Pic: Eggnog. It must be Christmas Eve!
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Andy
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Andy
Link: Great article that will get you even more annoyed waiting in line at airport security. http://t.co/Q3KFpc0x
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Andy
Never had my coffee mug swabbed by airport security before. Always something new! Other than that I wasn’t “randomly selected” for anything.
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Andy
Just tried to change some Botswana Pula to Canadian dollars but the airport wouldn’t take it. Guess we’ll have to go back to Botswana!
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Andy
Back it up!
As we head towards the holidays, lots of pictures will be taken and lots of memories made. This will be one of my boring blog posts, but as you will see, it is something I believe pretty strongly about. Think of it as and early gift for the holidays!
Many people have different ideas when they think about backing up their files. There are different levels of backup and I try and break it down to the following:
- If I accidentally delete a file, how easily can I get it back?
- If my hard drive fails, how long until I am back up and running?
- If my computer is lost, stolen or damaged, do I have a copy of all my files?
- In the most extreme circumstance, if my house were to burn down, would I lose all my photos? 1
If you can already manage each of those situations, then congratulations. You can stop reading now and be happy knowing that you are well backed up. For the rest of you, if you can hang in there a little longer, I hope to show you that it’s not that hard to be ready for each of the above scenarios.
Here is my complete backup strategy:
Mac OS X Lion – The latest edition of the Mac operating system includes a versioning system that lets you go back in time to older versions of files or retrieve filed that are accidentally deleted. It’s a good first step but most wouldn’t even consider it to be a true backup. All the files are stored on the same hard drive, so if your computer is lost or damaged, so are all the versions of the files.
Time Machine – The easiest routers to setup are the Airport Extreme and the Time Capsule. The Airport Extreme allows you to plug any hard drive into its USB port and use it as a Time Machine backup. The Time Capsule is even easier in that the hard drive is already built in. Once you set this up, every hour, any Mac on your network will automatically backup your hard drive to the Time Machine disk. You don’t need to remember to do anything, it just happens. This is the minimum amount of backup anyone should have since if you lose anything on our Mac, it’s on the Time Machine disk. If you get a new Mac, or your old one is lost or damaged, you can restore the new Mac using the information on the Time Machine disk. This restore takes time though, so I would suggest you take other precautions to be up and running even faster. Also, in the unlikely event that the Time Machine backup becomes corrupt at the exact same time as you need it for a restore, then you will be wishing you had another strategy in place.
Dropbox – You can get 2 GB of storage on Dropbox for free, and increase it based on referrals. 2 Or you can pay for more space. I usually suggest that people keep their “active files” on Dropbox. This means any folders with files you are currently working on or need access to on the go should be in Dropbox. For some people, this might be all files besides photos and music, for others it might be everything. It all depends on your workflow and how often you access old files. The advantage to this is that now your files are accessible from any computer over the web. If your computer becomes unusable, you can use another computer to continue working, especially if you are facing a deadline.
SuperDuper – This is a Mac only utility and I’m not sure if there is an equivalent for other systems. With SuperDuper, you make an exact clone of your hard drive that is bootable. What’s the difference between this and Time Machine? A bootable backup means you can plug the hard drive into any other Mac, boot off the external drive and you have your exact system back up and running. Some people run this every night, so if their hard drive is damaged, they can immediately be back to where they were the night before. And since you’re using Dropbox, any changes to your active files will also stay up to date. Since I store everything in Dropbox, I personally run SuperDuper every 3-4 weeks or after making big changes to my photo library. You need to decide how often to run SuperDuper based on your individual usage patterns.
Multiple Backups – Don’t just make one clone of your hard drive with SuperDuper. Buy two hard drives. Keep one at work, one at home and switch them every month. This way if your house burns down, there is an off-site copy that will never be more than a month behind. Obviously, you can keep theses drives up to date more often depending on your level of comfort and how much you are willing to lose. The key is whatever interval you pick, set a recurring alert in your calendar to remind you to do the backup on a regular basis. Also, try booting from your backup every once in a while to make sure they work.
Online backup – This is the final step, keeping your files safe from a natural disaster that simultaneously wipes out your backups at home and work. (You never know!) There are many services out there depending on your level of paranoia. Personally, I would recommend keeping as many files in Dropbox as you can. Then, for the other files, I would use a combination of Arq and iCloud.
Arq – This allows for a similar strategy to Time Machine as above, but the backup goes to Amazon’s S3 servers which provides redundant backup around the world. You can chose which folders get backed up to S3 and you pay only for the storage you use. I use S3 for all my photos, and pay around $3 per month. The latest pricing is about $0.14 per GB per month. The initial setup of S3 isn’t difficult, but it is not exactly Mac like. Setting up Arq on the other hand is extremely easy and well worth the one time cost of the application.
iCould – Until this past week, I did not have all my music backed up online. I simply had too much music and I didn’t think the time required to upload it all to S3 was worth the time or money to store it all. But, this week, Apple released iTunes Match in Canada. For $27.99 per year, all of my music is backed up to iCloud and accessible from all my devices. The advantage to iTunes Match is that it only uploads files that aren’t in the iTunes store, even if your original files aren’t from iTunes. For me, this meant that less than 20 per cent of my music actually had to be uploaded which is a huge savings in time and bandwidth compared to backing it all up to S3. For the convenience of accessing the music from all of my devices and knowing its all backed up online, it is worth the $27.99 per year.
iOS 5 – If you haven’t updated your iPhone or iPad to iOS 5, do it now. The latest operating system allows for automatic backup to iCloud each night when your device is plugged in. No thinking involved. If the device gets lost or stolen, you can restore your new device online and nothing is lost.
Thanks for hanging in to this point! So, now you might be thinking, it will cost money to by hard drives and it will take time to set all this up. But I think you just need to ask yourself one question: If you were to lose your computer today, and lost all your photos, how much time and money would you be willing to spend to get all your files and photos back? When put in that situation, it would probably be a lot more than the time and money it would take today to protect everything. Just a thought.
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Andy
New post: Taylor Lake, Gatineau Park http://t.co/lWaFhPYS
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Andy
Taylor Lake, Gatineau Park
Photos: Taylor Lake
After all of our African adventures, it is easy to forget that there are many places right in our own backyard for more adventures!
This past weekend was Amanda’s birthday. I booked us a yurt at Taylor Lake in Gatineau Park. We had never hiked out and stayed overnight in Gatineau Park prior to this weekend, so we figured it was a very Ottawa thing to do.
The ground was lightly snow covered which meant it was better to move away from our barefoot shoes, and put on the hiking boots. There was some soggy parts on the trail, so we were both glad we made that choice. The hike was only 6-7 km before we reached Taylor Lake Yurt. Bunk beds, wood stove for heating, propane stove for cooking, candle light – what more could we ask for! I’m glad Amanda likes to do the same outdoor activities as I do. There were a few people at work that were glad I wasn’t getting them birthday presents!
Aside from one minor scare with the carbon monoxide detector going off 1, the hike and overnight stay were uneventful. Just a nice relaxing evening and a great way to celebrate Amanda’s birthday.
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There were warnings that leaving the wood stove door open could cause the carbon monoxide detector to go off. We didn’t think we had it opened for too long, but the detector didn’t agree. After we opened the doors for a couple of minutes and reset the alarm, there were no further issues or scares. ↩
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Andy
Artists should get paid
As many of you know, Amanda and I try to eat organic and fair trade as much as possible. Not only is it healthier, but it also raises personal awareness for what is going into our bodies as well as ensuring that the farming practices are safe for the workers. Most importantly though, fair trade means that workers are adequately paid for what they do.
So what does this have to do with artists? In a similar way, one could say that artists should be paid fairly for what they do. Artists can be writers, poets, musicians, film makers, actors, software developers, etc. By thinking about artists in terms of “fair trade” it raises some interesting issues. Many would argue that music has gotten worse over the years and maybe an album shouldn’t be worth $10 or a song shouldn’t be worth 99 cents. What music is “worth” is something we all need to consider. Instead of then illegally downloading those songs or albums, maybe we should ask if we really need that song in our music collection in the first place. After all, if we are saying that we wouldn’t even pay 99 cents for a song, it can’t really be worth keeping, can it?
The same argument can be made for movies. Many people say they download movies illegally because DVDs and Blu-ray discs are too expensive. If we really feel that buying the movie is too much money, and we don’t even want to spend the money to rent it on iTunes, perhaps the movie really isn’t worth watching.
To put this another way, if we were to start limiting downloading music, movies, books and television shows to legal downloads, where the artists get paid, it is true that we may have to become more selective in what we chose to download. For some, being selective would be a necessity, if only for financial reasons alone. But think about how much more time might be available to do other things by downloading less. Plus, those artists that you do chose to support become that much more special and you know you are supporting the artist to continue producing content that you are willing to buy.
Am I the poster child for what I just wrote? Absolutely not. I feel that I am part way there in that I do my best to support the musicians that I listen to the most or that are my current favorites. I also try to support these artists by attending their shows when they play locally. But there are many songs that I listen to often enough that should have been worth a 99 cent investment at some point.
Here are some suggestions to ensure artists get paid:
- Music – Buy music direct from the artist whenever possible. Musicians make more money if you buy from their websites directly. iTunes is a great choice as well, especially from a convenience stand point. If one of your favorite musicians is in town, buy a ticket to the show to support them even further.
- Movies – No more illegal downloads. I don’t have time to watch that many movies so when I do, I will use Netflix or iTunes to legally watch them and support everyone involved in making the movie. A great side effect of this is that if we stop supporting all the bad movies coming out of Hollywood, maybe they will stop making them!
- Television – We don’t currently subscribe to cable and in general, we only watch one or two shows at any given time. The big issue with television shows is there are some shows that are not available on iTunes or aren’t available in Canada. For shows like this, there is often no choice but to obtain them by other means. But I will try to look for shows on Netflix and iTunes first.
- Software – The majority of software I buy now is on my iPad or iPhone so the only way of installing it, without hacking the device, is through the legal App Store. The Mac App Store is also making installing legal software extremely easy.
- Books – iBooks and Kindle versions of books are readily available. Between the two choices, you would be hard pressed not to find what you are looking for.
If the reasons above aren’t encouraging enough to consider fair trade for entertainment, maybe taking a look at a recent story about a new site will provide a bit more incentive.
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Scott
Great post. I used to use alternative methods, but I omostly use iTunes and kindle. Same as you, some tv shows are hard to come by.
Scott
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Andy
New post: VIDEO: What is the single best thing we can do for our health? http://t.co/yKFddAMD
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Andy
VIDEO: What is the single best thing we can do for our health?
This video by Dr. Mike Evans is a short 9-minute watch with an easy tip as we head into the holiday season and the new year. Straight forward. Easy to understand. We can all do it!
(via Runblogger)
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Andy
New post: Getting rid of “stuff” http://t.co/csyD4BJ2
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Andy
Getting rid of “stuff”
Since Amanda and I have returned from Africa, one of the general themes we keep discussing is how much “stuff” people in North America tend to have – us included! I think that there are a lot of things that we thought we needed, but when you are away and don’t have those things, perspective can change. As we move into the season where people generally accumulate more “stuff”, I thought I would share some of the tips to de-clutter that Jason Robillard posted on his barefoot running website. He draws a lot of parallels between living a minimalist lifestyle and barefoot/minimalist running. You can expect more posts on similar themes in the future.
- Get rid of extra unused clothing. Go to your closet. Turn all hangers around so they’re facing the opposite direction (hook on the backside of the rail.) When you wear an article of clothing and wash it, return it to the rail normally. At the end of one month, you’ll know which clothes you’ve worn and which clothes you haven’t by the hanger position. Donate half of the clothes that were untouched.
- Do the “35 items” challenge. Each day for one week, select five items around your house that you do not use. Place them in a pile somewhere in your house. At the end of the week, donate the pile to a local charity.
- Do a week-long “zero growth” activity. If you buy anything during the week, you must get rid of something of approximately the same size and/or value. The goal is to stop accumulating new stuff.
Feel free to leave any other tips and ideas in the comments!
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Andy
“I’m a Muppet of a man…”
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Andy
.@matt_skinn We watched the 1984 Muppets Take Manhattan to get “warmed up” to see The Muppets on Monday! Can’t wait!
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Andy
10 km run this am. Miss the African roads and scenery but it was good to be back running along the familiar Rideau Canal.
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Andy
This is a quick article for anyone still on the fence about changing their running form. http://t.co/OfIxewyJ
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Andy
Link: A good, quick as we start “The Season of Stuff” – http://t.co/B2rBiyXH
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Andy
And to think we thought it got dark early in Botswana!
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Andy
Back safely in Ottawa with all our bags! It’s cold here!
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Andy
Lots of winter coats and warm clothes in the airport. We are in shorts & sandals. It was > 35 degrees when we left! Currently 4 in London.
Scott 11:50 am on 12/20/2011 Permalink
Hi Andy,
Was the 27.99 you paid for iCloud a set amount, or was it tied to the volume you needed? Was that just for your iTunes Library (music / videos etc), or would it cover other mac digital purchases (iBook etc)?
Scott
Andy 6:00 pm on 12/20/2011 Permalink
The $27.99 is just for iTunes Match and is just for songs not purchased through iTunes. Things purchased through iTunes (aside from movies) can already be re-downloaded to other devices or if lost. Hope that makes sense. The price is a set amount for the service so the size of your music library doesn’t matter.