Mac Geekery

Torrents rock, right? But what if you have a PowerBook, where it’s hard to keep the machine running long enough for those really big downloads? Mac mini and Azureus to the rescue!

I recently bought a Mac mini at the local AppleStore and promptly wired it up in my entertainment system (more on that later!) and as I’m busily ripping all my DVDs to MP4 for true Video On Demand, it occurred to me that I finally have a stable, always-on system. The only problem was that I only have a TV hooked up to it, and no keyboard or mouse. How to start up the torrents? A jaunt through the Azureus prefs turned up a watch folder option, just what we need.

In preferences, go to “files” and then “torrents” and you’ll see this option.

Now, I just start copying new torrents to the specified torrents folder and within a minute or so Azureus starts the download.

For good measure, I have OSXvnc running so that I can tweak the order and priority of my currently running torrents, see when they’re done, etc.

Now, if only Azureus could send me an email when it’s done…