The boss in his ?helmet?

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Testing mobypicture and various settings

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there's just something about a flashmob

having been part of one (very small one) they are exciting

take a look at this one

pancakes and flashdrives

gravelboy and i got up early to take spacie to teh train and stopped off at maccers to pick up some hotcakes for breakfast (6am drive through only) (for non-kiwi mcdonald's users - ours have pancakes on their breakfast menu)

gravelboy likes his pancakes and so purchased 2 lots





and ate them faster than i did mine ...

and as for flashdrives ...



L to R

won @ an ICT thing - 1GB - i use for when i want to print photos @ the local photo printing place

8GB from bestbuy in the US - on sale for US$20 - use for everything

1GB that i got cheap from harvey norman (bought one for everyone) which spacie seems to have used for her assignments - even though she already has one!)

2GB with a linux OS on it that i haven't been able to run successfully on my macbook ... sigh ... one day

1GB tomato flash that's been formatted as OSX and therefore runs super fast in transferring files between my iBook and MacBook

at school i also have another couple of flashies ...

long story short ...

ever since i got back from Montana i've been having problems with my nokia 6121 - not major problems - just annoying problems such as a time lag between clicking on "new text" and the text screen coming up (and when replying as well)

last week while home sick i was checking out dealaday.co.nz when they had a special "FREE" deal - only pay freight on a 1GB Transcend MicroSD Card - that was something i couldn't pass up since i only had a 512MB card in my nokia

2 days later a parcel arrives - i open it and in it was a 2GB Transcend MicroSD Card - the invoice with the parcel stated a 2GB although my emailed invoice stated 1GB

having fiddled around so i could transfer the data from the old card to the new card (i basically downloaded it into a folder on my macbook via bluetooth) i inserted the new card and hey presto - my problems have disappeared!

i wasn't sure if the problems had occurred because of extreme temps or something else - still not sure why they occurred as my card memory wasn't maxed out ... but it's nice to have it all working swiftly again ...

geocaching ....

my trusty sidekick and i went out geocaching today



sidekick and view of kapiti island through the trees



some of the travel bugs we left in the cache

then we went to Paraparaumu and visited the "sustainable something or rather fair"

i was rather taken with this:



and this is the same at a distance



and to top off this post here are a couple of sunset pix:

thursday night from my balcony



last night from the beach area

Nerdy Post #2 - Backups

You can never remind people too often to backup their computers - why? - because no matter how often you remind them when the inevitable happens and their HDD dies or becomes corrupted they panic because their computer wasn't backed up and they've lost all their data.

I was just counting to myself the various ways I backup information. I think it's 4 or maybe 5 ways:

Time Machine - Since I have 2 Mac computers - iBook and MacBook - I can access the built in TM function - non-mac users can use other programs.



I back up both machines (total backups) to a 1TB FreeAgent Drive that I purchased for $270 earlier this year from Harvey Norman.



This just sits on my desktop (my actual desktop not my computer desktop ;-) ) - I do a total backup once a week (although time machine will backup hourly/daily/weekly/monthly) on both my machines.

I also do limited backups from both machines to Mozy.




I have a home account which allows me 2GB space - this is not actual 2GB but 2GB once compressed (so I discovered after doing a restore).



I use this for important documents that I don't ever want to lose.

I also use an extremely handly little piece of software/cloud computing called "Dropbox".



How this works is very snazzy. You download some software which installs a shared folder (dropbox) on your computer. Anything you put into that folder is automatically synced with your dropbox account online. You can also install a folder on another computer and have both computers syncing via the cloud.

I use this for all my work related stuff. All my documents, pictures, various other files that I need for work are in that folder. I also have other docs that I may want to access at any time. Basically if a file, or program, or picture is in that folder I can access it from any computer in the world (or even from my iTouch).

This meant that while I was in the USA for 5 weeks in Dec/Jan I was able to do school work and then access it from my school computer when I got home.

I have a folder hierarchy within the initial dropbox folder which keeps things organised.

Dropbox has a 2GB quota for the free account. As you can see I have a way to go before I hit the limit.



I also have 2 portable drives: one is my old FreeAgent Go 75GB drive that I used to use for backups (and ran out of space) - this is for my iBook for storing stuff I want to have access to but don't need every day or even every week. For my MacBook I have a Freecom Toughdrive 320GB drive I picked up at Learning@School for $180 - I'd use it for my iBook but there's a compatibility issue with it.



The Toughdrive is a beauty. I can run movies etc right from the drive without having to download them onto the HDD - and in fact, have used it plugged into the XBOX 360 and watched videos on the TV directly from the drive.

I also have an 8GB flash drive - this being the most portable of all - I carry stuff around on here that I might want to share with others at a moments notice.

And the final place I have stuff backed up - not that I'm doing this too often now - is on DVDs - I have old school photos from the last 3-4 years; games; docs etc on DVD. I'm gradually moving those onto the 1TB drive.