Conversion work to Dokuwiki

Well, despite the availability of macros for converting from either MS Word or OO Writer to Dokuwiki, the work hasn’t been that straightforward. Quite a few things don’t get converted properly, so quite a bit of manual editing needs to be done. This will probably take a few weeks at least..oh well..

Also came across an online conversion tool that seems to produce somewhat more reliable results. Only thing though, is that I’d first have to convert the document to HTML first, and then use this online tool to convert the HTML markup to Wiki markup. Looks good thus far.

http://diberri.dyndns.org/wikipedia/html2wiki/index.html

Getting started on that intranet wiki

My workplace will be converting some documents into a wiki format, partly to make it more searchable. Alas, none of the open source wikis I’ve looked at has an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor. To manually convert hundreds of pages of documentation into wiki syntax would definitely be a most daunting task!

So I was really happy when I came across the following macros:

MSWord to DokuWiki
OpenOffice Writer 2 to DokuWiki
I’m really excited because this should significantly speed up the conversion process! Will update on the outcome in a few weeks!

DIY File Server to Qnap TS-101

Just a few months ago I put in quite a bit of effort reading up on the best/easiest way to set up a file server on my old AMD Duron 800MHz PC for the home network. I settled on installing Clark Connect and used it as a DIY Network Attached Storage (NAS) device.

But today, I migrated my file server to the decidedly specialised Qnap TS-101 device. So what’s with the switch? Was it the lower power consumption? The much smaller size? The lack of fan noise? The sleek looks? The faster read & write speeds?

Well, all the above played a part in the decision. But the biggest reason is that…the Duron 800 PC simply refused to boot up anymore. Good old Duron…stayed with me since my undergraduate days and gave nary a problem. Farewell old friend!

I did have a little headache when trying to copy the data off the drives in the Duron PC though, as they were in Ext3 format. I installed the Ext2 driver for Mac, but the Ext3 partition simply wouldn’t mount.  What a nightmare! Thankfully, I remembered that my Macs can boot to Windows…and thus use the Ext2 IFS driver for Windows! Surprisingly enough, it mounted the partitions right away with no problems. Speed was also really good!

I now have all my data copied over to my new 500GB TS-101 file server. The write speed is definitely better than my old Duron PC and everything was copied over rather quickly.

Will post more thoughts on the TS-101 over the next few days.