We all have different computer usage patterns and therefore different backup demands. This post will explain the backup plan I have in place, I’m sure there’ll be people out there who will find this useful, and I’d appreciate any feedback that could improve the process.

A little bit of background. I am a heavy computer user, using at least two computers every day, often more. As a hobby I develop software and create and manage websites. My projects change on a daily basis (I actually do work on them!) and so does my personal documentation, such as finances, passwords, reference and todo notes, etc. Since I need access to these at all times, a USB drive is a crucial part of my setup and is where my working copies are located. My websites must be backed up on a nightly basis. This includes the static content, databases and Subversion repositories. I make enough photos to have to back them up once a week from my camera (not cutting edge backup, but good enough for me) and any new music should be backed up once a month, since I’d like a copy of it to survive all future disasters. All my email is stored on an IMAP server (Fastmail.FM), which is backed up locally with IMAPSize.

This is the diagram of my backup plan (click to enlarge):

The main idea with creating a backup plan is understanding how often the data changes and what data is “priceless”, meaning that once lost, the data would be extremely hard or impossible to regenerate. For me, my software, my websites, my personal documents, my email and my photos are the priceless electronic stuff. This data changes on a daily basis and for it I maintain both an automatic daily online backup and several copies of monthly offline snapshots.

Offline backups are performed on a monthly basis and include both a snapshot of my crucial data as well as less important data (can be found online) such as software, publicly available docs, etc.

These are the tools and services I use:

- SyncBackSE with powerful filtering options is used for moving everything to a centralized backup area on my main PC. I do this since my projects require some cleaning from unnecessary files (svn folders, build files, etc) before being backed up. This saves space and therefore backup times.

- Mozy is an excellent online backup service which I’ve been using for the past few months. The Mozy agent is transparent and does it’s job very well. Mozy provides a free account with a generous 2GB, but also provides paid accounts in case you need more space.

- Fastmail.FM is my email service provider. With a 2GB IMAP store my live email system is also my main email backup area (I’ve been with Fastmail for almost 5 years and they have earned my trust). However, I do backup up my email locally with a scheduled automatic backup every week with IMAPSize and monthly to a DVD. Fastmail also provides me with 1GB of flexible file storage which I use in case I need to share files online.

- For backing up my websites I use the widely available scripts for automatic backups. Even though I’m extremely satisfied with my main host A Small Orange and I do trust their backup strategy, I feel much better knowing that I have my own backups in case something goes terribly wrong. I keep two copies of my live websites at every time. One is the latest nightly backup and the other is the weekly backup, which is a Sunday’s copy of the daily backup. Due to space limitations I can’t afford to have more than two full backups, so this is a compromise I made. Ideally, at least a week of daily backups should be kept in case the latest backup is messed up for some reason.

In summary, all my important data is backed up automatically on a daily basis. An exception are photos and the address book in my phone, since these currently require my manual intervention. Once a month I perform the big offline backup to DVDs.

Tags: Backup, Online Backup, Mozy, SyncBack, IMAPSize, Fastmail, Email Backup

Just a quick note for those among you who enjoy wine, I’ve started a wine diary a couple of weeks ago. It’s a mix of wine tasting notes and wine software and web sites. I like it

Also started a small experiment, called “A Wine Blog“, it will be interesting to see how it develops.

Tags: Wine Blog, Wine Diary, Wine Websites, Wine Sites

It’s been a while since I posted. I’ve been on holidays in Serbia and Montenegro and have been in a lazy computer mood ever since I returned. The six weeks of meeting up with good old and some new friends, partying, relaxing and letting it all go have recharged me, and my programming and online activities are starting to gain momentum once again… It’s good to have the urge back

For me, Live 365 is one of the best sites on the Internet. I don’t really follow mainstream music and the bands I mostly enjoy listening are not always easy to discover and find. With Live 365 this task is much easier. For example, I enter an artists name and a list of stations that play his/her music gets listed. For those of you who don’t know, Live 365 is a huge collection of amateur and professional radio stations that broadcast over the net. It’s cool because broadcasters are located all over the world and literally all music genres are covered. I like the fact that people run their stations from their rooms using their personal music collections (of course, some stations are more professional than that). There’s something new to discover every day.

Anyway, today I wanted to add a list of my “Presets” (favourites) to the sidebar of my blog and was surprised that there is no RSS option available on Live 365, which is strange knowing that they offer podcasts. What I wanted was an RSS feed for my presets so I could distribute the link to my friends and let them know what new stations I’ve discovered lately. In the absence of an elegant way to perform this, I’ve manually added the list of my favourite internet radio stations to the sidebar of my blog. Take a look, you might like some of it!

If you’ve found a way to perform something similar automatically, please let me know.

Tags: Live365, Internet Radio

The SimpleTags plugin is my first WordPress plugin. It was something I desperately needed and since I couldn’t find a plugin that would fully suit my needs I wrote this one. I hope someone else finds it useful too.

SimpleTags is a WordPress plugin that will allow you to easily generate Technorati tags at the bottom of your blog entries, like the ones below this post. There are several plugins already available for this purpose, but AFAIK, they all require you to use custom fields within WordPress. The SimpleTags plugin eliminates this need, so you can now easily generate tags with your preferred method of posting, be it by email, a blogging tool like w.bloggar or from WordPress itself.

SimpleTags was inspired by TechnoTag. Thanks Gudlyf!

Tags: SimpleTags, Technorati Tags, Word Press

On my recent trip to Spain a friend introduced me to the wines of the Ribera del Duero region. This region is located in the north-west central Spain on the banks of the river Duero, around the cities of Burgos, Segovia, Soria and Valladolid. Wines that have been produced there lately are becoming hugely popular among Spanish wine drinkers (that makes prety much the whole of the population). I must admit I enjoyed it as much as my favourite Riojas.

The wines are made of Bordeaux grape varieties as well as the local ones, Tempranillo and Garnacha. The top vineyard of the region, Vega Sicilia, produces the “Unico” which is reputedly the most expensive wine in Spain.

Tags: Ribera del Duero, Rioja, Wine

“It’s a beautiful day”, you have to live in Bono’s Dublin to appreciate this phrase. At least when it comes to weather. Well, it’s one of those beautiful days today, sunshine everywhere.

Some people ask me what satisfaction do I get from writing free software. It comes down to, among a few other things, putting smiles on peoples faces, including mine. It’s a great feeling to see how something you’ve created positively effects people. Thanks Jerry and Matt, you’ve made my day too.

I’m now going for a walk with my Mrs, down to the blue Dublin Bay, to listen to the waves and clear our heads from last nights party. Still feeling the nice taste of the newly discovered cool drink - Zubrowka, Bison Grass Vodka. Thanks Adam!

To many Japanese, the key to their personality lies not in their stars but in their blood type. Speaking broadly, it is said that people with Type A Blood are calm, composed, and very level-headed and serious. People with Type B Blood are curious about and interested in everything. Type O Blood people are said to set the mood for a group and to take on the role of creating harmony among its members. People with Type AB Blood are said to have a delicate sensitivity. They are considerate of other people’s feelings and deal with them with care and caution.

In Japan, blood type has influenced peoples lives in unexpected ways. For instance, some Japanese companies have planned departments around the blood types of their workforce. This is why this myth is nowadays under attack.

Check out more on the personality classification by blood type in these articles:

JapanVisitor, Issendai

You might have noticed that I’m using WordPress as the blog engine. Apart from using WordPress for my 3G Handsets blog and CuteNews for my IMAPSize news, I’ve tried numerous other tools. The main features I was looking for in the “perfect” blogging tool were a small footprint, easy configuration and easy integration with the rest of the site. Being able to hack it around in order to satisfy my needs was a must. Plugins would be a huge plus.

The choice first came down to two excellent tools: AJ-Fork and blosxom. AJ-Fork is a fork of CuteNews and its main goal is to make CuteNews more flexible and powerful while preserving its simplicity and small footprint. Blosxom is really small and beautiful (well, as blossom is supposed to be) and I had a great time playing with it.

However, I had some problems with both of these tools, be it RSS feeds, automatic pings, posting by email and posting methods in general, so I decided to give WordPress another try and everything I needed worked straight away. Its footprint is not as small as the previously mentioned tools, but it is small enough to comfortably live with it. I feel kind of sorry to have abandonded AJ-Fork and blosxom, with some additional effort I’m sure I would have adapted them completely to my needs. I’ll keep them in mind for some other blog!

After years of playing around with RSS (mainly related to my hobby projects) and recently starting a news blog related to 3G Handsets, I’ve finally felt a need to create a blog space where I would drop some of my own thoughts, ideas, and cool things I stumble upon every day.

This blog will revolve around things that are of most interest to me, but which could be of some interest to others too (I hate being boring!). These are all kinds of software tools, webmaster stuff, cool sites, high-end mobile phones, messaging, travelling, photography, hedonism, etc. Basically, I’ll just let it roll and see where it goes. I hope you enjoy it!