Posts

Posted on

Time Capsule

18 months ago, I bought an Infrant ReadyNAS to store MP3s and our home backups. It’s been all peaches, and we’ve been using SuperDuper for backup against it with no issues.

When Leopard came out, thought we’d switch to Time Machine for backup… only to discover that Time Machine doesn’t support backups to network shares — unless those shares are on Mac (HFS+) volumes. The ReadyNAS does do AFP, but the ReadyNAS itself is Linux-based, and its internal filesystem is ext-something.

This sucks. Without simple, any-OS network backups, you’re forced to attach a physical disk to each machine you want to back up — unless you’ve got OS X Server running somewhere in the house (and thus have some networked HFS+ volumes to back up to).

Found a hack on the Infrant forums to force Time Machine to see a ReadyNAS share as a supported volume:

sudo defaults write com.apple.systempreferences \
TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

Timecapsule It works! Time Machine has been backing up to a partition on the ReadyNAS for a few weeks now. But I haven’t had occassion to try and restore from it yet, and don’t completely trust it. Apple’s introduction of Time Capsule seems like the perfect answer, and is dirt cheap for what you get (remember it doubles as an AirPort base station and print server).

But I resent that it’s required. Daring Fireball has essentially the same gripe. I already have an excellent networked storage unit. I shouldn’t have to buy Apple hardware to accomplish this. Apple needs to step forward and support TM backups to any network volume. Time Machine shouldn’t be a gateway drug sucking you into the Apple Store.

Of course, no law prevents me from continuing to use SuperDuper. But TM feels so good…

Music: Alton and the Flames :: Tuff
Posted on

QuickTags

Web-based forums/boards have had comment formatting buttons (quote, italic, bold, link, etc.) for years. I have no theories as to why this feature is not present on any major blogging platforms I know of. Even weirder, it’s really hard to find a plugin to implement what would seemingly be a much-requested feature. But went searching for one tonight and eventually found LMBBox.

Quicktags

Not listed in the major plugin repo’s. Doesn’t claim support for anything over WP 2.0, but I’ve got it working in WP 2.3. Required some mods to comments.php in my theme (probably one reason why it’s not a common plugin), but seems to be working nicely (Safari of course insists on showing its usual elegant but un-styled form buttons; not yet tested in IE).

Music: Vicki Anderson :: The Message From The Soul Sister
Posted on

MacHeist

Whoa: 11 great Mac apps ($368.75 worth) for $49 – can’t beat that with a stick. Heck, I’ve already spent more than $100 on a few of these over the past couple of years.

Macheist

It gets better: 25% of the proceeds go to charity. Some of the software licenses won’t be released until certain quotas have been met – all that remains to be unlocked at this point is Pixelmator (I already own that one, but let’s work together and complete the set). Run, don’t walk.

Music: Bob Dylan :: Love Minus Zero-No Limit
Posted on

Death and Underachievement

Technically a few weeks late for a new year’s resolution, but better late than… whatever. Just stumbled across an incredible essay by Ryan Norbauer of 43 Folders: Death and Underachievement: A Guide to Happiness in Work

Norbauer chips away at the notion that productivity and achievement are pathways to happiness, and in so doing opens up a Pandora’s box of existential questions for the workplace. For those of us driven like rats to sip from the sugar-water spouts sticking through our cage walls looking for one more rush, one more minor achievement to fool our impatient selves into thinking we’ve found a scrap of meaning in our lives, Norbauer says it’s time to step back and take a close look at ultimate motivations:

The essential point that we must confront here is that the achievements which seem so important and for the pursuit of which we perpetually torture ourselves are on the one hand futile and the other utterly insignificant. What is the ultimate summit we expect to reach? And if we can’t answer this question, why do we exert ourselves as if we’re heading towards one?

His observations are in part triggered by the release of The Underachiever’s Manifesto: The Guide to Accomplishing Little and Feeling Great, which rests upon these core principles:

  • Life’s too short.
  • Control is an illustion.
  • Expectations lead to misery.
  • Great expectations lead to great misery.
  • Achievement creates expectations.
  • The law of diminishing returns applies everywhere.
  • Perfect is the enemy of good.
  • The tallest blade of grass is the surest to be cut.
  • Accomplishment is in the eye of the beholder.

It’s a powerful piece, and one I needed badly to see. I’ve been feeling all of this for a while now, but blaming it on the wrong things: ennui, exhaustion, a fragmentated work environment, my own stupidity. But maybe the problem is that I’m looking for love satisfaction in all the wrong places.

My (fittingly late) New Year’s resolution is to chill more, back off the treadmill, and to remember to breathe.

via Weblogsky

Music: Sun Ra and the Year 2000 Myth Science Arkestra :: Other Voices
Posted on

The Meal

Miles and I spent an hour with iStopMotion and boxes of toys today, experimenting with animation techniques. The topic’s been on his mind recently since he’s starting to really figure out where real actors end and animated characters begin – the quality of rendering in so many modern kid’s shows makes the line more blurry than it used to be.

This was our second practice clip, unpolished and without sound, but he really got the hang of it after a while. Took about half an hour to create these 10 seconds, but he says he’s willing to put in the time to create more fluid flicks in the future. And I realize now that we should have been working at the default 20fps rather than 15.

Click to play

A friend of his stopped by while we were working on it and he told him “We’re making a movie about animation and I’m the conductor!”

Heard of an alternate stop-motion technique the other day – rather than feeding DV camera output to a Mac and grabbing still frames directly into a sequence, mount a digital still camera instead. Since the images will all have sequential filenames by default, you can drag then into Final Cut Pro, setting the initial duration for each image, and get the same effect. Except that you’ll have had the advanced features of the digital still camera, and the advanced features and controls of FCP rather than being limited to what iStopMotion offers. Hmmm…

Music: Guru Guru :: Woodpeckers Dream
Posted on

Garmin Colorado

Garmin Colorado 400T Stock-1 I’m not the gadget hound I used to be – practicality’s got the better of me. But I’ve been drooling over Garmin’s coming Colorado handheld GPS receiver. Is this the iPhone of the GPSr world? After nine months of geocaching with my intro-level unit, I’ve become painfully aware of its limitations: Small screen, tendency to lose signal easily in tall trees, difficult-to-use buttons, inability to store anything but coordinates from .gpx files (which is why I wrote gpx2ipod).

The Colorado addresses all of that and more… at a price. Excellent review at GPS Magazine (6-page review, check the photos on inner pages). “Indiana Jones Meets MacGyver.” Not sure I want to be either of those guys, but dang, I’m drooling. Went to look for a demo unit at REI yesterday, but it’s not in stores yet. Ended up walking out with new mud boots instead. Saving pennies.

Music: The Langley Schools Music Project :: Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft
Posted on

A Very Sad Day

After just having spent the last couple of hours watching the Republican half of the ABC debates, I can sort of relate to this poor four-year-old:

(not really). Actually, it was a pretty interesting experience watching the GOPs duke it out. You go through stretches thinking “See, they’re not all idiots! Some of these guys are pretty bril.” Then someone’s real agenda eeps out through the smokescreen and you’re forced to recant.

Music: Altai Hangai :: The trot of an uulgan shar camel
Posted on

Integrated Manure Utilization Systems

The idea behind the Discovery show Invention Nation is good: Send three hipster dudes around the country in a bio-diesel bus, looking for interesting technological environmental solutions. Unfortunately, the show is poorly produced and executed, but the ideas in it are interesting enough that it’s kept me watching.

Cool to see a piece recently on Integrated Manure Utilization Systems (IMUS). There’s a butt-load (sorry) of usable methane gas locked in the manure that gets discarded by the ton at dairies and stock yards around the world. An IMUS system involves strategically placed floor grates in cattle yards, into which manure can be pushed. From there, it’s chopped, mixed with water, and placed in large holding tanks. Bacteria go to work on the sludge and methane rises to the top, where it’s burned (cleanly) to create electricity.

How effective is the process? The dairy farm visited by the Invention Nation guys had 250 cattle, and was able to generate enough electricity not only to power itself, but 150 average-sized households as well. And the equipment investment pays off in 5-7 years.

The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association says the range of benefits from IMUS include:

  • Reduced manure handling costs
  • Protection of water resources
  • Odour reduction
  • Recycling of waste water
  • Reduced energy costs
  • Value-added revenue from the sale of energy and bio-based fertilizer
  • Strengthening agriculture’s reputation of environmentally sustainable resource management

Imagine if every dairy and cattle yard installed their own IMUS – the enviro benefits would be immense.

Music: Son House :: Empire State Express