Oct

2

2 More Simple Home Backup Solutions

Filed Under Doing, How to, In the life | 1 Comment

Welcome! You appear to be new here (or you've reset your cookies recently). If you're new here, you may want to browse around a bit and find out what the site is about. I encourage you to register for the RSS feed or to receive updates through email. Thanks for visiting!


Information Superhighway
Creative Commons License photo credit: nickwheeleroz

With the financial crisis swirling around this week, I took another look at ways I keep my data safe. To best achieve this, offsite backups are a must. Should my computers become damaged or stolen, my data is still secure.

I’ve written before about Mozy, an effective automated system, but recently I’ve discovered a couple of other ways to ensure my data is safe. These solutions are simple file-copy based, but work well for most applications.

Redux
SyncBack (Freeware) is a simple yet effective utility. To quote from the helpfile:

SyncBack Freeware is used to back-up, restore, and synchronize files and directories, whether they be on a local drive, a network drive, an FTP server, a ZIP archive, or on removable media.

And it does exactly that. Through my -host, I have an FTP account that I’m using to regularly my extensive digital photo collection.

SyncBack simply logs into my FTP account, looks for changes in the file or directory structure, and then synchronizes the offsite structure with the local one. Zip compression is an option.

As a freeware utility, it works well, though the full (paid) versions offer more utility including data encryption, CD/DVD and many more. View the handy comparision chart for more details.

Simple Hard Drive — really simple!
My next door neighbour (a bit of a hardware geek) introduced me to the Thermaltake BlacX USB Hard Drive docking station. That’s a mouthful, but it describes the item.

Basically, you plug this little device into any USB 2.0 slot on your PC. Insert a SATA Hard Drive (up to 1 TeraByte) into the dock. A quick initialize and format later, you have a fresh, empty HD on your system.

Setup time: under 2 minutes.
With the cost of drives continuing to drop, this kind of personal complete becomes more and more affordable. My setup cost under $100, CAD.

Your or Mac system will recognize the adapter and drive as a removable storage device. Which means you can now use your favourite software (SyncBack works for this) to save your data. Or, simply copy your files and folders to the new drive.

When you’re done, eject the Hard Drive, and store in a safe place off-site. If you want to get fancy, you could automate your backups to the BlacX drive, and cycle between two (or more) drives, keeping the most recent at work.

The one downside to any solution is the time to . Using SyncBack you can schedule your backups to run evenings or whenever you’re not using the computer. Also, to make your have less impact on your work, you could stagger your : Photos day one, Documents day two, Save games day three..etc.

So, between Mozy, FTP and offsite HD storage, there are many good solutions for the paranoid user to consider.

Sep

30

Telemarketing gains another enemy — the Canadian government

Filed Under Doing, How to, In the life | Leave a Comment


Telemarketing gains another enemy -- the Canadian government (image: )Previously I’d written about iOptOut, a free service, set up by Canadian Law Professor Michael Geist.

Well today citizens of are now able to register on another Do Not Call list, this one run by the government.  Marketers should realize that telemarketing is so 20th century.

But, even with this double-double assault on telemarketers, this new solution isn’t perfect.

The problem is, law allows many exemptions to the Do Not Call regulations, including political parties, survey companies, newspapers and registered charities.

As well, if you have a previous with an organization, yep, they can market to you over the phone.

Now, here’s where iOptOut differs from the federal opt-out .

Under the law, exempted organizations are permitted to make unsolicited telephone calls despite the inclusion of the number in the do-not-call registry. However, organizations must remove numbers from their lists if specifically requested to do so.

iOptOut is a that ’specifically requests’ that your number be removed from telemarketing lists. It fills the holes in the legislation by maintaining a list of organizations (some of which you have dealt with in the past, banks, airlines, etc) and once you set up your profile, contacts them on your behalf and asks for your number to be removed. Simple and effective. And, when coupled with the federal list, maybe even doubly so.

Sep

23

Mini-Book Review: A Case of Exploding Mangoes

Filed Under In the life, Musings, Review | Leave a Comment


Book Cover: A Case of Exploding Mangoes

Yikes! This is waaay overdue (sorry about that) The Mini-Book Expo concept is simple, yet I managed to blow Rule # 4:

Blog it.

* Post something about the within a month of getting it

So, without further ado, here’s my mini !

Title: A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Author: Mohammed Hanif
Publisher: Random House (Canada)

Quick Takes

Pre-read thoughts: This might be interesting. A newsy event (death of Pakistan’s leader) related as a mystery. And other reviews seem to think it mildly amusing. Who knows, I may learn something.

Part-way through: This is one weird-ass .  There’s not enough of a distinction, so maybe the humour is subtle. Yeah, that’s it. Or ironic satire…hmm, but wait, it’s based on reality so maybe there’s something here. I mean, our main character (the son of a disgraced (or not) famous general) is variably infatuated with a military academy room-mate who’s gone AWOL.

Then there’s this crow. A cursed crow. A crow carrying a curse against the dictator of the country!

Basically, there’s a lot of motivation in a lot of characters built up by this point. But the pace of the plot development was slow! I could have ridden a Pakistani Pachyderm faster than this developed. Or maybe that was deliberate — an invisible homage to the slower pace of life in Pakistan.

But I’m still engaged, that’s a good thing.

The End: Ok. It’s over. Not a bad read. I learned a bit more about Pakistan. I learned more about the events surrounding the death of General Zia. I learned that I could read a that wasn’t a fast-paced Tom Clancey action adventure, and still pull some enjoyment from it.

My Take: Frankly, not my cup of tea. It was an interesting read, especially over the summer, but not my normal fare. I found myself wanting to skip ahead as the plot unfolded; yet hesitant to do so as there was the promise of brilliance here. Meh, it didn’t happen.

Sep

18

3 Top Tools To Tame Twitter

Filed Under Doing, In the life, Social Media | 2 Comments


 

Twittermania
Creative Commons License photo credit: Thomas Hawk

As Twitter moves into its more mature phase, a number of have emerged, some good, some not so good. I’m an early adopter and a daily user and have experimented with many over time. Please feel to follow me but without further blather, here’s my top 3, must have, :

  • TwitThis.com — Though showing its age, TwitThis is a very tool. In a nutshell, simply browse to a page that you want to share. Click the TwitThis bookmarklet (that you’ve previously installed). If you’re not logged in to , you’ll be prompted to do so.  A window pops up, and you can edit your Tweet and then send it to your stream. I like it because for quick Tweets, I don’t have to jump to another application, load a tab in my browser, etc.
  • Twitter Twerp Scan — If you care about managing your Followers, then you need to run the Twerp Scan from time to time. Basically, Twerp Scan checks your account for people with extremely high following to follower ratios. These are most likely ‘bots or marketing drones — who could be potentially bringing down the value of your ‘ Juice’ (is there such a thing? I’m thinking of Google Juice here, that mythical elixer that adds Page Rank to your website based on the power of incoming links). You can customize your Twerp ratio but if you have a high number of Twerps, the block/removal process is a bit tedious. Id’ love to see a ‘batch un-follow’.
  • TweetLater.com — Ok, you’ve used for a while, are used to updating your followers, and have a good network that notices when you’re not there. Or you’re the specialist for an organization that uses to keep your informed. Regardless, you also have a need to publish Tweets on a regular basis, then TweetLater is for you.  Simply, it’s a hand site that allows you to queue-up Tweets, to be published at a specific time.  One very and not-so-obvious feature: you can also set TweetLater up to autofollow people who follow you. Reducing your maintenance chores, though I’d remember to run TwerpScan from time to time :) Just to nuke the Twerps.

Sep

14

Google Chrome: a quick look and how to block ads with Privoxy

Filed Under Doing, How to, In the life, Review, Web | 4 Comments


Google Chrome Logo
Creative Commons License photo credit: Randy Zhang

Google Chrome is no Firefox (yet).

For the last week and a bit, off and on,  I’ve been using Chrome (’s new entry into the browser wars). On the 3 XP-based systems I’ve used it on, I’ve found it to be very fast, very efficient, and stable. Pretty good performance for a ‘beta’.

I do have concerns about the way Chrome appears to ‘monitor’ my surfing activity (by using Google Gears functionality), but then again, I use Gmail and other Google Apps so I’m sure the Big G knows all about me at this point.

But, without plugin extensibility, Chrome is currently a curiosity. I won’t be using it for my daily work.

One major annoyance is the lack of Adblock. The is a very marketing-heavy place, and I prefer to selectively view my advertising. The Adblock extension for Firefox allows this.

To achieve an advertising-reduced surfing experience with Chrome, I need to use Privoxy, a local managing Proxy server. It’s a quick install and seems to work flawlessly.

A solution to this for now is http://www.privoxy.org/

1.) Install Privoxy
2.) Click on the Wrench icon in Chrome in the upper right corner
3.) Choose options>Under The Hood>Change proxy settings
4.) A box pops up, choose LAN settings (at least this is what it’s called in Vista)
5.) Check off “Proxy settings” and in the address setting add127.0.0.1 and in the port 8118
6.) If you have the option, you can also check off “Bypass proxy for local settings”
7.) Click “Ok”, close chrome and restart it. 

Tada. Enjoy.

Geekzone provided the process (thanks guys!)

Aug

11

Lesson learned: Relying on one of anything is bad (Gmail Down)

Filed Under Blogging, In the life, News, Social Media | 6 Comments


Lesson learned: Relying on one of anything is bad (Gmail Down) (image: )The world was in a tizzy this afternoon as ’s application crashed and burned.

and Apps for domains all seem impacted.

This is a breaking event so I’ll update this post when more is known. Gmail’s Blog has nothing on it, currently.

*** UPDATE ***
It looks like the big brains at Gmail have fixed the issue.

The issue was caused by a temporary outage in our contacts system that was preventing from loading properly. Everything should be back to normal by the time you read this.

And indeed it does seem to be back to normal. Excellent.

Aug

8

I love mashing technology! (freebies)

Filed Under How to, In the life, Social Media, Web | Leave a Comment


I love mashing technology! (freebies) (image: ) + LinkedIn = Cards


I’ve written before about Moo (cards & stickers) and LinkedIn (the network), but this is the first time I’ve written about both in the same post.

Short story.
is letting you make 50 of their beautiful photo-enhanced business cards for free!

It’s really mashup2
itself is a mashup of the traditional card printing , an card creation and billing model, and an ability to import from Flickr and other sources. The new mashup component is that you can import parts of your LinkedIn profile into the card creation process.

And 50 free Moo cards is always cool.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Jul

22

Bag Open. Cat Out. Internet in danger! OpenDNS to the rescue?

Filed Under Blogging, Doing, How to, In the life, News, Web | Leave a Comment


PDP-11/45 lock
Creative Commons License photo credit: Jef Poskanzer

One little secret that your ISP ( Provider) has likely been involved with is the -wide patching of the Multi-vendor DNS Issue.

Simply, this issue could allow malicious evil-doers to redirect your surfing to websites that they control, intercepting important and private information (such as passwords, banking info, etc).

Frequent Black Hat Speaker Dan Kaminsky today announced a massive, multi-vendor issue with DNS that could allow attackers to compromise any name server - clients, too. Kaminsky also announced that he had been working for months with a large number of major vendors to create and coordinate today’s release of a patch to deal with the vulnerability.

of this industry-wide vulnerability and the collaboration (to fix the flaw) was originally scheduled to be announced at the Black Hat Security Conference in August, but due to the vulnerability being published elsewhere, the presenter thought it best to release the information so that people can take the appropriate actions.

What can you do?
Basically, this is a complex issue, but it boils down to a simple test and a very simple fix.

The test:
To find out if you are vulnerable to this issue, you can use the DNS checker link on Kaminsky’s webpage here (in the upper right corner).

The fix:
If you are vulnurable, then you can either A) wait until your ISP fixes their DNS servers, or B) set your own computer’s DNS strings to point to OpenDNS servers.

I highly recommend option B.

The OpenDNS website has friendly, easy to implement instructions on converting your DNS settings and also offer a whole host of additional features your current ISP may not have:

Features

I’ve written about OpenDNS before, so feel to check out these previous articles and then help save the .

And if you do test your ISP using Dan’s page, please post your results in the comment section! I’ll start things off by adding mine.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

Next Page →