Having read a few recent posts from “Andy Budd”:http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2005/01/backup_solutions_for_os_x/ and “Jason Kottke”:http://www.kottke.org/05/01/narrowly-avoided-catastrophe, I’ve grown suddenly worried about the prospect of losing my Powerbook’s _data_. For the past couple of years, I’ve manually backed up critical files to CD, but I was lucky if this got done _once_ per year…
After briefly flirting with DVD archiving (thanks for your help “Jason”:http://www.circa1973.net/bossanova/), it was clear that this would be only slightly less annoying than CDs. And, web servers offer even less disk space…
No, I decided that it was time to set up _scheduled_ backups, to hard disk.
First, I started with an old Dell Desktop, which we set up in our litter-box closet. We bought a USB Wi-Fi “G” adapter to connect the PC (and our printer) to the network. I should also mention that I added an 80GB internal drive…
With the hardware in place, I decided to use “Déj? Vu”:http://propagandaprod.com/dejavu.html to run the backups — this app does everything a backup app should do, but I like the way it is integrated in System Preferences, as a _preference pane_. It’s lean, clean, and fits well into the OS.
After an hour or so of Setup, I’ve got scheduled weekly backups of my _user_ directory, starting tonight at 3am…
I know that I’ll sleep more soundly!
After a few site tweaks earlier in the week allowed me to implement new categories in this weblog, I decided to add weighted category lists, much like Flickr & Technorati.
I modified an example given by hitormiss, which looks like this:
<?php
$minfont = 1;
$maxfont = 5;
$fontunit = "";
<MTCategories>
$catlinks{"<$MTCategoryLabel$>"} = "<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>";
$counts{"<$MTCategoryLabel$>"} = <$MTCategoryCount$>;
</MTCategories>
$spread = max($counts) - min($counts); if ($spread <= 0) { $spread = 1; };
$fontspread = $maxfont - $minfont;
$fontstep = $spread / $fontspread; if ($fontstep <= 0) { $fontstep = 1; };
foreach ($counts as $catname => $count)
{
$catlink = $catlinks{$catname};
print "<a href=\"$catlink\" title=\"$count entries\" class=\"cat".
ROUND(($minfont + ($count/$fontstep)))."\">$catname</a> \n";
}
?>
[You can also download it in a text file]
Put it in your Moveable Type archive template, and you’re good to go. It will write 5 CSS classes — cat1, cat2, cat3, cat4, cat5… (of course, you’ll have to define those in your stylesheet!)
You can head over to my archives page, to check out the implementation. (Notice that the 5 largest categories are the original 5… i will be classifying old entries in the next couple of days…)
(I apologize if not all the code is viewable here — I suggest you highlight and copy/paste to a text editor, which should work)
“mic stand 2″, posted by nedward
On Tuesday, we checked out NYC’s latest hyped offering, “The Bravery”:http://www.thebravery.com/, at “TT’s”:http://ttthebears.com, and it only cost $8. Labeled by the BBC critics as the “Sound of 2005″:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4097433.stm, it looks as though they have a shot at living up to the hype.
Usually a staid Cambridge crowd, TTs was absolutely electric… check out my “photos”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/nedward/sets/97028/.
Just a note of thanks to Stef & Nobuko for recommending Dali’s for our anniversary dinner.
Presley and I have been together now for 8 years, and I don’t think we’ve ever had a finer experience. Because of the blizzard, we had to delay one day, but it was worth the wait… (a couple of photos of us… gag!)
Tapas items that we ordered:
- Mejillones con Aguacate (Green-Lipped Mussels w/Avocado)
- Queso de Cabra Montaña (Baked Goat Cheese w/Tomato & Basil)
- Gambas al Ajillo (Garlic Shrimp)
- Vieiras al Azafrán (Scallops in Saffron Cream)
- Ravioles de Mariscos (Lobster/Crabmeat Ravioli w/Langostino Sauce)
- Solomillo en Tostada (Beef Tenderloin w/Pimento on Toast)
And, for dessert:
- Filloa al Licor (Fruit-filled Dessert Crepe accented with Chocolate Sauce and Orange Liquor)
Some Anniversaries past:
Is it wrong to look at mothers in the “mall”:http://natickmall.com/ food court, and wonder why they let their kids eat McDonald’s and Pizza?
(There are limited culinary options near my workplace)
It was a long time coming, but I gave this weblog yet another design tweak, converting the horrid _image map_ navigation to _CSS-styled unordered lists_.
This design has served me well for the past 2+ years… a major re-design has been in planning for more than a year, but I almost enjoy tweaking this one more. There is value in _constancy_.
The real motive for doing this, is that my category choices for posts have been limited to the same 5: “books”:http://ned.suckahs.org/archives/cat_books.php, “music”:http://ned.suckahs.org/archives/cat_music.php, “movies”:http://ned.suckahs.org/archives/cat_movies.php, “features”:http://ned.suckahs.org/archives/cat_features.php, and “posts”:http://ned.suckahs.org/archives/cat_posts.php… I couldn’t add new categories, because the image navigation, and complex scripting behind its display wouldn’t allow for it.
Stupid right? Designing with flexibility is something that I am learning… pixel-perfect, heavily-graphical sites can turn out to be a pigeonhole.
Maybe I just needed 2+ years to strip away, and “un-design”:http://ned.suckahs.org/archives/000862.php it to the point where the content becomes the most important component.
Anyway, everything is a bit in flux at the moment, so there might be further changes to come.
I just came in from shoveling the driveway of our next door neighbor, where he kindly let me park the 9-3… more than two feet of snow, blizzard conditions, and very cold temperatures — reminds me of the Buffalo blizzards of my youth…
Everything is closed, and I’m waiting to hear if I have to go in to work tomorrow morning… in the meantime, i put some photos on “Flickr”:.
Also:
