – not the files themselves). The rest was pretty obvious although like many i-device apps it takes some tapping and swiping to find everything. Almost all the interface elements are labeled or pop up a menu when pressed, making it easier to know what’s happening.

I didn’t spend much time with the iPad app, but the interface was much easier for me to use than Instacast. It was functional and made sense.

Instacast is a simpler interface with fewer options and settings. Fewer options isn’t always a bad thing.

The Initial Experience

I emailed an OPML export of my podcasts to myself and then imported them into Downcast. Unlike Instacast it couldn’t read the Music app for my podcast list. I didn’t have any of the bugs or problems that I had with Downcast. My only problems came about when I changed around settings, especially sync settings.

I liked the ability to create playlists more than I thought I would. I also liked being able to assign settings per podcast. I listen to some podcasts at double speed, while others are always regular speed. I can set the defaults for each podcast but change them on th fly if I want to.

I’m keeping both apps on my iDevices, but I’ll be using Downcast until it gives me a reason not to.

I fired it up at lunch yesterday and have been using it since.  It’s far from perfect but it may be good enough to keep me from trying out anything else.

It has the features I require:

• Sort all podcasts from oldest to newest so I can play the oldest first
• Syncing between devices
• Podcasts can be downloaded to the device
• Keeps track of unplayed episodes
• Handles password protected podcast feeds
• Can play podcast at double speed

Features I like but are just nice to have:

• Can stream without downloading
• Mixes video podcast in the same list and in the “all unplayed” list

Things I miss:

• No playlists (but since playlists are broken in iTunes this isn’t a real loss)
• Sleep timer. My alarm clock app integrates with the Music app to work as a sleep timer. I lose that with Instacast.

Dislikes:

• The app is buggy, at least on the iPhone (haven’t used the iPad app enough to know)
• I didn’t find the UI very intuitive. But the built in help is pretty clear. The iPhone UI is better than the iPad UI. I admit this is subjective.

The Initial Experience

I was able to import my list of podcasts directly from the Music app on my iPhone which made it easy to get going. Only audio podcasts on the phone were imported. When I got home I exported all my subscriptions from iTunes and imported them into Instacast. The online help had clear directions.

I enabled iCloud to do syncing in anticipation of also using my iPad. Dropbox is also supported but that seems like a manual process. While working through the various settings to see how they worked I had a few program crashes which wasn’t encouraging but things seemed to settle down once I stopped changing the settings around.

The other annoying problem I had was the app would frequently go offline (4 times in the 24 hours I’ve used it), saying it had no connection to the internet. I could resolve it by killing and restarting the app, or by cycling wi-fi off and then on. All other apps had no problem getting an internet connection when Instacast was offline. The wireless off/on worked even when I was only on 3G and wasn’t even on wireless.

My final problem was just a few hours ago. A podcast was playing and when I went in to stop it, the interface was frozen just displaying the album art for the podcast. There wasn’t any UI although the podcast was playing fine. I had to kill the app to stop it. When I went back in it picked up right where I killed it and seemed fine, (Although I’ve yet to finish that podcast.)

It has more to do with my wireless service, but streaming was problem free even when driving to work.

The iPhone app is 2 bucks, the iPad app is 5 bucks. I ended up buying the iPad app once I got used to the iPhone app. The iPad app is different which could be a good thing since it is a different form factor. But I find the UI even more cumbersome. Touch points all over the screen and lots of swiping to get to a podcast. I’m sure I’ll get used to it and it’s light years better than the way the iPad natively handles iPads.

The syncing via icloud has been fine so far. My subscriptions showed up quickly and play podcasts update nearly instantly.

There’s been enough bugs that I may still look at other podcast apps, but other than the bugs Instacast seems to meet my needs quit well. Even if I don’t find something else, it’s enough to get my podcasts out of iTunes. Looks like I’ll have one less reason to sync with iTunes.

• With the screen hype I expected to turn on the iPad and exclaim “It’s Gorgeous!”. Instead I thought “It’s an iPad 2″. The screen is certainly nice, but as an daily iPad 2 user it was only noticeably better when I displayed them side-by-side. Someone who does a lot of video or photos would probably feel different about this.
• Verizon LTE was faster and a better internet experience than I expected. I had tried an LTE phone a while back and was not impressed. See my twitter feed for some speed test screenshots.
• The iPad does not feel faster. I had to find my most intensive app and do some side by side comparisons. Obviously the iPad is more powerful and has faster hardware (it needs it to push those pixels around), I’m just saying I have to stretch to find a performance difference for what I do today.

This is based on how good the iPad 2 is and the way I use it (little photo or video)

Buyer’s remorse? Not really. I’m a fanboy and it is better. I suspect Verizon LTE will be a regular subscription on my iPad rather than the twice a year event that AT&T was. That makes up for the overblown expectations I had with the screen.

The Screen

The new screen was my primary reason for getting the upgrade. I’m not a pixel peeper so I really only care how it looks in day to day use.  The first thing I noticed is that the screen doesn’t seem as bright as the iPad 2. I mean this in a good way. It’s kind of like the vivid and movie mode presets on TV’s. Retailers have it set to vivid because people seem to like it better at first glance (so I’m told), but movie mode is better on the eyes actually watching TV. I never considered the iPad 2 as being too bright, but I immediately noticed the new iPad was more pleasing and seemed to have better color range. When I compared them side by side I saw the new iPad wasn’t as bright when set to the same brightness settings. I suspect this will make it better for long term viewing. I rarely read at length on the iPad. That may change now.

I mainly use productivity apps (not a lot of large pictures or video). When i run them on the new iPad they look nice enough but it wasn’t a noticeable difference, even for ones that were updated for the new iPad. But then I put old and new side by side and there is a noticeable difference in clarity. The new iPad just looks sharper. Instapaper looks better and I use it to read a lot, but this isn’t a fair comparison because the upgrade that included retina support also included new fonts.

I don’t have any HD video that can be played on the iPad so I looked at my existing video, both my own encodes and some from Apple. As expected there’s no significant difference since it’s the same video. I do think the new iPad seemed to have a little more clarity to the colors and everything looked better. Again, it’s more noticeable when played side-by-side.

I’m not a fan of iTunes video but I did find some free 1080p content to give a try. And this was clearly a better viewing experience. Still, I don’t see this as a big benefit. iTunes HD content has a relatively small file size but I dislike the DRM and other restrictions. If I’m going to pay HD prices I don’t want the restrictions. I can’t play the HD video on my Mac because the display doesn’t have HDCP which the content providers force Apple (and others) to require for HD playback. So it’s either iPad only viewing, standard def, or I buy and Apple TV. None are choices I like. It’ll be interesting to see if I mellow and give in over time and start getting some videos.

Photos are significantly better on the new iPad. But again, I didn’t typically have photos on my iPad 2 so it’s not a use case for me. But I did some comparisons and they are sharper and have more color depth. Interestingly I hadn’t sold my original iPad and I do use that one for photo more frequently. One thing I noticed is that the double-tap to zoom on a photo zoomed more. On the old iPad it seemed to double the size. On the new iPad it seems to quadruple the size.

The apps I use that I really would like to see get graphic improvements haven’t be updated for the new iPad – National geographic, a couple comic book apps and a couple games. So the jury is still out on how much I’ll benefit from the new screen, But it will only help.

Performance

There’s been a noticeable improvement in screen scrolling. Especially when I consider the screen display keeps up with all but the fastest scrolling.

Bento is the most resource intensive app I run on the iPad. There was a noticeable difference when I went from iPad 1 to iPad 2. Bento doesn’t seem any snappier on the new iPad than it was on the iPad 2. Maybe a little faster at times, but still a lag as I go from record to record. Searches also seem a tad faster. I don’t consider the difference significant and what I do see may be more wishful thinking than reality. I’m not saying it’s slow, just not faster than the iPad 2.

I’ve only been using it for a few hours so I may see more of a difference when I use it for real work and have more apps open. But so far app start-up and switching isn’t faster, at least that I notice.

The iPad 2 never got warm for me. The new iPad has gotten warm enough to notice. It’s not hot, but there was a temperture increase while watching video and after extended use. Never happened on the iPad 2.

Verizon

One of the reasons I upgraded to the iPad 2 was to get the 3G model. I picket AT&T at that time to get some variety in my telcos, my phone is AT&T. I’m no fan of any telco but AT&T has always been at the bottom of my list. I took this opportunity to switch to Verizon even though I didn’t have any particular problem with AT&T.

I like that the plan is pay as you go. There’s only a couple times a year when I use it, but I really like the convienence of being able to grab the iPad and be online, I do have the hotspot on my iPhone and use that with several devices. But the iPad’s hotspot may be a viable replacement, at least while Verizon keeps the hotspot option free. I do always have the phone with me but my laptop is typically the only other device I use the hotspot with And while I may not always have the iPad with me, I typically have it when I have the laptop on the road.

I did buy a data plan for a month to try it out. My “Personal Hotpot” selection didn’t appear on the main settings page. After waiting a bit I went into General -> Network -> Personal Hotpot and was able to activate it there. Then it appeared on the main settings page. I found the default password to be a little too boilerplate. Seemed like only the last 4 numbers would change. I usually change defaults anyway but would recommend it especially in this case.

I did get a LTE connection. I’m on the edge of a coverage area and the last time I tried an LTE phone at my house it didn’t get an LTE connection. Maybe things got better, maybe that phone sucked, maybe the iPad is better. The speedtest.net app tell be I get 37.09Mbps down and 6.96 Mbps up. The download speed is fairly consistent. The upload speed has been as low as 0.43 Mbps but was usually above 6 Mbps. Over my home wireless (and Comcast ISP) it tells e I get 30.07 Mbps up and 5.82 Mbps down. By comparison a 3G connection tests at 2.12 Mbps up and 0.88 Mbps down. All these tests were done within a 30 minute period.

I did some real world downloads. I don’t want to burn through my data allowance so I picked a 89 MB file from download.com using my MacBook Air. Using my wireless connection and Comcast I get a fairly consistent 1.3MB/sec. Use the LTE hotspot I got as high as 1.5MB/sec in one test but the rest of the downloads (out of 4) were about 450KB/sec. Browsing and video were fluid over the LTE hotspot.

Wrapping Up

Was it worth it? I’m not returning it and that is still an option. I’ll wait a couple days before sending the iPad 2 to Gazelle but I’m 95% sure I’ll keep it. But it’s not a slam dunk upgrade form an iPad 2. Hopefully Verizon will keep the hotspot free for several months, but even so the data plans are considerably more than the cost of using my iPhone as a hotspot. At least with my typical data usage I can get by with a plan that keeps my cost about level.

The much lauded screen is nice, no doubt. Whether or not it’s worth the cost of an upgrade is subjective. Time will tell if I start reading or watching video on the new iPad more. Forget the specs, things look better on the screen, even text and standard def video. The colors just look better and text looks crisper.

Whether or not it was worth the cost probably depends on whether or not I use it more. Will I read more with the better screen? Getting me off a Kindle e-ink reader for extended sessions of plain text reading will be tough. Will I watch more video? The iPad 2 was better for video display than the Kindle Fire yet I gravitated to the Kindle for video, so probably not. If I was into the iTunes ecosystem for video this would be a big benefit, but a better screen won’t draw me into iTunes video.

Over half the cost was covered by selling my iPad 2, so that helps. I’m hoping I have the willpower to skip the next iPad. I’m hard pressed to think of a feature I would want in a year.

Bottom line – I’m happy, not thrilled with the upgrade.

• Real-time file watcher now works properly on Linux installations with 3.x series kernels
• Attaching an archive no longer adversely affects existing archive.
• Setting up a backup to an attached drive no longer redirects to the local install path of CrashPlan.

None of those bugs bit me.

I run CrashPlan on Windows Home Server 2011 and Crashplan updated itself about 1AM this morning, shortly before it’s scheduled backup start time at 2AM. Not sure if that was coincidence or intentional preparation.

I like how CrashPlan has been “basically set it and forget it”. I have it set to send me an alert if no backup occurs in 2 days. Even though CrashPlan is a safety backup of stuff already backed up,  I don’t want the surprise of finding out I need it and there hasn’t been a backup in 3 months.

I haven’t given a status in awhile. I’m up to 363 GB stored with them. That’s more than Comcast’s data cap (250 GB) will allow me to restore in a month so if disaster strikes I’ll either need a couple months or some fast talking. So I haven’t been looking to add much more to the backup beyond changes of current selections.

CrashPlan is still on my recommended list for WHS backups, even if it’s not officially supported. CrashPlan related articles are here.

And that bloat caused occasional but severe frustrations over the years. The last two days were no exception.

I’d recently changed my settings back to start iTunes automatically and sync when my devices were connected. I turned this back on recently because it’s now a rare event for me to connect via the USB cable and my primary reason to connect is usually to do a sync. The most recent update broke that feature. Not a huge deal since I had only recently started using it again.

Then, two days ago I rebooted my Mac Mini (which runs iTunes on it). The auto start & sync magically started working again. But then things got worse. iTunes would freeze shortly after starting. Even without a connected device iTunes would freeze. I went as far as to put my devices in airplane mode to make sure iTunes didn’t find them when it started. No joy. I get a few seconds between starting a freezing and during that time (during several force quits and restarts) I was able to get all the devices out of iTunes memory so they wouldn’t show when iTunes started. I guess you could say there was progress, as the time between starting and freezing could be counted in minutes with no devices in the device list. But the freeze was inevitable.

I left iTunes “running” for about two hours but did a force quit before going to bed for the night. I didn’t want to leave it running to avoid open files that wouldn’t be backed up. I figured my next step would be to revert to a backup but wanted a current copy to go back to when that didn’t work.

The next morning I started iTunes, watched the pinwheel appear, and headed off to work. I connected in from work about 6 hours later and iTunes was happy and responsive. Not sure how long it took, somewhere between 5 minutes and 6 hours. Tonight all is fine. Stops, starts, syncs, plays.

What changed to cause the problem? No idea. What changed to fix the problem? Nothing except my patience to let the pinwheel spin. I rebooted my Mini because I was moving cables and it would lose power. No software changes. There’s always content changing on the i-devices, but nothing out of the ordinary. No completely new apps. I do have my iTunes library on my Windows Home Server so the problem could have been there. And the one thing I did change was I applied the monthly Microsoft patches to the WHS shortly before the iTunes problem happened. I did reboot the server during the issue and that didn’t help the problem and since I didn’t change anything on the server to resolve the problem I don’t really think that was the issue.

I guess iTunes just had some issues that it needed to work through.