Author: Bob Martens

Categories
Technology

Changes to Backups

Back in Rethinking Backups I spoke at length about some plans I had for backing up the machines we have in our house.

Well, over a year later, it is time to both rethink the system and finally implement the entire thing.

 What’s Changing

I’ve been backing up to a FreeNAS box for the past few months and then making a single clone to a 250 GB hard drive periodically. However, a couple of things have changed since then.

  1. My wife has started taking photos for clients again, which is awesome. What that means is that we are keeping GBs of client photos on her laptop at the moment and I want to make sure that nothing happens to those photos.
  2. I want to start integrating AirPlay speaker systems into the house, which requires rethinking the networking infrastructure a little bit.

So I’m ditching the FreeNAS box for a Time Capsule and moving on from there.

What Is It Going to Be

It is a three-tier system that will be used on the most sensitive device: my wife’s MacBook.

  1. Time Machine backups to the Time Capsule.
  2. CrashPlan backups to “The Cloud”.
  3. Two rotating external hard drives for bootable clones which will be triggered by two events:
    1. One week since last backup.
    2. Client photos loaded onto laptop.

That hard drive will then be taken off-site and stored for emergencies (probably at the farm). That’s in case everything else fails or the house burns down. Neither of which I want to happen.

For my own machine, it will be much more subdued. I already backup the important documents to Dropbox (since I’m not dealing with image files), and any important code is on GitHub or Dropbox as well. This leaves mainly some less important documents, my few images, and any customization I’ve made to my machine.

I’ll be using CrashPlan and a single external hard drive for a period clone to handle that part.

I’ve been burned once before by losing data, I’m doing what I can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Categories
Technology

New iMacs Incoming?

Mac Rumors piggy backs on a report from FoxNews.com’s Clayton Morris that Apple is very close to releasing new iMac models.

My response? Please oh please oh please.

I’m still fully expecting a simple MacBook Air-esque update to Ivy Bridge with the inclusion of USB 3.0 (which is really nice) more than a huge Retina display update. Just the increase in processing power and the inclusion of USB 3.0 is “good enough” for me at the moment.

No news on the Mac mini also receiving an update, but one can hope that it will happen at the same time.

Categories
Technology

Self Inflicted Stupidity

I was working on some iOS programming today and was hitting my head against what was seemingly an immovable problem.

I could not get one of my statements to resolves to true. No matter what I would do, it would always resolve to false and mess everything up.

I stared at the problem for probably a half-hour before it finally hit me.

Arrays are zero-indexed.

Yup, of course it to going to resolve to false when it will NEVER be equal. Never. Ever. Period. No amount of hoping will change it. In programming, n will never  be equal to n + 1. it just won’t happen.

So … sometimes you need to take a step back and just think things through a little bit. Even the most basic of computing tenets sometimes escape your brain and need to be unearthed again.

Wow.

Categories
Life Technology

What I Want from Podcasts.app

I tried out Podcasts.app again recently just to see if the fixes that have been released make the app easier to use. While it does smooth over some of the rough edges, there are still a few things I would like to see change before I move away from Instacast.

  • Podcast.app for the OS X. You can still sync through iTunes (there would be some hook through there like iPhoto), but a dedicated app would decouple one thing from iTunes and bring a little more sanity between iOS and OS X.
  • Better iCloud syncing. Just make it so that you don’t have to hook it up to iTunes for playlists and the like to transfer over … let iCloud handle that. Subscriptions, current location within podcast, settings, etc. could all be sent between your iOS devices, your Mac, and even the Apple TV. THAT would be cool.
  • Allow subscriptions without taking you out of the podcast directory. This is annoying because you can’t subscribe to multiple podcasts as easily as it would be if the app would just sit still for one minutes.
  • Better library management of played podcast episodes. Right now I just cannot seem to get the settings correct to allow me to subscribe to a podcast, remove those that I have already listened to, and then still get new episodes. Always have issues with that.

The idea of a Podcasts.app that bridges between the iOS and OS X worlds is cool, but it is not there yet.

Categories
Technology

Saving Point-and-Shoots

Engadget asks if Android can save the point-and-shoot camera industry and I think it is a valid question.

I think the issue really comes down to this: is it still another device you need to carry with you? If you can’t eliminate a device, then I don’t think this is going to save anything.

Yes, it can take better pictures than the camera on your phone, but that tiny little camera keeps getting better and better and we are at the point where the difference is worth not having to carry along another device. With limited space and more and more gadgets to carry with you, convergence will happen around those devices that can easily be combined without losing functionality (or gaining some). Cameras and phones are the best case of this.

There are always going to be cheaper point-and-shoot cameras around, but the days of that market growing are pretty much over. The real advances will be happening in the phone and higher-end space.