Rick’s Rants and Raves

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.

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.

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.

I’ve recently had some difficulty finding an e-mail solution that works for me and my family. Until a week ago I had been using a Gmail account to manage multiple other accounts for myself. Since my primary address is a non-gmail address, I use the “send mail as” feature to use Gmail to send e-mail as a my primary account on nearbennett.com. The problem is that some clients receive my e-mails as “Sent on behalf of”. So people see both the Gmail account and my preferred account and aren’t sure which one is right. Replies come properly addressed, but I’m still annoyed by the “Sent on behalf of”.

I learned about Google Apps from Skippy a couple of months ago, and decided to give it a try.

Its an interesting concept that lets me manage various aspects of my domain through Google. Their instructions are complete and easy to follow for anyone who has heard of DNS. You don’t have to know the difference between a CNAME and an MX record. So I set up my Google account to manage e-mail and a “start” page. I expected they would be just like Gmail and iGoogle, respectively.

Unfortunately, the Google Apps versions of e-mail and iGoogle appear to be older versions. For example:

• The UI for GA e-mail is about 2 years old, compared with the current GMail version
• The GA e-mail client still has a bug that prevents users from editing imported contacts.
• The GA start page doesn’t allow multiple tabs, whereas the current iGoogle does.
• The GA start page doesn’t allow users (or admins) to customize the number of columns, but iGoogle does.

The other problem I currently have with my Google Apps is that it doesn’t have a version of Google Reader. So, to continue using Google reader, I have to maintain the Gmail account.

Oh well. So far, the Google Apps have been fun to experiment with, and functional enough. If Google Calendar had an off-line client, I might be able to convince my wife to use it.