I have a blog?

It is very sad and very scary. I hope Travis is doing ok. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26803108/

Just shows you how easily things can be take away.

I have alway heard alot about rsync but never used it. Now more than ever I think about backing up my information. I just think about how much I would lose if I didn't back up my picture of my son. So here comes rsync.

It does require that you have a remote or local server access via ssh or if you can run the daemon version of rsync.

Here are some example commands that I have been playing with.

This command will send files and folders in /backup/ to the configured rsync location on the server(test).

 rsync -v -r --delete /backup/ server::test/
 -v = verbose
 -r = recursive
 --delete = will delete the files on the remote machine if you delete them locally

This is the reverse command. Sending files from the server to your local machine.

 rsync -v -r --delete server::test/ /backup/

To go along with this if you are using a windows machine you can still use rsync with a few more hoops to jump through.

This download link http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/download.html will get you to a windows version of rsync. It uses cygwin so when you specify the folder you will need to append /cygdrive/c before the /backup to specify C:\backup on your windows machine.

Finally, I pondered the ability to have a shared point to distribute information. An example is that my parents want full copies of our son's pictures. So if I could setup an rsync connection we could all add pictures to the rsync bucket and then each have a folder that we add content to. Those folders would be syncronized together and we could copy out the files that we want to keep. An initial gui with all the values hard coded is below using shoes, by whytheluckystiff.

 <http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/shoes/>

CODE:

 Shoes.app :height => 150, :width => 250 do
   background rgb(240, 250, 208)
   stack :margin => 10 do
     button "SyncToBucket" do
     SyncToBucket = system('cmd.exe /c C:\rsync\bin\rsync.exe -v -r --delete /cygdrive/c/backup/pat server::test/pat')
     if SyncToBucket == true
         @label.replace "Your files have are syncronized to the Bucket"
     else
         @label.replace "Failed to sync to Bucket"
     end
     end
     button "SyncFromBucket" do
       SyncFromBucket = system('cmd.exe /c C:\rsync\bin\rsync.exe -v -r --delete --exclude=pat/* server::test/ /cygdrive/c/backup/')
     if SyncFromBucket == true
         @label.replace "Your files have are syncronized from the Bucket to you"
     else
         @label.replace "Failed to sync from the Bucket"
     end
     end
     @label = para "Press ", strong("start"), " to begin timing."
   end
 end

Resources.

http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/

http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/download.html

http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/shoes/

I have not been a big fan of dotMac mainly because I have had my own hosting but always like the fact that it was hosting anyone could use. Now I think it is great that someone took that Idea and created notMac. I would only have to say the lack of support for Linux shoots themself in the foot. But a Linux and Windows port is on the way. Check it out.

notMac Challenge :: View topic - Ben Spink Wins the notMac Challenge

I really really do not like to have to think about how to project information onto the world. If I can be done with this stuff right now I would be happy. But sadly I do not have that luxury.

Well that is all I have for today.

They won't apologize if they step on your toes when they develop updates but they won't pull a Microsoft where they deliberately write code to stop you.

Thanks Apple!

Apple: You have our blessing to hack the iPhone to bits

Holy Drobo!

This is the holy grail of backup. I have been looking for a solution and I might have found it. You can feed it hard drives of various sizes, without buying enclosures for the drives, and it just works. The same reason why I now only use Apple products. Because it works.

When I think of configuring a RAID array it makes me queasy, so I say get a Drobo, and don't put yourself through the headache.

Data Robotics, Inc.

I was reminded of the Drobo by this article on http://www.digg.com

http://baratunde.com/blog/archives/2007/09/please_backup_your_hard_drive_now_twice.html

iPhone Unlock

I have never been big into cellphones. I use it to call but when the iPhone came out it changed the game. iPhones were bad ass, but I drop my phone alot, and my son likes chuck my phone at various objects, so I think I will be waiting for something a lot less pricey before I purchase one of these.

Unlock away.....

iPhoneSIMfree goes retail, let the unlocking begin - Engadget

I finished.... I had a lot less time than I thought I would this weekend. Between having to go out of town and my 1 year old son, only caught about 6 hours of coding. (part of that was setting up the server too)

http://www.mysocialbuddy.com

The Idea

The idea is that there are many social networking sites, but no common link between them. My Social Buddy can be the middleman between them. You manually add friends and then add links to their multiple accounts. So your friend Steve has a Facebook account, and a MySpace account, so you add Steve as a friend. Then add a link to Steve called Facebook and another link to Steve called MySpace. Each point to the profile of Steve on each site. The site is not flashy but does the job.

I have even started to use as somewhat of a bookmarking system for myself too.

Check it out. I am going to move it from the competition servers at the end of this month to my slicehost.com account. So you will be able to use this even when then voting of the competition is over.

Don't forget to vote for me!

http://mysocialbuddy.vote.railsrumble.com/

Are You Ready To RUUUUUMMMMBBBBLLEE

Cause you know I am. I am excited to enter this competition. I know I don't have a chance at winning because I found out that I am going to be gone for part of the weekend. But my idea is not a very complex one and I think I can have a simple site done in time.

Stay Tuned for more details!.....

http://railsrumble.com/ Rails Rumble September 8-9, 2007

RM-Install

Now this is great to see. I would have liked to see this a month ago when I was trying to install imagemagick and rmagick. I swear I followed I don't know how many blogs and wikis and some how it finally worked. But FiveRuns has put it all in one nice package. It is only for OS X Intel and Linux but they are going to have others OS instances to follow. But they hit all of my needs. Thanks FiveRuns.

Link

FiveRuns™ – Management Suite for Rails – RM-Install