Category Archives: Internet

Writing is a pain in the ass now

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It has gotten to be such a pain in the ass to write a blog post anymore. I’m not even sure where to put my primary content. I like taking pictures. I like writing about them, but my current “publishing” workflow has got to change. Here’s what I’m doing currently, though it seems to vary a bit post-by-post.

  1. Edit my photos in Lightroom or GIMP as needed. Export them to a web-sized image for uploading.
  2. I upload the images I’m most proud of to Flickr. If people I know on Facebook are in the images, I’ll upload to Facebook too (or sometimes instead). If its an image like the one above that I’m writing about and has no other merit, I’ll just upload it to my blog.
  3. I write about the images or the experience or whatever I’m thinking about. Most always that writing is done on my blog. Sometimes I’ll add content to the description of the Flickr images. Sometimes I’ll add content to the Facebook images.
  4. I’ll publish my blog post.
  5. Sometimes I update the description of the images on Flickr or Facebook to include a link to the blog post.
  6. I link to the blog post on Facebook .
  7. I link to the blog post on Google+.

I have a small community of contacts in each of those spaces that I’d like to maintain, but its getting to the point where a) I don’t know why I’m doing what I’m doing and b) it takes a minimum of 30 minutes just to publish an image and a paragraph about it. So I’ve started to procrastinate–took me three weeks to say almost nothing about the shoot with Jessi.

Why use four different venues for my content?

I use Flickr as much out of habit as anything. And I’ve got a few contacts on there whose input on my work I value. And it means my web host doesn’t get hit with traffic for the images (yeah, I know, all 10 views).

I use Facebook because the huge majority of the people I know use Facebook, and its the best way to make sure my content gets seen. But I don’t write extended content on Facebook because their terms of service used to say they can use my content any way they want, even if I deleted it. The TOS doesn’t say that now, but old habit die hard, and I feel like I want control over my content history. Also, (I believe this is still true), comments, status updates and notes on Facebook are not searchable to the world. So if you got an “smoni receive datagram” error, and had I published my experience solving the error on Facebook, you’d never find it. On the other hand, my blog post about it is number two on Google search results. I like to write to help others.

I started to use Google+ because there was a huge influx of photographers there. Seemed like a good place to go to meet and share with other ‘togs. But almost none of my IRL friends and family are there.

I use my own web host because of the degree of control that I have over my content. But not many people read the posts. And control also means I have to deal with spam and hackers.

So this is mostly a rant about the situation I’ve developed for myself. I know, first world problem. Dunno where I’m going to go from here. If you have a thought, please feel free to hit me up on any of the above channels.

Using winscp to back up my mom’s files

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My mom has a computer, but it has been years since I encouraged her to have any sort of data backup plan. I have two low-cost, low pain (for her) options for attempting to secure her data.

  1. Plug a USB drive into the back of her PC, and script an xcopy command (or something similar) so that every hour or so, it copies her important files to the drive. This would be cheap (she doesn’t have that much data), and pretty easy. The solution would protect against drive failure, but not against robbery, fire, or flood.
  2. Use winscp to securely copy her files over her internet connection to my NSLU2 network storage. This is more complicated, costs nothing but a bit of time to figure it out, and protects against all possible forms of data loss (unless our whole city is consumed with a fire or flood).

Since I’m already sharing my NSLU2 with Skippy, and I’ve got way more space than she’ll ever need, and I like a bit of a challenge, I’ll go with winscp.
Some pre-requisites that I’ve already got set up:

  • NSLU2 running Unslung.
  • Use OpenSSH for remote access.
  • Forward a port on my router to the OpenSSH port on my NSLU2.
  • Establish an account with a Dynamic DNS host, such as DynDNS.com, and set up my router to check in with DynDNS to update my IP address periodically.

Now, on to using winscp for this application.

  1. Download the “portable” version of winscp and  save it to a new directory. I renamed it from winscp416.exe to just winscp.exe.
  2. Create a new user on my NSLU2 for my mom, and give the account ssh access.
  3. Establish the first winscp session to my NSLU2 to save the security keys: winscp sftp://user:password@host:port
  4. Save that session in winscp by choosing Save Session… from the Session menu. The default name was user@host, and I chose to keep the password.
  5. Create a list of winscp commands, and store them in winscp-commands.txt. The following commands will copy everything from the current directory structure to the home directory on the NSLU2.

    option batch on
    option confirm off
    option transfer binary
    synchronize remote -delete
    close
    exit

  6. Create a batch file, named backup-files.cmd with the following command
    winscp user@host /console /script=winscp-commands.txt
  7. Set backup-files.cmd to run as a scheduled task.

The “synchronize remote -delete” command will put all files from the local directory into the remote directory, deleting any files on the remote that have been removed from the local.

It is also possible to add multiple synchronize commands to this file, but be careful, because the remote directory must exist for the sync to work. For example:

synchronize remote -delete “c:\documents and settings\me” /user/my_stuff

will only work if the directory /user/my_stuff already exists.

Stranger Photos

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I love this idea: tie a camera to a public bench, with a note instructing people to take pictures. Retrieve the pictures to see what people did.

http://theplug.net/28/strangerphotos.htm

It would be a fun project at Chautauqua, especially if the sign had a URL where people could go see their and others’ photos. Chautauqua is such a trusting place, I could almost do it with a digital camera.

Using Twitter to Drive Blog Traffic

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Here’s an experiment to try:

  1. Sign up for Twitter, if you haven’t already. If you don’t have an e-mail you want to share with them, use a dodgeit.com account.
  2. Add a link to your blog (or a particular post) in a tweet.
  3. Go to step 1, using a different username and dodgeit.com account.

Do this 5-10 times to get your link onto the front page of http://www.s2n.com/pulse/twitter.com. See how many hits you get.