It's News to Me

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After reading Tom Simpson's post about Handy Backup, I downloaded it for the 30 day free trial period and put it through its paces.  After only 5 days of that evaluation period, I have determined that it meets my needs quite nicely.  I was able to set it up and backup my data to my web hosting service without any problem.  Afterwards, I tested whether I was able to restore the backup to my own computer, and I was.  Being able to restore, is, of course, an essential function. 

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For the last several days, I've been evaluating several new pieces of software.  As I mentioned in my Lessons Learned post on the 22nd, I needed to explore an automatic backup program that gave me an option for offsite backup.  The next day, Tom Simpson posted a piece called «Backups Should Be Automatic» that was, at least in part, a response to my post.  In it, he recommended a backup program that he had found recently called Handy Backup.  It provides the features that I need.  It can be set up to be automated, and it provides the option of backing up with FTP to some remote location, among other options.  It also provides the ability to backup to DVD, but since I don't have a DVD burner on this computer, that option doesn't do me much good.  Though you can backup to CD and though the program is smart enough to span multiple CDs if your backup is too large to fit on just one, that option, while viable for me, entails attending the backup so that you can swap the CDs when one fills up and another is needed.  Better than not backing up at all, of course, but not ideal.  So I am choosing to experiment with the FTP option to backup to my hosting service's servers.

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After receiving the scare I had the day before yesterday about possibly losing my computer, I've drawn a few conclusions from the experience.  Whether I've «learned my lesson» I can't say, but I did discover some things that are potential lessons for me that I hope I'll have the wisdom to learn.

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Thanks to Tom Simpson's long-distance diagnosis of the problem I was having yesterday, I was able to restore my computer to functioning.  It was simply a matter of having loosened the connection of the IDE cable where it is plugged into the motherboard that was the source of my problem.  Tom said he had had the same experience before and suggested that I make sure it was seated properly.  Once I did that, the computer booted properly.  So thanks, yet again, Tom for saving my bacon.

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Smokies Baseball Fathers Day 2006 043
Originally uploaded by Dr Reelgood.

As a Father's Day gift to me, Mike and his family took me to see the Tennessee Smokies play the Chattanooga Lookouts at the Smokies stadium in Sevierville, TN. This picture of Mike and Connor, taken by Cheryl, captured a milestone in Connor's life -- the time he first attended a professional baseball game with his dad and his Granddad.

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Tom Simpson has done some investigation about this new online community and says ...

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One of the joys of using either Firefox or Flock is that both of them allow you to extend the functionality of the browser. What that means is that if you need for your browser to do some specific thing that it doesn't already do, you, or in my case somebody else, can write a mini-application called an «extension» that provides the ability to do what you want it to. By using extensions, users can choose to install only those additional features to their browser that they actually need and want to use.

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This morning I've been experimenting with Flock. For instance, here is one of my experiments.

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