Sunday, August 9, 2009

Synch files with multiple PCs

Do you carry files around between work and home on a thumb drive, or a notebook? You have a repository for code but don't want to put everything in it (for example: vendor data sheets which will seldom change)? Do you need to synch files between two or more PCs? You tried Microsoft's interesting SynchToy app but wonder why it has not been maintained or open sourced since 2006? Me too.


For a few weeks now I've been happily using a file synching program called Allway Synch. It's free for moderate personal use, but I like it so much that I bought a license - currently on sale for $20. I use this pretty much every day. It even keeps usage statistics for you (the screen capture) - with which you can see it has already saved me more than it's license cost in saved time. It has never crashed or locked up. Many little features show that some thought and skill went into making this program robust and easy to use. I highly recommend it, and you can try before you buy.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Occam Pi - alive and well: links to current work

I know what you're thinking: what are Occam, Occam Pi, or the Transputer (RIP)? Wikipedia my friends, and perhaps a discussion for another day. In the meantime, thanks to a post from P.H. Welch on the Java-threads and occam-com mail lists, here on one handy place is a collection of links to several related web sites, in response to the question of whether occam was "dead" or not:

To see some life, you could look at the CoSMoS demo pages:

http://www.cosmos-research.org/demos
all of which are programmed in occam-pi. This is a *funded* project
(almost 1.5M GBP), starting nearly two years ago and continuing
through March, 2012. occam-pi is flying, :).

We're also maintaining:

http://pop-users.org/wiki/occam-pi (general start page)
http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/ofa/kroc/
http://transterpreter.org/
http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/ofa/sei-cmu/ (the course)
https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/research/groups/sys/wiki/OccamPiReference
https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/research/groups/sys/wiki/OccamPiStyleGuide
https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/research/groups/sys/wiki/OccamDoc
https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/research/groups/sys/wiki/OEP
https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/research/groups/sys/wiki/KrocInternals
https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/research/groups/sys/wiki/OccBuild
http://occam-pi.org/occamdoc/frames.html
http://frmb.org/occ21-extensions.html
http://projects.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/kroc/trac/wiki/Installation

(open sources - svn repository)
https://projects.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/kroc/trac/
https://projects.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/transterpreter/trac/
https://projects.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/tock/trac/
https://projects.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/nocc/trac/

And there will be quite a few developments reported at CPA 2009:
http://www.wotug.org/cpa2009/

What - you want some of the wikipedia links to save you a minute of typing/searching? OK:
Occam Language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam_(programming_language)
Inmos Transputer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer

Many of the early Occam and Transputer concepts have been reborn in current technology. Please post comments with links to any of which you are aware.

best regards
Bruce