• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

  • Home
  • About
  • People
    • Christina & Avinash Meetoo
    • Avinash Meetoo
    • Christina Meetoo
    • Anya Meetoo
    • Kyan Meetoo
  • General
    • News
    • Mauritius
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Business
    • Travel
  • Computing
    • Apple
    • Linux
    • LUGM
    • Programming
    • Web
    • Technology
    • Knowledge Seven
  • Entertainment
    • Music
    • Movies
    • Photography
    • Sports

Archives for August 2008

May The Force Be With You, Mr Bruno Julie!

18 August 2008 By Avinash Meetoo 38 Comments

 

 

22 August 2008 Update II: Bruno Julie has earned a Bronze medal for all of us!

 

Bruno Julie lost on points against the Cuban. Even though I am completely ignorant of boxing techniques, I felt that Bruno Julie was tired at the end. The TV commentator suggested that the referee made a mistake but, frankly, I don’t have a clue…

The most important thing is that Bruno Julie is officially now the first ever Mauritian to earn a Bronze medal at the Olympics. It will be years (at least 4 more) before another Mauritian tries to equal this so this is a fantastic achievement. Congratulations to you, once more, Mr Bruno Julie!

My wife, my two kids and myself will be at the SSR International Airport to welcome Mr Bruno Julie to Mauritius! Who is coming?
 
22 August 2008 Update I: Bruno Julie’s fight at 15:31 today!

Today, at 15:31, a lot of Mauritians will stop whatever they are doing and watch Bruno Julie’s fight against Yankiel Leon Alarcon of Cuba during the first semi-final of the 54Kg boxing competition at the 2008 Beijing Olypics.

Bruno Julie is already sure of winning a Bronze medal at least. And this is a first for our tiny country, Mauritius. I sincerely hope that Bruno Julie’s performance will make Mauritians realize the importance of preserving our unity and working towards the same goals and objectives. Allé Bruno! Allé Maurice!

18 August 2008 Update: The first ever Olympic medal for Mauritius!

Bruno Julie has won convincingly. Therefore, he is the first ever Mauritian to obtain an Olympic medal. He now is in the semi-final. Who knows what may happen next.

Thank you for giving us, fellow Mauritians, so much joy. And May The Force Be With You for the next fight!

18 August 2008: May The Force Be With You, Mr Bruno Julie!

Today is an historic day for our tiny country, Mauritius, as Bruno Julie, will fight in the men’s 54kg boxing quarterfinal in the Beijing 2008 Olympics at exactly 15:16. If he wins against Hector Manzanilla Rangel of Venezuela, he will be the first Mauritian ever to win an Olympic medal and he’ll be one of the few real heroes of our country.

Good luck, Mr Bruno Julie! May The Force Be With You!

Filed Under: Mauritius, News, Sports

The Rajiv Gandhi Science Centre in Mauritius

12 August 2008 By Avinash Meetoo 5 Comments

The Rajiv Gandhi Science Centre which is at Bell Village is one of the most well-kept secrets in Mauritius!

We went there two weeks ago with average expectations… We payed (I believe) Rs. 30 for a ticket. The first nice surprise was that there were a lot of things to experiment with in the yard. Things like using parabolas to transmit sound very efficiently (3rd picture) and lots of optical illusion experiments (4th and 5th pictures above.) As you can expect, the kids were having a lot of fun. And Christina and I were happy to answer all their questions.

Inside we got our second surprise: there were so many things to see (the story of the universe, the geological story of Mauritius, lots of background info on great scientists, etc.) and also so many things to experiment with (see the photos.) Anya, Kyan and their cousin, Chloé, were running everywhere trying out things and having a lot of fun! As a scientific, I was ecstatic. I couldn’t prevent myself wondering why some science classes (at primary and secondary levels) were not done there. I’m sure students would have understood a lot more.

I have to admit that there are some problems. Some of the experiments have stopped working and should be repaired. Applying fresh paint would not be a bad idea at all especially outside. But apart from those “details” which are so easy to remedy, the Rajiv Gandhi Science Centre is a great place to go to spend some hours and learn a lot at the same time.

Go there one day and I’m sure you’ll like it. We did.

(Click on the picture above or here for additional photos.)

Filed Under: Education, Mauritius, News, Technology

Incremental backup of iPhoto ’08 library using SuperDuper!

7 August 2008 By Avinash Meetoo 13 Comments

iPhoto is an excellent Mac OS X application created by Apple which is used by countless amateurs (like yours truly) to manage their digital photo collection. Since the release of iPhoto ’08, a lot of people have wondered how to do an incremental backup of their library as this latest version of iPhoto keeps the library in a package (a special type of folder) instead of a plain folder and some backup applications have trouble with that. (An update: I tried doing the same thing with the latest HFS+-aware version of rsync 3.0 but I couldn’t do it as it seems to me that rsync does not copy all the metadata created by Mac OS X. Maybe I missed an option…)

 

I’ve managed to do incremental backups (i.e. quick and painless) using my registered version of SuperDuper! It’s important to use a registered version of SuperDuper! in order to do smart updates which is what SuperDuper! calls incremental backups. The non-registered version of SuperDuper! cannot do incremental backups which means that the whole iPhoto library will be copied over when doing a backup (which means 15Gb in my case…)

This great backup software is normally used to backup a whole partition (i.e. my MacBook’s hard disk) to another partition (i.e. a partition on an external drive which can then be used to boot the MacBook.) I’ve just realized that it’s relatively straightforward to restrict the files to be backed up to a selection (i.e. your iPhoto library only…) and, instead of the destination being a partition, to choose a sparse image (i.e. a special file containing other files and which takes up only as much actual disk space as the data contained within.)

Step 1

First of all, select the partition where the iPhoto ’08 library resides in ‘Copy’ (mine is Multimedia.) Then select where the sparse image will reside (I chose a folder on another disk.) Then you’ll have to create what SuperDuper! calls a copy script which will be used to indicate what to copy and what to ignore. To do that click on the drop down next to ‘using’ and choose ‘New Copy Script.’

Step 2

Write a nice description and make sure that the ‘Allow the user to select this script’ is ticked.

Step 3

In the ‘Included Scripts’ tab, click on the ‘+’ and choose the predefined ‘Exclude all files’ script. This is to make sure that SuperDuper! only backups those files and folders that you’ll explicitly specify and ignore all the rest. This is essential.

Step 4

Then, in the ‘Script Commands’ tab, navigate to the folder where the iPhoto library is found and select it. Click on ‘Add Item’ and it will be added in the top part of the window. The default command is ‘ignore.’ Change that to ‘copy.’ As you can easily guess, this, combined with the ‘Exclude all files’ seen previously, will tell SuperDuper! to only consider the iPhoto library and nothing else which is what we want.

Click on ‘Close.’ and give a sensible name to the script (‘Backup iPhoto library’ is nice…)

Then you can click on ‘Copy Now’ and, voilà, an incremental backup is done! Remember to use a registered version of SuperDuper!

Filed Under: Apple, Programming, Technology

Primary Sidebar

Our Personal Websites

Avinash Meetoo
Christina Meetoo
Anya Meetoo
Kyan Meetoo

Random Posts

The Blue Penny is a good Mauritian movie

Wishes for 2007

Incremental backup of iPhoto '08 library using SuperDuper!

Recent Comments

  • Memento Mori by Depeche Mode on I have my dream HiFi setup: Audiolab and Elac
  • Avinash Meetoo on High-End Hi-Fi Audio Companies
  • Gerard Chavagnan on High-End Hi-Fi Audio Companies

Archives

  • March 2023 (5)
  • February 2023 (1)
  • December 2022 (1)
  • November 2022 (1)
  • October 2022 (4)
  • August 2022 (3)
  • July 2022 (3)
  • June 2022 (5)
  • May 2022 (5)
  • January 2022 (3)
  • December 2021 (2)
  • November 2021 (1)
  • October 2021 (1)
  • September 2021 (4)
  • August 2021 (2)
  • July 2021 (14)
  • May 2021 (2)
  • April 2021 (4)
  • March 2021 (9)
  • February 2021 (2)
  • January 2021 (1)
  • October 2020 (1)
  • September 2020 (1)
  • August 2020 (2)
  • July 2020 (5)
  • June 2020 (3)
  • May 2020 (5)
  • April 2020 (6)
  • March 2020 (2)
  • February 2020 (2)
  • January 2020 (2)
  • October 2019 (1)
  • September 2019 (2)
  • July 2019 (2)
  • June 2019 (1)
  • May 2019 (3)
  • April 2019 (2)
  • March 2019 (1)
  • February 2019 (1)
  • January 2019 (3)
  • December 2018 (1)
  • October 2018 (3)
  • August 2018 (2)
  • July 2018 (2)
  • June 2018 (1)
  • May 2018 (1)
  • April 2018 (1)
  • February 2018 (1)
  • December 2017 (1)
  • October 2017 (1)
  • September 2017 (1)
  • August 2017 (1)
  • July 2017 (1)
  • May 2017 (4)
  • April 2017 (3)
  • March 2017 (4)
  • February 2017 (5)
  • January 2017 (3)
  • October 2016 (1)
  • September 2016 (1)
  • August 2016 (4)
  • July 2016 (1)
  • June 2016 (1)
  • March 2016 (3)
  • February 2016 (3)
  • January 2016 (1)
  • December 2015 (1)
  • November 2015 (2)
  • September 2015 (1)
  • August 2015 (3)
  • March 2015 (1)
  • December 2014 (1)
  • November 2014 (4)
  • October 2014 (1)
  • March 2014 (2)
  • February 2014 (3)
  • December 2013 (1)
  • October 2013 (1)
  • September 2013 (1)
  • August 2013 (1)
  • July 2013 (1)
  • June 2013 (2)
  • May 2013 (1)
  • March 2013 (3)
  • January 2013 (2)
  • December 2012 (3)
  • November 2012 (4)
  • September 2012 (3)
  • August 2012 (2)
  • July 2012 (3)
  • June 2012 (2)
  • May 2012 (1)
  • April 2012 (2)
  • February 2012 (1)
  • January 2012 (4)
  • December 2011 (2)
  • November 2011 (1)
  • October 2011 (4)
  • September 2011 (2)
  • August 2011 (1)
  • July 2011 (2)
  • June 2011 (4)
  • April 2011 (7)
  • March 2011 (2)
  • February 2011 (1)
  • January 2011 (3)
  • November 2010 (3)
  • October 2010 (1)
  • September 2010 (2)
  • August 2010 (4)
  • July 2010 (2)
  • June 2010 (1)
  • May 2010 (3)
  • April 2010 (4)
  • March 2010 (3)
  • February 2010 (3)
  • January 2010 (5)
  • December 2009 (2)
  • November 2009 (3)
  • October 2009 (1)
  • September 2009 (5)
  • August 2009 (3)
  • July 2009 (1)
  • June 2009 (3)
  • May 2009 (2)
  • April 2009 (7)
  • March 2009 (12)
  • February 2009 (10)
  • January 2009 (5)
  • December 2008 (4)
  • November 2008 (11)
  • October 2008 (6)
  • September 2008 (7)
  • August 2008 (3)
  • July 2008 (8)
  • June 2008 (6)
  • May 2008 (5)
  • April 2008 (7)
  • March 2008 (6)
  • February 2008 (3)
  • January 2008 (6)
  • December 2007 (11)
  • November 2007 (10)
  • October 2007 (7)
  • September 2007 (9)
  • August 2007 (3)
  • July 2007 (7)
  • June 2007 (8)
  • May 2007 (14)
  • April 2007 (11)
  • March 2007 (18)
  • February 2007 (14)
  • January 2007 (15)
  • December 2006 (16)
  • November 2006 (10)
  • October 2006 (7)
  • September 2006 (8)
  • August 2006 (8)
  • July 2006 (6)
  • June 2006 (4)
  • May 2006 (13)
  • April 2006 (10)
  • March 2006 (11)
  • February 2006 (7)
  • January 2006 (14)
  • December 2005 (8)
  • November 2005 (6)
  • October 2005 (7)
  • September 2005 (2)
  • August 2005 (6)
  • July 2005 (2)
  • June 2005 (6)
  • May 2005 (15)
  • April 2005 (12)
  • March 2005 (3)
  • February 2005 (8)
  • January 2005 (3)
  • December 2004 (1)
  • November 2004 (2)
  • October 2004 (2)
  • September 2004 (3)
  • August 2004 (3)
  • July 2004 (3)
  • June 2004 (3)
  • May 2004 (6)
  • April 2004 (10)
  • March 2004 (12)
Creative Commons License This work is licensed by Avinash Meetoo under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License.