Redundant Backups

I seem to have developed a quadruple redundant backup system, without realising it. Any files that I frequently access from different places are stored in Dropbox, which, obviously, has an off site backup. Reference materials and scans of pretty much all paperwork are stored in Evernote, which, again, has an offsite backup. Everything is backed up locally with Time Machine (Which recently saved my entire iTunes and iPhoto libraries when I accidentally wiped them). And everything important (including the Evernote and Dropbox data) is backed up again, off-site, with Mozy.

Slightly over the top, perhaps. But, it wasn’t really intentional. After I lost my iPhoto and iTunes libraries, and recovered them off my Time Machine, I decided to add an extra level with Mozy, just in case anything happens to my Time Machine drive. Which isn’t unheard of - I lost an external drive myself not long ago. It took 6 hours and rsync to try and recover the 380Gb of data on it, and I only got about 80% off, before it failed completely.

The only think I don’t have backed up are my DVD rips of my movies and TV shows, but uploading terabytes of data to Mozy would be silly, and would take over six months. Besides, by their nature of being rips, I have the majority of the original discs in a cupboard somewhere.

Who’d have thought?

So, last night I finally managed to get all 800Gb+ of video onto my windows 7 based media pc. The PC in question is an Acer Aspire Revo, an ION based net top. Turns out that while the ION is quite capable of playing full HD video, and even full HD gaming, the little 1.6GHz Atom CPU is completely incapable of the real time transcoding required for watching things over my network on my iPad. Very unhappy.

There are three solutions to this. One, move it all back again and stream it to the media pc from my MBP. Two, use the media pc for my tv, and stream video for my iPad via my MBP and use that to transcode. Three, transcode all my videos to h264 so no more transcoding is needed.

Three would be the ideal solution, but would take an enormous amount of time. And one and two both require leaving two machines on, which is rather wasteful. Sigh. I have a dilemma.

Who’d have thought ten years ago that a one thousand six hundred megahertz CPU would be under powered.

The Real iPhone 4 Issue

There has been so much fuss over the iPhone 4’s antenna recently, no one has noticed the real issue. The glass back. It should be renamed the iPhone Slide. IT WON’T STAY STILL.

The back is almost completely frictionless. I can’t put it down anywhere and expect to come back and find it where I left it. If I put it on the arm of a chair, it’ll either end up down the side of a seat cushion, or it’ll fall off on the floor. Put on in the seat of the chair/sofa, or on a bed, and it’ll slide towards wherever you’re sitting, and end up stuffed under your ass. Don’t put it on the passenger seat of the car when you’re driving – it’ll be gone in seconds.

It astonishes me the sort of things it’ll slide on too. It slides off the arm of my leather recliner. I have a bedside table made from pine. It’s not polished, I made it myself, and it’s sanded down just enough to not give you splinters, so it’s still pretty rough. And yet if I put my phone on it, it slides. Really slowly. If you watch it carefully, you can see it move. If I put it on and go to bed, about an hour later, it’ll fall off.

Bring on the free case.

Pain Scale

Took this off Zoe’s Blog some time ago, it’s handy for quickly explaining pain levels on things like twitter, where you’re limited to a certain number of characters. Also handy when you’re actually IN pain and can’t form a coherent sentence. Pain-free is, of course, 0.

1. Very minor annoyance – mild aches to some parts of the body. No pain medication needed.
2. Minor annoyance – dull aches to some parts of the body. No pain medication needed.
3. Annoying enough to be distracting. Over-the-Counter pain relievers (such as Naproxen Sodium, Acetamonophen, or topical treatments such as Absorbine or Arthritis Pain relieving rubs) take care of it.
4. Can be ignored if you are really involved in your work, but still distracting. Over-the-Counter pain relievers remove pain for 3-4 hours.
5. Can’t be ignored for more than 30 minutes. Over-the-Counter pain relievers help somewhat (bring pain level from 5 to a 3 or 4) with pain for 3-4 hours.
6. Can’t be ignored for any length of time, but you can still go to work and participate in social activities. Stronger painkillers (such as Ultram) relieve pain for 3-4 hours.
7. Makes it difficult to concentrate, interferes with sleep. You can still function with effort. Stronger painkillers (such as Ultram) are only partially effective. (Stronger pain killers bring pain from a 7 to 4-6.)
8. Physical activity severely limited. You can read and converse with effort. Stronger pain killers (such as Ultram) are not effective. (Narcotic pain killers do bring this pain down to a level 3 or lower.)
9. Non functional for all practical purposes. Cannot concentrate. Physical activity halted. Panic sets in.(Narcotic Pain killers bring the pain level from 9 to the 4-6 level.)
10. Totally non-functional. Unable to speak. Crying our or moaning uncontrollably – near delirium.

I am, unfortunately, almost always on 7 just with my back. Migraines bring it up to 8 occasionally 9. I’ve had 10 once, and I dread experiencing it again.

iPhone 4 antenna issues

I’ve been getting extremely frustrated lately with all the coverage of the iPhone 4’s antenna issues. Doesn’t matter where you get your news from, it’ll be skewed from various perspectives. Anyone who doesn’t know anything about antennas is getting heavily biased information, even from the supposedly impartial BBC.

The fact is as Steve Jobs said in his press conference the other day, the number of people experiencing any problems with signal is shockingly small given the way it’s all been blown out of proportion. I don’t know anyone who’s experienced any issues with theirs, and I myself have only had a single dropped call, and that was in my back lounge where my old phone couldn’t get any signal at all.

The important point to take away is that ALL phones (or anything with an antenna – radios, walkie-talkies, laptops, pdas) experience signal attenuation when you introduce a EM absorbing object between them and the transmission source. In this case, that object is the bag of water that is your hand. Your body is nearly two thirds water. Water absorbs EM. How do you think your microwave works? Look it up.

In this case, there’s the additional issue of left handers covering the bottom left antenna gap with their palm. This is a design flaw. The antenna should probably be anodised or something – having an exposed transmissive surface that is going to be frequently in contact with a conductive object is silly. However, again, I’ve not had a problem with this. I’m generally speaking ambidextrous, but depending on the task I usually use one hand more than the other. For phone calls, I use my left hand, but I hold the phone loosely and my palm doesn’t even touch the antenna. I’ve done this for years - it’s not a case of trying to make my iPhone 4 work - it’s a case of trying not to irradiate my hand any more than is strictly necessary. It’s not hard, and I certainly don’t have to put my hand in any unusual positions.

Then there’s the complete twits trying to get some publicity out of it – that US senator for example. There’s Consumer Reports saying Apple should give away free cases, which they do, and then refusing to recommend what they admit is the best smartphone on the market anyway, just out of spite. There’s RIM and Nokia having their own individual hissy fits because it was their phones used as examples in the press conference to show that all phones suffer attenuation when you hold them.

Then, to top it all, I’ve got the brainless morons who, upon seeing my phone, ask me to do the “death grip”. Even if I could get it to work, which I can’t, why would I? Shut up. The lot of you. There is a positive note though, for each idiot who believes all this crap and decides not to buy an iPhone 4, is one less person with the same phone as me. This I like.

I’ve decided, given how annoyed I get with idiot drivers, and stupid journalists asking stupid questions, that from now on I’m going to make a conscious effort to be more like Oz from Buffy. Chilled.

Quick, get to the church!

There’s a church I drive past frequently that has a long drive up to it, at the end of this drive, the road is cross hatched in yellow, with giant writing on it saying “CHURCH ENTRANCE KEEP CLEAR AT ALL TIMES”.

Now, I appreciate that people don’t like having their driveways blocked, but, I’m trying to imagine the sort of emergencies when you’d need immediate access to a church. The only thing I can come up with is a vampire apocalypse in which crosses and holy water are urgently required.