My Digital Life Blog (English)

Why is the sky blue?

2020-01-24T13:08:00.001-08:00

Contrary to an old saying, the sky is not blue because it reflects the ocean. Instead the reason why the sky seems blue is because...

Contrary to an old saying, the sky is not blue because it reflects the ocean. Instead the reason why the sky seems blue is because the light from the sun splits on its way through the atmosphere. Light from the sun contains all colours and therefore is considered as white. However, when the light enters earths atmosphere, the molecules in the atmosphere splits the light. The atmosphere mainly contains oxygen and carbon molecules, which in particular splits shorter light rays. Blue is the shortest wave length visible by the human eyes, and that is why the sky seems blue.

Why is there a leap day?

2020-01-24T12:23:00.001-08:00

A leap day occurs in a leap year. A leap year contains 366 days oppose to the regular 365 days in a normal year.

A leap day occurs in a leap year. A leap year contains 366 days oppose to the regular 365 days in a normal year. The extra day is referred to as a leap day. In a leap year February has 29 days instead of the regular 28 days. It is a leap year if the year (2020, 2024, etc) is dividable with 4.
In the gregorian calender a year equals 365,2425 day, hence the reason why we have leap years in to ensure that the season remains constant. Without the extra leap day the summer and winter seasons would shift after appr. 730 year .

How to create rules on IFTTT.com?

2013-05-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

(source: http://technorians.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/backup-facebook-photos.png)

In this post I will guide you through the process of how to create rules using IFTTT.com. If you don't know what IFTTT is check out my other post about it: As a specific example I will show you how to create a rule which automaticly saves tagged photos of you from facebook to dropbox...

The process if fairly simple. You can either select from their library of rules created by other users. Otherwise if you cannot find the exact rule that you are looking for, you can create it yourself. This is done in 7 easy steps. First click "create" in the top, and you will be guided through the 7 steps:

Step 1: Define the trigger service, in this we select facebook simply by clicking the facebook logo
Step 2: Define the trigger condition, in this case we select "You are tagged in a photo"
Step 3: Create the trigger, this is done simply by pressing "Create Trigger"
Step 4: Define the action service, here we select Dropbox in similar way to step 1.
Step 5: Define the action contidion. This is where we define what is going to happend if the trigger condition (i.e. you are tagged in a photo on Facebook) is activated. Here we select "Add file from URL".
Step 6: Create the action. Here you define the specific settings for the select condition. Unlike step 3, now you actually have some settings to change. You can leave everything as it is and just press "Create Action" if you are happy with the default settings. Otherwise you can change the name, folder, etc.
Step 7: Create the rule. Now you get a final confirmation window. If you are satisfied with the settings set up in step 1 through 6 you hit "Create Rule".

That's it! You are done, and all photos of which you are tagging in will now be saved to your dropbox folder automatically!

What is IFTTT?

2013-05-15T00:30:00.000-07:00

(source: http://documania20.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/ifttt_logo_documania20.jpg)

Have you ever experienced to face a task where you find yourself thinkin: "There has to be a smarter way to do this!" Ta da, look no more, because the webpage IFTTT.com can help you what (some of) that. IFTTT is short for "If That Then This", and the basic idea is to create rules that automates certian task for you...

The nice thing about automatic certain task is that it simplifies life. As an example, let's assume that you have been tagged in a photo on facebook. Maybe you are not updated on facebook so you'll never see that picture of you (although sometimes it might be for the best! :) ) Or maybe you just want you save that picture on your harddrive. So the concept of IFTTT is that you set up a "rule" defining a trigger and (in case the trigger is resolved) and action. For example you can make a rule saying that IF you are tagged in a photo on facebook then save the photo into my dropbox folder. Or IF you are tagged in a photo on facebook then send me an email (although facebook already have that feature).

The only limitation is your imagination! To get your creativity going, I have added some additional examples below. Later on I will show you how to setup "rules" with IFTTT.

(source: http://allthingsd.com/20120104/ifttt-raises-funding-for-its-digital-duct-tape-service/)

10 things you need for your next road trip

2013-05-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

(Source: http://drivethenation.com/files/2013/04/roadtrip.jpg)

The summer is upon us, and the case might very well be that you are currently planning your next road trip. However, just because we are on vacation, we shouldn't necessarily live as cave men! Here are the 10 gadgets I would bring for my next road trip...

1. GPS-navigation:

(source: https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/on-the-road/automotive/new-2013/nuvi-44/prod120959.html#gallery-dialog)

First things first, the most important gadget to bring on a road trip is off course a navigation system - that is unless you already have a built in navigation system or a hell of a co-driver.

2. Music:

(source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/IPod_nano_5G.png)

The second most important thing to bring with you an a road trip is music... however, time have left CD's hanging in a void, so make sure to bring your iPod or whatever music player you prefer!

3. iPad:

(source: http://sanphamapple.com/upload/images/san-pham/ipad/ipad-2/ipad-2-den.jpg)

While mentioning the i-products, I might as well mention the iPad, which is a wonderful entertainment device in case you're a not driving. Any other tablet will as well!

4. Seagate wireless external hard drive:

(source: http://www.itopnews.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Seagate-Wireless-Plus.png)

Memory problems on your tablet? No more! The Seagate wireless external hard drive allows you to bring 1 TB of movies, pictures, etc. with you can syncs with the iPad wirelessly by creating a local hotspot!

5. E reader:

(source: http://www.aitnews.com/wp-content/uploads/kindle-paperwhite.jpg)

Another good way to entertain yourself is with a good book, and what better way to read a book than on an E-reader. I would bring my beloved Kindle Paperwhite! In case YOU are the one to do all the driving consider to bring good audiobooks instead so you can keep your eyes on the road!

6. Cooler: This might be among the least techy things on the list, but let's face it... we want our beverages to be cool in the hot summer sun.

7. Camera:

(source: http://www.kamerabild.se/polopoly_fs/canon-eos-650d-1.507707.html!/image/3780044545.jpg)

After all this is a vacation, so make sure to bring your camera. I would bring my Canon Eos 650D (a.k.a. Canon Rebel T4i). Hence, I will recommend to bring your enormous camera which you normally wouldn't take with you due to the sheer weight of it. But since this is a road trip you don't have to carry it around.

8. Smartphone with useful apps:

(source: http://www.vmart.pk/images/detailed/10/nokia_lumia_920_4.jpg)

A smartphone serves two purposes. First of all you can use is a your travel assistant to get information about nearby tourist attractions, restaurants, hotels, traffic queue, etc. Secondly, it is always nice to have a "life line" in case your car breaks down and you need assistance.

9. Wireless car internet: If you really can't live without being constantly online, and your phones internet connection is not sufficient either, then you should go all the way and install a wireless internet connection in your car!

10. Electricity Power Inverter: With all these gadgets eventually you need some juice to reload your devices.

Happy road trip!

(source: http://dagmarbleasdale.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/137.jpg)

How to setup up your NAS?

2012-08-20T08:50:00.001-07:00

In this post I will tell how I have centralized my digital storage so that all computers, smartphones, tables, media center, and what else we might have in our house, can access all your digital photos, movies, music, and much more. In this post I will describe the setup of the heart in my digital life, namely my network attached storage, or NAS ...

In short, is a NAS a network hard drive that you connect to your router, whereby the content is available on your local network (as opposed to the hard drive of your computer – which in somewhat simplified terms - only is available on your computer). By storing your files on a NAS you allows all computers and devices to access content on the NAS in an easy way. A NAS is a good solution if you have several computers, tablets, etc. in the household where you want to have access to your pictures, music, movies, etc.

There are many different types and manufacturers of NAS, and according to my knowledge there is not much difference if you buy some of the most recognized brands such as Synology, Qnap, Thecus, etc. I have a Synology DS211 (firmware is "Synology DSM3.2 ") and am extremely pleased with it - it's super easy to use. This, together with my desktop computer, is the backbone of my digital setup as this is where all files and data is passing through, are processed, archived and synchronized - and not least backed up! Before I begin describing my setup, I would emphasize that this post is not intended as an actual review of the product in a tradional sense – I believe that this have already been done, and I will therefore not be able to contribute with anything new. In this review of the product I will focus on how I have set up and use my nas in our digital home, then a more substantive review.

Setup

I would recommend that you follow the Synology guide to connect to your NAS for the first time, and how you write your administrator password. Then you can begin the actual setup. First you have to "set up" file system. You can compare it a little with first-time setup of a computer. This may sound very technical, but is in fact very straight via the built-in guide. The only thing you will really need to do is make a choice. This can really be difficult enough in itself so here's some help concepts. The most essential choices faced with a NAS is the choice of RAID. To learn more about RAID, I made a brief review of the main types here. In a two-drive NAS must either choose between RAID 0 or RAID 1 (you have a NAS with multiple disks, there are also other RAID settings). Consider what your needs are in terms of space, cost, performance and especially safety. I have chosen a RAID 0 setup, and manage backup (of the important files) to external hard drives that are connected to the NAS with USB connector (I tell how this is done automatically in a later post). Note that RAID 0 is no "built-in" safety, so this must be done otherwise, if desired. Is security an important factor for you then select the RAID 1 (or possibly. RAID 5 if you have more than two hard drives in your NAS).

When the NAS is set up with the desired RAID setup (note that this may take a looong time where the machine creates the file system) you have to create some "shares". A share can be considered a "main folder", for example, a folder for images, one for movies, etc. On your computer you will afterwards be able to add these shares as a separate drive on your computer and control who has access to the different shares. You can read this guide to create shares on your Synology NAS. I have structured my NAS so I have the following (primary) shares:

-Movies

-Photos

-Videos

-Music Sonos

-Documtens

-Disc image

Note that you can enable three features on your Synology NAS ("Photo Station", "Music Station" and "Video Station"). If you choose to activate these features the NAS will create/use the following three shares: "Photo", "Music" and "Video". Therefore, it may be an idea to choose some other names than these three IF you want to use these features AND IF you do not want all your photos, music and/or videos to be indexed in the "Stations". Personally, I don’t use these features, and therefore will not describe them in detail here.

On the NAS you can create multiple users and you can completely control which users have access to which shares. Multiple users is not something we really make use of in our home (admittedly, we have a user each), but they all have the exactly same user rights. So I would recommend you to just have one user unless you have specific needs for multiple users. You can read this guide on how to create new users on your Synology NAS.

One thing we care for in our home is the envoiroment. Not in an obsessed kind of way, but we try to do whatever we can do in our everyday life to e.g. minimize the power consumption. And yes, we do turn off the TV on the switch in order to avoid any unnecessary stand by power usage. And similar with our computers, etc. Therefore, the power consumption of our NAS is also something we try to minimize (without influencing the usability of the NAS). Of course it is a balance between have the data available when needed, but on the same not have the data available (and thereby the NAS turned on) when not needed. Therefore I have set the NAS to turn off and the night and during the middle of the day while we were not home. To learn how you can read my guide here.

There are many things that you can setup on your Synology NAS, and if you have a inner network administrator hidden inside, there is a lot of opportunities to tweak your NAS setting, etc. But for general use, the above steps cover most of what you need to know in order to get started using a NAS. So now that we've created shares (and possibly multiple users), you can add your shares as a separate drive to your computer so that your data is always easily available when you need it. You can do this by following this guide.

And now you're ready to use your NAS. I will in a later post talk about how you can use your NAS for backup, whether you want to backup your files on your computer to your NAS or you want to backup the contents of your NAS to a separate drive, e.g. an external hard drive.

How to connect to your NAS from your computer?

2012-08-10T14:16:00.002-07:00

In this post I will tell you how to connect to your NAS from your computer so that your shares are accessible when you open "My Computer". I have, as I said, a Synology NAS and a Windows 7 computer, but the principle should be the same for other setups too...

1) Open "My Computer". And click on "Map network drive" at the top of the window.

2) In the window that appears you can select which drive letter your share will have on your computer and the network path to your NAS. Note that the drive letter don’t be the same for all computers in your household to access the NAS, but it will probably be easier to structure/remember if you select the same drive letter for the same share on the the computers you would like to connect to your NAS. In that way your Photos-share will have the same drive letter on all computers, ect. My Synology NAS is called "Disk Station" on my network (if you have not changed anything on your Synology it is most likely that your will have the same name). In the windows that have appeared you can enter the following: "\\Disk Station\Name_of_share" (must be entered without "). You must replace"Name_of_share" with the name you have given your share (If you have not created a share, you can follow this guide). For example, to add a share named "Photos" simply replaces "Name_of_share" with "Photos" in the picture below:

It is important to tick off "Reconnect at logon" since this will make you computer remember your username and password, so you can more easily access the files on your NAS in the future. When you are finished click "Finish". NOTE: You may, instead of typing the path manually press "Browse ..." and then manually go to the share you wish to add.

3) You should now simply specify the username and password for your user on the NAS. If you have not yet created a user, you can follow this guide to do so, or you can just use the administrator login (there is always an administrator) if you do not want to create multiple users.

Now you’re done adding a share to your computer, and that share will appear as a specific drive in "My Computer" in the future. You can repeat the process with all the shares you have created that you want to add to this computer.

How to automatically turn your Synology NAS on or off?

2012-08-10T14:04:00.001-07:00

One of my priorities is to minimize power consumption in our home. In this guide I will tell you how to reduce power consumption from your Synology NAS by having the NAS to turn off automatically in periods where it’s not used, e.g. during the night or even midday. And even though power consumption is greatly reduced when the NAS goes into “sleep mode” when it’s not directly used (according to Synology's website from 22W (Access) to 10.8 W (disk sleep)), there are still electricity to be saved by turning off the NAS completely in time periods where it is still not is used. In this post I will show how to create power schedules on your Synology NAS (firmware is "Synology DSM3.2" but the process should be similar in other versions)...

In other words, I will in this post describes how you can automatically have your Synology NAS to turn on and off automatically at specific times (and days).

1) Log into your NAS as administator. Then press the little arrow in the upper right corner and then select "Control Panel" in the menu that appears:

2) In the menu that appears, select "Power" in the third line.

3) Now select the tab "Power Schedule". To create certain switch on/off times press "Create".

4) When you press "Create" a new window appears where you can create a rule defining when your Synology should start up or turn down. Here you can define whether the rule should apply to all days in a week ("daily"), on weekends ("weekend") or only on weekdays ("weekdays") or you can customize exact which day a specific rule should apply to. Suppose that I want to define a rule to start up my NAS every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 7:00 AM. I start by selecting "Startup" in the top left corner. In the dropdown menu "Date" I select the desired days as shown below. In the drop down menu "Time" you’ll be able to define at which time you want the rule to be activated (on the selected days). In my example I’ll set this to 7:00 AM. To end simply press OK, then press "Save".

Now you have created (and saved) your new rule and can continue to tailor the rules to your specific needs and wishes. Personally, I've decided that I would like to turn off my NAS - and thereby reduce power consumption – in the middle of the day (on weekdays) and during the night (every day). So I have configured my Synology’s power schedule so that my NAS is turned on within the following time periods (you can see the rules I've set up in Figure 3):

Weekdays: 7:00 to 9:15 and 17:00-24:00

Weekends: 9:00-24:00

In this way, I "only" have my Synology turned on for 76.25 hours out of the 168 weekly hours. In other words, I only have my NAS turned on for 45% of the time on a weekly basis - namely, during the periods where I have defined that there could be potential for me or my girlfriend using it. Of course it is still possible to manually turn Synology on and off if the need should be different one particular day. And the booting time is only about a couple of minutes for the NAS, so this is a very satisfying solution for me knowing how much electricity I save by not having my NAS turned on all the time. I hope you will be able to benefit from this post by managing when your Synology is turned on and off, and thereby thinking about the environment as well as your wallet.

How to create users on your Synology NAS?

2012-08-10T13:03:00.001-07:00

In this post I will tell you how to create users on your Synology NAS (firmware is "Synology DSM3.2" but the process should be similar in other versions). First you must log in to your NAS as an administrator...

You create a user on your Synology NAS as follows:

1) Press the little arrow in the upper right corner and then select "Control Panel" in the menu that appears:

2) In the menu that appears, select "User" in the top line.

3) In the window that appears you must at least enter a username (It is most probably also a good idea to specify a password). Press "Next" when finished.

4) Next, you select whether you want this new user to be "administrator" or just a regular "user". Check "User" and press "Next" when finished.

5) Then you can assign user rights to the shares you have created. If you have not yet created any shares, you can read how to do this here [LINK]. Alternatively, you can set/modify user rights later on. Press "Next" when finished.

6) Now you can choose whether the user will have space restrictions (and if so how much). If you don’t fill out anything a user will not have space restrictions. Press "Next" when finished.

7) If you have activated some of the more advanced features of you Synology NAS (music station, photo station, etc.), you will be able to define the user access to these if desired. If you have not activated these features yet this step is not relevant for you.

8) Finally, you’ll see a summary where you can check that all settings for that specific user are correct. If so, click "Apply" to create the user.

You have now created a new user and can repeat the process until the desired number of users is created.

How to create “shares” on your Synology NAS?

2012-08-10T12:52:00.001-07:00

In this post I will tell you how to create “shares” on your Synology NAS (firmware is "Synology DSM3.2" but the process should be similar in other versions). First you must log into your NAS as an administrator…

You create a shared folder as follows:

1) Press the little arrow in the upper right corner and then select "Control Panel" in the menu that appears:

2) In the menu that appears, select "Shares" in the top line.

3) The window that appears will (if you have not created shares before) be completely empty. To create a new share please click the "Create" in the upper left corner. Then select a name for your new share and possibly a description. I have chosen to call my share "test" and opted not to give it a description. When you are finished click "OK".

4) Now you get to choose which users have access to the drive – and if so, what rights these users should have. If you have not created users on your NAS, you will only see the administrator (admin) and maybe a guest user (guest). In this example I choose to give the administrator full read and write rights to files in this shared, and to deny access for guest users.

When you are finished, press "ok" and you have created a share on your Synology NAS.

What is RAID?

2012-08-10T12:37:00.001-07:00

In this post I will briefly give an explanation of what RAID is. What are advantages and disadvantages and which options do we face when choosing between the different RAID setups (such as RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, etc.). RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks . RAID combines two or more disks to achieve higher read / write speeds and / or safety – depending on the chosen setup. Below I will describe the most common RAID setups...

In RAID 0 (also known as "striping") multiple disks (requires a minimum of two disks) are "pooled" together and would thus appear as a single hard drive on your computer, i.e. putting two 2TB drives in a RAID 0 setup, these appear as a single 4TB disc. The advantage of a RAID 0 setup is that it achieves better performance in terms of higher read and write speeds compared to a single harddrive. Let us take an example, suppose a RAID 0 setup with two disks each of which has a read speed of 100 Mb per second. Suppose we want to download a file of 1200 mb. If we had not set up a RAID 0 and had to retrieve the file from one disk, we could only get 100 mb / sec, ergo it will take 12 seconds to load the entire file. If we compare this with a RAID 0 setup with two disks, we could get 100 mb / sec from both drives at the same time - that is 200 mb / sec – by which we will be able to download the file in 6 seconds. The rate can be increased further by using more disks. With three discs, we will thus be able to get 300 mb / sec, so it will take 4 sec. With four discs we will be able to load 400mb/sek corresponding to a 3sec loading time, etc. The downside of RAID 0 is the lack of security. If one of the disks fails, all data is lost without possibility to restore the data.

RAID 1 (also known as "mirroing") can be considered the opposite of the RAID 0. In RAID 1 discs are "mirrored", so that a file is written to all disks in the RAID 1 setup. If one of the harddrives fails the files will still be redeemable from other disc(s). Suppose, as before a setup consisting of two 2TB harddrive, but this time in a RAID 1 setup. These hard drives drives will appear as one drive on 2TB on your computer. Note that with RAID 1 you achieve less available space than with RAID 0 with the same number of disks (if they are of the same size). The advantage of RAID 1 is safety; If one disk fail, you data is not lost. You will be able to replace the defective hard drive, and the healthy disc will then restore the files to the new hard drive so that the two hard drives are again “mirrored”. The disadvantage of RAID 1 is - apart from the less available space mentioned earlier - is that you will not achieve the same level of performance (I.e. speed) as RAID 0. Finally, it is important to note that the RAID 0 (or the more advanced configurations RAID) is not a foolproof protection against data loss. It designed to protect you from hard drive failure. For example, RAID cannot restore deleted files (whatever they are deleted by humans or programs / virus). It is therefore important to know the limitation of RAID and don’t misinterpret it with a backup of your data.

If three (or more) hard drives are used, more advanced RAID setups can be selected, such as RAID 5. A RAID 5 can be seen as something in between RAID 0 and 1, gaining both speed and safety. In a RAID 5 setup no data will be lost if one of the discs fail. This is due to one of the disks being used to write a checksum, making the system able to reconstruct the data on the broken disc. A simple way to explain this is to consider the three disks as variables in an equation, such as: 2 +2 = 4. We assume therefore that hard drive A will contain the value 2, HDD B equally, while the hard drive C will contain the value 4 ("checksum"). The system is safe as long as only one disk fails, since the system is able to derive the missing information (one equation with one unknown variable) if you remove one of the variables (i.e. the broken disc), which will be reconstructed as soon as the failed disk has been replaced. A RAID 5 setup is both a fast and secure. The disadvantage is that the read / write speed in a RAID 5 setup will be slower than an equivalent RAID 0 setup with the same number of disks (but still faster than RAID 1).

Lastly, RAID 0 +1 and RAID 1 +0 should be mentioned. These are, as the names suggests, a combination of RAID 0 and 1 The difference between RAID 0 +1 and RAID 1 +0 is whether the hard drives are mirrored or striped first. The advantage of a these types of setup is that you achieve all the benefits of both RAID 0 and 1. That is a system that is safe and as fast as RAID 0. The disadvantage is that it requires double the number of disks, which will make the set-up of more expensive. The minimum number of disks is four hard drives, but can be expanded to any (evenly) number of hard drives.

Above, I have described the most common and most used RAID setups. However, there are several additional RAID setups, although less frequently used. Please also note that the explanations given here is heavily simplified, but will however – hopefully – given an easily digestible overview of the different RAID systems.

Welcome to my blog "My Digital Life"

2012-08-08T13:27:00.000-07:00

Hello and welcome to my blog My Digital Life!

The purpose of this blog is primarily to share my own experiences with various gadgets and describe how I have organized "My Digital Life" in a smart and simple way, while it meets the needs here in our home, in terms of subjects like images, media center, "Intelligent Home", sports activity and general lifestyle. The target audience for this blog is everyone who wants to know more about how you can arrange your life in an EASY, SIMPLE, SMART and AUTOMATIC way using digital means - without necessarily compromising on quality...

The content will be presented in an easy way, so if you are completely new to the digital lifestyle, feel free to read along. Hopefully you will get some tips on how to get started without the need of more advance IT skills. Hopefully you will expand your horizon and learn a bit about how you can (read: how we have) embraced the digital lifestyle.

The motivation for this blog is that I often have found myself searching the internet to find help for a specific piece of software, or find a review of a gadget, or something like that. Now I will give back the experience I have made (and future experiences) to the online community. I am not in any way affiliated with the companies mentioned on this blog - I have chosen to describe these things because they help me to organize my digital life and meet the wishes and preferences we have in our household.

Well, who am I then? And what preferences do I have to My Digital Life? I am a 27-year old educated engineer, and while many may think that we eat binary numbers for breakfast, differentiate for fun and only speaks C +, I do prefer a simple setup with a straightforward and user friendly interface. One of the success criteria for how I arrange my digital life is that my girlfriend can (and - equally important – are willing) to take advantage of the many benefits of embracing the digital age in full.

What then is the goal of my digital life? I will make a comparison with a car. Today's cars have become so sophisticated and have multiple support systems (like ABS, ESP, GPS, power steering, etc.). Y ou do not notice all these underlying systems in everyday life, but they are key aspect in helping the driver to accomplish what really is the most important, namely to drive the car. Similarly, I have tried to use technology to help us focus on the content rather than the underlying and surrounding systems. And if an accident occurs, today's cars are also extremely safe (e.g. including Airbacks) and designed to minimize the consequences of accidents. Similarly, in our household we also have underlying systems that constantly ensures that our digital life are synchronized and backed up, in order to minimize the effects of accidents and prevent data loss. The idea here is that one should not pay attention to these systems, they should just work automatically so that you can focus on what is important for you, while knowing you knowing that your data is safe. The idea behind the digital life is that everyone should be able to utililize the benefits as easily as they would get behind the wheel of a car and drive away. Stated briefly: the goal of my digital life is to increase the quality of life by using technology, so we can focus on the things that have the most value to us.

Throughout this blog I will be talking about the following subjects (among others):

* Sonos: a wireless high quality music system throughout the home (more info can be found on Sonos's own website).

* EAC: How can we digitize our CD's and automatically saves the song title and artist into the song's metadata?

* Mp3tag (and other) programs that I use to tag my music and manage the metadata of my music library in order to ensure that I have the correct metadata and cover art embedded into the song-file.

* Synology NAS: Large digital network attached (NAS) storage for all your devices throughout the household.

* Cloud Solutions: How do I use programs like Dropbox and Evernote.

* Technology & sports: How to "track" our route when we are hiking-/biking-/rowing?

* Garmin Forerunner 910XT: GPS & Heart Rate wristwatch for triathletes.

* How capture our vacation with photos?

* Panasonic Lumix DMC-FT4: Underwater Camera with Quad Indicator (GPS, compass, altimeter and pressure gauge).

* GeoSetter: Wonderful program to (automatically) to geotag your (vacation) pictures. Can also be used to view / set the direction in 3which a picture is taken.

* Facetag pictures: Picasa vs. Windows Live Gallery.

* Withings scale: Bathroom scale with built-in WiFi that automatically logs your weight progress.

* Digitization of VHS tapes: For all of us who want to perpetuate our old memories.

* Media Center: I will talk about my thoughts on this topic.

* iPad: How we used it to control media center (and the rest of the digital home).

* Backup & environmental care: less "exciting" topics, but at least equally important.

And last but not least, how do we get all of this to act together in an EASY, SIMPLE, SMART and AUTOMATIC way so that our digital active lifestyle are up-to-date, synchronized and ready to take on the world?