MacHeist II

macheist2.png

The MacHeist guys are at it again. This time there’s 14 applications in the bundle, but it’s not as obviously a great deal as last time. I succumb to the lure of lots of programs for only a little $$$ anyway though. Here’s the list of applications along with my comments:

  • 1Password – I use Keychain Access instead
  • AppZapper – surprisingly this one is useful since it cleans up Application prefs, etc.
  • Awaken – this will probably be my new travel alarm
  • ChaChing – if it handled stock portfolios this would be more useful
  • CoverSutra – not for me
  • CSSEdit – I almost bought this one before, so I think it’s worth it
  • iStopMotion – not for me
  • Pixelmator – I use Photoshop, but for others this is probably just right
  • Snapz Pro X – good if you write Mac software manuals, overkill for most people
  • Speed Download – Not what I thought it was, doesn’t sound that useful
  • Task Paper – I use iCal for this now.
  • Tiki Magic Mini Golf – Computer golf. Love it or hate it.
  • VectorDesigner – I’ll use it if they unlock it, otherwise I make do with OmniGraffle (which is really a replacement for Visio, not Illustrator)
  • Wingnuts 2 – If it’s as much like TimePilot as I hope, it’ll rock.

Check out the Heist yourself to see if any of this stuff meets your needs. Don’t forget to tell ’em Sandro sent you (my referral link):

https://www.macheist.com/buy/invite/67851

UPDATE: VectorDesigner has been unlocked. I think that actually makes this a really good deal overall.

Backup solutions

Since I’ve started running Leopard the backup situation on my computer systems has gotten much better. It’s not just that Apple has created a slam-dunk solution in Time Machine (trust me it rocks). Or even that Time Machine is a complete backup solution (it isn’t). But that Time Machine has inspired me to get all my ducks in a row.

For starters there are two computers I use regularly: my Macbook Pro, and the household server running FreeBSD. Until I installed Time Machine, neither had a consistent (or even existent) backup strategy. In my mind, a backup strategy must handle three situations:

  1. accidental deletions
  2. hardware failure
  3. site disaster

Since installing Leopard, a clear backup strategy has started to evolve, it’s still not complete, but here’s a table listing I’m dealing with the three aspects of backup/recovery on my two main machines.

Failure Laptop Solution Server Solution
accidental deletion Time Machine snapshot
hardware failure Carbon Copy Cloner RAID-1
site disaster ??? ???


Cheap hard drives makes the first two failures easy to implement solutions for, I spent less than $350 to acquire almost a terabyte of backup disk. Clearly, I’m still looking for a good solution for off-site backups. If anyone is willing to trade bandwidth I’d be interested in using CrashPlan, but I’m open to other suggestions.

How are you handling off-site backups? Leave me a comment and let me know.

New (Computational) Digs

This blog (and indeed all of the household computing services) have moved onto a new server. It took much more time to complete the migration than I had planned, but the current configuration should be good for at least a couple years. A few things to note:

  1. If you were getting services from the knot.org servers, they’re probably not on the new server, unless you’ve already seen them working. I have the data, but I removed the services since they were getting very little use, and I wasn’t in the mood to port over every last bit of data. (What’s the point of cleaning house if everything gets kept?)
  2. Every service that is still running was updated, and the data porter over. Please check out the services you know about and make sure they still work as expected (this blog included). Let me know of any issues you spot.
  3. The new server is faster, but our connection speed is still abysmal, so I’m not sure may people will notice any improvement on the speed front. If things seem slower do let me know.
  4. I’m looking for a good source of secondary DNS — limited funds are available for pay-for-service, free is better :-).
  5. We’re now running software RAID 1 on the server, so what data we have is somewhat protected against hardware failure. I’m looking into further data protection measures. I’ll probably implement soft-update based snapshots, and if anyone is interested, I’d be willing to do some kind of mutual off-site backup scheme (like CrashPlan).

Thanks, and feel free to leave me your comments…

Back in Mac

MacBook ProMy MacBook Pro came back from service last week, and I’m fully operational again. During the week it was gone, I was limping along on a spare laptop running Ubuntu Linux. I’ve needed to send my MBP in for minor service for about 9 months, but there was never a good time. I finally decided that no time would be good, but I wanted to beat the post-Christmas/pre-Macworld rush at Apple Service, so I would just bite the bullet.

Before sending in the mac, I took the time to:

  1. Backup the entire hard drive
  2. Configure Ubuntu Linux with the tools I’d need for up to a month without the mac.
  3. Reformat the mac’s internal drive (I didn’t want my personal data in other people’s hands
  4. Upgraded the MBP to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

I had been meaning to shift to Leopard for a while, but didn’t want to take the 24-48 hour downtime for my normal upgrade rituals.

During the week the mac was in the shop, I felt like I had lost an arm. The Linux box let me get by with my day to day activities, but it wasn’t pleasant. In a word, the experience of living with an Ubuntu system as my sole computing platform isn’t acceptable, and I wouldn’t recommend it to any long-time mac user. Much of the high-level functionality of the computer works well (despite being somewhat clunky), but basic low-level functionality is broken. My laptop never: slept, woke-up, or shutdown properly, and power-consumption was off the charts. While most of the application programs did what I needed, I can say the Mozilla Thunderbird isn’t a mail program I would use everyday, and it’s a miserable RSS reader.

After just one week (which included a week-end and Christmas Day), I got my Mac back. It now has a new screen, new DVD superdrive, and four small rubber feet on the bottom. Immediately jumped in and went through an entire rebuild of my software environment in Leopard. I downloaded, re-installed, and patched every program to the latest levels. I also took the time to drop some programs from my standard set (Yahoo! Widget Engine), and added others (iClip). The vast majority of the upgrade time was spent tracking down current license numbers for all the software I’ve bought (mostly though MacHeist and MacUpdate Promo). After 3 days of installing and patching, everything is up and running. Leopard seems faster, although I’ve found some minor bugs and annoyances.

All in all, it’s good to have the mac back. Kind of like coming home.

Buy Nothing Christmas – revisited

Contrary to popular belief (and my previous post on the matter), I’m not quite taking the hard line approach on buying nothing this Christmas.

While my friend Kevin has put a $100 cap on spending this Christmas, I’ve decided that I’m not giving commercial products sold at retail. The gifts I’ve chosen this year involve making, hacking, or recycling things. I’m trying to give gifts the recipients wouldn’t or couldn’t acquire for themselves. A side-effect of this attempt to avoid the mall as a source of gifts is that I’ll probably stay under $100 as a natural consequence of the decision.

I should also point out that my decision was heavily influenced by what my friends (like Peter and Jef) are doing for presents this year as well.

Photoblog feeds updated.

rss iconThis really only concerns 1 or 2 people in the world, but I just updated the theme for the photoblog to include thumbnail images in the feeds.

Yea!!

Anyone who is using this theme, and would like the current update, should go ahead and contact me directly.

Someday when I’m bored, I’ll write up real instructions for using the theme…

Workflow: Print via SSH

Otto the Automator MascotSince I’ve already posted one script today, here’s another for good measure. This Automator workflow prints PDFs to a remote printer via ssh. I use it to print to the department printserver without using the VPN.

Click here to download the workflow.

To install this workflow:

  1. Edit the script to set your username, SSH hostname, and the printer name
  2. If it doesn’t already exist, create the folder: ~/Library/PDF services
  3. Copy the workflow to this folder

To use this script:

  1. Start to print your document as usual
  2. In the print dialog, click the PDF button (look in the lower left of the dialog)
  3. Select Print via SSH

Note: You must have SSH public key support to be able to run this script.

If you do not know how to set up public key support, tools like SSH Agent or Secure Shell Helper can help.

Feel free to leave me questions in the comments.

Folder Action: SCP folder contents

SCP Folder Contents IconMy buddy Scott is beginning a comparison of Lightroom vs. Aperture (maybe he’ll blog about the results). It turns out that it’s really easy to get Lightroom to upload a web gallery to an FTP server. On the other hand Aperture only has one-click uploading to .Mac; there are plug-ins that allow exporting images directly to a variety of online servers (including FTP), but none of them seem to work with entire web galleries.

Since Aperture can export the web galleries directly to disk, I decided to use a Folder Action to send those files directly to my server via scp (which is more secure than standard FTP).

Click here to download this Folder Action.

You can install this script by copying it into ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts (you might have to create this folder).

To use this applescript:

  1. Create a new folder to use as a dropbox (it can have whatever name you find most descriptive).
  2. Option-Click the new folder and select Get Info from the menu.
  3. Under Spotlight Comments put the destination for the scp transfer in the form: username@hostname:destintation_path.
  4. Option-Click the new folder and select Attach Folder Action...
  5. Find and select “SCP folder contents” in the file chooser.

Note: You must have SSH public key support to be able to run this script to connect securely to the remote system.

Now any files dropped on the new folder you created will be automagically transferred to the remote server (and the local copy is moved to the Trash).

I keep a folder for each remote system I use regularly. Now I can just export directly to these folders from Aperture, and the exported files are transferred to my server without any further intervention on my part.

If you have any questions or feature requests just let me know in the comments section.

New Addictions

Chain Factor ScreenshotSo part of what helped keep me occupied this weekend (other than my friend Donald’s wedding) was Chain Factor. Compared to DTD, it’s more of a traditional puzzle game, but no less addictive.

My current top score is: 191,449 in Basic mode. Since there’s no groups standings on the Chain Factor site, feel free to leave your high scores in the comments.

My other preoccupation has been Rock Band. You’ve been a Guitar Hero, and through the Karaoke Revolution, but now you can play the drums! Too cool. I’ve always wanted to pick up the drums, but this may be close enough. 🙂

To make matters worse, now that I’m on a “next-gen” console I can order additional content online. I’ve already bought 5 new songs for Rock Band (3 Police songs, My Sharona, and Junk Box Hero) at about $2/song. Bloody leeches. But it is fun, and the ability to pay for only the songs I’m interested in might keep me from buying future expansion packs. I’m not counting on it though.

Buy Nothing Day

For the second year in a row, I decided to avoid the crowds, traffic, and pain of Black Friday in favor of enjoying some time at home. This involves forgoing some “doorbuster” deals used as loss-leaders to get you into crowded stores, but it’s not much of a sacrifice.

I only now realized that there is an official campaign called “Buy Nothing Day“, and an associated campaign called, “Buy Nothing Christmas“. I’m totally on board (those who know my situation well, will realize that this isn’t much of a contest).

So this year I’m done. No Christmas presents. No tree. No decorations. Just a little peace and good will towards all.